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What Microsoft Should and Shouldn't Do For the Xbox 720
donniebaseball23 writes "Xbox 360 just came off a record November, with more than 1.7 million units sold in the U.S., but behind closed doors Microsoft is planning its next move for the successor to the popular console. Plenty of Xbox 720 rumors have surfaced in recent months, but veteran games journalist Chris Morris has filtered through them to provide a realistic take on what Microsoft should and shouldn't do with Xbox 360's successor. In particular, he notes that Microsoft should adopt the Blu-ray format from Sony. 'A DVD drive as a medium for storing larger and larger games is outdated – and it steps on the toes of a system that bills itself as the high definition leader,' Morris writes. 'Microsoft resisted the move to Blu-ray this generation without any ill effects. It even survived picking the losing side in the format battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, but it can't rely on the DVD to take it into the next generation.'"
Of course, there could be a middle ground in this case.
Stores can get a licence from a distributor, which means they get a server that games are downloaded to when they are released.
Those with internet can download directly, or they can take an SSD / HDD to the store and download it from there to put on the console.
It'd require more security, and no doubt Sony would try to force a proprietary solution instead of using encryption, but it is doable.
This is more likely to happen than eliminating stores entirely.
It also has the added advantage of pretty much killing the used market as well as still having the stores on-board anyway.
Prices will likely remain the same even though the distribution is significantly cheaper overall. (whether this mostly goes to the stores or producers / publishers is another question. I'd prefer a middle ground again since either of the 2 dying would be bad for the industry)
So now we have a huge-scale, distributed game CDN, officially backed, people can download from those or go to the store directly and download from it if they have no connection. Everybody wins.
The WiiU is already confirmed to use a proprietary optical disc (probably based on blu-ray).
Mada mada dane.
It was simply a marketing ploy. The thinking was that PS3 sounded 1 better than XBox2, so they simply used a bigger number starting with 3 (to help parents understand they are equivalent). I imagine it will carry on in the same vein, so expect the "Xbox 404 Not Found" to hit the shops in a couple of years time.....
For the first issue, MS has heard, and is addressing that on the 360, so I would assume that they would keep it in for the next version.
Basically, if you're an XBox gold member (which from your post you are), with the most recent dashboard release, they allow you to save your profile, and game saves to the "cloud". So now, when you finish playing something downstairs, you can go upstairs, and continue playing from there, without needing to migrate your existing gamertag. (Although I've not used it, I would expect that you can only use your gamer tag on 1 Xbox at a time.)
Some games may have game-specific 'install' support; but there isn't a generic caching mechanism.
The Xbox made the 'install' option system-wide for all games if you have the space. Some developers claim that installing their disc to the HDD will cause it to run slower, but it's definitely there for every 360 game. PS3 still requires that the game do the install, so it still varies by game on that platform.
And, most important:
They should dump the optical drive entirely and move to a cartridge-like system using encrypted flash drives. For the majority of people with a solid internet connection they can just buy and download directly to their console from their living room, but for those with crappy/capped bandwidth, the physical flash drive is there for them if they want it.
Hell, they don't even need to really produce pre-made flash drives with the games on them, they could just switch to a kiosk method of distribution. You go down to your local Walmart, go up to the Microsoft kiosk, pick which 'Xbox 720' game you want, it copies that to a generic, proprietary Microsoft flash drive right in the machine, prints a label on it, and shits it out the slot on the bottom, ready to go. The cost of producing that physical copy could easily be offset to the consumer while at the same time giving incentive to people to switch to direct download by allowing for cheaper prices there
No more discs to press on their end, no more discs to get scratched up by the consumer, and it goes a long way towards moving the digital distribution method out of the city and out into the sticks. The games are always up to date (the kiosk can just keep the disc images updated) and not only that, but they can literally offer every single game they produce at every kiosk. A few TB hard drives in the unit and a web connection and you've got access to everything. Hell, they could even combine the unit with a demo machine like the 360 ones and let people play the games before they buy right there in the store!
Seems like it would work well for both them and consumers. Which is probably why it won't happen.
I haven't noticed any large increases is game size in the past decade.
That's because a lot of games are ports from the Xbox 360, which is limited to a DVD unless the publisher is willing to go to the hassle of splitting it across multiple DVDs.
Plus it opens up digital distribution to those out in the sticks through kiosks at the local Walmart/Gamestop/Whatever. Store the images on hard drives in the machine (which can be updated via the store's internet connection), fill it with generic Microsoft flash drives, customer comes up, picks their game, it dumps the image to a flash drive, prints a label and sticks it on, dumps it out the slot, and there you go.
They can offset the costs to the consumer by charging more for the physical copies than they do for the downloaded one, while getting around the whole "what about people that don't have a fast internet connection?" limitation that keeps them from eschewing physical copies entirely. Plus, instead of the 20 games that Walmart keeps on hand to choose from, the customer would be able to buy any game, at any time, via the kiosk. No more shelf space taken up with 50 facings of Dudebro: My Shit Is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time, and 3 months later when they're sitting on 187 unsold copies, no more shipping them back to the distributor to end up buried in the Arizona desert under dark of night.
Seems to me like it would be the most efficient way to go.