Slashdot Mirror
New Console Always-Online Requirements and You
An anonymous reader writes "The new Xbox is almost here and the details appear to strongly suggest 'always on' is the way forward. We all know that this is an artificial requirement and certainly there are plenty of people on all sides of the table. To paraphrase the user 'tuffy' who commented on this issue at Ars Technica recently; if you're trying to sell 'always online' as a feature of the future, there needs to be some benefit for me the customer. There is not one. Or, rather, there is no sign yet of any actual clearly compelling reason why any end user would support this limitation to their purchase. So, what's the best way to express this? Spend your money on an Ouya? Contact the Xbox team? These are all valid options but they also lack visibility. What we need is a way that could help actually quantify the levels of discontent in the gamer community. Maybe E3 attendees could turn their backs in protest like some did during Thatcher's funeral procession. Or gamers could sign some useless petition. What do Slashdotters think? Is the upcoming Steam box a reasonable plan? As a gamer, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. I really don't like it but I may roll over eventually and join the herd because I could get used to it. Then again part of me is rankled by this slow erosion of access to me and my data."
The only winning move is not to play.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Steam basically requires an internet connection. Offline mode exists, but you need to switch it over while you have a connection, so its useless if you go offline suddenly.
I have no reason to believe that the steambox will be any different.
Use a PC for gaming and vote with your wallet (refuse to buy games that require internet connection).
Just don't buy one.
A hacker will provide a fix to remove that always online requirement. Problem solved.
Microsoft knows and abuses their user base. For example, all Xbox Live game servers are hosted by players. These players pay a yearly fee to MS, so that MS will grant them the privilege of hosting these servers and playing against other players. MS is basically getting free money.
Rednecks who don't know better; Call of Duty dudebros; 13 year olds with gullible soccer moms - these are all people don't give a shit about always online and represent the core audience of the Xbox brand. They'll buy the next console without asking questions and they'll create the critical mass MS and publishers need in order to push always online.
People who hope the PS4 will save us from always online are naive. Always online has always been the publishers' wet dream. They've been pushing for this for years. At the very least, MS and Sony will implement mechanisms so that any publisher will be able to impose the always online requirement for their games. And remember, MS and Sony are also publishers, and they're quite big publishers. Where do you expect people to go once all games released by Activision, EA, Sony, MS, Ubisoft and others will all require always online? How will you fight a cartel in its own walled garden?
Blizzard games, Steam games, even the dreaded SimCity sell tens of millions of copies each year, despite the various types of (partially) always online requirements. Always online is here to stay and there's nothing you can do, because of the massive amount of people who will gobble this up without thinking twice.
Sig
Whats the point of consoles again? Its not like any next gen console have any chance in hell of being more powerful than my PC. Why should I spend money on a separate box?
The 'point' of a console is that it allows you to shove a small, simple device under your TV and play games.
And a controller is fine for FPS games. I can play Halo as easily as I can play BF3 on the PC with a mouse and keyboard.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
"As a gamer, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. I really don't like it but I may roll over eventually and join the herd because I could get used to it."
And that's your problem right there. Why is everybody expecting that sticking to your principles doesn't need something in return?
The time people will really start caring is in ten years time when the activiation servers are switched off and they can't play their games anymore.
Optimist. Microsoft "PlaysForSure" lasted for all of four years.
Steam only has DRM the publishers chose. You're free to support the ones who do things DRM free. Steam does not require a connection to play in any way shape or form.
These are the facts.
What I hate so much about "always online" is that EVENTUALLY these companies are going to shut down their servers and people who want to play these games in the future will be screwed. I really do hope hacking solutions come out of this, otherwise you're going to have an entire generation of games that literally cannot be played in the future. Imagine if movies did that and you could no longer watch The Shawshank Redemption because its profitability expired a long time ago and it cost money to keep the movie servers running.
If you think this won't happen, see how Microsoft has pulled the plug on multiplayer Halo 1 / 2 or Mercenaries 2. At least the single player component wasn't affected, but for future games, it will be. Over enough time, without proper cracks, these games will be IMPOSSIBLE to play.
I hate this mentality of forcing everyone online with no recourse for when the plug eventually gets pulled. It's intentionally destroying culture in the name of profit, which I find immoral.
Microsoft is just using this whole always online thing to get everyone worked up so they are super focused on the fact that there is this onerous requirement. That way when they announce that it is not in fact going to be always on, the press will spend so much time focused on that they won't even notice that it's price is in the stratosphere unless you agree to a subscription regardless.
So, what's the best way to express this? Spend your money on an Ouya?
Are you fucking DAFT?! You have to connect the Ouya to the Internet AND give it your credit card information before you can even use it. It requires a mandatory firmware update out of the box. Then, EVERY game must be Free To Play in some capacity. As a game dev I want to like the OUYA, but it's shit. I can't even just put a full version of a game and demo version out and have you buy the game outright if you want -- Nope, instead I have to create an in-app-purchase and lock away features calling the locked neutered game a "demo", and then I have to check with the Ouya DRM servers before you start playing the full version of the game (better be connected to the Internet, always). Other games that are "free to play" and funded via in-app-purchased micro-transactions are roughly equivalent to "always online DRM", you doofus.
Ouya == Free To Play PITA == Always Online DRM. You want to escape this crap?! So do I. Game on your damn PCs. PLEASE!
...also "feature an always on", and they recommend that it's turned on so it can automatically update the system while turned "off".
I have however - paranoid as I am - blocked the camera on the console with black tape, there's hardly any games using that camera anyway.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
... let them do it. They fucked up with Win8 , lets just get the popcorn and watch them fuck up xbox too.
People - an xbox is just a toy. If we were talking PC operating systems requiring always on then fine, that would be Bad News. But an Xbox? Meh, who cares. Its hardly a crucial purchase and hardcore gamers will use PCs anyway.
There is a benefit to the consumer: playing video games on the new Xbox. The consumer doesn't pick, in isolation, whether they want always-on connectivity; they choose whether or not to buy the whole bundle of good and bad design decisions that make up the Xbox. There is presumably a group of people who will move from wanting an Xbox to not wanting one because of this feature, but my gut feeling is that they won't be that numerous, because I think that the games, not the technical requirements, are probably uppermost in peoples' minds when buying a console.
People hate 'always on' DRM. No one likes it. Some hate it with a fiery passion.
It's 'people' like you who assume the following:
That gives M$ the notion that doing this would work. Seriously, only because people like you exist, the "if you're getting raped you might as well enjoy it" logic people...fsk you and your notions of consumer choice.
Platforms can die when the alienate their users and/or make bad business decisions, ex: Sega, Neo/Geo
Thank you Dave Raggett
Don't worry about it, you're not the target audience after all. :)
Right. The target market is clearly people who prefer poor quality games and lots of bullshit. You?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
your alternative is to maintain a ridiculous and expensive beast of a PC where the video card alone costs more than a console.
Video card? What video card? Skyrim is playable without one now.
There was that EA bloke(who has now formed a queue for all the other EA people for dole money) who wondered what all this outrage over the always online thing was. He quite helpfully ignored the MEEELLIONS Sony had to pay over the PSN outage, the SimCity brouhaha and the hot water Blizzard found themselves in in Germany and Korea. And he wore a corporate EA suit as a product manager.
If you see that kind of ignorance at that level then you do not find it hard to believe they really want to stick to the always online shenanigans that have gone on lately.
Meanwhile in the real world engineers tell people that relying on internet conncetivity with custom mobile software is a bad idea when it mostly is used to record electircity metering data in cellars and that they might want to take this into consideration.
Nowadays the suits(of which I'm a card carrying member) want computers not to copy data(hardyhar) and always be connected to the internet to transfer huge amounts of data while every carrier puts caps on what they transfer. If the chips are down and the lights are out complete ignorance of recent events will see us through. And that's why everybody with a modicum of technical understanding is up in arms. Me, I could simply ignore that. I do not plan to own a PS720 or XBox4. Nothing EA tries so hard to sell to me tickles my fancy. But shoddy workmanship for dubious business reasons is a step backwards and that simply gets my heckles up.
20 minutes into the future
Seriously. Want to still play games, but the consoles don't do what you want? Use a computer. They are first-flight gaming platforms these days. Currently more powerful than any console, even with lower range hardware. You can also get games with whatever your DRM tolerance is. Being open platforms, developers can really do wahtever they like so you find it runs the gamut. There are some games with always-on DRM, Ubisoft is pretty (in)famous for that. There are games with DRM that requires you to go online to activate once, but then not again. There are games with DRM that kinda fades in to the background and is just part of the setup (like Steam). Finally there are games with no DRM at all.
So you can play whatever games meet your requirements in terms of level of DRM. There's nothing being forced by a larger entity, and indeed because of the varied market it is easy to vote with your dollars and developers can see the result of that.
So you don't have to wait for some alternative, there is already one here, and you probably already have the basics of what you need. A Windows PC (there just aren't many games for Linux at this point) with a reasonably modern processor is a good foundation, then knock a $100ish graphics card in and you are good to go.
Yes you can hook it to your TV and use a controller, if that is what you desire.
Steam forces their own DRM, Steamworks, on all games. Unlike some other DD servers (Impulse for example) there is no capability to release a game without the built-in DRM. Publishers can use additional DRM as well, but Steamworks is mandatory.
It's pretty low key DRM over all, most people are ok with it (I am) but it is DRM. You have to have Steam running and be logged in to your account to be able to play a game. You don't have to be online, you can cache your credentials and play offline, but you must have Steam running and logged in or you cannot play a game.
Many people are ok with Steam DRM, I'm one of them, but don't be disingenuous and claim there isn't DRM. There is and it is required.
Is piracy really that rampant on the Xbox? Seems like every time I've heard about a new hack, M$ has been quick to fix it and ban hammer those exploiting it. You can't even clone a factory HD to a bigger one and pop it in without getting busted.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Do you return to PC gaming, but only play indie games
Bingo. Indie games and GOG.
There's the core market that take whatever dross is shovelled to them under a certain brand. They get sucked in to buying all the DLC even if it's just cosmetic or even maps from the last revision (no, they don't qualify as versions anymore).
There's enough mindless COD sheep to keep the new consoles going for quite a while, meaning this will not go away this coming console generation or next.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
Have you ever tried it? It sucks. My Android widgets that grok HDMI can't even scale to the screen size properly (yay black borders!), let alone output native-resolution 1080-anything. And the audio only seems to be capable of producing stereo PCM, which meh.
Fix all that, and maybe add a useable remote control and a user interface that works properly with it, and oh yeah - we're back to Ouya.
Kid-proof tablet..
The problem isn't the "always online" part necessarily. The problem is the fact that a game disc will be tied to a single console, effectively eliminating the secondary market for used games like ebay, amazon and Gamestop.