Study your game industry history. If you really want to compare the Dreamcast to something, and this is a HUGE stretch, it's the PS4. In reality nobody is in the position Sega was in when the Dreamcast launched - it was an attempted comeback from a failed system. It was actually a pretty good console but they were unable to recover from the Saturn.
if you mean xbox one from 2001, it's been pretty close to, with epic sega exclusives that no one bothered to purchase.
oh, and more mobile games? I'm fine with that.
love my iphone, would love to see better budgets coming there, would love to work on that kind of games too.
I have a hard time siding a company who only stopped their plans to screw me over because I screamed loudly enough for them to hear me in their corporate towers. Still getting a PS4.
+1
...not that Sony's a saintly company now, but it seem they got it mostly right with what consumers want this time.
LOL,
I half agree. I find the constant internet thing dumb and simply because if one doesn't need a persistent universe then why would it matter?
If it can go offline for 24 hours then why not longer? I don't need that forced on me because what if I take my Xbox somewhere without internet? I'm sure cloud support works just fine if you are connected to the internet like everyone will likely be. I'd like to have that option, until I moved a month ago this would have been a problem for me and I live near Seattle.
I don't get why they can't do anything that they all ready announced, if anything a set of what should be standard features has been added on and that alone is great. While it would be nice to get developers more money but I think that they could easily do something like steam sales and that alone would drag people who have good internet into the place Microsoft wants them to be, online, using online services. I see this as a positive because I believe that the two can work together.
This is the person that people see as the face of the game industry and to live up to?
One stupid bloody change, and suddenly the entire console market is going to collapse? Bloody, sodding, hell, talk about being the bastard child of Schrier http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=schreier
I love Cliff, but the trouble with this is that he's implying that if Microsoft had gotten it's way everything would be roses and sunshine for developers. I don't agree.
The bing line kills me. I'm with AlexCat, I really hope they can find a way to make it work both for those that want physical disks, and those who were looking forward to a completely digital XB:1.
If people want to trade in a game for $7, it's their right to do it. We don't need a 3rd party to police that. If people would stop SELLING them games for so cheap, then Gamestop would start offering more money, or go out of business. That's how consumer business works. But the MS plan was also going to prevent me from selling my games on Ebay, which I CAN get more than $7.
The same console as before (but with better graphics); really? Ok, if that's the case, than MS was trying to sell me a 360 with DRM support. Oh, that sounds wonderful. It goes beyond better graphics. The new consoles will not have more processing power, and will be able to offer what PCs are getting right now (and yes, fall behind again down the road).
Cloud support: There is no reason a game can not have a label stating "Requires internet access while in use", so that the consumer knows that they'll need it for the cloud support. But requiring 24/7 internet was not necessary for supporting games that don't utilize the cloud.
Steam: It has already been covered several times here, there is an offline mode. As for pricing, set a fucking precedence MS. I've seen what both MS and Sony do in their stores. They rarely offer deals, and even those deals aren't comparable to steam. Why would I think it would change? MS nickle and dimed me right out of using my 360 anymore. Am I suppose to believe that they'll suddenly care about giving me a deal? Maybe, if they want to move into the same realm as Steam, they should start offering 'summer sales' like steam does. Maybe they should start lowering the prices of old games, instead of keeping them at $60, because they still have some commercial success.
PS - The kinect: I've never been truly worried about MS watching me in my underwear. I'm more concerned about an always on camera, that would allow a thief to view inside my home, or some pervert neighbor. I also don't like the idea of MS changing the cost of my movie, if too many people are in the room. In the end, if I don't want the damn thing connected, then I should have that option.
The problem with the Kinect is that it drives up the cost of the console with no visible benefit. Motion control has failed to find an audience outside of fitness/sports/dance games and even those have sold poorly on the 360 compared to the Wii.
I expect Microsoft to end up walking back their policy on self-publishing and decoupling the Kinect from the XB1 after the launch. At which point the consoles really will basically be interchangeable except for a handful of exclusive titles.
as much as i love this, the bit about cloud support and creating huge game universes is literally the most stupid thing i've ever heard.
you can do that without anyone ever being online. if people were required to be online all the time for that functionality to work, it would also require their console to be turned on all the time for it to work.
The problem with the Kinect is that it drives up the cost of the console with no visible benefit. Motion control has failed to find an audience outside of fitness/sports/dance games and even those have sold poorly on the 360 compared to the Wii.
I expect Microsoft to end up walking back their policy on self-publishing and decoupling the Kinect from the XB1 after the launch. At which point the consoles really will basically be interchangeable except for a handful of exclusive titles.
You answered why they need to include it, in your own post. The Wii does well with motion control games, because the sensor is included. Developers know, if they make a game for the Wii, it WILL have a motion sensor. If they make a game for the 360, they can not guarantee that. For the XBone, it will be guaranteed that every user will have a kinect.
That being said, I'm sure developers will mostly ignore the kinect still. I did not see many exclusives announced, and even some of the 'exclusives' are only launch exclusives, with planned expansions to other consoles in a year (at least as rumor has it). So, if they are going to make a game, that supports multiple platforms (including the PC), then I don't seem them supporting a kinect, since the other platforms won't have it.
I'm personally not a fan of motion control gaming. I might consider it when browsing media, but probably still won't care for it. I certainly do not want to talk to my xbox. From what I've read/seen, it does not seem like I'm in the minority on these opinions either.
So, MS is taking a chance that the kinect needs to be included, to get support. If that does not work out, then I suspect future systems will no longer include it. Who knows, maybe if they had supported indie development, someone may have came up with a non-game application that would have made the kinect an essential tool
Fair enough. But compare that to the benefits of DRM. It helps build an ecosystem that is easy and convenient and, most of all, affordable enough to draw customers.
Benefits? Are you serious? The only benefits to DRM is giving the publisher/console maker more control over you. The grand features they have been trumpeting could have been implemented just as easily without DRM. They just wanted to make sure nobody stepped off of their carefully crafted golden path. Steam is no better.
Because reselling games would now work through a hub, publishers could make money on resold games.
Why should they? They created a good that is scarce and in demand. They made the things resalable, but they whine that they should get a cut of the sales. Again, the car analogy does apply (wear and tear means nothing). The used games have a falling demand over time and a finite supply, so they depreciate in value. You can't (legally) make your own copies so however many copies exist are all there is. Cars are the same, they have finite supply and depreciating demand/value. That's all that matters.
Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper.
This is flat out false. There has been no historical evidence that when a business achieves complete control over a market that they drop their prices. Invariably, prices go up because they know there isn't a competitor that might give you a better deal. Price reduction happens because they can use it to entice you away from a competitor. Take that away and they have no incentive to lower their prices.
You also would have started getting a better return on your "used" gamesbecause a license does not have to be resold at a diminished rate.
Excuse me? What is the basis for that assumption?
How do you know that this would have been the case? Because that's exactly what happens on Steam.
Wrong, Steam has competitors (especially with Origin now). That's why they have insane sales. In addition, Steam doesn't make the hardware your games run on. My PC is my own. I control the hardware. If I don't like Steam, I can get my games from another marketplace. That's not the case with the XB1. You're stuck with the marketplace they set up. The console won't play games MS hasn't approved, but my PC will play non-steam games. Steam even acknowledges this.
Sharing games would have worked either by activating your Live account on someone else's Xbox One, or by including them in your 10-person share plan, which would not have been limited to "family."
They can still do that. There's nothing stopping them. The same goes with digital games. There's nothing stopping this from still happening. They don't need DRM to make it work. DRM doesn't enable, it restricts. End of story. DRM doesn't do anything for the consumer, but it does make risk adverse publishers less paranoid, even if DRM is about as effectual as urinating on a grease fire.
The 24-hour check-in would have been necessary for the X1's store, which it is not for Steam, because the physical product (game discs) would still be available. This check-in, literally bytes of data exchanged, would confirm that the games installed were not gaming the system in a convoluted install-here-and-then-go-offline-and-I'll-go-home-and-check-in-and-go-offline-too-and-we'll-both-use-the-game methods.
Nobody would do that, because it's way too much hassle. This could only be done on a temporary basis, because as soon as they wanted to use any online features, it would catch the duplicate and it would go "poof!". The only reason you would want two copies of the same game available in two distance locations is because you want to play multiplayer. That would much more be easily done with both consoles set up in a LAN/SysLink setup and online connectivity would be unnecessary.
The author of that article makes a lot of broad (false) assumptions and sets up false dichotomies. There is plenty that can still be implemented without the need for DRM. This is just MS trying copy Steam so they can sell the bitter pill of DRM by including some independently viable features to make that pill easier to swallow. I swallowed the bitter pill of Steam DRM years ago only to cough it back up and get a nasty aftertaste.
The big difference with the Wii and Kinect is that you can unplug the sensor bar on the Wii and still play the console. You lose a lot of functionality and some games wont work, but the console will still run. I don't think this will really matter much anyway though.
If it can go offline for 24 hours then why not longer?
Because physical media is still involved. The game changes when you can install a new game offline via a disc vs having to connect to the internet to install it online.
Since steam knows you have to connect to the internet to grab a new game (and will validate your license while downloading), the license check can be more relaxed (I think offline mode can run for something like 2 weeks?)
Thats pretty much the one fundamental difference between what the xbox1 could have been, and steam.
...not that Sony's a saintly company now, but it seem they got it mostly right with what consumers want this time.
It's actually kind of funny. This whole situation reminds me a bit of Sony's earlier console efforts.
Sony never made it big in video games by being the best. They did it by being lucky. They stumbled into the perfect situations with the perfect product at the time. They never actually planned any of the success they enjoyed with the Playstation and Playstation 2.
Now we're seeing a bit of that again. Sony didn't have any grand strategy leading up to the announcement of the XBox One. They were probably sweating bullets about their upcoming E3 conference because they had already decided to shoehorn on-line multiplayer into the PS+ paywall. Then Microsoft came out and announed their intentions to 1984 the game industry. Sony lucked into another great situation. Right product, right time.
Because physical media is still involved. The game changes when you can install a new game offline via a disc vs having to connect to the internet to install it online.
Since steam knows you have to connect to the internet to grab a new game (and will validate your license while downloading), the license check can be more relaxed (I think offline mode can run for something like 2 weeks?)
Thats pretty much the one fundamental difference between what the xbox1 could have been, and steam.
Where are you getting that it can run two weeks? I have never had this issue and I used to run steam offline for months if not longer.
What do you mean by:
Because physical media is still involved. The game changes when you can install a new game offline via a disc vs having to connect to the internet to install it online.
If you have a disc game just play single player as long as you like? Obviously you wouldn't have access to online features, but you can still play non-offline play all you want. I don't understand your post really. It's not like the game will magically change, if I wanted to update it to the latest version or whatever then I would connect, if not the game straight off the disc would work just fine.
I feel like you are talking about a game with a persistent universe or an MMO of sorts when you mean it changes online, well if I was offline I wouldn't expect to play a game like that, that wouldn't make sense.
I don't always want to play a game with a friend or share some stupid moment in my game or watch TV.
I Googled the steam 2 week limit and turned mixed results. I am inclined to believe that is not the case from personal experience.
You answered why they need to include it, in your own post. The Wii does well with motion control games, because the sensor is included. Developers know, if they make a game for the Wii, it WILL have a motion sensor. If they make a game for the 360, they can not guarantee that. For the XBone, it will be guaranteed that every user will have a kinect.
That being said, I'm sure developers will mostly ignore the kinect still. I did not see many exclusives announced, and even some of the 'exclusives' are only launch exclusives, with planned expansions to other consoles in a year (at least as rumor has it). So, if they are going to make a game, that supports multiple platforms (including the PC), then I don't seem them supporting a kinect, since the other platforms won't have it.
I'm personally not a fan of motion control gaming. I might consider it when browsing media, but probably still won't care for it. I certainly do not want to talk to my xbox. From what I've read/seen, it does not seem like I'm in the minority on these opinions either.
So, MS is taking a chance that the kinect needs to be included, to get support. If that does not work out, then I suspect future systems will no longer include it. Who knows, maybe if they had supported indie development, someone may have came up with a non-game application that would have made the kinect an essential tool
That's really not true. Developers who make Kinect games know that only people with Kinects are going to buy the game the same as on any other platform.
Furthermore part of the argument you're making hinges on the idea that people will embrace the kinect if it's forced on them and go buy Kinect software. Motion control was the defining trait of the Wii, it was almost the entire reason to buy the console for the typical consumer because it was marketted at families with young children as the healthy way to play videogames. It is the same way with the Kinect, anyone who buys a Kinect is doing so with the explicit intention of getting motion control. You know exactly who your audience is.
It is not the same situation with the 360 or the Xbox One. The Kinect is not the defining feature of the console, it's tacked on as an addition in order to improve Microsoft's market share and the result is a $100 more expensive console for a device that a large portion of their consumers will turn off immediately and forget about or opt to buy a PS4 instead. By your own admission you fall into this group of people and like you said, you don't appear to be a minority...
Market share is also not the entirety of Microsofts problem, even when you ignore the total number of 360s and only look at Kinect vs Wiis available the games do not sell in equal proportions. Kinect software sells fewer units per Kinect than Wii sells software per Wii. Meaning Microsoft has some other issue outside of simply not having as many Kinects in peoples homes as Nintendo has Wiis which could be anything from different demographics, worse marketing, inferior hardware, pricing, or some other reason.
You asked why the online drm had to be every 24 hours, having a physical medium that would download a game to tie to your account vs downloading it online is the reason it was 24 hours. The always online thing wasn't just about how games would work, its how it would know the game belongs to you, as you would no longer need the disc (or that specific console) to play your games. Its not an argument for or against it...its the reason why it was the way it was.
As far as the 2 weeks thing with steam, im not 100 percent sure now that you mention it either...but I'm never disconnected from the internet when I'm on steam for more than a day *shrugs*.
The family share thing can still happen and after reading his explanation of it I wouldn't even call it a good feature and it's something that can be done anyway via digital downloads and trials.
If the entire DRM thing was a used game/revenue issue then let the publishers/developers decide on it, why force it on the consumer? If they fear losing money then make your game worth buying (stuff like demos of newer games, alphas/betas, first DLC free etc...) the devs/pubs who don't look after their consumers will either follow or keep losing money.
Everything else he states are either unwanted features by most or things that either company can implement/are implementing. The only thing MS has with the XB1 is Kinect 2.0, which in a majority of cases will turn out to be a £100 brick.
Another line I hear a lot coming from the XB1 camp at the end of their interviews/articles is something like 'We're planning/creating all these really cool features etc...', thing is I don't see anyone elaborating on them.
After all that I'll buy one, like I buy every console but like my 360's they will sit offline and only be booted up when a Halo passes by.
The 24 hour time limit is arbitrary, you can make your DRM check in as much or as little as you want.
By the way another big advantage to requiring users to at least connect to the internet at least once to set up the game is that you can prevent pre-release piracy (which has been an ongoing problem for the 360) by encrypting the installation files and having the user connect to the internet to get the key to install the game.
It's probably the only really effective antipiracy measure ever made (outside of game design incentives like multiplay)
You asked why the online drm had to be every 24 hours, having a physical medium that would download a game to tie to your account vs downloading it online is the reason it was 24 hours. The always online thing wasn't just about how games would work, its how it would know the game belongs to you, as you would no longer need the disc (or that specific console) to play your games. Its not an argument for or against it...its the reason why it was the way it was.
As far as the 2 weeks thing with steam, I'm not 100 percent sure now that you mention it either...but I'm never disconnected from the internet when I'm on steam for more than a day *shrugs*.
Sorry, I was not referring to downloaded games, but either way you could store that authentication information for longer than 24 hours, it's just a number, not a finite number. They could make it two weeks which would be totally fine. I was referring to games installed to the hard drive by disc (or played off of just as you would a 360 game) mostly, that should never have a time limit. Even then online games should always play offline. Since you can just torrent a 360 game and play it without a hard mod or soft mod then I don't see a reason to restrict something like that to only 2 weeks as it could have the authentication information stored locally.
Furthermore part of the argument you're making hinges on the idea that people will embrace the kinect if it's forced on them and go buy Kinect software. Motion control was the defining trait of the Wii, it was almost the entire reason to buy the console for the typical consumer because it was marketted at families with young children as the healthy way to play videogames. It is the same way with the Kinect, anyone who buys a Kinect is doing so with the explicit intention of getting motion control. You know exactly who your audience is.
What I'm saying has nothing to do with consumers embracing it. I'm talking from MS's view. They want to kinect to be successful, and the only way they think they'll get developer support, is to include it on every system. Personally, I don't think it will work that way, because, as you did touch on, the developers will ignore it if the consumer is not embracing it.
I'm just explaining why MS is including the kinect in every system. THEY think it's key to making it successful, and having developers embrace it. They will not make it optional... at least for now. Maybe, if it has a slow adoption rate, they'll start packaging it without the kinect. That's when you'll know it has failed.
the only thing I have enjoyed on the kinect was shouting people off cliffs in Skyrim and giving my team mates orders in Mass Effect 3. Most the time now though, it just sits unplugged as I got sick of it taking commands from Netflix. Nothing like watching a movie or show and having it pause or fast forward because of the dialogue. I'll wait and see what happens with the XBox as time goes on. I feel they made a step in the right direction, but comparitively, I'm not sold on it.
I understand Microsoft's rationale, you described it as something they "need" to do though which it is very much not.
The Kinect is already successful as a piece of hardware, Kinect bundles of the 360 have been outselling the basic 360 for a while and Microsoft is doubling down on it because Nintendo is moving away from motion control and the Playstation Move was DOA and Microsoft hopes they can be the one to capture what Nintendo is leaving behind.
It's also the only thing really differentiating the two consoles.
If they were willing to sell their console at a loss to compete with Sony (which they might still decide to do) I think that might work. As it stands though I believe they're just shooting themselves in the foot. If Sony can claim a dominant share of the market they'll just relaunch the Playstation Move to compete with the Kinect.
Microsoft is testing the waters right now because there's a lot of time before the launch, if sales don't pick up depending on how committed they are to the Kinect I think you can expect to see either a price drop or a decoupling of the Kinect from the XB1.
I love Cliff, but the trouble with this is that he's implying that if Microsoft had gotten it's way everything would be roses and sunshine for developers. I don't agree.
The consumer rage you are seeing over the XBOX ONE launch is really the market beginning to recognize that the era of console gaming has passed and that purely electronic distribution of games supported my microcurrency based economics is the only game business model that makes sense in this era. Apple got there first and Sony and Microsoft are regrettably deeply invested in an obsolete vision of the console that doesnt work for a generation of gamers that grew up on free (self-marketing), cross-platform, mobile games with mixed advertising and microcurrency based economies. Microsoft should have named the XBOX ONE the XBOX RETRO.
from the dude who made direct x a thing and launched xbox project
oh and apparently he had a fair share of cackling over xbone launch too
Well to be precise my argument is that the traditional console market peaked with the PS/3 and XBOX 360. My second argument is that IF there is another generation of console like device it wont resemble consoles as we knew them. My more recent claim is that having seen the IPAD and AppleStore, I believe Ive seen the future of gaming in mobile consoles with entirely digital app markets. Having seen the success of the Apple Model, I assert that launching a console that is not a superset of Apples approach in this day and age is retro. That doesnt necessarily mean failure just LESS success. and I agree that it would appear that Microsoft is giving Sony the gift of the remaining console market.
"Xbox division have always been for the gamer"... bullshit! There was nothing about this plan, that was for the gamer. They have their heads so far up their asses, about those new 'features' that they failed to understand why the gamer wouldn't like it. He then continues to talk about helping the publishers, by ending used games... again, gamers want the used game market to exist.
Then he just starts his pity party about the family sharing. While I liked the concept, and it would be a bit easier, I can still share my game with my family, now that the DRM BS is gone. I can hand my hard copy to my brother, and he can borrow it. The family plan, as I heard it explained, wasn't going to allow all 10 people to play it at once anyway. In other words, it would have been like handing my disc around, but digitally.
On top of it, he suggested that the family sharing may still continue, with digital downloads. It doesn't seem to me, like anything was lost, other than the convenience of not hand delivering my disc.
He honestly seems to believe that, if it was just explained better, everyone would have been happy, and puppydogs and rainbows would fill the skies. The positives did not outweigh the negatives. Apparently he thinks gamers are just ignorant and incapable of understanding the concept.
or people who don't want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it's called Xbox 360.
I can't be the only one that finds that statement annoying and pretty insulting. Really? Who's going to be making 360 games once the XBone comes out? Oh, right, nobody...
Microsoft is testing the waters right now because there's a lot of time before the launch, if sales don't pick up depending on how committed they are to the Kinect I think you can expect to see either a price drop or a decoupling of the Kinect from the XB1.
That's essentially what I said at the end of my response. They'll probably break the kinect out as a separate package, but that will likely be a year or so down the road.
As for taking a loss, that's supposedly what they did with the initial 360 launch, so I don't disagree that they may need to try that again. Then again, maybe they already are taking a loss, with the current $500 price tag.
But like I've already mentioned, I think they'll make bundles, to try to offset that $100. So, you'll still pay $500, but you'll get freebies, like a year of Gold, and a triple A title. That's my assumption. I'm already seeing bundles like that, but the price is above the retail price.
I just caught this line at the end, "I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2, while Xbox One is trying to revolutionize entertainment consumption."
I'm curious why he believes that. The PS4 has the same (if not better) hardware specs, so it's just as capable as the XbOne. Sony hasn't even demonstrated the software (something that I hope is impressive). Everything MS is offering, outside of the actual device, is just software, that Sony can just as easily implement (and may be doing already). So I guess the XbOne is the 360 part 2 also.
The only thing holding back the PS3 and 360, was the hardware. Both systems were lacking the power to keep up with the evolution of games. So, it was time to up the guts of the systems, and that's what they both did. How is that any different than when Nintendo introduced the super nintendo? Or atari introducing the 7800? You don't evolve a gaming system, by adding methods to watch movies.
Then he just starts his pity party about the family sharing. While I liked the concept, and it would be a bit easier, I can still share my game with my family, now that the DRM BS is gone. I can hand my hard copy to my brother, and he can borrow it. The family plan, as I heard it explained, wasn't going to allow all 10 people to play it at once anyway. In other words, it would have been like handing my disc around, but digitally.
Read more carefully; they'd only get to play the first 45 minutes, then they'd have to buy it. It's not so much sharing as 'giving someone the demo that probably should exist in the first place'.
That's essentially what I said at the end of my response. They'll probably break the kinect out as a separate package, but that will likely be a year or so down the road.
Yes it is, it's also what I said in my original post that you replied to on the last page which started this conversation.
As for taking a loss, that's supposedly what they did with the initial 360 launch, so I don't disagree that they may need to try that again. Then again, maybe they already are taking a loss, with the current $500 price tag.
But like I've already mentioned, I think they'll make bundles, to try to offset that $100. So, you'll still pay $500, but you'll get freebies, like a year of Gold, and a triple A title. That's my assumption. I'm already seeing bundles like that, but the price is above the retail price.
I can't find the article I read about it but if I'm not mistaken the XB1 is currently priced at a profit for Microsoft so if that's true they do have some wiggle room.
If they are really after market share for the Kinect then eating a loss isn't a bad choice, Sony was also taking a loss last gen in order to put the Bluray player (and the cell processor which is a different story) into the console and it turned out to be the consoles only saving grace a year into its launch. So it's a strategy that could pay off.
Read more carefully; they'd only get to play the first 45 minutes, then they'd have to buy it. It's not so much sharing as 'giving someone the demo that probably should exist in the first place'.
Hmm, I skipped over that bit, and that is not how it was explained originally (by other MS people). That's not a very impressive offering. So essentially, they were offering a demo, that I could have access to, because a relative owned it? Why bother with the social connection, and not just offer a demo?
They aren't selling the full game digitally yet (at least not video the website), and I can't compare the survival pack prices, since it's still on the point system, but it's essentially $5 on the xbox, and $2.50 on steam.
Why do they always say this, "How can developers continue to create these experiences if consumers refuse to support them?
How do they not know what they are saying or how the market works. Its like they are saying, we will tell them what they want, if they dont like it then there is something wrong with them, so we must force them to take what we want.
Consumers arent supporting you because you arent giving enough of them what they want.
arent supporting you because you arent giving enough of them what they want.
Hehe
For some reason the first thing that came to mind was:
YAAAY! More CoD and Halo clones! Real Money Auction houses! DLC'd characters already on disk, more Just Dance! And we DEMAND more QTE in our games!!! MORE QTE's!!!!
Guys, remember when we were still fucking buying games cartridges - built with proper circuit boards - PCBs and they were fairly expensive and then people complained. Well at least they were the real deal - 100% non copied product and look how publishers repay the first generations of games players? Just copy the same data on CDs and charge them just as much and give most of the money to the shareholders. Exactly why music has been like it has recently, since people realised what they were buying cost 25p to produce and £12 to buy.
@Jacque: they 've been making money for years, it's just not been going to developers, but shareholders.
If your company sells 5 millions copies in a month, and you are in the red, then maybe you need to rethink what you're doing? Because it's clear that you and your peers suck big time and have too many old shareholders who bought you out when Nintendo was still making Metroid games.
Guess what, paying 3K a month to your artists isn't what is bleeding your company dry, there are plenty of indie studios with a couple of peeps in an office that make around 200-300K a year, with good salaries, products and rent, they're still in the green.
Guess what, making COD clones isn't the solution, and it has never been, we have plenty of game clones, with only barely few, even the monolith that is EA, getting anywhere in the mainstream, so lets stop believing that's what the future holds, because unless you're 5, you will remember all those shitty clone games we got on the NES, some of them even being literally copy and paste of Mario games with changed colors for sprites, there were literally only a handful of old games that are originals and the thousands are simple carbon copies of those.
And guess what? We progressed perfectly fine, now lets all stop thinking that this new age of cloning is ruining stuff, because I'm perfectly happy with options for MOBA games.
An industry that needs the Xbox One's to survive as Cliffy B. claims, is a an utterly failed industry that has no place in being called an entertainment service, nor being in peoples home.
"We have 48 million Xbox 360 users connected online nearly 24 hours a day. That is much more than any of our closet competitors and vastly more than Steam."
Stopped reading right there. Because (I estimate) there are roughly 60~65 million active* accounts on Steam by now. They had 30 million users in October 2010, 40 million in January 2012, and 54 million in November 2012. It has a fluctuating concurrent player count of roughly 3 to 4.5 million connected users, with a peak of 6.6 million when Big Picture mode was revealed. By comparison, Xbox Live has only had 3.3 million users connected at once.
*active users, IIRC, mean that they've bought at least one game, and logged in once in the past month
I don't know why the mechanism of restrictions couldn't have been left to the actual publishers like many were doing with their online pass system.
Sony seemed cagey when they said "they" wouldn't have restrictions on used games, but hopefully a streamlined mechanism exists for studios to be able to implement this on their own games.
We're paying $400 or $500 for very marginal graphical improvements?
Actually, one of the more appealing aspects of the new boxes is going to be their internal hardware design. Both companies have the opportunity to create much more efficient systems that allow for built-in functionality on the hardware level. The low-power modes that both consoles will allow for is something that excites me. Ditto for the ability to download and apply patches at any time.
A lot of the better improvements for these new boxes will be more subtle.
Guys, remember when we were still fucking buying games cartridges - built with proper circuit boards - PCBs and they were fairly expensive and then people complained. Well at least they were the real deal - 100% non copied product and look how publishers repay the first generations of games players? Just copy the same data on CDs and charge them just as much and give most of the money to the shareholders. Exactly why music has been like it has recently, since people realised what they were buying cost 25p to produce and £12 to buy.
@Jacque: they 've been making money for years, it's just not been going to developers, but shareholders.
I'm waving the tiniest angry fist in the air here at the evil corporations!
Games back then were still put on media that was massproduced as 1's and 0's, a copy of the month long project that was the game, now-a-days those projects are a fart in space compared to the sizes we are dealing with.
The costs are there and we are ready to pay them, there are also smaller alternatives at cheaper prices that were developed with a smaller budget, such as all the fantastic indie-games being released, everyone has a choice!
We're paying $400 or $500 for very marginal graphical improvements?
The technical specs are there and real and anything but marginal, it's we as artists who uses these to create even more fantastic visuals.
It's no wonder we've seen a big burst of open world games being revealed for the new consoles, these are experiences that just weren't feasible if you wanted to have your game look fantastic on that tiny bit of memory while also having to rely on visual cheats and cutscene-models.
Replies
http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905
I do feel sorry for the people working there who have been undone by ridiculously incompetent business decisions.
Study your game industry history. If you really want to compare the Dreamcast to something, and this is a HUGE stretch, it's the PS4. In reality nobody is in the position Sega was in when the Dreamcast launched - it was an attempted comeback from a failed system. It was actually a pretty good console but they were unable to recover from the Saturn.
if you mean xbox one from 2001, it's been pretty close to, with epic sega exclusives that no one bothered to purchase.
oh, and more mobile games? I'm fine with that.
love my iphone, would love to see better budgets coming there, would love to work on that kind of games too.
+1
...not that Sony's a saintly company now, but it seem they got it mostly right with what consumers want this time.
LOL,
I half agree. I find the constant internet thing dumb and simply because if one doesn't need a persistent universe then why would it matter?
If it can go offline for 24 hours then why not longer? I don't need that forced on me because what if I take my Xbox somewhere without internet? I'm sure cloud support works just fine if you are connected to the internet like everyone will likely be. I'd like to have that option, until I moved a month ago this would have been a problem for me and I live near Seattle.
I don't get why they can't do anything that they all ready announced, if anything a set of what should be standard features has been added on and that alone is great. While it would be nice to get developers more money but I think that they could easily do something like steam sales and that alone would drag people who have good internet into the place Microsoft wants them to be, online, using online services. I see this as a positive because I believe that the two can work together.
One stupid bloody change, and suddenly the entire console market is going to collapse? Bloody, sodding, hell, talk about being the bastard child of Schrier
http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=schreier
If people want to trade in a game for $7, it's their right to do it. We don't need a 3rd party to police that. If people would stop SELLING them games for so cheap, then Gamestop would start offering more money, or go out of business. That's how consumer business works. But the MS plan was also going to prevent me from selling my games on Ebay, which I CAN get more than $7.
The same console as before (but with better graphics); really? Ok, if that's the case, than MS was trying to sell me a 360 with DRM support. Oh, that sounds wonderful. It goes beyond better graphics. The new consoles will not have more processing power, and will be able to offer what PCs are getting right now (and yes, fall behind again down the road).
Cloud support: There is no reason a game can not have a label stating "Requires internet access while in use", so that the consumer knows that they'll need it for the cloud support. But requiring 24/7 internet was not necessary for supporting games that don't utilize the cloud.
Steam: It has already been covered several times here, there is an offline mode. As for pricing, set a fucking precedence MS. I've seen what both MS and Sony do in their stores. They rarely offer deals, and even those deals aren't comparable to steam. Why would I think it would change? MS nickle and dimed me right out of using my 360 anymore. Am I suppose to believe that they'll suddenly care about giving me a deal? Maybe, if they want to move into the same realm as Steam, they should start offering 'summer sales' like steam does. Maybe they should start lowering the prices of old games, instead of keeping them at $60, because they still have some commercial success.
PS - The kinect: I've never been truly worried about MS watching me in my underwear. I'm more concerned about an always on camera, that would allow a thief to view inside my home, or some pervert neighbor. I also don't like the idea of MS changing the cost of my movie, if too many people are in the room. In the end, if I don't want the damn thing connected, then I should have that option.
I expect Microsoft to end up walking back their policy on self-publishing and decoupling the Kinect from the XB1 after the launch. At which point the consoles really will basically be interchangeable except for a handful of exclusive titles.
as much as i love this, the bit about cloud support and creating huge game universes is literally the most stupid thing i've ever heard.
you can do that without anyone ever being online. if people were required to be online all the time for that functionality to work, it would also require their console to be turned on all the time for it to work.
so yeah... some of that post is bullshit :P
You answered why they need to include it, in your own post. The Wii does well with motion control games, because the sensor is included. Developers know, if they make a game for the Wii, it WILL have a motion sensor. If they make a game for the 360, they can not guarantee that. For the XBone, it will be guaranteed that every user will have a kinect.
That being said, I'm sure developers will mostly ignore the kinect still. I did not see many exclusives announced, and even some of the 'exclusives' are only launch exclusives, with planned expansions to other consoles in a year (at least as rumor has it). So, if they are going to make a game, that supports multiple platforms (including the PC), then I don't seem them supporting a kinect, since the other platforms won't have it.
I'm personally not a fan of motion control gaming. I might consider it when browsing media, but probably still won't care for it. I certainly do not want to talk to my xbox. From what I've read/seen, it does not seem like I'm in the minority on these opinions either.
So, MS is taking a chance that the kinect needs to be included, to get support. If that does not work out, then I suspect future systems will no longer include it. Who knows, maybe if they had supported indie development, someone may have came up with a non-game application that would have made the kinect an essential tool
Benefits? Are you serious? The only benefits to DRM is giving the publisher/console maker more control over you. The grand features they have been trumpeting could have been implemented just as easily without DRM. They just wanted to make sure nobody stepped off of their carefully crafted golden path. Steam is no better.
Why should they? They created a good that is scarce and in demand. They made the things resalable, but they whine that they should get a cut of the sales. Again, the car analogy does apply (wear and tear means nothing). The used games have a falling demand over time and a finite supply, so they depreciate in value. You can't (legally) make your own copies so however many copies exist are all there is. Cars are the same, they have finite supply and depreciating demand/value. That's all that matters.
This is flat out false. There has been no historical evidence that when a business achieves complete control over a market that they drop their prices. Invariably, prices go up because they know there isn't a competitor that might give you a better deal. Price reduction happens because they can use it to entice you away from a competitor. Take that away and they have no incentive to lower their prices.
Excuse me? What is the basis for that assumption?
Wrong, Steam has competitors (especially with Origin now). That's why they have insane sales. In addition, Steam doesn't make the hardware your games run on. My PC is my own. I control the hardware. If I don't like Steam, I can get my games from another marketplace. That's not the case with the XB1. You're stuck with the marketplace they set up. The console won't play games MS hasn't approved, but my PC will play non-steam games. Steam even acknowledges this.
They can still do that. There's nothing stopping them. The same goes with digital games. There's nothing stopping this from still happening. They don't need DRM to make it work. DRM doesn't enable, it restricts. End of story. DRM doesn't do anything for the consumer, but it does make risk adverse publishers less paranoid, even if DRM is about as effectual as urinating on a grease fire.
Nobody would do that, because it's way too much hassle. This could only be done on a temporary basis, because as soon as they wanted to use any online features, it would catch the duplicate and it would go "poof!". The only reason you would want two copies of the same game available in two distance locations is because you want to play multiplayer. That would much more be easily done with both consoles set up in a LAN/SysLink setup and online connectivity would be unnecessary.
The author of that article makes a lot of broad (false) assumptions and sets up false dichotomies. There is plenty that can still be implemented without the need for DRM. This is just MS trying copy Steam so they can sell the bitter pill of DRM by including some independently viable features to make that pill easier to swallow. I swallowed the bitter pill of Steam DRM years ago only to cough it back up and get a nasty aftertaste.
Because physical media is still involved. The game changes when you can install a new game offline via a disc vs having to connect to the internet to install it online.
Since steam knows you have to connect to the internet to grab a new game (and will validate your license while downloading), the license check can be more relaxed (I think offline mode can run for something like 2 weeks?)
Thats pretty much the one fundamental difference between what the xbox1 could have been, and steam.
http://pastebin.com/TE1MWES2
Take with a grain of salt obviously.
It's actually kind of funny. This whole situation reminds me a bit of Sony's earlier console efforts.
Sony never made it big in video games by being the best. They did it by being lucky. They stumbled into the perfect situations with the perfect product at the time. They never actually planned any of the success they enjoyed with the Playstation and Playstation 2.
Now we're seeing a bit of that again. Sony didn't have any grand strategy leading up to the announcement of the XBox One. They were probably sweating bullets about their upcoming E3 conference because they had already decided to shoehorn on-line multiplayer into the PS+ paywall. Then Microsoft came out and announed their intentions to 1984 the game industry. Sony lucked into another great situation. Right product, right time.
Where are you getting that it can run two weeks? I have never had this issue and I used to run steam offline for months if not longer.
What do you mean by:
If you have a disc game just play single player as long as you like? Obviously you wouldn't have access to online features, but you can still play non-offline play all you want. I don't understand your post really. It's not like the game will magically change, if I wanted to update it to the latest version or whatever then I would connect, if not the game straight off the disc would work just fine.
I feel like you are talking about a game with a persistent universe or an MMO of sorts when you mean it changes online, well if I was offline I wouldn't expect to play a game like that, that wouldn't make sense.
I don't always want to play a game with a friend or share some stupid moment in my game or watch TV.
I Googled the steam 2 week limit and turned mixed results. I am inclined to believe that is not the case from personal experience.
Furthermore part of the argument you're making hinges on the idea that people will embrace the kinect if it's forced on them and go buy Kinect software. Motion control was the defining trait of the Wii, it was almost the entire reason to buy the console for the typical consumer because it was marketted at families with young children as the healthy way to play videogames. It is the same way with the Kinect, anyone who buys a Kinect is doing so with the explicit intention of getting motion control. You know exactly who your audience is.
It is not the same situation with the 360 or the Xbox One. The Kinect is not the defining feature of the console, it's tacked on as an addition in order to improve Microsoft's market share and the result is a $100 more expensive console for a device that a large portion of their consumers will turn off immediately and forget about or opt to buy a PS4 instead. By your own admission you fall into this group of people and like you said, you don't appear to be a minority...
Market share is also not the entirety of Microsofts problem, even when you ignore the total number of 360s and only look at Kinect vs Wiis available the games do not sell in equal proportions. Kinect software sells fewer units per Kinect than Wii sells software per Wii. Meaning Microsoft has some other issue outside of simply not having as many Kinects in peoples homes as Nintendo has Wiis which could be anything from different demographics, worse marketing, inferior hardware, pricing, or some other reason.
You asked why the online drm had to be every 24 hours, having a physical medium that would download a game to tie to your account vs downloading it online is the reason it was 24 hours. The always online thing wasn't just about how games would work, its how it would know the game belongs to you, as you would no longer need the disc (or that specific console) to play your games. Its not an argument for or against it...its the reason why it was the way it was.
As far as the 2 weeks thing with steam, im not 100 percent sure now that you mention it either...but I'm never disconnected from the internet when I'm on steam for more than a day *shrugs*.
After reading that I'm still not 'sold'...
The family share thing can still happen and after reading his explanation of it I wouldn't even call it a good feature and it's something that can be done anyway via digital downloads and trials.
If the entire DRM thing was a used game/revenue issue then let the publishers/developers decide on it, why force it on the consumer? If they fear losing money then make your game worth buying (stuff like demos of newer games, alphas/betas, first DLC free etc...) the devs/pubs who don't look after their consumers will either follow or keep losing money.
Everything else he states are either unwanted features by most or things that either company can implement/are implementing. The only thing MS has with the XB1 is Kinect 2.0, which in a majority of cases will turn out to be a £100 brick.
Another line I hear a lot coming from the XB1 camp at the end of their interviews/articles is something like 'We're planning/creating all these really cool features etc...', thing is I don't see anyone elaborating on them.
After all that I'll buy one, like I buy every console but like my 360's they will sit offline and only be booted up when a Halo passes by.
By the way another big advantage to requiring users to at least connect to the internet at least once to set up the game is that you can prevent pre-release piracy (which has been an ongoing problem for the 360) by encrypting the installation files and having the user connect to the internet to get the key to install the game.
It's probably the only really effective antipiracy measure ever made (outside of game design incentives like multiplay)
Sorry, I was not referring to downloaded games, but either way you could store that authentication information for longer than 24 hours, it's just a number, not a finite number. They could make it two weeks which would be totally fine. I was referring to games installed to the hard drive by disc (or played off of just as you would a 360 game) mostly, that should never have a time limit. Even then online games should always play offline. Since you can just torrent a 360 game and play it without a hard mod or soft mod then I don't see a reason to restrict something like that to only 2 weeks as it could have the authentication information stored locally.
What I'm saying has nothing to do with consumers embracing it. I'm talking from MS's view. They want to kinect to be successful, and the only way they think they'll get developer support, is to include it on every system. Personally, I don't think it will work that way, because, as you did touch on, the developers will ignore it if the consumer is not embracing it.
I'm just explaining why MS is including the kinect in every system. THEY think it's key to making it successful, and having developers embrace it. They will not make it optional... at least for now. Maybe, if it has a slow adoption rate, they'll start packaging it without the kinect. That's when you'll know it has failed.
The Kinect is already successful as a piece of hardware, Kinect bundles of the 360 have been outselling the basic 360 for a while and Microsoft is doubling down on it because Nintendo is moving away from motion control and the Playstation Move was DOA and Microsoft hopes they can be the one to capture what Nintendo is leaving behind.
It's also the only thing really differentiating the two consoles.
If they were willing to sell their console at a loss to compete with Sony (which they might still decide to do) I think that might work. As it stands though I believe they're just shooting themselves in the foot. If Sony can claim a dominant share of the market they'll just relaunch the Playstation Move to compete with the Kinect.
Microsoft is testing the waters right now because there's a lot of time before the launch, if sales don't pick up depending on how committed they are to the Kinect I think you can expect to see either a price drop or a decoupling of the Kinect from the XB1.
The consumer rage you are seeing over the XBOX ONE launch is really the market beginning to recognize that the era of console gaming has passed and that purely electronic distribution of games supported my microcurrency based economics is the only game business model that makes sense in this era. Apple got there first and Sony and Microsoft are regrettably deeply invested in an obsolete vision of the console that doesnt work for a generation of gamers that grew up on free (self-marketing), cross-platform, mobile games with mixed advertising and microcurrency based economies. Microsoft should have named the XBOX ONE the XBOX RETRO.
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/06/11/xbox-one-fun/
from the dude who made direct x a thing and launched xbox project
oh and apparently he had a fair share of cackling over xbone launch too
"Xbox division have always been for the gamer"... bullshit! There was nothing about this plan, that was for the gamer. They have their heads so far up their asses, about those new 'features' that they failed to understand why the gamer wouldn't like it. He then continues to talk about helping the publishers, by ending used games... again, gamers want the used game market to exist.
Then he just starts his pity party about the family sharing. While I liked the concept, and it would be a bit easier, I can still share my game with my family, now that the DRM BS is gone. I can hand my hard copy to my brother, and he can borrow it. The family plan, as I heard it explained, wasn't going to allow all 10 people to play it at once anyway. In other words, it would have been like handing my disc around, but digitally.
On top of it, he suggested that the family sharing may still continue, with digital downloads. It doesn't seem to me, like anything was lost, other than the convenience of not hand delivering my disc.
He honestly seems to believe that, if it was just explained better, everyone would have been happy, and puppydogs and rainbows would fill the skies. The positives did not outweigh the negatives. Apparently he thinks gamers are just ignorant and incapable of understanding the concept.
I can't be the only one that finds that statement annoying and pretty insulting. Really? Who's going to be making 360 games once the XBone comes out? Oh, right, nobody...
That's essentially what I said at the end of my response. They'll probably break the kinect out as a separate package, but that will likely be a year or so down the road.
As for taking a loss, that's supposedly what they did with the initial 360 launch, so I don't disagree that they may need to try that again. Then again, maybe they already are taking a loss, with the current $500 price tag.
But like I've already mentioned, I think they'll make bundles, to try to offset that $100. So, you'll still pay $500, but you'll get freebies, like a year of Gold, and a triple A title. That's my assumption. I'm already seeing bundles like that, but the price is above the retail price.
I just caught this line at the end, "I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2, while Xbox One is trying to revolutionize entertainment consumption."
I'm curious why he believes that. The PS4 has the same (if not better) hardware specs, so it's just as capable as the XbOne. Sony hasn't even demonstrated the software (something that I hope is impressive). Everything MS is offering, outside of the actual device, is just software, that Sony can just as easily implement (and may be doing already). So I guess the XbOne is the 360 part 2 also.
The only thing holding back the PS3 and 360, was the hardware. Both systems were lacking the power to keep up with the evolution of games. So, it was time to up the guts of the systems, and that's what they both did. How is that any different than when Nintendo introduced the super nintendo? Or atari introducing the 7800? You don't evolve a gaming system, by adding methods to watch movies.
Read more carefully; they'd only get to play the first 45 minutes, then they'd have to buy it. It's not so much sharing as 'giving someone the demo that probably should exist in the first place'.
I can't find the article I read about it but if I'm not mistaken the XB1 is currently priced at a profit for Microsoft so if that's true they do have some wiggle room.
If they are really after market share for the Kinect then eating a loss isn't a bad choice, Sony was also taking a loss last gen in order to put the Bluray player (and the cell processor which is a different story) into the console and it turned out to be the consoles only saving grace a year into its launch. So it's a strategy that could pay off.
Hmm, I skipped over that bit, and that is not how it was explained originally (by other MS people). That's not a very impressive offering. So essentially, they were offering a demo, that I could have access to, because a relative owned it? Why bother with the social connection, and not just offer a demo?
$5 for the original game. By comparison: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Dead-Island/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024b4d07df
$20 via the Xbox Store.
They aren't selling the full game digitally yet (at least not video the website), and I can't compare the survival pack prices, since it's still on the point system, but it's essentially $5 on the xbox, and $2.50 on steam.
How do they not know what they are saying or how the market works. Its like they are saying, we will tell them what they want, if they dont like it then there is something wrong with them, so we must force them to take what we want.
Consumers arent supporting you because you arent giving enough of them what they want.
Hehe
For some reason the first thing that came to mind was:
YAAAY! More CoD and Halo clones! Real Money Auction houses! DLC'd characters already on disk, more Just Dance! And we DEMAND more QTE in our games!!! MORE QTE's!!!!
@Jacque: they 've been making money for years, it's just not been going to developers, but shareholders.
Guess what, paying 3K a month to your artists isn't what is bleeding your company dry, there are plenty of indie studios with a couple of peeps in an office that make around 200-300K a year, with good salaries, products and rent, they're still in the green.
Guess what, making COD clones isn't the solution, and it has never been, we have plenty of game clones, with only barely few, even the monolith that is EA, getting anywhere in the mainstream, so lets stop believing that's what the future holds, because unless you're 5, you will remember all those shitty clone games we got on the NES, some of them even being literally copy and paste of Mario games with changed colors for sprites, there were literally only a handful of old games that are originals and the thousands are simple carbon copies of those.
And guess what? We progressed perfectly fine, now lets all stop thinking that this new age of cloning is ruining stuff, because I'm perfectly happy with options for MOBA games.
I think this article describes it best: http://www.destructoid.com/an-industry-that-needs-xbox-one-drm-is-a-failed-industry-256643.phtml?utm_source=twitterfeed
An industry that needs the Xbox One's to survive as Cliffy B. claims, is a an utterly failed industry that has no place in being called an entertainment service, nor being in peoples home.
This textdump is very misleading indeed.
"We have 48 million Xbox 360 users connected online nearly 24 hours a day. That is much more than any of our closet competitors and vastly more than Steam."
Stopped reading right there. Because (I estimate) there are roughly 60~65 million active* accounts on Steam by now. They had 30 million users in October 2010, 40 million in January 2012, and 54 million in November 2012. It has a fluctuating concurrent player count of roughly 3 to 4.5 million connected users, with a peak of 6.6 million when Big Picture mode was revealed. By comparison, Xbox Live has only had 3.3 million users connected at once.
*active users, IIRC, mean that they've bought at least one game, and logged in once in the past month
Sony seemed cagey when they said "they" wouldn't have restrictions on used games, but hopefully a streamlined mechanism exists for studios to be able to implement this on their own games.
Let me get this straight.
We're paying $400 or $500 for very marginal graphical improvements?
Actually, one of the more appealing aspects of the new boxes is going to be their internal hardware design. Both companies have the opportunity to create much more efficient systems that allow for built-in functionality on the hardware level. The low-power modes that both consoles will allow for is something that excites me. Ditto for the ability to download and apply patches at any time.
A lot of the better improvements for these new boxes will be more subtle.
I'm waving the tiniest angry fist in the air here at the evil corporations!
Games back then were still put on media that was massproduced as 1's and 0's, a copy of the month long project that was the game, now-a-days those projects are a fart in space compared to the sizes we are dealing with.
The costs are there and we are ready to pay them, there are also smaller alternatives at cheaper prices that were developed with a smaller budget, such as all the fantastic indie-games being released, everyone has a choice!
The technical specs are there and real and anything but marginal, it's we as artists who uses these to create even more fantastic visuals.
It's no wonder we've seen a big burst of open world games being revealed for the new consoles, these are experiences that just weren't feasible if you wanted to have your game look fantastic on that tiny bit of memory while also having to rely on visual cheats and cutscene-models.