Xbox's "Always On"fiasco.

[Psychotic]

I really feel like I betrayed this generation by going to the xbox. I think I will go home to sony regardless if this is true or not. SONY I'M COMING HOME.

Oh, I feel the same. Sometimes I stay up at night plagued with nightmares at how I betrayed a multi million dollar corporation by buying their competitor's product after spending the previous 10 years giving them my money. I don't know how the smurf their shareholders coped after I turned my back on the Big S's profit margins but I feel kind of sick just thinking about it.

[Pike]

Man I was never even a big Playstation fan to begin with.

I bought PSX for one reason and that reason was Final Fantasy. Overall I preferred the N64.

Then I bought PS2 for two reasons and those were Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid. Overall I preferred the Xbox.

Next gen rolled around and my interest in both the FF and MGS franchises had waned considerably and both were on 360 anyway, so never got a PS3 and never had interest in it. Similarly, no interest in PS4.

[Madame Adequate]

Sorry babe but N64 didn't have Poy Poy or Kurushi or Kula World so it was clearly the inferior console.

It did have Body Harvest though, granted.

[Pike]

I'm not talking about who had the better library, I'm talking about which one I personally enjoyed more

[Psychotic]

Kula World

That game is dangerous. It leads to too many philosophical questions. What does a beach ball want with all that fruit? It can't eat the fruit, it doesn't have a mouth. It can't even pick the fruit up, yet somehow it consumes the fruit just by bouncing onto it. Does it even know the fruit is there, or is it that in the case of an infinite amount of beach balls bouncing around an infinite number of levels intermittently sprinkled with fruit, one of the beach balls will inevitably end up inadvertently bouncing onto some of the fruit?

smurf you huxley

smurf you

you brought it all back

[Shauna]

I really wanna play Kula World now.

[Freya]

No need to be a jerk, paul.

[kotora]

Hmmm. I'm not even bothered about the fact I'd have to be connected all the time, I'm more concerned about why as it seems very Surveillance Society to me.

Probably just for DRM reasons as usual. If you wanna worry about surveillance, start with the Patriot act and all its counterparts in other countries, especially the UK. Now that terrorism isn't a credible fake threat anymore, western governments have moved on to cybercrime propaganda to suit their agendas. Vidya machines are the last thing you have to worry about as a freedom-concerned citizen.

[DMKA]

No way would I ever buy any platform that required I always be connected to the internet. In fact, unless we're talking about MMO games, I wouldn't even buy a game that required a constant connection to be played.

I initially assumed this was just another rumor like the "PS3 WON'T PLAY USED GAMES IT'S OVER SONY IS FINISHED!" rumor back in 2006. But after that little fiasco on Twitter...it seems like more than just a rumor. Although, wouldn't Microsoft be able to just remove it through a software update if the response to it ended up being really negative?

Probably just for DRM reasons as usual. If you wanna worry about surveillance, start with the Patriot act and all its counterparts in other countries, especially the UK. Now that terrorism isn't a credible fake threat anymore, western governments have moved on to cybercrime propaganda to suit their agendas. Vidya machines are the last thing you have to worry about as a freedom-concerned citizen.

(SPOILER)EoEO is that way...

[Slothy]

Although, wouldn't Microsoft be able to just remove it through a software update if the response to it ended up being really negative?

I'd say almost certainly yes, but if it's own features and every game being developed for it are being made with always online in mind then to say removing could cause problems would be an understatement. I'd hate to be the people trying to patch that even more than I'd hate to be the people who spent money on the privilege.

On a different note, I was thinking a bit more this evening about what Paul said: that after the Sim City blow up they may strongly reconsider this. I hope they will, but there's a problem with that line of reasoning. Always online DRM has been blowing up in developers and publishers faces since long before the Sim City fiasco and nothing has changed.

Assassin's Creed 2 was probably the earliest case I can think of as the PC port caught a ton of flack for it. Hackers even took down the servers for the first few days to make a point. What did Ubisoft do? They added it to a lot of games after that, and even a few more after they said they would stop (granted Ubisoft are just complete morons about PC gaming and piracy though). But what happened after all of those problems Ubisoft had and the customer dissatisfaction they incurred? We got Diablo 3 which didn't have any single player and didn't really work for the first few weeks. They actually took the whole DRM concept farther than Ubisoft did because there's nothing like doubling down on a proven flop. And then we have Sim City... just yeah...

So it'll be nice if Microsoft has half a clue and doesn't screw this up, but history tells me that three of the biggest publishers in the industry not only made the exact same mistake repeatedly in the last several years, but they actually upped the ante and failed more spectacularly than the last guy every single time. If the pattern holds, an always online console would be a great way to out do EA.

[Skyblade]

I do think this will effectively kill the new XBox. Which I honestly don't really mind, I don't think we need a new machine anyway.

The outrage at a game requiring it and not being able to handle it is one thing. If people's consoles start being useless like that... That's it. They'll be returned, people will stop buying them, and things will not go well for Microsoft, no matter which games are exclusive to the console. Customers will go elsewhere, and devs will follow.

[Bolivar]

It made me think of this strip:



I "remember what happened with Diablo 3." Despite some initial shake-ups and most people on this forum thinking it's garbage, it was still another wildly successful hit for Blizzard. I was just playing it last night myself.

I understand people disliking the inability to use a disc you paid for, but for how many of you will this really be a burden for? Maybe I'm just not phased by it since I wasn't going to buy an Xbox anyway, but it seems like people are offended more by the idea rather than it put to practice.

edit: that said, I love a great Twitter feud and I never in a million years would have thought this could happen. I hope that Bane gif is the first of many memes on this issue.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I'm too poor for more consoles anyway.

[Sephex]

Occasionally, I feel like dragging my ballsack through a jar of glass. This is not one of those times.

[Skyblade]

It made me think of this strip:



I "remember what happened with Diablo 3." Despite some initial shake-ups and most people on this forum thinking it's garbage, it was still another wildly successful hit for Blizzard. I was just playing it last night myself.

I understand people disliking the inability to use a disc you paid for, but for how many of you will this really be a burden for? Maybe I'm just not phased by it since I wasn't going to buy an Xbox anyway, but it seems like people are offended more by the idea rather than it put to practice.

edit: that said, I love a great Twitter feud and I never in a million years would have thought this could happen. I hope that Bane gif is the first of many memes on this issue.

Look at the number of people who returned SimCity because of this issue. Amazon stopped selling it. I seem to recall hearing of fraud (due to their claims of the necessity of the always-online stuff, which isn't true) and denial of service claims being set against Maxis/EA for it.

And a lot of that was just because of the launch burden. A console would be far worse, because it has that burden all the time. Even if you have a perfect internet connection (which many people don't. I certainly wouldn't be willing to stop gaming every time TWC dropped my connection, even if it does work out to miniscule amount of time relative to how much its up), every time the service screws up, can't handle a load, or misinterprets something, you're out.

It's going to be a problem, and, since there are alternatives out there, I think a lot of people will adopt them.

Me? I'm safe in the knowledge that they won't be able to try this on my precious handhelds for quite a while.