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Why The X-Box Network Will Fail
angkor wrote to us an article from The Register that looks at what Microsoft is planning for the X-Box Network. The factual information is educating on it's own - and the analysis of why they think it will fail is interesting as well.
Just in case The Register [register.co.uk] gets slashdotted, there's an american version of the site called The USA Register [theregus.com] with the story here [slashdot.org]
Or maybe you meant here
Kind of like a Microsoft OS, you never see security...
Yawn. Can't we just get some stuff implemented in the slashcode that posts the standard MS joke for each kind of story, so we lusers don't have to waste time with the SAME JOKES TROTTED OUT EVERY FUCKING TIME?
Jesus, get some imagination.
Aargh! One big paragraph! I forgot to switch to plain text for a long post. My apologies.
Factul information? Where? Interesting? About as interesting as your commentary Hemos. You should get out more if you thought that article was enlightneing and factual.
hardly. Pyrric victories can be applyed to any part of life. yes, the term comes out of war, but it means that you win at such a great cost that in reality you end up losing.
you can not apply that term diffrently to diffrent situations. it is what it is.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You know.. I congratulate you for using this word, and for using it correctly! But, I think people would be more impressed if you spelled it correctly
Your thoughtful spelling police..
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
That seems to suggest that there will be the possibility of additional fees for some games. Online RPGs for instance are now expected to be updated regularly with new items, quests, etc., and I imagine that a static world would mean the death of the game. Yes, people would love to not download patches that fixes features that should have been in the game in the first place. However, people also love the dynamics of the game where the weapon you had last week may have been the best, but the new weapon drops on such and such mob is even better.
Back to the original point, who is going to pay for those updates, as these updates will certainly not be developed for free? That $10 a month will probably cover the bandwidth and matchmaking services, but it's doubtful it will help cover developer expenses, and if it doesn't cover their expenses, why bother making an online game? Sports games are suppose to update their statistics and rosters (injuries) as the real life season progresses for a more "realistic" game, so it's not only RPGs that would require developer maintaince. Let's say MS is generous and gives a portion of that $10 to developers. But what if gamers play more than one online RPG with more than one sports game? Then that $10 is split so many different ways that it becomes insignificant. And if developers have to pay for hosting at MS's datacenters, that is a recurring monthly fee for the developers possibly, and I doubt that the $50 you paid for the initial game can pay not only for the development costs of the game, but also the recurring monthly costs to be hosted by MS. I just don't think people should get their hopes up that this is a $10 flat fee.
All good points. I would add a few other things. One, Blizzard is a good example of why Microsoft's strategy may be more successful. Battle.net may be free, but it is also buggy, overcrowded, laggy, and infested with cheaters. Blizzard lacks either the ability, or the desire to fix these problems. With Microsoft's strategy there is one system to police and maintain. If it works well, all the games on it will work well. With Sony's strategy each game will be a crapshoot. Some companies will get it right, others will be abysmal failures whether they charge or not.
Battle.net would not be successful on a console. There environment it too hostile for casual gamers. The console market is different from the pc market. PC online gamers are mostly hardcore gamers willing to fiddle with stuff to get it to work. Consoles like the playstation 2 are so successful (>30 million world-wide) precisely because they don't limit themselves to hardcore gamers. Microsoft's system will present one unified, homogenous, well maintained destination for all gaming. On Sony's system you will have to deal with 10 different companies and their separate bills, servers, interfaces, matchmaking systems and quirks. Plus, with the XBox you can find your friends and talk with them anywhere on the network, anytime, no matter what game they are playing.
p.s. If you like subspace, it is far from dead. It is now called Continuum, but it is the exact same game. Check out www.subspacehq.com. That game ate my life when it was in beta years ago. It is a perfect example of a game that would have succeeded with Microsoft's system because they wouldn't have had to pay for servers. There are many great games that will never be popular enough to pay for the infrastructure investment necessary to make them online. The only way around this is user hosted servers (the common pc model) and this won't work with consoles.
David
When the Intellimouse first came out it had completely broken the PS/2 mouse standard that was ubiquitous in the industry at that point and M$ also refused to give up the specs for "their" protocol. I had many would-be Linux users screaming at me for months that Linux must be shitty because it wouldn't even support their mouse.
I expect you've never seen their hidden API's either. Does that mean they don't exist?