MS To Indie Devs: You Have a To Have a Publisher

Loadmaster writes "The new Oddworld game New 'n' Tasty is coming to every platform in the current generation and even the next generation but not the Xbox One. It's not that developer Oddworld Inhabitants isn't porting the game. It's not that they hate Microsoft or the Xbox One. No, it's that Microsoft has taken an anti-indie dev stance with the Xbox One. While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops, Microsoft has decided all developers must have a publisher to grace their console."

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

Re:Who cares?

[Vinegar Joe]

The sooner the better. Hopefully a U-boat will take care of the lifeboats.

Re:Who cares?

[im just cannonfodder]

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights, if sony dont implement this along the way, "forced by the nasty publishers" it will be implemented in the next offerings.



vote with your money people, don't pay for the destruction of your rights



the next anti consumer move will be, charging for hmmm, netflix, lets say, rentals that charge per person sitting in the room & calculated by always on connect..!



also does the nsa have back-doors into the xbox, the same as windows 0day exploits handed to them by m$?

Re:Who cares?

[LordLimecat]

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights

If only there were an open platform with standardized, interchangeable hardware existing in a highly competitive ecosystem, your choice of operating system, and the ability to choose where you get your games and whether to participate in an online community.

Someone should make one of those.

Re:Who cares?

[Chrisq]

Microsoft is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

You mean like SCO ... oh Wait.

Re:Who cares?

[Mitchell314]

The sooner the better. Hopefully a Wii U-boat will take care of the lifeboats.

Sorry, it was bugging me that such a perfect opportunity went to waste. :P

Re:Who cares?

[T-Bone-T]

One of the intricacies that you've missed is that a company can be referred to as a group of people instead of a singular entity. Just imagine (The people of) Microsoft, (the people of) Sony.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

did you understand the sentence ? It is not anybody that has the chance to have english as their first language. You does not have to write this here.

And, if you do not mind, "don't" or "doesn't" should not be written, only spoken... So you are wrong too...

Re:Who cares?

[limaCAT76]

Microsoft is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

From this point of view (not allowing independent games) this is a very well reasoned observation.

Or maybe we can say

Xbone is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

An ecosystem is done or killed by the software it delivers.
To be interesting for a publisher (or for a self-publshing aka "indie" developer) that ecosystem needs to have a big number of applications.
Take the iOS and Android ecosystems: they have been great for gaming[1] because they just brought software to millions of people, and publishing on either app store or google play wasn't neither hard nor costly. The console gaming market has been bleeding money either towards the zyngalike games[2] or the smartphone gaming ecosystem. If this were 2006, Microsoft could have positioned the xbone like PS3 without taking a big hit, but now with indies and the other dumb attempt to kill off the disk-as-content-key delivery model it's hard to believe the 'bone will have some relevance in the future home gaming market.

Note: in my opinion mobile gaming will never completely kill console gaming off, but Microsoft should rapidly scale its ambitions down and at least allow indie developers on xbone. I don't believe the other propositions given by xbone (being a media center without DVR functions) will ever matter enough for getting gamer money, but maybe I'm wrong.

[1] for some kinds of gaming: sporadic, easy to get in and to get off. [2] even if the Zynga fremium model does not grow with the userbase as hoped, so it is flawed.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

firdly proof readin the internet ads nothing.

Re:Who cares?

[limaCAT76]

If only there were an open platform with standardized, interchangeable hardware existing in a highly competitive ecosystem, your choice of operating system, and the ability to choose where you get your games and whether to participate in an online community.

Someone should make one of those.

Choice of operating system is difficult, as operating systems give out base services needed to software to abstract and decouple the underlying hardware from the software logic. You still need to either virtualize the game (risking too hard performance hits) or give it an operating system that does the necessary housekeeping.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

dirty console peasants are inherently unable to handle freedom. They are only fit for slavery.

Re: Who cares?

[Connie_Lingus]

kinds sounds like Flash on your browser...

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

not if it Windows 8!

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lul I remember the last book I read didn't contain any contractions at all. Not a single one!

Maybe you shouldn't speak on shit you don't know about. Doesn't mean your a bad guy, just a stupid

Re:Who cares?

[marcosdumay]

I don't believe the other propositions given by xbone (being a media center without DVR functions) will ever matter enough for getting gamer money, but maybe I'm wrong.

I'm quite sure that you are right here. The price of media centers is going down fast, while the price of the X-Box is going up slowly. Altough some people got the Xbox 360 to use as media centers, it's very unlikely that any measurable number of people will do that this time.

Re:Who cares?

[mcgrew]

I found this story puzzling, I would have expected Sony to do this rather than Microsoft. The fight against "piracy" is the fight against indie media, since the indies use the internet to get the word out and the mainstream monsters don't need it.

Nobody ever lost a dime to noncommercial infringement, but many great artists have starved from obscurity (very good example being Van Gogh, who only sold one painting for ten bucks in today's money, to his brother, to pay a debt). The fight against "piracy" is a fight against their indie competition, who DO cost them sales; fifty bucks I give Indie A is fifty bucks I don't have to give to MAFAA B.

Before CD burners and the internet the creator was dependent on publishers, but publishers are no longer needed. Publishers hate and fear the internet, with good reason.

Since Sony has publishing arms and MS doesn't this is really weird. Maybe MS is deliberately trying to kill the ex-box like it did FoxPro? It would make sense if Sony did it, but not Microsoft.

This pisses me off, as a former Sony victim I want that company to die horribly. Come on, Sony, follow Microsoft's lead and let Nintendo have the game business!

Re:Who cares?

[nitehawk214]

xbone

Ha, nice. Like a skull and cross-bones. Sums up this system well.

Re:Who cares?

[nitehawk214]

Choice of operating system is difficult, as operating systems give out base services needed to software to abstract and decouple the underlying hardware from the software logic. You still need to either virtualize the game (risking too hard performance hits) or give it an operating system that does the necessary housekeeping.

But even with the potential of vendor lock-in via obscurity with a Microsoft Operating system; Microsoft cannot come up with "xboneheaded" decrees like "You must have a publisher or you are not allowed to develop for our platform."

What are the publishers going to do, get some law passed that allows Microsoft to turn Windows into a walled garden? And even if it was possible, wouldn't this just cause developers to jump to a new platform that imposes no such restrictions?

This is why "PC gaming is dead" is such an absurd statement.

Re:Who cares?

[Penguinisto]

Funnier still, the MS fanboys use that name as well (well, they use it as shorthand for "XBox One", or rather, they intend that it comes out as "XBOne")

Re:Who cares?

[ewanm89]

I wonder what you call "Microsoft Game Studios"? If not the publishing arm of Microsoft?

Re:Who cares?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Microsoft is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

So Ballmer's just going to rearrange the deck chairs?

Re:Who cares?

[Applekid]

The facts are that Sony isn't doing well. At all.

The PS4 and it's seemingly gamer-friendly features are a result of them putting aside their arrogance ("We're Sony so you have to buy it at 599 US dollars giant crab etc").

An interesting contrast can be made with Nintendo at the dawn of the DS and the Wii. Both systems did more than just promise to have the next Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon. They actually offered something new and different and captured the imagination.

Then Nintendo's arrogance returned. With brisk sales they happily accepted licensing fees for shit shovelware while denying developer kits to smaller development studios, which PSN and Xbox Arcade happily courted.

Sony would do well to learn how Nintendo's story shook out. Wii-U sales are miserable, 3DS sales are well below expectations given the DS's market saturation. Lamenting squandered opportunities and gamer goodwill won't change any of that, so the lessons are there to be learned.

Re:Who cares?

[Psyborgue]

WTF are you talking about. Wii U isn't doing that great because of it's high price relative to horsepower, but the 3ds is doing better than the DS has to date by a million units, and the original DS was the best selling handheld console to of all time. The Vita is the portable that's flopping. I think it's cracked a million units but just barely. There's no doubt Sony will win the console war with MS, but I wouldn't count the Wii U out of the race already. It's not too late for a price drop and when Nintendo releases new first party titles like Zelda their market share will increase. Once that happens, developers will target the platform more, even if it means increased development costs.

Re:Who cares?

[brit74]

Nobody ever lost a dime to noncommercial infringement

I'd like to see a source for that claim. Here's a counterpoint: I have a friend who used to buy the software he uses. Then he discovered piracy. Now, he never pays for software and thinks anyone who does is stupid. You can't tell me that piracy didn't lead to lost sales.

Re:Who cares?

[thoughtlover]

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me, either. I have a feeling that M$ will simply become the publisher for indie titles. By publishing the titles, they could exert a bit more control over content, possibly.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone wants to play only Mario and nothing else. Everything is better than Nintendo.

Re:Who cares?

[snoopyowns]

Oh, it was your "friend". You can just admit it is you, we won't care. No need to say it is a friend.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a device would be absolutely useless for playing exclusive games, ie, the games people want the most. People buy consoles because they want to play very specific games, whatever those may be. Those games are not available on PCs.

Re:Who cares?

[White Flame]

Windows Phone was a dud. People are trying to avoid Windows 8 as much as possible (the Microsoft Tax being their only real sales). The XBone is trumped by the PS4 in every way.

I think we can say that Microsoft itself is having problems, not just the console division.

Re:Who cares?

[TsuruchiBrian]

You have to look at the total effect of piracy. If piracy caused your friend to be X number of games less than he would have otherwise but indirectly causes another person to buy Y games that they wouldn't have otherwise, then piracy caused a net gain/loss of (Y - X) sales.

Why would people buy more games in a world with piracy? For the same reason that Costco gives out free samples. Sometimes people are unwilling to pay for something until they've tried it. People are willing to play more games if they don't cost anything. Many people learn to love particular game brands and eventually end up paying for those games even if they initially pirated them

I used to pirate lots of games when I was a kid. No I don't anymore. Piracy certainly caused me to be more involved with computers and video games. And now as an adult (with more money than patience), I am a paying customer.

Piracy popularizes intellectual property but also lowers the amount of money collected per sale. If 90% of the people who play your game pirated it, but 20 times as many people now play it than would have otherwise, it means piracy netted you a profit. It doesn't always yield a profit, but it certainly can and has in the past. Piracy is one of the main reasons that windows dominated the OS market for decades.

Re:Who cares?

[ikaruga]

This pisses me off, as a former Sony victim I want that company to die horribly. Come on, Sony, follow Microsoft's lead and let Nintendo have the game business!

This is nothing but a display of ignorance. Sony did lot's of bad things in the past indeed, but they're are under the new leadership(Kaz Hirai) since Q1 last year and since them they've been doing quite a lot great things. Open source android projects, semi-open game platforms, restructure of the company and product lines and removal of incompetent staff just to name a few. To demonize the whole company because the poor choices of a few is just not fair.
By the way, your beloved Nintendo has a fair share of black history as well. This whole closed console DRM plagued business is their ****ing invention, let alone their love for proprietary formats.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Gaming is just like life.

Newborn: Nintendo Wii users just flail their limbs about.
Very Young Child: Playstation users are only familiar with basic shapes and primary colours.
Young Child : Xbox users are only familiar with 4 letter of the alphabet.
Adult :The PC Gaming Master Race has the full control of all 26 letters, and thus, their destiny.

Re:Who cares?

[ButchDeLoria]

I've personally taken to Xbox Done.

Re:Who cares?

[ButchDeLoria]

Nonsense, here in America, corporations are their own singular entities.

Re:Who cares?

[mcgrew]

Sony did lot's of bad things in the past indeed, but they're are under the new leadership(Kaz Hirai) since Q1 last year and since them they've been doing quite a lot great things.

Maybe, but they've been screwing over their customers for a decade and the new guy has a LONG way to go before his company is the least bit trustworthy. Trust must be earned.

I'm curious, why did you put that apostrophe in the third quoted word?

Re:Who cares?

[mcgrew]

I wish I could find a link to the story, but a few years ago a book publisher commissioned a study to see how much in sales he was losing to piracy. Since it takes a few weeks for pirate versions of books to show up, they looked at sales figures to see how much sales dropped when the pirate version was available. The researchers and publisher were amazed to discover that rather than a drop in sales, there was a spike in sales!

Corey Doctorow credits his status as a best selling author to the fact that he puts his ebooks on boingboing for free.

Of course there will be a few folks like your friend, but study after study has shown that music pirates spend a lot more money on music than non-pirates. No study except some commissioned by the RIAA or MPAA has shown loss in sales caused by piracy.

DRM often causes me to pirate. I'll buy a DVD and after fifteen minutes of unskippable piracy warnings and trailers I'll get a torrent started to get a non-cripppled version of it.

The irony of DRM is that it's never stopped a single pirate, but it's driven customers to piracy because the pirate version is usually just better.

Pirating software is just plain stupid, you're begging to be pwned. Music, movies, and books are safe, though.

Re:Who cares?

[mcgrew]

The facts are that Sony isn't doing well. At all.

Yes, I've seen that, and it makes me happy.

Re:Who cares?

[mcgrew]

Good point.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahha kudos to you sir that was fantastic

Re:Who cares?

[AlabamaCajun]

Ballmer is going to rearrange the deck for the chairs! @*#% Microshaft!

Re:Who cares?

[lagi]

Agreed. They had so many opportunities to correct their awful ways in the last 20 years, they used none of them.
I feel the game is finally over for Microsoft.

They cannot play it anymore, they lost the paper with the rules.
It's a sick company without direction or goal - pretending they are "just fine" for quite some time now.
They are losing the whole gaming industry, not only as a publisher, not only as a console maker but also as a provider of operating system as well. and that's the only way they could have been saved.

Re:Who cares?

[just_a_monkey]

It's amazing (and depressing) how many take offense rather than express thankfulness when strangers help them write less like third-graders, for free. Don't let the ignoramuses discourage you, azav!

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

abolish debt

Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

This is just Microsoft protecting their own turf. This is part of their culture. As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[UnknowingFool]

Wow, I thought the negatives for Xbox One couldn't be any more before it got launched. Did Sony get a leak of Microsoft's plans and then decide to do the opposite? 1) Make PS4 cheaper, 2) Not require constant internet connection, 3) Allow used games, 4) Push for indie games.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[AJH16]

Or they are simply acting sanely.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Nerdfest]

... or they're lying ... again.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[gutnor]

This, I think summarize it.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

Citation please.

Sony fucked up a lot last gen, it looks like they are learning.

Either way, even if they change a month after shipping it, at least it started out better than Xbone.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

... or they're lying ... again.

Yep, give this man a cigar.

Micrsoft has a long history of using the "Queen's duck" strategy to pretend they're listening to their customers. After a suitable pause, Microsoft will grandly and magnanimously agree to allow users and developers some token feedom while reserving the option to continue screwing everyone who deals with them.

They'll have their social media reputation managers pulling out all stops to sell the pre-planned reversion as a "customers have spoken" moment, when it's really anything but.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just Microsoft protecting their own turf. This is part of their culture. As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

So basically MS has been infected by Las Plagas. Just wait for Alice to come and rescue them.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[TWiTfan]

As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Actually, that USED to be Sony's reputation. In the console space at least, MS once had a very positive reputation. Lately though, the attitudes seem to have completely reversed. MS has become the arrogant, control-freak pricks and Sony is actually looking like the decent, pro-consumer company. Just bizarre.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[denmarkw00t]

> Citation please.

OtherOS was a feature available in early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console that allowed other operating systems, such as Linux or FreeBSD, to be installed on the system. This feature was made unavailable in newer models and removed from the oldest ones through a firmware update by Sony.

Source

Sony fucked up, in a few ways, one of which was lying.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony fucked up a lot last gen, it looks like they are learning.

So it did when they came out with the other OS option. You know what happened.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

When did they hide that or lie about it?

I thought they were totally upfront about it. They removed the feature from new units and told the folks on the old ones to not update. Sure it sucks, but nothing like being a total cockbag from the word go the way MS is being.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

I think it is natural.

Sony has to do well with PS4 or their console dreams are over. Microsoft is doing very well with the 360 and thinks they are on top of the world. This means Sony is pulling out all the stops to get converts. Microsoft thinks they can be as dickish as they like and keep enough customers. Sony has done this in the past when they were on top.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

They were assholes, but not liars about it.

Other OS should have been left alone, but they did not lie about it.

For the record I will not be being either until I see the linux based steambox first.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[ZaMoose]

I'm unfamiliar with the "Queen's duck" gambit and the Google search results are woefully unhelpful. Citation, perhaps?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is about Microsoft courting other companies. The Xbone is MS's attempt to please big content, and this includes large game companies. They've served up a laundry list of wet dreams (Like the end-run around the right of first sale for retail games) because MS has had decades-long dreams of being a cable company, or something. (I really don't understand while MS lusts after being a content distribution company)

Indy titles are starting to eat marketshare from the big companies, and big companies really don't get indy titles. This is just a move to raise the barrier to entry to make sure the Xbone doesn't get another minecraft. (Minecraft is one of the 360's biggest titles. Period. Both in terms of sales and hours played. Kids LOVE that game)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[denmarkw00t]

It was a promised feature that was removed later - would some of the people who purchased it have dropped that $$$ if they knew that, even at some point in the future, they'd have to make a choice between running Linux or playing online? I know I wouldn't have, if Linux were part of the draw to a PS3 (too pricey for me tbh). Besides, their track record isn't great, and it'll be worth it to watch both of these companies after launch... just wait and see.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they didn't lie. The new model that came without the feature no longer listed it as a feature on the specs. The old systems were patched, and we were warned a head of time that feature was being removed.

That said. To install another OS on your ps3 you gave up the ability to connect to the PSN and play games, so there is no reason for you to update period. The only people upset with that were ones thinking installing linux was a means to pirate software, it wasn't, and never was. I had one, i had that feature removed, I never used it once, because I bought a game console, i already have several computers.

Anyone whining about install otherOS is full of crap, to install the other os, you lost the ability to connect to PSN and play games, unless of course you were dual booting, which I'm not even sure was an option.

If you wanted to continue to install another OS, you simply didn't install that patch, because you don't need to connect to the PSN. As such, you can also factory reset the console a forcably downgrade the firmware, so, really, no leg to stand on, no lies, just whiny pirates.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[RKThoadan]

An argument can be made that by saying it would have that capability and taking it away the original statement was a lie. You have a valid point in that they were pretty upfront with things when they took it away. So they were very honest about when they decided to make their original statement a lie.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[cockroach2]

They sold a product with feature X, then went "nah, you can't really have that feature". Sounds like lying to me.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Since everyone loves to criticize, purposefully add in problems to your creation that would be easy to fix (a pointless duck next to the queen in a game of video chess) so that criticism is focused on that rather than more difficult issues.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony advertised that those PS3s came with OtherOS. They did not advertise those PS3s come with OtherOS as long as you have no interest in playing new games or enjoying new features on your console, especially when those features and games have no conflict whatsoever with OtherOS.

It's like a dealership warranty requiring oil changes at the dealership (I know that's only the case for extended warranties now) and after the 12th oil change they rip out the radio (but they were nice enough to tell you that they'd do that the day you bring your car in for the 12th oil change). They lied because the radio was part of the car and nowhere in the warranty does it say you'll have the radio ripped out on the 12th oil change.

Lying by omission is still lying.

Let's also not forget about the rootkit, which was as obvious of a lie as any.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Karl Cocknozzle]

It was a promised feature that was removed later - would some of the people who purchased it have dropped that $$$ if they knew that, even at some point in the future, they'd have to make a choice between running Linux or playing online? I know I wouldn't have, if Linux were part of the draw to a PS3 (too pricey for me tbh). Besides, their track record isn't great, and it'll be worth it to watch both of these companies after launch... just wait and see.

They made some unfortunate choices, but "changing their mind" is the prerogative you gave them when you bought their proprietary hardware/only-as-open-as-we-say-it-can-be model in the first place. I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that ability to be taken away?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

They sold a product with feature X, then they said if you want to keep feature X we will not longer support you. Shitty, but not lying.

Honestly I was pissed about Other OS from day one. It was never Other OS, it was Other Crippled OS. They used a hypervisor to prevent you from talking to the interesting hardware.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out EA Sports some time. You get all the "we listen" BS and as special bonus you get fanboys to blame the community that they listened to when all features are half-assed and problems from 3+ years ago aren't addressed.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

You could never really run Linux on the PS3, you could run it on some hypervisor on the PS3 that prevent access to the interesting hardware.

Yeah shitty move, but not lying.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is probably telling the truth in this instance, but they have been caught in many lies, such that they deserve the GP's comment.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product.

I don't know if I actually invented this term or not, but I am certainly not the originator of the story that spawned it.

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Dual booting was the only option.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Vanderhoth]

What planet have you been living on?

First Sony said a couple of months before the Other OS removal they wouldn't be removing it. Then on an April 1st release they removed it. Everyone just thought it was a joke until it was too late for a lot of people. Sony made it MANDATORY because you either had to update and lose the Other OS feature, or you couldn't use the console to connect to PSN (meaning you lost access to any games you bought online), play newer bluRays or newer games. Either way, doing the update or not, you lost something you bought the console to do.

As I've said probably a dozen times in the last few weeks. My console was updated, not by me, when I had some people over to watch a RENTED movie. The movie required a BluRay update, which updated the console.

Sony was not up front about removing the Other OS, they lied about it profusely and tried to trick, and ultimately forced, PS3 owners to update. Linux was an awesome feature to have on my PS3 and I did a lot of stuff with it, but anyone that didn't update is now stuck with an overpriced ($800 when I bought mine), under powered, locked down Linux machine.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[war4peace]

Maybe. However, this makes me wonder whether there's still some available wood in their coffin to hammer THIS nail in.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[TWiTfan]

You would think that console companies would have learned by now that being on top in one-generation and getting cocky about it is the sure road to getting your ass kicked in the next generation. Just ask Atari, Nintendo, and Sony. Nothing spells doom in the console world quite like a "We're on top now, so we can do anything we want!" attitude.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the title of the article is probably wrong. It should say "Microsoft demands exuberant fees for publishing rights on Xbox One". Oddworld Inhabitants could become a publisher them selves but it probably is horrible expensive.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[cockroach2]

The support is not what I care about, but I have to choose whether I want to keep that feature (which I did) or still be able to use the console for gaming (which I'm not). So true, my original statement was slightly wrong, it should have been something like:

They sold a product with features X and Y, then went "nah, you can't really have both" (i.e. other OS, PSN).

Still not the honest thing.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bfree]

Here 47 days before this announcement they were removing it on Sony Fools Day.

Please be assured that SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the "Install Other OS" feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[LocalH]

Wait, what? People bitching about the forced removal of OtherOS are "just whiny pirates"?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Xest]

What about backwards compatibility then? They said they'd support that by including necessary hardware and software patches where necessary and then just stopped with the software fixes to make some games work half way through, eventually just removing the feature in hardware altogether.

Some people with original systems can still play some of the games but there are plenty who bought a system expecting it given that it was an advertised feature (just like Linux was) only to find the first they know of it being removed is when they tried to use it.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[alen]

you have to update the firmware or you lose access to netflix, PSN and every other online resource that the PS3 supports

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony fucked up by ever offering otherOS to begin with. No one will ever make that mistake again.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Xest]

To be fair on Microsoft I think they really do have a much better line up of games than Sony, but I suspect they've achieved this precisely by offering to block second hand sales and push strict DRM.

I think Microsoft's card this time is that they'll fuck the users rights, but get better publisher support and hence better exclusives and hence hope to lure users over that way.

The worrying thing is that this may well work, because this worked for Sony with Bluray - Bluray was the more restrictive format and less consumer friendly format without a doubt, it too required users to update their players over the internet or using discs to be able to view content and so forth but it slaughtered HD-DVD, why? Because all the publishers backed the format that gave them DRM and HD-DVD was dead as soon as all the content went to Bluray.

It's no surprise that Microsoft is touting exclusives like Dead Rising 3 and put quite an emphasis on Metal Gear Solid 5 which used to be one of Sony's most prized exclusive flagship titles.

Personally I liked playing the Dead Rising series coop, but if the PS4 isn't going to get games like this then I'll by neither console. Many normal consumers however would just say "fuck it, I'll buy the XBox One" because most of them don't even know what DRM is and wont even care until it bites them on the ass. I saw a similar thing many years back with Apple products and iTunes, I've known a number of people buy an iPod, build up a music collection, have their device battery go or the device fail and not be aware you could get it replaced and realise that they basically had little choice but to buy a new Apple device or lose hundreds of pounds of content - they were in effect through their own naivety tied to Apple's platform.

This is really what separates us geeks from the average consumer - we're well aware of how stupid DRM is technically, but also what issues it can cause. Most consumers neither know what it is nor care until it causes them a problem, by which time they're already a customer and already tied to the platform. There's more awareness of DRM now than there used to be but I don't think there's enough to necessary cause the XBox One to be a complete flop - if anything does that I'd wager it's the higher price point that will hurt it more than anything else.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

So you would have choosed the XBox 360 instead?
Or would you have held out as the pro gamer you are for the Wii?
The other OS thing was shitty. I agree. It was not a lie though and I still would have picked up the PS3 had I knew about this ahead of time.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

There appears to be parallels to the Start Trek movies. Every odd release of the XBox does poorly.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Clsid]

And you are stupid as hell by defending a corporation as if you were a shareholder. Sony screwed people back then and that's fact. Learn to deal with it and be thankful that you didn't get burned. Some people refuse to buy Dodge Caravans after their door glass broke on them and you cannot easily forget something like that. This is what serves companies to stick to honest business practices if they want to keep getting repeated sales.

Besides, with the PS4 charging money for online access, the choice is very clear to me, a PC gaming rig and a Wii U is the way to go. You get to play all the cool games at even better resolutions than the "next-gen" consoles, plus all the fun and original Nintendo games.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Svartalf]

I would say not. Sony and people defending how they did this might want to try to paint people that way- but it'd be, heh, yet another lie.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain HOW they fucked up- use specific details or own having done it yourself by opening your mouth. (Hopefully you won't make that mistake again...)

Keep in mind, this was done to defend a gaping hole in their DRM that they will inevitably have in everything. It doesn't even work, mind- people got the root key that can't really be revoked without serious consequence- because it'd entail a recall of all shipped consoles to date to "fix" that problem.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Vanderhoth]

1) I didn't bring it up. I was pointing out the fact that Sony did in fact lie. They said they wouldn't remove the Other OS, then they did.
2) I paid $800, not because it could run Linux, but because it could also run Linux.

This is just one of many things Sony did with the PS3 to screw over customers and it's important to make sure people don't forget. Especially now where Sony stands to get back on top, not because they've done something great, but because they aren't as bad as their competitor. When people are thinking about their options to buy a PS4, XBone, Wii U or a PC I want them thinking about the type of company they're buying from, how they treat their customers and how some of the things these companies have gotten away with are affecting them now and will affect them in the future.

As an example, Class action over the Other OS removal, ruling was in Sony's favor although stated by the judge it was unethical. Because of the president it's now "unethical", but ok for any other company to do the same. It's ok to sell any product with a feature then just not support it, or altogether remove it later.

Also because of the Other OS removal now companies are including "no class action" clauses in their ToS, another huge hit to consumer rights. That's on Sony, and it's up to everyone to make sure people know what they're supporting when they give their money to a company like Sony or Microsoft.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[gstoddart]

I think Microsoft's card this time is that they'll fuck the users rights, but get better publisher support and hence better exclusives and hence hope to lure users over that way.

Or, everyone is going to conclude that this console is exceedingly anti-consumer, and not worth buying.

The more they tell us about this, the more I'm 100% certain there's no benefit to me to buy one. Lots of people will still buy them, but anybody who has been reading this stuff is definitely thinking this isn't shaping up to be a good idea.

Microsoft isn't even offering a reach-around, and the constant DRM and needing to ask Microsoft to sell used games isn't gonna happen for me.

This is greed, and acting like assholes. Guess what Microsoft, you don't get to be my entertainment hub, because I simply don't trust you or care about your platform anymore.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Offering otherOS didn't sell very many extra consoles and it didn't sell very many games. So there was no benefit.

On the other hand, it helped crackers breach the system security. And then they got sued for removing it. And they got the opportunity to deal with the extreme entitlement mentality and general assholishness of some Linux hackers.

In short: no upside, lots of downsides. Lesson learned.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DrXym]

That's the real world for you. Sony were faced with two choices:

1. Watch their multi billion investment and revenue model go to shit as a viable exploit allowed people install to custom firmware primarily to play warez. Even if the exploit were experimental to begin with but you can guarantee that it would be perfected to the point that burning and booting from an ISO would root a PS3. Even if Sony patched this exploit there would likely be another, and another, and another.
2. Take out OtherOS and thus the entire risk and endure some whining from people, most of whom never used it in the first place and probably never would have either.

It sucks it was taken out (and I had used it myself BTW). But what would have sucked a LOT more is seeing the console I spent a lot of money go into terminal decline as it became a wasteland of shovelware shit because piracy was endemic. Or if the multiplayer was taken over cheating bastards and griefers thanks to modded firmware.

Given that the PS3 was the least pirated console of this generation by a large margin I would suggest that Sony got something right even if they angered some people in the process.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[gstoddart]

Wow, speaking of lying ... apparently the stuff they demoed at E3 wasn't even running on an XBox 1, but a Win 7 box.

If that's true, it's both crapware and vaporware.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

"Changing your mind" after customers purchase your hardware = "lying". I'm 37, and I wasn't expecting that feature to be taken away. I'm not buying a PS4 partially because of that - and the rootkits, and their incredibly poor response and questionable statements related to the PSN hack.

(Side note: this is quite possibly why Sony isn't doing the online thing; it isn't being gamer-friendly, its them remembering their network was unusable for 3-4 weeks.)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DrXym]

I played around with Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3. It provided a full GNOME desktop but it really wasn't very fast. The PS3 only has 256MB, an inline CPU and was sitting over a hypervisor which blocked access to the 3D GPU. I think in time someone might have been able to put those SPUs to work to accelerate the graphics to some degree (e.g. mesa over SPUs, video decoding). Maybe someone would have made a dist that booted into a front end for playing arcade / SNES / Sega / Atari / C64 / PS1 games or MythTV.

But OtherOS really never attracted a whole amount of interest before the threat of removal became a reality. Then people who never used it were whining to the high heavens about evil Sony. Of course Sony was just protecting their platform - removing an esoteric feature which was massively exploitable. I expect the PS3 would died a death if piracy had taken hold and one way to ensure that was to leave OtherOS in there.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DrXym]

The interesting exploitable hardware. As it turned out they didn't protect it well enough even with a hypervisor so the entire OtherOS had to go.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[arendjr]

What's even more telling is how misplaced their "we're on top" attitude is. Xbox 360 may have had the lead for quite a while due to being released earlier, but the PlayStation 3 actually did surpass it in worldwide shipments. In total shipments, MS is actually behind both Nintendo and Sony.

Then again, I think they still do have an edge in the US (I'm in Europe, so I don't know the US numbers by head), and given that MS is a US company they must feel like they own the world.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Zeromous]

You're conflating physical hardware with software terms of service. One which you agreed to allow them to change the terms at any time.

Also I wouldn't call what Sony did "Advertising OtherOS". In fact it was not an advertised feature at all beyond a small little Yellow Dog Pengiun on the side of the original box.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Zeromous]

>First Sony said a couple of months before the Other OS removal they wouldn't be removing it.

Source please. Sony NEVER said this. EVER.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Xest]

"Or, everyone is going to conclude that this console is exceedingly anti-consumer, and not worth buying.

But as I say it was the exact same thing with Bluray and with the iPod, and the iPhone. Yet still customers bought them in droves.

I agree with you on everything else you said, but I'm not confident that being anti-consumer necessarily means product failure. There are a number of devices in the past that have won out despite being the most anti-consumer choice, which is rather sad.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

"... but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Um, I don't think an Idiom can be used to describe a culture.

To accurately describe a culture it is required that you be descriptive. "Cutting off their nose to spite their face" is an idiom and idioms are used figuratively, not descriptively.

Thought you should know. :)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[ultranova]

Given that the PS3 was the least pirated console of this generation by a large margin I would suggest that Sony got something right even if they angered some people in the process.

Actually, by that criteria, wouldn't the most succesful console be Phantom, which didn't see a single pirated copy of any game whatsoever?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Vanderhoth]

173w ago - Update: Sony's Geoff Levand has now confirmed, to quote: "SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the 'Install Other OS' feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases."

Read more: http://www.ps3news.com/playstation-3-psn-news/rumor-sony-to-remove-otheros-in-next-ps3-firmware-update/#ixzz2WUNHPlbf

199w ago - Today Sony's Satoshi Hashimoto, in an interview with Impress Watch, confirmed that Sony will not be removing the OtherOS and Linux functionality in old (non-Slim) PlayStation 3 consoles.

Read more: http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Linux/ps3-otheros-linux-to-remain-in-old-ps3s-no-security-hole/#ixzz2WUNsxnTI

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[AJH16]

Still, lying about it rather than advertising your intent to abuse consumers is sane behavior. I didn't say Sony's any better and I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, but MS saying to consumers faces "hey, we want to screw you over in every way we possibly can. Please buy our product, you'll like it." isn't exactly sane. Truth, unfortunately, hasn't been in advertising for some time.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they are simply acting sanely.

No, the only difference between Microsoft and Sony is that the the former fucks you from the begining while the latter fucks you months down the road.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[gstoddart]

Oh, I definitely agree loads of people will still buy this because they don't know or don't care.

But there is still going to be a significant chunk of gamers who decide they're not going this route. I'm definitely already one of them.

I play Skyrim, my wife's dancing games, and Tiger Woods golf -- there is no benefit to me for an always on connection, so the next XBox won't be what I play those on. I'll either buy a spare XBox 360, or switch to a PS4 from the looks of it ... and the spare 360 is probably cheaper.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[tlhIngan]

Wow, I thought the negatives for Xbox One couldn't be any more before it got launched. Did Sony get a leak of Microsoft's plans and then decide to do the opposite? 1) Make PS4 cheaper, 2) Not require constant internet connection, 3) Allow used games, 4) Push for indie games.

This is probably the least bit of news ever.

The Xbox360 also requires a publisher if you want to be on a disc or Xbox Live Arcade. The PS3 doesn't, I believe. Though if you go through Playstation Mobile (which is now free), Sony reserves the right to determine pricing - yes, you create the game, and Sony approves it. Sony also determines what to charge and what to pay you (sort of like Amazon App Store).

How do I know? A game company I know of is having difficulties because their publisher went bankrupt, and thus they're unable to update their Xbox360 game because the publisher agreement is tied up in the courts (it's an asset, after all). Even now that they found a new publisher, they're tied up in the court system trying to unwrangle the publisher agreement. (They went bankrupt around September-November 2012 and it's all about asset deposition)

The only real way around it was the Xbox Live Indie Arcade, which has a bunch of limitations. Not sure if XBLIA (not to be confused with XBLA - they're completely different) will be on Xbox One, since XNA is dead...

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[dougisfunny]

Here is a product that does X, Y, and Z*.

Disclaimer: We are selling it as X, Y and Z in perpetuity, but in a few years it's going to be only X and Y, and then just X a few years after that. Or X and Z. And eventually X* (because some of X won't be compatible without Y) and Z.

So, not lying, just bait and switch?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that ability to be taken away?

Considering that was the first generation of game consoles that even had constantly pushed out firmware updates, that no company in the history of gaming consoles had ever made such a major feature change after launch, and the questionable legality of taking it away from people who owned the system before that decision was made, I am certain almost no one expected that it would ever be taken away.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony screwed people back then and that's fact. Learn to deal with it and be thankful that you didn't get burned.

So it's Sony's fault that a bunch of people bought a closed box on which to run Linux that cost $200 more than it would to get a pc of similar capabilities running Linux hooked up to your tv?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Zeromous]

I attribute at least the Hashimoto quote to partial quotes out of context, he said it would not be removed from current revisions of firmware. Obviously this changed for the 4.x firmware and was likely far above the product manager's head.

At no point did Kaz Hirai say or commit to OtherOS as an advertised feature for the duration of the consoles life, in fact at the time of the sources you provided the writing was on the wall.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

Too bad it did not stop the custom firmware. So you can forget about that argument.

The sony console was expensive and not something the frat kids where into. That explains the lack of piracy more than anything.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Blu-ray won out not because of DRM, but because it is a superior standard! 50GB per disc vs. 35GB, scratch resistant coating MANDATED (take a look at your 5 year old PS3 discs, then compare them to your 5 year old Xbox discs!), and better support both from movie studios and directors themselves. The PS3 was the icing on the cake, Sony managed to get MILLIONS of blu-ray players in people's home with their game console. It was the same with DVD...it wouldn't have been NEARLY as popular if Sony didn't make DVD playback standard in the PS2! (remember the OG Xbox needed a $30 IR adaptor to enable DVD playback?)

Well, this gen, Microsoft seems hell bent on making everything digital only, essentially killing off physical media (or at least degrading it to a simple transport medium), and in the process, redefining the concept of "owning" game software. They overstepped. Gamers are going to reject their sad vision of developers profiting on used game sales. They are going to reject the integrated Kinect NSA spy cam. They are going to reject SimCity style DRM. In short, the only people who will buy the XBox One are the uninformed, the fanboys, and the foolish. Fanboys will keep it from falling flat on it's face, but it's still currently being outsold 2:1 on Amazon by the PS4, and after the early adopters get done, word of mouth and the simple fact that gamers will get whatever platform their friends are on, will continue to slide into irrelevance. Just like Surface, Windows Phone, and indeed Windows 8. The future isn't looking too bright over at Microsoft right now...If I worked there, I would seriously start considering looking for other work! (unless you are in "reputation management"...they will be busy for years!)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Endo13]

That's the problem with continued updates... it allows the manufacturer to bait-and-switch legally. What they did with the PS3 is exactly the same as an auto manufacturer removing four-wheel-drive from your vehicle after you bought it, or a radio manufacturer disabling the cassette deck, or TV manufacturer disabling USB ports, or any number of similar examples that could be made.

None of these things should be legal.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair on Microsoft I think they really do have a much better line up of games than Sony

You say this as though there is such a thing as a successful {console name here} exclusive game anymore. It is fact that you -will- make less money developing for a single console unless the company making the console pays you truckloads to make games exclusively for their system. (Or if you can't or don't want to afford developing for multiple systems)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Patch86]

I don't get it. I've just looked at the figures[1] and as of Q1 2013 the PS3 had shipped 70 million units worldwide, and as of Q2 2013 the Xbox 360 had shipped 77 million units worldwide. That seems remarkably like a "tie" to me. (The Wii outsold them both with 100 million units, and also made Nintendo an absolute fortune compared to their rivals due to their cheaper hardware profile, giving them good cause to claim that they in fact "won" that generation; but I'm sure that depends on your perspective).

Compare to the previous generation, where there was a clear winner (Sony as it happens, but that's not my point)- PS2 sold 153 million units, Xbox 24 million, Gamecube 21 million.

From where I'm sitting, it looks like Sony and MS have been locked in a head-to-head duel this generation, and both are understandably hoping to break away from their rivals (and start making some money again) with the coming generation. Sony's plan appears to be "same again but more so", and MS's plan appears to be "change everything and hope it makes us lots of money". Nintendo have gone for the "zany new peripheral" approach again. So far, the smart money would seem to be on Sony's approach.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[drinkypoo]

So it's Sony's fault that a bunch of people bought a closed box on which to run Linux that cost $200 more than it would to get a pc of similar capabilities running Linux hooked up to your tv?

A lot of people wanted to play with the Cell, and I don't know if you priced Cell cluster nodes back when the PS3 was still new and Other OS was still a thing but they cost something like an order of magnitude more than the PS3 and the big differences were a lack of fancy case and I/O but being rack mounted instead, and a more credible PowerPC in the package. But not an order of magnitude more credible...

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

They also said the Xperia Play would continue to be supported and get Android 4.0. (And get PS1 games which was kind of the whole point of the thing).
They are the worst of the worst. (If their stuff was the absolute best then I could perhaps tolerate it but it never has been and likely never will be now.)

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Vanderhoth]

You can try and spin it anyway you like, but the fact was it was an advertised feature. I bought my Console on launch day, If it wasn't an advertised feature then I wouldn't have known about it and it wouldn't have been the deciding factor in choosing the PS3 over the XBox 360.

Also Other OS was removed in version 3.21 of the firmware, so you're still wrong.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Clsid]

You understand that false advertising is recognized as something very bad in most societies?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Clsid]

btw, I was replying to the AC but somehow my post got screwed, lol.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Honesty is tough when people are mad.
But I can try and help you out.
Sony gave us other OS. It was geek awesome.
Sony was happy we had it. Then one day some geeky fun guy found a way to bypass Sonys security using other OS.
Sony like many big corps with big managers and little brains panicked. So they made the decision to remove other OS to make their system "Safe" again.
This made many geeky people angry. They then stopped playing with other OS and broke the security of the PS3 anyway.

So. While Sony acted stupidly, anyone with any honesty that followed what happened knows that it was neither a lie nor was it "Bait and Switch".

Now that you have the facts. (I am assuming that you are a semi honest person and did not have them before this.) You can see the truth.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Patch86]

Damn, forgot my citation link:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(seventh_generation)#Sales_standings

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but even more than that it shows that Microsoft is failing to do anything to stop their slide into irrelevance, nor do they even recognize it is happening.

Re: Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

You also said anyone who didn't update is now stuck with it. But that's what you want right? So why complain about it? No way software updates are going to change the hardware of the console

Oh yeah I'm sure you did toooooons of stuff with the other OS feature. I used mine to play hundreds of hours of games though.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[dougisfunny]

So Sony didn't sell a system for running various media and then later stop allowing those media types from working? I completely understand it wasn't the plan out of the gate. But they sold a general purpose computer with special hardware to allow it to play games and blurays nicely, then they specifically went out of their way to make them not work anymore. How is that not a bait and switch? Because they didn't plan to do it ahead of time?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

"OtherOS was a feature available in early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console that allowed other operating systems, such as Linux or FreeBSD"

FreeBSD had a Cell port? Please point me out to this, as that was my first choice of OtherOS to install and I couldn't find it even after a year.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

And what happened AFTER OtherOS got taken away?

Hypervisor got DESTROYED by hackers, allowing full access to the system.

Or did you forget the RNG always returning a result of 4?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[amicusNYCL]

Either way, even if they change a month after shipping it, at least it started out better than Xbone.

What? Even if they fool me twice, I'm still not an idiot.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[UnknowingFool]

On Arcade, yes. However there is separate section in XBL for indie games. MS has announced that they are merging all XBL sections effectively eliminating the indie one. All games will require a publisher which means no indie games.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

It was a Lie. OtherOS was ADVERTISED not only in video but on the box itself. That was why I bought the PS3 (first-gen with full BC) was because it ADVERTISED ON THE BOX "OtherOS"

That is false advertising AND a bait and switch.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

I did not.
It was a dumb design from the beginning.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[spire3661]

And if a car company tried to do what Sony did they would be razed to the ground.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

How is that not a bait and switch? Because they didn't plan to do it ahead of time?

Exactly. Bait and Switch is intentional. That is the whole point of bait and switch. It is to get the buyer to commit to something you have no intention of actually delivering. So that you can sell them something else.
Sorry. I though you coming from a place of understanding the terms you were using. Guess I was wrong.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

That is false advertising AND a bait and switch.

They delivered on their advertising. Then they sold you the unit promised.
Not false advertising and not bait and switch.

Try going back and reading my post. If you do not trust me then go back and look up the history of it yourself.

Sony was stupid and overreacted. But they did not lie, it was not bait and switch (By any interpretation I can think of) and it ws not false advertising.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

What happened was very detrimental to Sony.
They pissed off the geeks. The geeks that did not bother hacking the console cause they had Yellow Dog Linux to play with.
Then someone showed how they could get out of the sandbox. Sony panicked and removed Other OS.
They Geeks hacked the console harder. Sony came down on the geek. The hackers came down on Sony and shut down online for months.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[unrtst]

So. While Sony acted stupidly, anyone with any honesty that followed what happened knows that it was neither a lie nor was it "Bait and Switch".

How the hell is that not both lying and bait and switch!?!?

AFAICT, Other OS was an advertised feature right on the front of the box, and there was no mention that it was a temporary feature, nor was there any mention that they planned on disabling it. There was probably some "we can do anything we want with future system updates" type of verbage in the click through license, but all licenses have that, and no one with any honesty would claim that removing a widely advertised feature with an OS update is something that one should expect.

If they had instead removed the abilty to play PS3 games with an OS update that could not be rolled back, would you honestly be saying the same thing? What about blu ray movies? Since it's "primarily" a game machine (as the common argument goes), removing the ability to play blu rays would be on equal footing with removing Other OS, correct? Doing so would leave people with the choice of either:
a) having a PS3 that only plays blu rays and no new games and all online aspects of existing games would cease to function
b) having a PS3 that only plays games, but no longer plays blu rays

That's what it boiled down to, just with Other OS instead. That's deceitful behavior. It's bait and switch. The product isn't just one thing or the other. The product was sold as a sum of its features, and they neutered it.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

You could never really run Linux on the PS3, you could run it on some hypervisor on the PS3 that prevent access to the interesting hardware.

Yeah shitty move, but not lying.

We run Linux on our PS3 cluster every day. Really.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

"Offering otherOS didn't sell very many extra consoles "

Better go talk to the Air Force and DoD on that one, pal.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

My original post pointed out that Sony was stupid in their reaction.
But.
The devices they advertised as having other OS had it.
Sony while advertising it had no intention of removing it.
That makes it not a lie.

Bait and Switch.

The intention of the bait-and-switch is to encourage purchases of substituted goods, making consumers satisfied with the available stock offered, as an alternative to a disappointment or inconvenience of acquiring no goods (or bait) at all, and reckoning on a seemingly partial recovery of sunk costs expended trying to obtain the bait. It suggests that the seller will not show the original product or service advertised but instead will demonstrate a more expensive product or a similar product with a higher margin.

So how does this jive with what Sony did?

It does not. Sony did stupid things that pissed off many people. They did not though engage in false advertisiing, bait and switch or lying.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

Umm, plenty of quotes saying "We will support older PS3 models with OtherOS and will not be removing the feature." as provided by other slashdot commenters, with links.

Sony shill detected.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

When Nintendo goes wrong is when they take any notice whatsoever of what anyone else is doing.

Microsoft is trying to set up a situation similar to the situations with mobile phones where the carriers get to choose how to screw over the end user who is not the customer. (But such as EA takes the place of the carrier).

Microsoft realises that EA / Ubisoft will demand this and Sony will give in so they will have what they want eventually.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

"They sold a product with feature X, then they said if you want to keep feature X we will not longer support you."

Yet someone above you in the conversation posted a link that proves you wrong.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[IndustrialComplex]

They removed the feature from new units and told the folks on the old ones to not update.

Yes, those are the words they used, but actual implications of those words was a lot worse than 'You won't get a bugfix for Red's Raiders game'.

The reason you are sworn to tell the whole truth, and not only the truth.

So the whole truth of that statement would be: "Don't update, and never again connect to our network. Also, your PS3 is now a sub-PS3 and you are forbidden from playing any new game released from this point forward*."

"*Also, post a guard on your couch to prevent anyone from ever clicking through the text when they pop in a game or movie. Because that's going to be an irrevocable update applied to your hardware with no recourse to you. Sure, you could go out and buy an entire new PS3... but we altered the HW of the PS3 so you lose your backward compatability as well."

That would be the 'Whole truth' of 'Just don't update.'

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

They made some unfortunate choices, but "changing their mind" is the prerogative you gave them when you bought their proprietary hardware/only-as-open-as-we-say-it-can-be model in the first place. I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that ability to be taken away?

You're pissed off because Ford came by and removed the radio from the car you already paid for? I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that Ford didn't have the ability to take your radio away? After all, it was written in page 57 of the five point type of legalese EULA!

Taking something away that you bought and paid for is theft, plain and simple. Me, I never got bitten by it because I stopped buying Sony when my daughter installed XCP on my computer just tryijng to play a CD she bought at a store she worked at. How fucking stupid do you have to be to buy computer equipment from a company that is willing it vandalize their own customers' stuff?

Sony stays in business because PT Barnum was right. If you're willing to buy Sony after XCP, OtherOS, and leaving info in an unencrypted, net facing database, my CAT is smarter than you.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

The choice was worse than that. It was either

* Lose Other OS functionality (upgrade to 3.21 firmware or later)

* Lose: Online connectivity (online gaming, Netflix, Hulu), lose ability to play future blu-rays which require newer keys (confirmed in my non-upgraded PS3), lose ability to play future game titles that require a newer firmware, lose the ability to purchase and play titles and dlc sold via the playstation store.

Then a later firmware upgrade (3.50) blocked quite a few USB peripherals from working on the console

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Since I am not posting anonymously I think you can take a look at my posting history or even my OP on this issue to see that I have problems with what Sony did.
But when idiots attack someone with stupidity it ends up making the think you are attacking look better.
So attack Sony all you want. Call them idiots for removing other OS so that the geeks spent their time hacking the system.
Tell people they reacted with stupidity and with no care for their current customers who were using other OS.
Do something fucking useful.
When you call them liars or accuse them of "Bait and Switch" or say that they engaged in false advertising some person will look at it and think. "That is not what Bait and Switch is.". Then they will decide that all of your dislike for said corp is unjustified and move on.
Of course there are the idiots as well. those who will just believe what you say with no real thought and move on. That of course is the same reaction that the big corps count on for spreading their FUD.
So since that is what you are doing you are obviously a shill for a large corporation. One that must hate Sony. So ... Microsoft or Nintendo?
See we can all run around and call people shills.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Tharkkun]

Citation please.

Sony fucked up a lot last gen, it looks like they are learning.

Either way, even if they change a month after shipping it, at least it started out better than Xbone.

Sony is going to fuck everyone over after the 1st year. They will patch the OS with always online or some crappy DRM. They essentially invented DRM so there's no way they will let it go.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

"Offering otherOS didn't sell very many extra consoles "

Better go talk to the Air Force and DoD on that one, pal.

Screw them. The profit margin on a console was very small -- maybe even negative on the first design. The Air Force didn't buy any games. Those console sales are almost entirely worthless.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Zeromous]

If you bought your ps3 to put linux on it, I'm truly sorry for your loss.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DeanCubed]

Also this Oddworld game will be on Wii U because Nintendo is embracing indie developers this gen.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, replace ripping out the radio with refusing to put in the radio code after disconnecting the battery. Same effect, but now it's a software problem. Doesn't feel any nicer.

Any amount of advertising, even small print that says "120 GB HDD" is still advertising. And if it's on the box, damn, that's even worse. Then it's specifications.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Khyber]

"Do something fucking useful."

I did, Re: Electronic Arts and Spore.

And I whipped their ass. They're now bankrupt.

What've you done?

Nothing that I can see.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Darinbob]

Sort of reminds me of MS and MS fans wondering why people were still upset with them about things that happened in the past. The answer was that they never acknowledged or apologized for the mistakes and bad things they did in the past. Same applies to Sony, until they apologize for their actions in the past people shouldn't trust them in the present.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

Nope, you run it on the hypervisor that the PS3 is running. This distinction is important as it blocks access to the graphics hardware.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan for the PlayStation 4 to be $399 was in there since its inception, according to Shuhei Yoshida on the IGN Beyond podcast

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Friggo]

It seems like you didn't read the article carefully. The PS3 70 million number were from November 2012, with an IDC estimate of 77 million sold in January 2013.
So the odds are that the PS3 did have higher shipping numbers than the Xbox 360 by March 31th, when Xbox 360 reached 77 million.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[VortexCortex]

How sad. Not even Microsoft uses Windows 8...

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Zeromous]

How can I put this to you? Sony removed a feature which provided a platform for compromising the DRM of the system (Illegal in the US and many other countries I might add). They had a fiduciary duty to remove that feature and were perfectly in their legal right to do so.

This may rub you the wrong way. I am a Playstation die-hard and even I understand why OtherOS could no longer be permitted. Sony didn't do this because they were greedy, or because they hate linux, or because they are evil. They did it because otherwise they would be liable.

It's really too bad this comment is buried on slashdot, because it seems Sony tried to do everyone a solid and it blew up in their face a bit. So if you want blame anyone blame GeoHot. But who can really? He was just doing what we computer geeks do. Sony just did what it had to do and I can assure you they will not make that mistake again.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[kwark]

I have first gen EU box here, no mentions of OtherOS. Pictures or it didn't happen.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually i think almost the opposite happened.

I have a suspicion that Sony may have falsely implied they would have some form of DRM, harsh or not, at some point intentionally so that Microsoft would think 'oh goodie we can pack some more DRM into our console', and the whole time had never intended to do so themselves.

I have no proof of this, but it is what i prefer to think happened, as when you think of it that way it seems like an amazingly clever plan which has *obviously* worked amazingly well in Sony's favor.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

What they did with the PS3 is exactly the same as an auto manufacturer removing four-wheel-drive from your vehicle after you bought it, or a radio manufacturer disabling the cassette deck, or TV manufacturer disabling USB ports

Whelp, guess I am officially old. Because the idea of a TV with USB ports confuses me.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[brantondaveperson]

Yeah, but it's the anticipation that makes it so good, so I'm going for Sony.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[unrtst]

Sony while advertising it had no intention of removing it.
That makes it not a lie.

I disagree. They were sold on one set of features, and Sony later broke that feature group.

Bait and Switch... your definition is almost exactly what they did. They offered a software update that forced users to choose to have feature set A (stay on old firmware and use Other OS but lose new games, new blu rays, PSN) or feature set B (update and lose Other OS). Users had to choose to recover the sunk costs expended by their original purchase or, well, there was no or. It's really worse than bait and switch, because the switch happened after the purchase, acquisition, and use of the product. The user did have the option of attempting to return the device in an attempt to recoup their investment, but that doesn't count all the games that can't be returned, time put into it, etc etc.

Users were robbed. They were shafted. They were deceived. What phrase can we use to describe this that you or someone else won't pick apart and say it doesn't strictly apply?
They weren't deceived because they didn't originally intend to deceive and had no intention of removing the feature, right? And yet the only reason they were able to pull this off is because the EULA says they can pretty much do whatever they want. It's a loophole to cover their asses, and they used it. Hiding the means to do this in an EULA (and then using it) is deceitful, and that's good enough for me to call it lying, for lack of a perfect term.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[drinkypoo]

Either way, even if they change a month after shipping it, at least it started out better than Xbone.

What? Even if they fool me twice, I'm still not an idiot.

How many times does it take?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[tqk]

You could never really run Linux on the PS3, you could run it on some hypervisor on the PS3 that prevent access to the interesting hardware.

Informative! Kind of like saying nobody really walks on the ground as there's always some small distance separating the molecules of your feet from the ground. Why split hairs?

Plug "ps3 supercomputer" into a search engine.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

It is amazing.
You type words and indicated that you read my post.
Then you state that the definition of bait and switch is what Sony did???
It was not bait and switch. It was not a deception.
It was a monumentally stupid decision that damaged their reputation, hurt their customers and in the end got their console hacked even faster.
There is no need to say stupid things to make them look bad!
They look more than bad enough for doing what they actually did.
Robbed is also not accurate. Though I do believe that "Shafted" does fit the facts.
Sony "Shafted" its user base by removing Other OS. This is a true statement.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[amicusNYCL]

How many times does it take?

For people who buy Sony products, it does make you wonder. I wasn't affected by OtherOS, for example, because I didn't trust them after the damn rootkit thing so I never considered a PS3. Some people obviously don't care though, or they don't learn, or they hear about features they like and forget.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Luckyo]

They didn't lie as they didn't promise "perpetual support". The solution offered to those who wanted another OS was "do not update". I.e. it would work absolutely fine as advertised, as long as you didn't update and ask for further support for that feature. They didn't force updates and they were very upfront about the issue, so if you needed the other OS and updated, it was your mistake.

It sucked hard that they chose to remove the feature in updates but they did not lie about it. That claim is a hyperbole.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Patch86]

I beg your pardon, you are quite right. The point stands though; the two consoles are basically tied with sales within a few million of each other, compared to the previous generation where one console was more than 120 million units ahead.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

The hackers came down on Sony and shut down online for months

And Sony had no SLAs for guaranteeing any uptime, so not a dime off Sony's pockets, whereas legitimate customers suffered. Very detrimental indeed.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[dougisfunny]

Sorry, I guess I should have used the 'unintentional' qualifier. They unintentionally pulled a bait and switch by making promises they couldn't keep.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

Nope, because that's "software". There's a notice in the manuals that says "features may change due to updates at any time, blah blah blah and you can only access PSN if you follow the rules, one of them being having the most current firmware update"

So, not lying.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

Yep, only in 2011 though. Got a mention here on Slashdot.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

The PS3 only has 256MB, an inline CPU and was sitting over a hypervisor which blocked access to the 3D GPU.

It also used the 256MB VRAM as VERY fast swap. However one big issue was the partitioning schemes offered which some of the people complaining about the removal don't seem to know about. You either get 10GB to OtherOS and the rest for GameOS, which cripples OtherOS (you need more swap for some compiles), or 10GB for GameOS and the rest to OtherOS... which basically makes the PS3 useless for gaming and media. One game can eat up half of that for Cache easy.

I think in time someone might have been able to put those SPUs to work to accelerate the graphics to some degree (e.g. mesa over SPUs, video decoding).

They did, there was a SPU enabled Mesa build... didn't help much.

Maybe someone would have made a dist that booted into a front end for playing arcade / SNES / Sega / Atari / C64 / PS1 games or MythTV.

Yes, someone did that.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

You can try and spin it anyway you like, but the fact was it was an advertised feature.

No it wasn't. getting mentioned on Ars Technica or Slashdot isn't "advertising". Now if there had been ads in magazines or TV, that would be different.

It wasn't even mentioned on the box!

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

Sony was not up front about removing the Other OS, they lied about it profusely and tried to trick, and ultimately forced, PS3 owners to update.

Considering that there are still people running Linux on their PS3's via OtherOS, there was no "forcing"

but anyone that didn't update is now stuck with an overpriced ($800 when I bought mine), under powered, locked down Linux machine.

yes, but if they've been running Linux on it, they obviously should know the limitations by now. And $800? How did you pay that much? My CECHE MGS bundle cost much less than that.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

In fact it was not an advertised feature at all beyond a small little Yellow Dog Pengiun on the side of the original box.

What YDL penguin? There was no YDL penguin on PS3 boxes. I keep asking people who say it was mentioned on the box for proof and none of them can provide it.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DrXym]

The custom firmware scene for the PS3 is background noise. Practically non existent by comparison to other consoles. And of course it would have been vastly worse if Sony had sat by and done nothing whatsoever.

As for it being "expensive", most PCs are more expensive again. Guess which platform suffers worse piracy. Cost has nothing to do with it so much as lack of copy protection or circumvention controls.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

CECHE01 MGS bundle box here, no mention of OtherOS on the box. I keep asking for pictures too.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[h4rr4r]

PCs are far cheaper for gaming, since you already likely have one. Even a mediocre Dell will be an ok gaming machine with a $75 GPU added.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

AFAICT, Other OS was an advertised feature right on the front of the box,

No, it wasn't. I still have my box for my CECHE01 MGS bundle model... no mention of OtherOS on the box. Pictures or it didn't happen.

Also the manuals directly say "features may change due to system software updates at any time." IIRC the PSN TOS (which is handled separately) states that one of the "Rules" to access it is having an up to date system software.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

It was a Lie. OtherOS was ADVERTISED not only in video but on the box itself.

It was? Pictures/Video or it didn't happen. I still have My CECHE01 MGS bundle model box, it doesn't mention OtherOS. I think people are making this stuff up for "waaah" factor.

And let me state in no uncertain terms that I don't consider some Sony exec mentioning it in an interview with Ars Technica or the feature getting mentioned on Slashdot..."advertising".

It's not advertising unless there were actual ads in OPM, EGM or on TV.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[CronoCloud]

So tell me, when has Microsoft or Nintendo ever officially supported Linux on their consoles. Sony has done it TWICE, once with the PS2 with the Linux Kit and again with the PS3.

Sure, being paranoid about the GeoHot exploit and removing OtherOS was an overreaction that offended some geeks, many of which didn't own PS3's or use OtherOS, but no other console maker has ever come close to Sony's support of Linux and open source.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[SwedishLesbian]

Yes, We probably did agree that this was something they could do when we clicked through the EULA. So legally, they had the right to. Just because they did so legally, does not mean that I like the company well enough to buy another one of their products if that's the sort of behavior I can expect.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Yes. I am sure that having their store shut down for many months cost them nothing.
Again. There are some really good reasons to not like Sony.
No need to be an idiot though.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

I can not tell if you are being intentionally stupid or not.
There is no such thing as unintentional first degree murder.
Unintentional bait and switch is called "We ran out of that."

How do they let people with no skills in logic on this site?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[dougisfunny]

Actually, there is unintentional first degree murder. Bob and Joe decide to hold up a bank but no one gets hurt. Bob, unbeknownst to Joe, is actually planning on using the gun he brought to kill the bank manager because he is dating Bob's ex. Joe knew about the gun, was part of the bank robbery, and being part of the plot to rob the bank is now culpable for the murder.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[ButchDeLoria]

I was under the impression that Sony stopped that shit because people were buying PS3s for compute clusters, and bulk purchase of consoles at MSRP + net loss on MSRP (which every first-party does but Nintendo) = losing money.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Karl Cocknozzle]

"Changing your mind" after customers purchase your hardware = "lying". I'm 37, and I wasn't expecting that feature to be taken away. I'm not buying a PS4 partially because of that - and the rootkits, and their incredibly poor response and questionable statements related to the PSN hack.

(Side note: this is quite possibly why Sony isn't doing the online thing; it isn't being gamer-friendly, its them remembering their network was unusable for 3-4 weeks.)

Sorry, but this is childish nonsense. You weren't forced at gunpoint to upgrade your firmware: And unless you can show me a clause in your user agreement taht says "all features will remain available forever in every future iteration of this product forever" I have little sympathy for you: You relied on "Sony's honorable intentions" in a buying decision, except that corporations don't have honorable intentions, they have profitable intentions. And continuing to develop that feature obviously didn't make sense to them--so they didn't.

Don't like it? Don't by Sony.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Karl Cocknozzle]

They made some unfortunate choices, but "changing their mind" is the prerogative you gave them when you bought their proprietary hardware/only-as-open-as-we-say-it-can-be model in the first place. I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that ability to be taken away?

You're pissed off because Ford came by and removed the radio from the car you already paid for? I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that Ford didn't have the ability to take your radio away? After all, it was written in page 57 of the five point type of legalese EULA!

Taking something away that you bought and paid for is theft, plain and simple. Me, I never got bitten by it because I stopped buying Sony when my daughter installed XCP on my computer just tryijng to play a CD she bought at a store she worked at. How fucking stupid do you have to be to buy computer equipment from a company that is willing it vandalize their own customers' stuff?

Sony stays in business because PT Barnum was right. If you're willing to buy Sony after XCP, OtherOS, and leaving info in an unencrypted, net facing database, my CAT is smarter than you.

Ahh yes, the classic Slashdot false-equivalency... there's just a couple minor details you're missing:

1) Nobody "took away" their Playstation 3--a firmware update that was offered turned off a feature they liked. Don't want to lose the feature? Don't update the firmware. Done and done.
2) A car-radio would be my actual property so nothing they can do after the fact would alter that ownership. If they offered a firmware update that changed the performance of that radio, I might kvetch, but my only real option would be to not-install-the-upgrade, just like the Sony whiners--nobody forced them to install that firmware upgrade.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is run by intelligent, educated, capable individuals. Some of those are in product development, some in marketing, some in upper management, and some in legal. While any of them might make mistakes, it is entirely implausible that collectively they exhibited such a lack of diligence that Sony could have been unaware of the liabilities you mention at the time that Other OS was advertised for PS3. Maybe your case could be made for earlier PS models, but certainly not by the time PS3 was in the works, let alone on the shelves.

- T

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Endo13]

Many newer TVs have the ability to play media files right off a flash drive or external HDD plugged into a USB port.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Douglas Goodall]

While they did say, "don't update", they also said if you wanted to continue to play multi-player games, you had to. That left us in the position of turning the PS3 into an unimpressive Linux system with way too little ram to do anything important, and no longer having game playing capability as well. They sold it as a game console that could also run Linux, the emphasis being on the work "also". Making it exclusively one or the other, without the ability to switch back and forth as desired. Definitely a scam IMHO. Not another penny for Sony, ever again in this lifetime.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

Yes, very detrimental is the same as non-zero cost.

Again, this was a case where the proportion of damage was skewed severely against the innocent. Sony made the decision about harming their users, and Sony themselves were the least harmed. They might have done great things technologically earlier, but no need to be an idiot defending them.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[DrXym]

I think you're just twisting to avoid the obvious point. An adequate gaming PC costs more than a console and yet piracy is endemic. Because PCs are an open platform and lack any adequate form of copy protection or DRM. Thus piracy is higher as can be seen just by visiting any torrent site and observing the number of seeds for popular games.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know you're 37.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Ok then. Discussing things with you is useless.
You are so filled with blinding hate that you respond to a post that states ...

Again. There are some really good reasons to not like Sony.

as defending them.

I am sure you want to not be a blind fool. You just can not see a way out.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

First you think non-zero cost means very detrimental. And now you think that you not attacking every aspect of every action of some entity means you cannot possibly be defending its one aspect. Which is the defence I am arguing is a faulty defence.

Along the same lines (not that I expect you to stick to any logical lines) , what do you think of your calling "blinding hate ", my statement that Sony had done great things technologically?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

You think that the Sony store being shut down for months on end cost ... Your words here... "Not a Dime."
Not a dime in lost sales from the store that did not work.
Not a dime in lost sales on consoles during the time that none of them could go online.
Not a dime in future sales from the massive number of people they pissed off.
Either you are a tool for Microsoft or an idiot. I no longer care to find out which.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

Ok, so now you are equating money not coming as money lost.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Ummm. Yes.
Like every business does.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

They are wrong then, as are you. Future money not coming in because one's own fault is poles apart from not being able to play one's lawfully purchased games for no fault of oneself.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

I did not realize that I stated equality between what happened to the customers and what happened to Sony.
I only stated that they lost a lot of money and pissed off their customers. Since though I have to be seen by you as an apologist for Sony you can throw whatever meaning you like to feel better about yourself.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

No, you stated equality between lost money and money not coming in the future. That is where you are wrong (for one).

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

So. You have never had a business. You know nothing about business.
Nothing.
When the Store was shut down for months on end that was not "Future Money" they were losing. (Yes. LOSING)
When a tornado hits you store you not only lose money from the damage and products lost but also YOU LOSE THE MONEY you would be making while you are shut down. Some insurances cover this as YOU ARE LOSING MONEY.
Every business takes this into account. Money lost do to lost sales during renovations. Even when the store stays open but loses business do to customers not wanting to deal with it. These are all loses.
Also future customer losses are very real.
Open a store. After each sale to a customer tell them to "Fuck off".
You still get the sale. All you will lose is "Future Customers". Since this is not a "Real Loss" your business should do fine. Right?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

Comparison was with being razed to ground to which you replied that it was very detrimental to Sony. Due to having cheated people and having insufficient security for their online platform if they lost some "future" money, it deserves no sympathy. Nor is it comparable to being razed to ground.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

The direct costs of the outage according to Sony was $171 million.
They took away other OS to keep the system from being compromised.
$171 million down the drain, PS3 completely a short time after removing other OS.
Indirect lost sales of systems. How many people that were choosing between a PS3 and an XBox while Sony had just given up the credit info of all their customers and had zero ability to do online decided on the PS3? Not many I would guess.
To this day people still warn others about Sonys removal of other OS.
They were fucking stupid and payed a rather hefty price.
Maybe not a high enough one for you but still a high price in anyone's book.
Of course I am only having a civil discourse with you because I was able to overlook your statement of

And Sony had no SLAs for guaranteeing any uptime, so not a dime off Sony's pockets, whereas legitimate customers suffered. Very detrimental indeed.

I overlook it mostly because if I do not then I have to conclude that you are one of four things.
1) Troll
2) Retarded
3) Paid shill liar
or
4) A person who defends their own mistakes with outright lies.

You know nothing.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

My reply was to a poster that by saying the event was "very detrimental" to a post saying a car company would have been "razed to ground" asserted some degree of comparison between what Sony suffered and being razed to ground.

Which is false because there is no comparison.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

So again.
what is you definition of

so not a dime off Sony's pockets

that does not qualify as a total and complete untruth?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

A definition where future lack of money income is not mistakenly assumed to be a loss of past money in the guise of misunderstanding business accounting.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

Again. Direct costs $171 million.
You can keep ignoring that to make your point but it does not make it true.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

1. According to you, as a business, they considered loss of future income as a cost.
2. $171 million according to Sony. They can well consider securing their network a cost, which they should have done anyway. So no evidence of real cost, just accounts rigged.
3. Nothing comparable to "razed to ground".

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Dishevel]

It is not loss of future income when all your sales stop.
If we lay you off of your useless job and you stop receiving a paycheck the lay off costs you money.
On top of that you are an idiot or a fool or a troll. Communication ceased.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

It is not loss of future income when all your sales stop.

Wow! This sentence is instructive in prejudice.
"Stop" is a term typically not used for cancellation of past events, but rather for cessation of future events of the same class. So if past sales are being cancelled, why are you using the word "stop"? And if future sales are not taking place, how is it not a loss of future income?

And everyone knows there was no cancellation of past sales, an equivalent of that would have happened if Sony had any SLAs with their paying customers, but they didn't. The idiot customers were at Sony's mercy.

If we lay you off of your useless job and you stop receiving a paycheck the lay off costs you money

Ignoring insults, it doesn't cost me any money, just money stops coming in the FUTURE.

Communication ceased.

Yes, like it was useless to discuss anything with me more than a dozen posts in the thread ago.

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 2009, my grad school bought 16 PS3 to run a cluster for ray tracing and other such things. It is still running to this day. So how was it taken away?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[vilanye]

You don't think Sony lost anything during that? No customers left, no customers scared off, nothing?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[bingoUV]

And it's comparable to being razed to ground, how?

And a remote acquaintance committed suicide and suffered immensely before kicking the bucket. Your point?

Re:Duh, they are a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically it's like a vehicle manufacturer having a recall on your car's AWD, and saying that your warranty is void and you give up all future support if you don't let them remove it (without compensation or replacement). Still a lousy move, but you had the choice to give up their service to keep using your AWD.

Of course, the service you were giving up was "any highway, ever" (PSN) but hey, at least you can still go off-roading (install Linux).

Stretching a metaphor too far? Eh, I think it fits.

Hopefully now they do hate M$

[Coeurderoy]

One of the main issue with "consoles" is that it really is controled by a bunch of sociopath focusing on how to put the maximum of toll boths to efficiently bleed the marcs..

Under the pretext of make the experience "safe", you need the get some sort of "authorisations" from the console makers, and now it seems that Microsoft feels strong (or is weak) enough to add an additional hurdle to avoid "wasting their time" with the unwashed masses.

I hope that "android" consoles become popular (and that it will not end up with Google doing exactly the same thing M$ is doing ....

Re:Hopefully now they do hate M$

[Jaysyn]

>I hope that "android" consoles become popular (and that it will not end up with Google doing exactly the same thing M$ is doing ....

I'm sure it's party due to the newness factor, but my kids haven't turned on the Wii U (aside from Netflix) or Xbox 360 since I brought the OUYA home last Thursday.

Re:Hopefully now they do hate M$

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the key to being upmodded on Slashdot of late is to accuse someone of being a sociopath...

Re:Hopefully now they do hate M$

[Clsid]

I want to ask what kind of stuff do you like the most of the Wii U aside from gaming? Is it better than the XBox360 for that? I know at least you are saving a ton of energy since the Wii U is extremely power efficient. Which titles are your kids playing on the Ouya?

Re:Hopefully now they do hate M$

[Jaysyn]

So far the Wii U is strictly for gaming & Netflix. We don't use the Mii chat or the TVii functionality at all. I've done a little light web-browsing on it as well & they really should give the browser more love as well as WebGL compatibility. We've also played a D&D session on it via Roll20, but it's really only usable for displaying the map. The Wii U makes for a crappy media center as I have no idea how you'd go about setting it up as one. If it's possible to do so it's very not obvious. I imagine the Xbox 360 would be much better, but we don't actually use it as such because:

1.) We had an Apple TV 1st.
2.) Running the media center extensions basically makes whatever Windows PC / laptop they are on useless for normal computing. It stays @ 50 - 75% utilization constantly.

TL;DR, the Xbox 360 is a Halo & Tekken machine, not used for anything else at all even though I did try to use it as a media center for the kids. I may get a separate PC just to serve up files for that purpose in the future.

When the kids aren't playing emulators on the OUYA, they are playing BombSquad, Ice Rage, Stalagflight & Canabalt. They actually like BombSquad enough that they broke out their piggy banks & gave me money to buy it for them as soon as the trial was up. They are also playing Chronoblade, but not as much as the previous games or emulators. Personally, apart from the shoddy touchpad on the OUYA controllers I'm very happy with the system. I'm hoping the issues with the touchpads are something that can be fixed in software.

MS you dont have that many foots to shoot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really is this the marketing strategy to win the console war?

It seems the console is TV TV TV TV TV SPORTS COD COD COD

Re:MS you dont have that many foots to shoot!

[Anonymous Coward]

* feet

Well if you're gonna be an asshole

[korbulon]

Might as well be a total asshole.

Re:Well if you're gonna be an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Never half-ass two things. Always whole-ass one thing.

Re:Well if you're gonna be an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

"Total Asshole" is a perfectly cromulent game title.

Publishers! Publishers! Publishers!

[Rob the Bold]

"Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels! Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels! Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels!"

What does that subject mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS To Indie Devs: You Have a To Have a Publisher

What?

Re:What does that subject mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's-a me-a Mario!

Re:What does that subject mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its-a-me-a The Godfather. Making an offer you can't refuse.

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how it's always been. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo all have certain requirements for those who want to publish games for their platforms. Sure Microsoft got the Xbox Live Marketplace for indie devs, but as I understand it, the article is not saying it's going away.

Re:And?

[UnknowingFool]

No but this article says the Indie section is going away:

Yesterday, Microsoft's Studios corporate vice president Phil Harrison told Eurogamer that the marketplace on the company's new Xbox One console would combine retail games, Xbox Live Arcade, and Xbox Live Indie Games into a single section. . . With the Indie Games section going away, that means developers are stuck with the standard Xbox publishing rules.

So yes, indie games will need a publisher which sorta not makes them indie anymore. This might be a misunderstanding but Oddworld seems to think they are being forced to use a publisher. MS might have to clarify this point. There is a need for a publisher in games mostly for funding; however, Oddworld is self-funded. They don't feel like sharing revenue and profits when they don't have to share.

Re:And?

[TWiTfan]

MS used to have XNA, and basically let anyone publish on the 360 with just a $100 a year license. Not sure why they abandoned such a forward-thinking program. But it does fit in with the general MS stance of making every fucking wrong move imaginable over the last 3-4 years, and scrapping every decent idea they ever had.

Sometimes I think Blamer has secretly gone nuts, and no one has the balls to have him committed. It would certainly explain why he's absent from MS public events these days. But at least Howard Hughes was smart enough to delegate well after *he* went batshit. Balmer, by contrast, seems determined to not only collect all his urine in jars, but also to run his company off the cliff.

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

Why is that a misunderstanding?

They are being forced to get a publisher and as such will not be Indie. This means the XBone will not have any Indie games. Indie means independent, which MS seems to not allow on the new console.

Re:And?

[Tridus]

Except that indie games can publish on the Wii U and PS4 without a publisher.

So no, that's just how it is in Microsoftland. Unless you're making a game for the Windows Store, which also doesn't need a publisher.

Or if you're Minecraft, which doesn't need a publisher because Microsoft threw their own rules out the window to get it.

That's one great set of rules MS has, where they're so good they keep getting rid of them.

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

Did XNA include the rights to publish patches?
My understanding was they charged far out the ass for that and it lead to many games staying broken since not even big companies wanted to pay to fix already sold games.

Re:And?

[UnknowingFool]

I'm giving MS the benefit of a doubt. They may not have all the details right and is still working them out. Their messaging also has not been very good lately so one group might be saying one thing and another group saying another.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are being forced to get a publisher and as such will not be Indie. This means the XBone will not have any Indie games. Indie means independent, which MS seems to not allow on the new console.

Can someone explain the definition of a "publisher?" Why can't Oddworld Inhabitants simply state that they ARE a publisher or create Oddworld Publishing as a separate, wholly-owned company? The latter might be a little bit of a paperwork drill but incorporation really isn't that difficult. Is there a list of certified publishers that MS uses or something?

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

Their messaging?
Can't at least slashdot being a safe haven from this marketing bullshit?

I don't care about how they fucking say it, just what they say. What they are saying is the issue, not how.

Marking folks, please follow Bill Hicks advise. I will even buy you the bullet.

Re:And?

[UnknowingFool]

This change could be as intended, but MS these days is bumbling badly these days on many fronts. They won't be the first company to change or clarify something after initial reactions.

Re:And?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Microsoft has been funneling everything through their marketing, so we don't have much of a choice. Due to this, What they are saying is dependent on how they are saying it.

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

Even at todays prices I would like to forward my offer to that entire dept. 1 bullet per Marketing person, for internal use only. Do please try to do it outside with a good backstop, we would not want any useful people hit by accident.

Re:And?

[UnknowingFool]

Can someone explain the definition of a "publisher?" Why can't Oddworld Inhabitants simply state that they ARE a publisher or create Oddworld Publishing as a separate, wholly-owned company? The latter might be a little bit of a paperwork drill but incorporation really isn't that difficult. Is there a list of certified publishers that MS uses or something?

I think it's more than a simple declaration. Publishers are responsible for manufacturing, marketing, advertising, etc. Indie normally don't do this because of staff size, expertise, etc.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS used to have XNA, and basically let anyone publish on the 360 with just a $100 a year license. Not sure why they abandoned such a forward-thinking program.

$$$$$$

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohnoes! So many complaints about Microsoft dropping their $99/year 'indie' publishing program and yet Apple takes in the knee when they dare charge $99/year for the same feature.

Re:And?

[Xest]

No, it didn't. There seems to be some confusion in this thread. The patch publishing fee was for XBox Live Arcade or retail games.

I think the reason Microsoft has ditched indie games is that they turned it into a failure themselves.

All the really really good indie games got given full Live Arcade publishing rights by Microsoft. XNA ran on a version of the .NET CLR but Microsoft ended up creating an implementation of it that worked for Live Arcade games and a simple API that extended XNA to allow for achievements and so forth so that indie games could be ported to Live Arcade extremely trivially.

The net result was that the only thing that ended up in indie games was complete and utter shit and as such it wont have made Microsoft even close to the amount of money required to maintain it and to maintain XNA too, hence what is I suspect the whole reason XNA has been EOL'd for a while and indie games is going too on the new XBox. It wasn't helped by the fact that in one of the dashboard updates Microsoft hid indie games so far out the way in the menus few people found it.

But what's stupid is that Microsoft seem to have forgotten that even though it wasn't profitable in itself it was still the catalyst for the creation of all those games that got turned into fully fledged Live Arcade titles.

I suspect someone from finance has looked at the balance sheet and seen that indie games/XNA wasn't profitable in itself without having even the slightest understanding of how important it was for driving XBox Live Arcade revenues. Had those Live Arcade revenues from games ported from Indie games to Live Arcade been attributed to Indie rather than Live Arcade I'd wager it was profitable, just not on paper.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing XNA and Xbox Live Arcade. The XNA publish system was always peer review, and cost low/no money or resources on microsoft's end to publish same was true to the updates. Xbox Live Arcade required the games be certified like disc based games, which from rumours can be in the range of 10-30 thousand per release/update you fail a cert, you have to pay again.

The biggest issue where a game never fixed itself was last year's release of fez. The game when released had bad framerate issues, the developer tried to fix it, released an update that broke savegames for some. then phil refused to release a patch citing the cert fees are too high, microsoft came out and said they were very generous to him not giving numbers but implying they waived the fees. Phil responded with "hey my exclusivity is up in 6 months everyone [who I burned] buy it again on a more open platform like steam". I hope he hires a real programmer for fez 2.

Most of the other bugs in other games would not have been patched regardless of cert fees or not. Because publishers don't care once a game ships.

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

Then why do they patch PC games so often?

The fees prevent patches from going out so games stay broken.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, THIS. as it stands, all it should mean is a flurry of new business incorporations, with "publishing" as a purpose. New businesses that actually do nothing at all.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, XNA lives on. It is just being supported by the Open Source community via MonoGame and has been ported to many other platforms. Microsoft Studios has endorsed the use of MonoGame (as well they ought to, supporting XNA themselves could not have been cheap) and has used it in some of their cross-platform titles such as Skulls of the Shogun. Porting from XNA to Monogame is as simple as swapping out the dlls, as the namespaces are all still the .XNA ones just like before.

If you are looking to do some iOS game development, the tool chain is actually a LOT nicer than the one provided by Apple, and it is on par with a lot of the third party multi-platform frameworks I've tried.

Re:And?

[Xest]

I had heard of it but hadn't tried doing anything with it. Does Monogame switch to OpenGL for rendering on other platforms? I did quite like the XNA APIs they were quite pleasing to use (especially compared to plain old DirectX and OpenGL!) providing you weren't doing something that encroached upon it's limitations.

Maybe I'll give it a go but I'm tending more towards OpenGL now given that with an OpenGL engine you can target Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, PS3, PS4, Android, iOS. The XBox 360 being the only platform it doesn't target, and the XBox One not supporting it kind of leaves the question as to why bother with Direct3D now.

Re:And?

[Clsid]

The issue is that Microsoft established a lot of good faith based on the 360 and some people just refuse to believe bad news when they hear it until they get to use a new product that will be handicapped. But after several days of the whole news I actually feel they will get away with it because they are promoting stuff like sharing your digital library in a household. It's kind of the same deal how Steam was able to infect us with DRM and having to run their software every time you want to run your games by making special deals with publishers and devs to have some games cheaper.

In the end, business models change but to be honest I do not know how these console manufacturers expect to sell as many consoles as they think they can in a weak economy. Nowadays you can get an AMD A10 budget gaming PC for like $270 and you get to do a lot more stuff with it too. Plus you have all these previous generation consoles that are really good, from the PS3 to the 360 and even the Wii (which is dirt cheap now), that people have way too much entertainment in their hands.

Re:And?

[Clsid]

Microsoft has created some decent products lately like Windows Phone, Bing and even the Hotmail revamp comes to mind. Just the fact Apple copied their "flat" graphic style now speaks volumes of what they have accomplished in the mobile arena. Sure they have issues and the XBox One launch is a disaster but they are a big company that can tolerate some bad iterations of overall successful products, like Windows.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that, the TSA bought all the ammo in America.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more than a simple declaration. Publishers are responsible for manufacturing, marketing, advertising, etc. Indie normally don't do this because of staff size, expertise, etc.

Then who normally does it for indies? They're either doing it themselves or they're hiring someone to do it. After all, I've seen plenty of ads for Oddworld games, so someone is advertising. I've purchased the games, so someone is manufacturing. If they're hiring someone to do it, then create Oddworld Publishing and subcontract out the individual steps, just as they're doing now.

Re:And?

[tonysg]

Maybe they are afraid to go the Atari way, although it doesn't apply anymore. Those indie titles are not sold like it was under the Atari model of the 1980's.

Re:And?

[X.25]

I'm giving MS the benefit of a doubt. They may not have all the details right and is still working them out. Their messaging also has not been very good lately so one group might be saying one thing and another group saying another.

5 months before the release, they "don't may not have all the details right".

Are you being serious?

Re:And?

[h4rr4r]

The government buys less than 5%.
If folks would stop stockpiling the shortage would end.

I hope that happens soon.

Re:And?

[Darinbob]

Why give them benefit of the doubt? Have they ever done anything once in their existence that might warrant the benefit of doubt now?

And of course their messaging isn't good, they're required to use Outlook at Microsoft!

Before the first xbox was released, someone I knew in the game industry said he hoped they would succeed. The reasoning is that all the other console makers were exerting very tight control over all the games while collecting a large fraction of the sales price of each individual game, making it economically difficult to make a good profit in the game industry (and this person was part of one of the big gaming houses). His hope was that xbox would break the stranglehold. And sure enough over time once they have a market share worth talking about, Microsoft turns out to be just another one of the bad guys.

Re:And?

[Darinbob]

Original xbox sold for less than the cost necessary to build one, as I heard it. That makes it clear that their goal was not to sell boxes but to get a large share of the game market. Early moves in this area were designed to gain market share. Over time things have changed, while acquiring more market share they also started looking more like their scummy competition. Now there's not much distinction at all.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

UnknowingFool, you are an unknowing fool.

How can you become a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are the criteria for game developer to become a publisher?

Re:How can you become a publisher

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are the criteria for game developer to become a publisher?

You have to give Balmer a handjob and then use the same hand to write a check to MS for a publisher's license. Oh, and you can't wash that hand until you've used it to play each generation of XBox.

What is a publisher even for?

[suprcvic]

Why do dev companies even need publishers? Serious question, what do publishers bring to the table?

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[theM_xl]

Theoretically, QA as well as a large distribution network (which one no longer truly NEEDS for indie titles due to a nifty invention called the Internet ).

Of course, much like Microsoft themselves, the publisher wants their cut...

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[UnknowingFool]

Money is one thing. Sometimes developers need upfront money while developing the game to pay salaries, bills, etc, especially if the game is larger than their last one.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[mic0e]

As far as I understood, publishers would select games they found supportworthy, and provide funding, thus making the game possible at all, or at least take a huge amount of risk away from the devs. Unfortunately for them, this is nowdays done by kickstarter.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[i kan reed]

It's not what you know, it's who you know. I honestly think we'd be better off burning all the existing publishers to the ground and letting everyone re-compete for that space.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Anonymous Coward]

To squeeze money from resales? MS told us that game resales are handled by publishers. If there were, say, a large number of indie developers that would create a significant subset of games that are freely resalable it would create undue pressure to other publishers to allow resales for free, thus diminishing their licensing revenues.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Tridus]

They bring a set of hands to take a cut, and Microsoft is looking out for their CEO friends at EA and Activision.

For indie games, publishers add nothing. They're of no value whatsoever.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[eddy]

In the case of the XBox, they are required for access to the platform at all.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[tepples]

Sometimes developers need upfront money while developing the game to pay salaries, bills, etc, especially if the game is larger than their last one.

And sometimes a developer has a complete game for Windows or Mac or Android or iOS, is paying "salaries, bills, etc" out of the revenue from that game, and is waiting for a developer license to bring it to one of the consoles. What role does a publisher fill in this situation except as a holder of "slots" on Microsoft's release schedule?

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[tepples]

"Because it's the status quo" has become a popular answer lately on Slashdot, but I don't think it's the answer that suprcvic was looking for. Let me rephrase: What advantage is there of requiring a publisher in the first place over not requiring a publisher?

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[X0563511]

That's a rhetorical question, right? Because there is no other role.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Clsid]

It's the same deal as a book publisher. People can complain all they want here about not needing publishers and what not. Sure you can self-publish to Amazon and others, but the kind of exposure you get if you have good materials is way better when it's done by marketing professionals. There are also the cash advances as people mention, the whole knowing how the distributions channels work, shipping internationally, etc, etc. So people really need to take their geek hat out of this one, since I believe not only that publishers are important, but that they will always be around to have a healthy industry, in the same way record companies exists for the music business and art galleries or foundries do their part with the fine arts.

But sure, as far as the Microsoft move goes, it is absurd to actually impose a publisher on someone. Having a publisher is the smart move but you should be free to do whatever you want because there can be occasions when you simply cannot secure a publisher until you have some kind of success.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better to burn all existing publishers to the ground and not letting anyone fill the space. Publishers lead the way to higher prices for stale content, in ever diminishing quantities. More money is all that matters to them and since they put up the money to start with, they wrote themselves into the position to call all the shots.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[UnknowingFool]

What is the question again? During or before development, a developer might be aware they don't have the money for additonal staff or tools to complete the game. If more developers or developers for a different plarform are required that they have, they need more money. They can go a pulisher and partner. Also some developers don't have the capacity or want to do things like marketing, advertising, etc.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[nitehawk214]

Theoretically, QA as well as a large distribution network (which one no longer truly NEEDS for indie titles due to a nifty invention called the Internet ).

Of course, much like Microsoft themselves, the publisher wants their cut...

So... nothing.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the above, plus advertisement.
Even big name titles have advertisement budgets in the tens of millions, because this enables them to reach many more customers (the internet is just another medium here). Take an average well-rounded indie game and put a full EA ad campaign behind it, and I'd wager quite a bit that sales will be one or two orders of magnitude higher than through indie self-promotion and highlighting on game sites.

captcha: pinscher

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Gravatron]

Pretty much. The Rise of DD kills, for some titles, the need for a publisher. Before, you needed them to do QA, to shoulder the costs of manufacturing the game, and to advertise it. Now, you can release on the net for next to nothing, and use viral marketing/demos/etc to get exposure. Not to mention lets plays and the like.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[gent01]

Don't you know that in the United States of America you can't publish anything without a man in the middle to skim a percentage off the top? It's un-american to do it any other way. Heck even asking why it's that way is un-american.

(I know you asked for a serious answer. I am joking, but the publisher who thinks this is serious about it.)

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Darinbob]

Basically the publisher can partner with Microsoft by signing an agreement stating that they will cheat the developers. It's all about making money.

MS just doesn't want to work with tiny people, it's inefficient and they just don't have the people skills necessary to talk to actual people. They want a few giant conglomerates that they deal with, and then leave it to those conglomerates to extract the necessary profits from the tiny people.

Re:What is a publisher even for?

[Waccoon]

I thought those guys were called producers.

no i don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially YOU

What?

[The MAZZTer]

What about Minecraft then? Mojang surely is self-publishing that. I suppose it's just a case of MS not being THAT dumb to reject Minecraft...

Re:What?

[Therad]

MS could always publish it for them. And every other game they find worthwhile. Which also means MS can take a bigger cut.

Re:What?

[Tridus]

Minecraft got a special sweetheart deal from Microsoft that throws most of the indie restrictions out the window. They also don't have to pay to post patches, unlike others (who pay tens of thousands of dollars, something no other platform is doing to indies anymore).

Microsoft's idea of "supporting indie games" is to find ones that got mainstream already and exempt them from the rules. Which is a sure sign that the rules are crap, but you know. This is Microsoft we're talking about.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Minecraft then? Mojang surely is self-publishing that. I suppose it's just a case of MS not being THAT dumb to reject Minecraft...

What makes you think the higher ups at Microsoft have any functioning brain cells left in them ?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Xbox version of Minecraft was published by Microsoft, as was found through a very quick Google search. You should try it sometime. It's good for your self being.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft got a special sweetheart deal from Microsoft that throws most of the indie restrictions out the window. They also don't have to pay to post patches, unlike others (who pay tens of thousands of dollars, something no other platform is doing to indies anymore).

Microsoft's idea of "supporting indie games" is to find ones that got mainstream already and exempt them from the rules. Which is a sure sign that the rules are crap, but you know. This is Microsoft we're talking about.

Exactly. Minecraft gets special treatment because of its brand name and nothing else.

Minecraft is not a indie game anymore. Once you have t shirts, posters, figures, replicas, stickers, toys, costumes and more in stores from toys r us to hot topic you are no longer indie. Minecraft is a industry in itself now. Much like angry birds was an indie game but has since become so huge it isn't indie anymore.

Re:What?

[tepples]

MS could always publish it for them. And every other game they find worthwhile.

In that case, if Microsoft wanted to retain developer goodwill, it could have defined clear rules for what kinds of game it would find worthwhile to publish.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Angry Birds was published by Chillingo so I don't think it would qualify as an Indy game since it had a third-party publisher (game was developed by Rovio). By contrast, Minecraft was developed by effectively one guy (who also had a day job for a while) and only turned into a company after it was a huge hit (http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1075326804/hiring-some-people-getting-an-office-and-all-that was in 2010; more than a year after Notch started selling the minecraft alpha).

Maybe this is splitting hairs; Minecraft is certainly a phenomenon; although to be fair, BF3 probably collected more in its first week than Minecraft ever has.

Re:What?

[Tharkkun]

MS could always publish it for them. And every other game they find worthwhile. Which also means MS can take a bigger cut.

Except 90% of these indie games are complete garbage. If Microsoft became the publisher then they also might want to QA each game. I don't think they want that headache for some $10 indie game.

DEVELOPERS!

[bmo]

DeVelOpERs! deveLOpErS! dEVLopeRS! deVelo....

Oh sorry, not for you guys.

--
BMO

Re:DEVELOPERS!

[virgnarus]

DeVelOpERs! deveLOpErS! dEVLopeRS! deVelo....

I hope I wasn't the only one trying to translate a hidden message within.

I hope

[MitchDev]

XBoxOne fails miserably as a result of MS's arrogance and stupidity

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has already failed for those reasons. The PS4 looks like the much better option this generation.

Holy crap...

[L4t3r4lu5]

If this were Reddit, I'd be asking for AWildSketchAppears to draw a plane crashing and burning into a train wreck because the pilot shot out the tires while simultaneously trying to insert his head up his own ass.

This seriously cannot get any worse. Can it?

Re:Holy crap...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Why don't you crawl over to that lame site and find out? I've had it with Reddit hipsters. Reddit is like a Down Syndrome convention.

Failure to capitalise the start of a sentence, failure to use an apostrophe in contractions, failure to capitalise proper nouns, failure to end a sentence with a full stop. Failure seems to be a common occurrence for you.

Re:Holy crap...

[Zeromous]

I always say "Talking to reddit is like talking to my tween daughters who think they know everything".

Re:Holy crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

the only failure there is a space before question mark. everything else is likely to be intentional

Re:Holy crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right, though. You're pointlessly referencing some other site that only a few people are going to know or care about here. Your comment comes off more as advertising than anything.

Re:Holy crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was reddit, would anyone here have noticed what you said?

Microsoft kicks it old-school

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, now THAT'S the Microsoft we all know and love! Glad to see it's the mid-90s to the early 2000s again, because now I don't feel so old!

That must've been it: Someone at an XBone design meeting must've heard that Judge Jackson was dying, so they went crazy with celebrations and decided to design their next console entirely around bragging about this fact. Let's see how this classic attitude of theirs survives in the 2010s!

Re:Microsoft kicks it old-school

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase an old saw...

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're Microsoft."

Re:Microsoft kicks it old-school

[Clsid]

Haha nice, I wish I had mod points for you. You know getting a Slashdot account isn't that hard :)

Re:Microsoft kicks it old-school

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha nice, I wish I had mod points for you. You know getting a Slashdot account isn't that hard :)

Meh, I have one, but when I'm just being a snarky smartass, I tend to prefer just going AC, even if it is legitimately funny. :-)

Editors? Anyone. Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline is well written once more. Why even bother to the read the article.

Abusive Monopolist

[tuppe666]

Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

No they don't they are simply the same bullying Abusive Monopoly they always are. There technique is abusive compromise...with the users doing all the compromising. They start with being over-reaching...and then step back ( a little) when users revolt, and repeat at the next iteration. IT has been incredibly successful at slowly eroding users rites.

Indie publishers got the short end of the stick on the 360 this is simply a continuation of that. my personal favourite http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/07/20/1540247/microsoft-taking-heat-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee the patch fee :)

Re:Abusive Monopolist

[h4rr4r]

Sure, but that is the same thing. They could make more money if they were simply not so dickish.

Re:Abusive Monopolist

[yoshi_mon]

What I've seen is that there is a full generation (maybe 1 and 1/2s worth?) of people now who did not grow up during MS's rise to power. About how there was a full blown ecosystem of computers, OSs, and paths that could have been taken to further ITs mainstream adoption. And instead of living though all of that they grew up with WinXP, XBoxen, and a Bill Gates who married a hot chick and is philanthropic. (And how he got all that money is a distant and well polished over memory.)

So while I'm quite sure that there still remain the MS paid shills, fanboys, and the apathetic masses. There also is a new generation of legit geeks that did not live though what MS did. And as such their view on what MS is/does is different than those of us who were around when MS built and then consolidated their empire.

Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[TWiTfan]

They been making so many bad moves in the last few years, I'm beginning to think this is some elaborate game to intentionally run the company off a cliff. Surely to god, they can't be doing all this dumb shit and actually thinking it's smart. Can they?

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can, and recently more than once.

Windows 8(.1)

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Greyfox]

There is a tendency in corporate culture to drink the kool aid the top is serving. Take SGI. Perfect example. They had no clear strategy a bit over a decade ago and I outright confronted one of their sales reps about it and asked him why I should buy their products when I knew IBM would be around 10 years from now. He gave me some bullshit response that SGI had solid products and platforms and they were out of business less than a year later. If someone in the company had just said "We don't have a clear strategy and are going to get crushed by Sun and IBM if we don't develop one," a couple years earlier, they might have been able to pull it out. They did have some things they actually did better than other companies, they just chose to throw all that away and try to pursue the same course IBM and Sun were. Even Sun couldn't pull THAT shit off.

So maybe Microsoft DOES actually believe, in their isolated corporate culture, that their platform is strong enough to get away with the shit they're trying to pull. Gamers have no loyalty and everyone has already decided to jettison them. Some people are changing consoles, some people are going to PC gaming. Microsoft could save itself a lot of money and just scrap the entire Xbox line right now. If Sony offered an easy path for indie developers, the Xbox developer landscape would be a barren wasteland within a year.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're making too much "profit" right now. We need to tank something for a while, get our stock price down, buy it when it plummets, and then we start doing minor improvements, remove some minor impediments, watch the stock price go up, sell, retire. Sounds like the management structure at the moment.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[TWiTfan]

The only thing I can figure is that it's a combination of the isolated echo-chamber (where they only hear each other saying positive things) and some misguided attempt to imitate Steve Jobs' "Screw the consumer, we'll tell them what they want!" attitude (but missing the fact that Jobs had a virtual cult that would follow him anywhere).

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Chris Mattern]

and some misguided attempt to imitate Steve Jobs' "Screw the consumer, we'll tell them what they want!" attitude (but missing the fact that Jobs had a virtual cult that would follow him anywhere).

And also missing the fact that Jobs, love him or hate him (and I'm not a fanboy--I don't own even a single piece of Apple gear), was a genius with an uncanny feel for what would sell. It's too soon to tell, but Apple may be at the beginning of finding out what happens when you pursue that strategy without that kind of genius.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Maintenance Goof]

This is part of the real brilliance and real motive of MicroSoft. At the top of their game, the bigwigs and the corporation sell stock. Then they publish a horrid OS and tell everyone at least 5 irrational things that will cause stock to fold. They still try to sell their brick grade junk at full pace during this, to still make what money they can. Then when the stock has hit bottom, the bigwigs and corporation buy it up and they publish a really good but slightly broken OS. People scream about the flaws, the stock stabilizes and then they fix those bugs. During each phase of the roller coaster, they do everything they can to manipulate the market. They make a fortune out of selling really junk OS's and pumping stock up and down. Much more than they would ever make if they were a reliable, and decent corporation.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Clsid]

The problem is that not everybody will get rid of them. Let's say Microsoft outraged a million users that are actually willing to dump them. They will still get a lot more of new people based on the 360 success no matter what people on the internet say. Then they will play and think, hey this does not affect me or maybe even think that's the way new things are. Then they will see a PS4 or even a Wii U which are cheaper and have fewer restrictions, and only then they will realize what they have lost.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[Clsid]

Reliable and decent corporation? Hmm, let me think. Nah maybe a non-profit will do.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[drinkypoo]

Any advantages SGI might have had in any other sector were rapidly being eroded by PC hardware's rise to amazingness — seriously, the PCs of today are pretty damned awesome if you have been computing for long.* And let's face it, IRIX was blergh and also urgh. It should have been amazingly great, but it wasn't. Had SGI embraced Linux at some early opportunity, rather than building a Windows PC, perhaps MIPS would still be a thing that anyone cares about outside of hundred dollar netbooks and embedded processors, and SGI would still be a thing.

* I used to sit on my 4/260 and roll around the garage, I had really long video and power cables and it had great casters. That machine had less power than my PC's storage controller does now... integrated storage controller. Well, one of them. This computer is almost as tall as that machine was, but it weighs about a tenth as much due to its switching power supply and aluminum case. :) And that machine had to have a VME board to even have narrow-fast SCSI.

Re:Is MS *TRYING* to commit suicide?

[nitehawk214]

If this was true and it was possible to prove, said MS bigwigs would either go to jail or get a strongly worded scolding from the SEC, or whatever non-punishment stock faudsters get these days.

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was already mentioned during E3, why is it popping again now?

Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculed by Sony's PS4 at E3, embarrassing reviews, poor hardware, mandatory kinect (read: PRISM) and users pissed off because of restrictive used games' policy and a not well defined mandatory online check every 24 hours.

Xbox One already belongs to the trash can of videogames' history, only a retard would buy it.

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Jade_Wayfarer]

So they'll get several millions guaranteed sells then?

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Anonymous Coward]

only a retard would buy it.

Or someone who speculates on the collector's value. :-)

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[TCQuad]

There's still five months before the consoles' release. One segment of the market (non-gaming parents who will be giving consoles for birthdays/Christmas) has no idea any of this is going on and they wouldn't understand it regardless. As for the rest, I don't really trust the gaming community to be able to sustain this level of vitriol and/or fanboism for that long.

All Microsoft needs to do is ditch everything they said at E3 and start over. Not fixing the problems, but presenting the situation properly. It'll still be terrible, but at least some of the insane restrictions will make some logical sense with regards to what they're trying to do.

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't trust the gaming community to maintain fanboyism? Really?

Parents are a good point, but they buy what the kids ask for, more or less. PS4 sales are going to blow away XboxOne sales over the first 6 months, probably 3 to 1. The only solid gaming sales points are some exclusive games and the Kinect so if those are the kinds of games you like, then maybe, but my bet is that the Kinect people are just going to stay with the 360 for the time being.

I think there is an outside chance the PS4 will hit 6 to 1 in sales initially. If that happens, the only thing I can expect MS to do is match PS4's price, but I'm not even sure that will be good enough. I think if MS wants to dominate this round they have to be $50/100 cheaper than PS4 and still include kinect (not going to happen any time soon)

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[amicusNYCL]

Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

Yeah seriously, it's only #2 on Amazon's best seller list for video games and still has 5 months before release. Someone get that thing a bodybag!

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[SebNukem]

> only a retard would buy it.

How do you think they became a monopoly in the first place? From history, Xbox One is going to be a smashing success.

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the XBone is already dead. Just like how the Wii bankrupted Nintendo long before it was released due to its lack of power, or how the PS3 was dead long before its release due to its price, or how the XBox 360 was dead around the time the mass RRoDs started striking, or how the Gamecube bankrupted Nintendo long before it was released because "real gamers" hate Nintendo because they're stupid and dumb and kiddy shit and stupid and dumb, or how the Mortal Kombat 1 fiasco doomed the SNES and made the Genesis the clearly undisputed winner of the 16-bit era, or...

Re:Who cares? The xbox one is already dead

[Gravatron]

No doub. The diehard will still buy one, but diehards alone don't pay the bills.

end of gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights, if sony dont implement this along the way, "forced by the nasty publishers" it will be implemented in the next offerings.

vote with your money people, don't pay for the destruction of your rights

the next anti consumer move will be, charging for hmmm, netflix, lets say, rentals that charge per person sitting in the room & calculated by always on connect..!

also does the nsa have back-doors into the xbox, the same as windows 0day exploits handed to them by m$?

I just...what?

[denmarkw00t]

I really, really don't understand what the people at Microsoft are thinking. Ever. They go about things in two ways - they either start off with a terrible product and keep it that way, or they start off with something decent (Windows 95, Xbox [original]), make it better (XP, 360), and then shoot themselves in the ass (ME/Vista/8, Xbox One).

It stinks too, I enjoy my 360 and, even with the Gold membership fees, I'm pretty sure I'm still under the cost of a PS3, however the PS4 or Wii U are my ONLY options in this next round of console purchasing. I'll be happy to let my 360 gather dust and not worry about all the crap M$ is trying to shove down our throats. The Microsoft cocktail:

- 2 oz gin
- lime zest
- fill to top with tonic water
- put in blender with 1 lb human fecal matter
- pulse until smooth
- pour on your customer base
- ???
- profit (and imbibe! delicious)

Re:I just...what?

[Shados]

From the look of it, they're trying to make the Xbox One as "big publisher" friendly as possible..... basically doing the stuff of wet dreams of EA, Ubisoft, and all those other big names.

Unfortunately they forgot that they have to sell some consoles too, else it won't do much.

Re:I just...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is EA/Ubi/Activision all have some pretty decent games.

Make no mistake, MS will sell millions of the things.

As a 'normal' gamer I care about 1 thing. I put disk in. I play game. I had fun. This market will be well served by MS.

As a 'collector' gamer I care about 2 things. The above PLUS I can do the same thing 20 years from now. This market will not be well served by MS.

As a 'trader' gamer (someone who buys/sells games to feed my habit). I want to be able to buy and sell my games after I finish them in 1-2 weeks. This market will not be well served by MS.

This whole xbox one is basically 'gets the gamestop out'. They want to be the re-seller. They have made gamestop their enemy. They are doing this by turning gaming into a rental model. The 'indie' guys were about the only ones who were not using DRM in some way.

Re:I just...what?

[omnichad]

they start off with something decent (Windows 95, Xbox [original]), make it better (XP, 360), and then shoot themselves in the ass (ME/Vista/8, Xbox One

That's a rather long-form way of saying Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

Sure, the "extinguish" portion was never meant to extinguish themselves, but that's still how it mostly happens.

Re:I just...what?

[splutty]

Change one ingredient (the tonic water) to , and your ??? is "Set on fire"

Not sure however if the profit still works then. I guess they could sell charcoal to the BBQ business.

Re:I just...what?

[tepples]

however the PS4 or Wii U are my ONLY options in this next round of console purchasing

There are five. Ruling out Xbox One leaves four. How, may I ask, did you rule out Ouya and HTPC?

Re:I just...what?

[ShooterNeo]

Yes, but those exact same games will have better graphics or framerates on the PS4. (probably in many cases the latter, since publishers will design the game to run ok on the Xbox One and when they "port" it to the PS4 it'll have better framerates by default)

Re:I just...what?

[Clsid]

But what are big publishers doing for them? It seems Microst took a lot of flag for nothing. At least Steam was able to bring some prices down and has sales from time to time in order to push us into PC internet DRM, run their software while gaming and phone home every month.

Re:I just...what?

[drinkypoo]

There are five. Ruling out Xbox One leaves four. How, may I ask, did you rule out Ouya and HTPC?

I just hope Ouya makes good on their plan of releasing a console every year or two. I'm going to want the next Tegra ASAP. Or is that AFAP? It would be cool to be able to buy it without a controller, or at lease get a discount or some free game credits or something if you make your purchase through your existing Ouya. I have a ton of places to use machines of this eensy-weensy class around my life (car, truck, camper...) so I have lots of excuses to buy them.

Re:I just...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also forgot that all gamers hate the BS that EA, Ubisoft, and all those other big names have been doing. I would argue that Microsoft learned that recipe from EA, as did most games-related publishers/developers.

Re:I just...what?

[marcosdumay]

So, MS is being played? The big publishers care for nothing, except how many people that have one kind of console want to buy their game. They'll support the console that sells more (to a public that likes them - not the Wii), and ony them think about the second place.

Re:I just...what?

[Shados]

Publishers support the console they make the most money on, which may not be the one that sells the most. Once upon a time the PSP was almost dead, until piracy on the DS went out of control, which gave the PSP a little bit of leverage to get back into the market (it never beat the DS, but...)

On the other hand, the Wii originally crushed the other consoles in numbers, and it didn't help it much in the long run.

MS is probably hoping that making an ultra-drm-friendly console, at the cost of a handful of alienated users, would make it more attractive to publishers. I guess they underestimated the potential backlash. We'll probably see them backpedaling soon. Probably too little even though the console isnt even out yet.

Re:I just...what?

[perryizgr8]

you can't say anything about better graphics. when ps3 was launched everyone was like it's gonna blow away the 360 in graphics fidelity but as it turned out the quality was identical or even worse than xbox 360 in some cases.

Re:I just...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep and in return they will get stuff like games 6 months early that people with no taste want.

I think it may well work. (And if it doesn't Sony will end up with the same restrictions anyway).

Re:I just...what?

[ShooterNeo]

That was because the Xbox 360 hardware was measurably better in some ways. Xbox 360 had a faster GPU and a slower CPU, effectively. In this generation, both consoles have identical GPUs and CPU architecture - except sony paid for a GPU with more processing units, a faster CPU, and much faster memory. By "identical" I mean that the same code will basically execute on either console, almost unchanged.

Re:I just...what?

[Tharkkun]

That was because the Xbox 360 hardware was measurably better in some ways. Xbox 360 had a faster GPU and a slower CPU, effectively. In this generation, both consoles have identical GPUs and CPU architecture - except sony paid for a GPU with more processing units, a faster CPU, and much faster memory. By "identical" I mean that the same code will basically execute on either console, almost unchanged.

Do you actually need the extra GPU? Sure it's cool to have it but when games on console's are capped are certain FPS what's the point? It's like people who play pc games at 150 fps. Complete overkill.

Re:I just...what?

[ShooterNeo]

Yes. Current console games use every last drop of power from the GPU to get 30 fps. The reason the game "caps" at 30 is to smooth out performance - the hardware is not able to do any better. The next gen will probably have the same problem - except that, as I said, a game that maxes out on the Xbox one will produce about 50% better FPS on the PS4. This means that the PS4 developers can set their cap to 45 FPS, and in "busy" areas where the Xbox One chugs away, it'll run significantly smoother on the PS4.

Hi Mr. Balmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddworld is way better than any crap released from Microshit.

end of gamin &/or your rights

[im just cannonfodder]

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights, if sony dont implement this along the way, "forced by the nasty publishers" it will be implemented in the next offerings.

vote with your money people, don't pay for the destruction of your rights

the next anti consumer move will be, charging for hmmm, netflix, lets say, rentals that charge per person sitting in the room & calculated by always on connect..!

also does the nsa have back-doors into the xbox, the same as windows 0day exploits handed to them by m$?

Re:end of gamin &/or your rights

[Anonymous Coward]

lol microsoft makes a facepalm move and you equate that with the end of gaming? Wow, fanboy much? Sony is taking this in stride and will be laughing all the way to the bank:

Cheapest true nextgen console= check
no constant or regular authentication = check
not forcing you to use kinect and have it on 24/7 = check
indie games = check
sharing and selling used games = check
no more online passes = check
free PSN network = check
better video hardware and memory = check

you'd have to be mildly retarded to be considering an XboxONE at this point. Is MS trying to fail? Kinda feels that way to me.

Re:end of gamin &/or your rights

[mjwx]

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of console gaming & console gaming rights, if sony dont implement this along the way, "forced by the nasty publishers" it will be implemented in the next offerings.

Fixed that for you.

But as a PC gamer I'm enjoying watching Sony and MS consoles implode. The destruction of these two consoles might mean that I'll see a game that will test the gaming rig I built in 2009 to it's limits.

Oh, by the by, read the Xbox360 and PS3 EULA's, console gamers never had any rights... It's just that Sony and MS couldn't enforce it until now.

Nintendo + Apple

[tuppe666]

Forget Xbox, the iOS consoles are already massively popular.

I original poster was making the point that their are a few Android consoles about, as an alternative...I believe Mad Catz (yes that one) is about to add to the already popular Android console market.

iOS does not have a gaming console, as Steve Jobs was pretty anti-games. There was a rumour about them buying Nintendo which I suspect would have been an incredible match. Instead they spent their time making criminal deals with book publishers.

I do think it would be a great move to turn AppleTV boxes into mini consoles even is it is only using the iPhone as a gamepad, but they are more interested in taking about bullshit design...rather than real innovation.

Re:Nintendo + Apple

[tepples]

even is it is only using the iPhone as a gamepad

I don't see how that would work. The flat sheet of glass that is the iPhone's input device doesn't give the player any feedback as to what on-screen buttons his thumbs are over. I can see how it would emulate an analog stick by setting the center to the initial point of contact on the left half of the screen, allowing the player to recenter by lifting and replacing the thumb. But I can't see how it'd handle (say) jump, primary fire, and second fire buttons.

Re:Nintendo + Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Good gawd, pull your head out of the sand and visit some other tech websites. Apple is working with controller manufacturers right now to manufacture controllers specifically designed to work with iOS devices, both by integrating an iPhone into the controller (turning it into a portable game console) or as a remote controller (likely to turn an Apple TV into a game console with the release of iOS 7's update on the Apple TV).

Re:Nintendo + Apple

[Clsid]

Jobs wasn't anti-games. You seem to have forgotten that speech where he was introducing some action games to OSX by way of Activision among others. Hell, the guy started his computing career in Atari by programming games.

You seem to have a strong dislike of Apple that makes you say random and crazy statements about the company. It's not like they haven't been convicted of anything yet regarding the book trial and your comment about the AppleTV just goes to show that you just hate them because they are not doing whatever it is that you want. To me, the AppleTV is one of their best products because it only focus on one thing and does it well, and there is no comparison with the other so-called SmartTVs platforms. If I want to play game on a TV I would get a console, which is more expensive but also provides a lot of things.

I don't know why is that I'm able to enjoy tech companies in general, be it Google, Apple and even Microsoft with some of the tools they make. And sure I have my own gripes with all of them, like the privacy issues with Google and Facebook, overpriced hardware with Apple and things like the stupid DRM in XBox One AND Steam. But that does not mean I have to trash other companies to make me feel superior about whatever tech I decided to focus on.

Re:Nintendo + Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I do think it would be a great move to turn AppleTV boxes into mini consoles even is it is only using the iPhone as a gamepad, but they are more interested in taking about bullshit design...rather than real innovation.

iOS 7 includes SpriteKit, an API for programming 2D games and better support for gaming controllers.

But don't let that disturb your preconception ...

and if they try the same thing with windows app s

[Joe_Dragon]

and the same BS was done with windows app = antitrust.

Watch 'One Man, 17 SKUs'

[eddy]

Brian Provinciano held a great presentation at GDC2013 about writing and releasing Retro City Rampage. Required watching/reading. One Man, 17 SKUs: Shipping on Every Platform at Once. He does not have many good things to say about working with MS on the XBox Live version.

The only really assured destruction ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... is self-destruction. Microsoft, Erdogan, Mursi -- delusions of grandeur have a remarkably similar outcome across all "platforms".

#1 reason to buy a PS4 instead...

[Enkrypter]

Remove money from wallet, then throw directly at Sony...

How hard is it to be a publisher?

[NicBenjamin]

The article tells you Oddworld:New and Tasty needs an official publisher to release on XBox, it tells you that Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning doesn't want to get a publisher, and it tells you why he doesn't want to get a publisher (he doesn't want to split the revenue), but it doesn't tell you Oddworld Interactive doesn't count as a publisher.

They clearly don't meet some requirement. Is the requirement stupid and obsolete (ie: the ability to ship boxed games), or is it reasonable (ie: the ability to correctly charge sales tax/VAT)? If it's not reasonable is it trivial?

Re:How hard is it to be a publisher?

[Kohath]

Is the requirement stupid and obsolete (ie: the ability to ship boxed games)

This one. You have to ship some specific quantity of disks to retail.

Re:How hard is it to be a publisher?

[ebunga]

If I were speculating, and I am, it probably involves an exchange of money, an NDA, and enough hassle that unless you were an established publisher you wouldn't want to bother.

Re:How hard is it to be a publisher?

[tfranzese]

There was a GDC talk given by the creator of Retro City Rampage that touched on this very thing: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/194311/Video_Shipping_Retro_City_Rampage_on_17_SKUs_at_once.php

In it he touches on these requirements and if I remember right the difficulty with becoming your own publisher is you have to have published two retail games before Microsoft will consider you a publisher. The problem with that is that publishing retail games is expensive. The with Microsoft's requirement is it ignores the change in landscape that allows non-retail games and the publisher's limited role because of that.

Re:How hard is it to be a publisher?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation?

Re:How hard is it to be a publisher?

[Kohath]

PS Nation Podcast. I think it was episode 245 or episode 289.

So what's the problem?

[jtownatpunk.net]

Set up a company called AAA Publishing. Problem solved. "You want a publisher? Fine. Here's our publisher. It's a freak coincidence that the president and CEO of our publishing company share the names of the president and CEO of our development company. Small world, I guess."

Re:So what's the problem?

[edwdig]

To be able to publish on XBox Live Arcade, you have to have published at least 3 disc based games for the XBox 360.

Re:So what's the problem?

[jtownatpunk.net]

[blink][blink][blink]

Well that's the dumbest thing I've heard this month. And I've heard some dumb things this month.

Re:So what's the problem?

[NeutronCowboy]

Utterly, completely, fantastically, wrong. Exhibit A: Castle Crashers, which is still in the top 5 of the most popular XBLA games ever, and it was released by someone who, until then, had only released a flash game. Exhibit B: Orcs Must Die, whose developer had until then never published an XBOX 360 game. Exhibit C: Limbo, whose single developer had never published any game on any console before. And those are just the games I bought.

I understand that MS is making quite a few mistakes, but it also seems that a lot of the "issues" are lies and misunderstandings repeated in the Internet echo chamber.

If you have to buy two PS3s

[tepples]

Sony also made new PS3 disc games require Other OS-incompatible firmware, which defeated the purpose of Other OS which was to have Linux and games on one device. If people knew that they'd have to keep one PS3 for Other OS and buy a second PS3 for playing new games, they would have bought a PC instead in the first place.

Re:If you have to buy two PS3s

[drinkypoo]

If people knew that they'd have to keep one PS3 for Other OS and buy a second PS3 for playing new games, they would have bought a PC instead in the first place.

Historically, Sony lies a lot. I would expect Sony to continue to lie a lot based on their past performance.

The queen's pet duck in Battle Chess

[tepples]

Toward this, see the entry for "Getting Crap Past the Radar" in TV Tropes' article about Battle Chess .

Going out with a bang

[Jetra]

Just like when the Japanese isolated themselves from foreign powers so too does Microsoft follow. However, unlike the physical guns back then, they will be dealing with metaphorical ones and they are asking for suicide. They're not going to fall or collapse. No, they are going to blow up and take as many people with them as possible. The industry's death looms ever near, Microsoft is just going to make it spectacular.

Citation needed

[Anonymous Coward]

While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops...

Is it? Despite all of the outrage on nerd sites for unthinkable transgressions committed by the largest publishers, don't EA, Activision, Ubisoft, et al still dominate the gaming revenue?

Machine gun foot; repeat

[Torodung]

Damn. With the 24-hour constant activation and this, it seems like MS is machine gunning itself in the foot with the XBox One. Who do they expect to buy this thing? Are they trying to sink their gaming unit?

It's Actiblizzard's fault

[tepples]

This is just a move to raise the barrier to entry to make sure the Xbone doesn't get another minecraft.

Oh I get it. It's Blizzard's fault. If Microsoft didn't institute a policy of requiring an established publisher, Blizzard would argue that Microsoft was implicit in allowing Mojang to weaken the distinctiveness of the Warcraft and StarCraft trademarks, just as Idthesda has accused Mojang of doing to The Elder Scrolls. Blizzard has so much clout because its parent company makes Call of Duty series, which is probably single-handedly responsible for millions of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions.

Re:It's Actiblizzard's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. Close, but it's much more simple than that.

The big publishers don't like the small guys eating their sales. Which they do.
Minecraft costs 1/5 of what a AAA titles does, yet kids play it for hours on end. Dozens of times longer than they'd spend on a AAA title. Big publishers don't like this because they want the kids to finish up their short, expensive game and move on to buy the next one.

I can garentee you that EA sees Mojang as a huge threat and pressures MS about it at every turn. (The amount of minecraft players, however, is too much for MS to ignore)

I guarantee you that the big publishers pressured MS in to the publisher requirement because it's a way to make sure that they remain the gatekeeper and games that give too much value for their dollar don't compete as effectively.

Re:It's Actiblizzard's fault

[rochrist]

Wut?

Re:It's Actiblizzard's fault

[drinkypoo]

Minecraft costs 1/5 of what a AAA titles does

1/2

yet kids play it for hours on end. Dozens of times longer than they'd spend on a AAA title

They might well replay the AAA title. Or just their favorite level. Most kids have a much higher threshold for boredom due to repetition. That's how the NES was ever a thing. I mean, Ninja Gaiden?

I guarantee you that the big publishers pressured MS in to the publisher requirement because it's a way to make sure that they remain the gatekeeper and games that give too much value for their dollar don't compete as effectively.

Microsoft may well have actually thought it was a good idea, so they don't have to personally deal with those unwashed indie developers.

Re:It's Actiblizzard's fault

[vilanye]

Considering that most "AAA" titles are repetitive and just copies of previous games your comments are funny. Ninja Gaiden is a better game than 95% of the "AAA" titles in the past 10 years.

Time for an intervention

[JDG1980]

At this point, the question is not whether Steve Ballmer should be fired as Microsoft CEO, but whether it's time to actually commit him to a mental institution.

Re:Time for an intervention

[PPH]

He's in one already. Leave him be (but do put in padded furniture).

Missing the Point

[tuppe666]

Sure, but that is the same thing. They could make more money if they were simply not so dickish.

They are being dickish to make *more* money. It only fails to work in places they are not an established monopoly, otherwise users have to eat shit.

Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[mystikkman]

See link below. Also, Microsoft pledged to have a independent creator program and is rumored to announce a new Xbox developer program at the BUILD developer conference on June 26th.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php

wrote this post on our blog a few months ago to express how absolutely weird and unfortunate I thought it was that the trending perception of Microsoft and indies had gotten so bad that silly creative decisions of mine were being taken as Microsoft's ever-burgeoning evilness toward indies, or something. My message was this: we're indie, we make the games we want to make, Microsoft publishes them, and the past five years of this have been great, and it's too bad that that's not super newsworthy, because this whole time it just feels like I must watch, powerless, as Lumbergh keeps taking my red stapler.

Then Xbox One happened, and a longtime fan of ours posted this on my facebook wall:

Questionable grammar aside, I was super glad he posted this, because through no fault of his own he's unwittingly illustrated what happens when these narratives blow up. You know that thing about no self-publishing on Xbox One? The meaning of that quote was that the partner/publisher relationship is currently the same (i.e. what we, an indie studio, been doing for the last five years) but they're exploring ways to improve it. Basically "everything's the same, stay tuned for improvements" mutated into "no indies on Xbox One, ever" in a few hours.

Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think there is a vast conspiracy to unjustly villify Microsoft. That would be weird, possibly an indicator of neurosis, even. I just wish I could add my "everything is fine" experience to the mix more often.

And with that, here's the original post:

In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network. There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us. I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:

In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game. This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)

But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.” Where do we stand on all this? Read on:

So, Microsoft is publishing Charlie Murder. What does that mean? Here are a few facts to set the record straight:
We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from (yes, celebrities).
Ska Studios is just Michelle and me. We work in our basement. We have two cats (you knew that).
Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to din

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[Anonymous Coward]

and who cares exactly?

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[Maury Markowitz]

Now what are you hoping to achieve, introducing facts on /. in the middle of a flame fest?

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[mystikkman]

Also, what happens if you want to sell a fart game to the PS4?
Sony will most likely reject it, so games have to go through an approval process(which is against this story's gist).
If they don't, the PS4 store will end up like the app store and play store, full of free-to-play junk with forced in-app purchases.
Sony is just milking the MS PR screwup to get the maximum sales before they actually reveal what's going to happen with a lot of things.

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugger, do I have to put my pitchfork away now?

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[Anonymous Coward]

And if indies DONT want to use MS as their publisher?

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[necro351]

This guy basically says: "look, everything is like it was before, its all cool at MS." Which is fine, but irrelevant. It is irrelevant because Sony, Nintendo, Apple, and Google/Android do not just keep doing the same thing, they change the terms of their contracts with indie developers over time. So why compare MS to how MS was 5 years ago? We should compare how MS is to its competitors _now_. If you follow that line of reasoning, it seems MS does not want to allow a company to release this Oddworld title for their console because they do not have a publisher recognized by Microsoft, but that is not a problem for the other consoles. Times are changing and MS is trying to turn back the clock to 5 years ago, and further with their ratcheting up of DRM controls.

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[St.Creed]

Either we were reading different messages, or we understand English in different ways. What I got from the post was: Microsoft hasn't changed the deal for Indies, it's trying to improve upon it to attract more developers and is very helpful all around.

I'm not a native English speaker so perhaps that's an issue.

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[necro351]

Either we were reading different messages, or we understand English in different ways.

Nice false dichotomy. Pretty crafty for a non-native speaker. You are learning the internets well!

Microsoft hasn't changed the deal for Indies, it's trying to improve upon it to attract more developers and is very helpful all around.

Sure, but who cares? Microsoft's policy toward indie devs may be improving upon what it was 5 years ago when they were leading the pack among consoles, but this article is about how the other consoles are surpassing Microsoft in its friendliness toward indie developers, for example, by publishing this new Oddworld game. This article is relevant because in other news Microsoft plans on imposing obnoxious DRM restrictions that chase the typical player of an indie game away from a system and there have been reports of developers having problems working with Microsoft that they don't have with other consoles. The gamasutra guy in the link above, and you my friend, are both missing the point.

Bottom line: the notion that MS is improving on what it was 5 years ago is just not good enough when its competitors are going beyond that to attract indie dev talent and indie game players. MS is getting outflanked by Sony pretty hard right now...

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[DUdsen]

And yet we have indies being forced to get publishers on the XBox platform, something dont add up.

This is basically the walled garden problem, in order for the walled garden to give the security benefits the curator promises the walled garden need gatekeepers, as MS cant afford to actually vet everything they need to limit the amount of companies/people who can publish content into the walled garden, hence cutting out small scale independent who don't want to give some established insider what is basically an bribe for entry into the walled garden.

MS probably want the indie's and do probably do have some measures to help indies get past the bribe seeking gatekeepers but unlike their competitors MS have a system that is dependent on a small number of gatekeepers in order for it to be viable.

Re:Alternate perspective from an indie dev

[St.Creed]

Either we were reading different messages, or we understand English in different ways.

Nice false dichotomy. Pretty crafty for a non-native speaker. You are learning the internets well!

Thank you - it's nice to be appreciated :)

Microsoft hasn't changed the deal for Indies, it's trying to improve upon it to attract more developers and is very helpful all around.

Sure, but who cares? Microsoft's policy toward indie devs may be improving upon what it was 5 years ago when they were leading the pack among consoles, but this article is about how the other consoles are surpassing Microsoft in its friendliness toward indie developers, for example, by publishing this new Oddworld game. This article is relevant because in other news Microsoft plans on imposing obnoxious DRM restrictions that chase the typical player of an indie game away from a system and there have been reports of developers having problems working with Microsoft that they don't have with other consoles. The gamasutra guy in the link above, and you my friend, are both missing the point.

Bottom line: the notion that MS is improving on what it was 5 years ago is just not good enough when its competitors are going beyond that to attract indie dev talent and indie game players. MS is getting outflanked by Sony pretty hard right now...

Okay - I think you have a point.

Sad...

[PortHaven]

Microsoft was on a good path for a while. The Xbox 360, the Kinect....these were good things. Even Windows phone 8 was venturous. And as much as folks knock Windows 8 - let's give credit where credit is due, it was very daring. (And honestly, there are a number of really good improvements. And if they got some kinks worked out. Windows 9 might do well.

But lately, they just seem to be doing "stupid" again. Steve Ballmer needs to be fired. Plain and simple.

Oddworld Hypocrisy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the same company that cashed *huge* checks from Microsoft to make Oddworld exclusive to the original Xbox? You know, the one that turned its back on thousands of their fans who had PlayStations... those guys, right?

They won't even get crocodile tears from me -- you reap what you sow.

Re:Oddworld Hypocrisy??

[CronoCloud]

A Hat made out of Money!

Obligatory Penny Arcade from 2000:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/10/23/

Sony to indie devs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Waive patch fee's for smaller patches.

Have a support team strictly to help indie devs with getting games on the playstation service.

Spend 2 months practically giving away dev kits to indie's.

Let you self publish your own games on our service.

Gives indie devs their own store on the PSN store and shares PSN main page advertising with indie devs.
Let you set your own prices, including free games.

Fishy

[tepples]

It seems the console is TV TV TV TV TV SPORTS COD COD COD

COD? I knew something was fishy about the Xbox One. Apparently someone in Microsoft thinks gamers are dumb Pollocks.

Re:Fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fatal marketing error. Not many fish play video games. Though it's conceivable fish might find them more useful than bicycles.

start a trade association

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Gang up all the indie studios and act as their publisher.

Old Chinese saying: Make a group, and you will be stronger.

Old American saying: United We Stand.

They went italian

[slashmydots]

"You Have a To Have a Publisher"
I don't get it it...they don't even make Mario games. Why a speak all italian and stuff, eh?

Developers have the content - act like it

[ChronoFish]

Developers -

You HAVE to flip the tables on MS and every other platform. Don't even think about paying a dime to be "published" or "licensed". If your product is worth anything - the demand will be there. Make MS, Sony, ETC come to you - NOT vice-versa.

MS charging a fee to "reach" their customers is no different than Comcast trying to force Google, etc to reach Internet surfers who connect with Comcast.

YOU (developers) are the ones in demand - act like it. The only reason to play the game-maker hoop game is because your product sucks and you're just trying to ride coat-tails.

-CF

Can I be my own publisher then?

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . I sure can with a book!

Muphry's law

[tepples]

failure to capitalise proper nouns

I'd assume that if a web site's name appears in lowercase in a web site's <title> element, it's acceptable to leave it uncapitalized. Besides, I thought "Down syndrome" had a capital D and a lowercase S. Muphry?

When kids are more informed than their parents

[tepples]

non-gaming parents who will be giving consoles for birthdays/Christmas

I know beggars can't be choosers, but by November, kids will have read about the limitations of the Xbox One. "Mommy, can I have a PS4? It's cheaper. Or better yet, a new computer that does homework and games."

Re: sucide squad, commit suicide!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good summary for E3 in webcomic: http://www.nerdragecomic.com/index.php?date=2013-06-14

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/06/15/who-is-winning-e3
>With almost 300,000 votes cast, the readers have spoken. 81% of you thought Sony won E3. Microsoft came in second with 12% of you saying they took the E3 crown and Nintendo rounded out the voting with 7% of the vote.

Dear Microsoft

[SinisterRainbow]

I hate you. Good bye.

What's a 'Publisher'?

[PPH]

Maybe Microsoft still doesn't get this Internet thing. But most of the functions performed by a classical (print or physical media) publisher aren't needed for pure digital content. Put it on a web site or app store and you're done. Publishers have very little value in a world with zero distribution costs and viral marketing.

'Publishing' as a gatekeeper for media distribution is also the last holdout of market manipulators and organized crime. Is this what Microsoft wants?

Re:What's a 'Publisher'?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Publishing' as a gatekeeper for media distribution is also the last holdout of market manipulators and organized crime. Is this what Microsoft wants?

C'mon seriously, Microsoft and Criminals ?
You bet. Criminal here meet criminal there and this is our program : " Let's fuck the gaming population" like there is no tomorrow.

Makes sense

[Anubis IV]

Normally I'd say, "Follow the money", but in this case, just ask yourself who benefits from all of this.

Entrenched publishers benefit from the destruction of the used games market.
Entrenched publishers benefit from phoning home regularly to confirm the license's legitimacy.
Entrenched publishers benefit from limiting your ability to share games with friends.
And entrenched publishers benefit from eliminating their competition's presence on the platform.

I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting out of this in exchange, since clearly Sony was able to keep things as they were. My best guess is that they caved under pressure from the publishers and fear that Sony would make this deal and thus secure the better exclusives. Maybe Microsoft did manage to secure some major exclusives from the major publishers that they think will make all of this bad PR fade away over time, but if they did, we haven't seen evidence of it yet. The only third-party published exclusives that have been announced so far are a new Plants vs. Zombies and Titanfall, both from EA. Literally every single other exclusive that's been announced for the One (e.g. Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, the new Halo, etc.) is being published by Microsoft Studios.

In contrast, Sony has already announced exclusives from Atlus, Blizzard, Capcom, Digital Extremes, Square-Enix, and also has a handful of indies with a proven track record on board (e.g. Jonathan Blow of Braid fame is making The Witness, Supergiant Games of Bastion fame are making Transistor, and the Octodad devs are bringing a new Octodad to the PS4).

Another nail in their coffin..

[Silpher]

But still.. the new Xbox will sell just fine and will do just fine because it's flowing in the mainstream..

Re:Great News For PC Gaming!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe all the console consumers will begin to put their money into REAL gaming, instead of these locked in consoles they have been selling since the 70's.

Never owned a console.
Never will.

Only 2 consoles deserved ever to be owned : the Atari 2600 and the Sega Dreamcast.
All the rest pure shit, and the last ones are as anti consumer as they have ever been.
Use the PC, and with emulators you can relive 99% of "console/arcade" gaming.

Ummmm

[Sycraft-fu]

You might want to look up your terms. MS is not anywhere near a monopoly on consoles. They have about a 30% market share, same as Sony. Nintendo has about a 40% share. This is for consoles, MS has no handheld.

So sorry, but you can't whine about monopoly here, because MS hasn't got one. They are only one player of three, and not the big one. That is not to say this is a smart move (it isn't) but this isn't some case of a big monopoly throwing their weight around. You aren't a monopoly unless you have total or near total control over a market and they don't.

More likely, this is MS trying to make publishers happy to get more exclusive games. The traditional publishers are extremely whiny about many of the things that the new Xbox is supposed to deal with, like reselling games, indy titles, DRM, and so on. The publishers probably told them all the things they wanted, and MS said "Sure!" That looks like it is going to bit them in the ass big time, but we'll see. Maybe MS ends up getting a lot of exclusives and gamers decide they want those, forget their anger, and buy it anyhow.

Either way, knock of the monopoly whining. A monopoly isn't a large company you don't like, it has a specific legal definition.

Re:Ummmm

[Endo13]

First, you need a source for your information. Second, you're right, MS has no handheld. They also don't care about them. Third, They also don't care about Nintendo, as Nintendo has been targeting an entirely different market and is almost 100% irrelevant. Fourth, if you are actually close on your numbers, the only reason Sony has the share they do is because of previous generation sales of the PS2.

The bottom line is, in this generation, for the console market they are targeting, MS does indeed have a virtual monopoly. Almost every console gamer I know has an XBox 360. A very small number of them also have a PS3. I know almost no one who has a PS3 and no XBox 360, and the few I do know aren't really the target demographic and only have a PS3 for one or two specific games.

Re:Ummmm

[Sycraft-fu]

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250982/2013-year-on-year-sales-and-market-share-update-to-may-18th/

Relevant part being lifetime sales:

PS3: 77,313,472
Wii: 99,574,394
Xbox 360: 77,311,669

"Every gamer you know" is not a valid metric. Anecdotal evidence is not useful.

Also this is only the 7th gen. Step back to the previous one and the PS2 is the best selling console of all time, over 200 million sold.

Sorry if it shoots your off-the-cuff rant to shit, but Sony is a force to be reckoned with in the console area. So in Nintendo.

Re:Ummmm

[drinkypoo]

The bottom line is, in this generation, for the console market they are targeting, MS does indeed have a virtual monopoly. Almost every console gamer I know has an XBox 360.

Oh, every console gamer you know. So like, that's scientific and stuff.

OpenGL + Apple + AppleTV

[tuppe666]

Jobs wasn't anti-games. You seem to have forgotten that speech where he was introducing some action games to OSX by way of Activision among others. Hell, the guy started his computing career in Atari by programming games.

If Seve Jobs wasn't anti-games(he was they weren't premium)...Steve Jobs was simply a failure at the gaming market. Apple is a barren wasteland when it comes to gaming...OpenGL was left to rot, and even with a massive hole in the PC gaming market with Microsoft pretty much shitting on PC gaming since the launch of the initial XBox, Apple has become increasingly more desperate to compete...thank god for Microsoft pushing stream onto Linux and Apple.

Tell me right now what apple is doing in the gaming market, how they are moving and shaking...Android has 6+ consoles...Apple nothing. What game exclusives are coming to Apple....None. What great gaming announcements were there at the Dev conference...I think they tweaked Game centre (did anyone notice). right now 2 consoles are about to launch...both aimed at controlling the TV something Apple have talked about forever...what is Apple doing with there poular and existing product with games...Nothing.

Atari Closed Down. Apple is simply not a gaming platform. I personally think its a (many) missed opportunity. You can lie that Apple is a gaming platform...I bought an OUYA runs Android comes with a game controller.

Well it remains to be seen

[Sycraft-fu]

So my guess is the reason they did all this stupid shit is publishers. The game publishers are extremely whiny, and extremely dumb, when it comes to the idea of consumer rights. They seem to think that extreme DRM is needed to prevent piracy (not that it has ever worked) and that they'd have way more sales if only they could do that. So there's the "Check in once a day thing." They also HATE the used game market, they really, honestly, act like it is money taken right out of their pocket. So there's the resale restriction. Also they, of course, hate indies, since those guys sell games without publishers, sometimes very popular ones (Minecraft). So there's this latest shit.

Now the reason for MS to do this would be to make publishers happy and thus to try and bribe them in to exclusives. Convince them to release games only for the Xbox, or at least first for the Xbox. Get a library that nobody else has or can have.

Well if that happens, then who knows where it goes? Maybe people stay mad, they say "fuck you" don't buy the console and so on. Publishers will, of course, go where the money is in the long run and the Xbox will get largely abandoned. It'll be a big failure.

However maybe gamers decide they really want those games. They forget or rationalize away their anger and objections and buy the Xbox and the games. This makes publishers happy and the Xbox gets more games and so on.

Never underestimate how short people's memories can be or what a bunch of pansy-asses gamers can be. An instructive example was Modern Warfare 2. They badly fucked over the PC version of the game and it had a lot of gamers PISSED. There was a "Boycott Modern Warfare 2," Steam group. Had a lot of members. So what happened on release day? You guessed it: Tons of people in that group had bought it and were playing it. Their anger was not enough to keep them from doing what they wanted (http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Boycott-Modern-Warfare-2.jpg).

Personally I think MS is in for a world of hurt, but we'll see. If they appease the publishers, and the publishers in turn deliver what gamers want, well maybe it works out. I hope not, but it could happen.

Apple gamepad!?

[tuppe666]

Good gawd, pull your head out of the sand and visit some other tech websites. Apple is working with controller manufacturers right now to manufacture controllers specifically designed to work with iOS devices, both by integrating an iPhone into the controller (turning it into a portable game console) or as a remote controller (likely to turn an Apple TV into a game console with the release of iOS 7's update on the Apple TV).

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/06/12/apples-ios-developer-guide-hints-at-dedicated-mfi-game-controller this is the only link I found which is negative especially from an Apple website.

It talks about "third-party manufacturers" using a standard interface,but "Previously, a rumor in March claimed Apple was courting developers at the 2013 Game Developers Conference to sign off on a controller to be released sometime in the near future, but the whispers were squashed by the well-connected Jim Dalrymple of The Loop"

Any defunct "publishers" for sale?

[Animats]

Find some "publisher" that went bust and acquire the name.

From MS to EA

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but think that Peter Moore has something to do with this publisher lovefest.

Mojang (Minecraft) are not indie anymore.

[Viewsonic]

They have sold more copies than most major games, have an operating budget larger than most major studios, and employ more than five people.

Mojang was indie back when it was just Notch almost 5 years ago, but not today, not tomorrow. They are a major studio these days.

Re:Mojang (Minecraft) are not indie anymore.

[vilanye]

And they are still independent, hence an indie studio. Just because they are big enough to push MS around doesn't make them dependent, does it? You have an odd definition on indie.

Indie doesn't necessarily mean small and weak, it means independent.

When Trent Reznor ditched his label, his two releases(Ghosts and The Slip) were independent, hence nin was an indie band. I am not sure if there upcoming record is being released independently or not.

Phil Harrison

[Anonymous Coward]

From that quote, it got me thinking that the key lynchpin here may be Phil Harrison's presence. His spectre seems to be the death knell of good product lines, or effective companies, which all implode shortly after his arrival. PS3 and duck demo -> Tanked. Infogrames to Atari -> bleed money. MS -> Xbone.

I'm scared

[jargonburn]

I want Microsoft to continue to advance these absurd, OBSCENE restrictions and policies on the Xbox One. I want it to get even worse.

But what if people ACTUALLY still go for it? What if it succeeds??

Re:Great News For PC Gaming!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those were the shittiest consoles ever made!!! I bet you are one of those idiots trying to dig up E.T. cartridges in the desert. My C-64 had a cartridge port on back AND a keyboard with an OS that you could program. Only parents who hated their kids bought them a dumb device like a console.
We will pray for you.

To appease retailers

[tepples]

[To qualify as a publisher to earn XBLA release slots,] You have to ship some specific quantity of disks to retail.

If this is true, I wonder whether Microsoft put this rule in place to appease retailers that treat consoles as essentially loss leaders to get people in the door to buy higher-margin disc games.

Re:To appease retailers

[Darinbob]

In-store sales are important. No matter how much some people think that digital is the way to go. Not everyone has the bandwidth to download the games for one. Plus you get to browse more easily in the store, pick up a box and look at it, maybe buy two games instead of one since you're already there. If you're a parent or grandparent or uncle/autn then you get to gift wrap it for christmas. The brick-and-mortar market is very big.

Now if some indie doesn't want to be a part of that then that's fine, and the console maker shouldn't necessarily disallow them. But console makers have been applying strict controls and nonsensical requirements for over thirty years.

Wall-of-text hits you for 2000 hp. You die.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want people to read your posts, get to the point. Don't re-post a lengthy ramble full mostly of fluff.

Indie gaming is being alienated.

[MaWeiTao]

If anything sinks the Xbox One it's going to be Microsoft's stance against indie developers. But this isn't a new development; it's been a long time in the making.

I've got a friend working for a successful indie developer who also happens fairly extensive contacts in the industry. There is near universal antipathy towards Xbox Live and Microsoft. The company has been so unfriendly towards small developers that even those who've enjoyed considerable success have said they'll never work with Microsoft again.

The reasons are varied. Microsoft gives developers no freedom. They dictate launch dates, pricing and promotions. They're inflexible with multi-platform releases, often prohibiting a release if it was previously available for other platforms. The approval process is slow and painful, with issues often being arbitrary. And despite that, games often launch with glaring bugs, which indicates an overburdened and apathetic certification team. On top of all that, Microsoft is stingy with sales data, so that in my friend's case they had to wait a month or two before they had any indication of how the game was selling. Not that they would have been offered any options to boost sales.

Unfortunately, this crap seems to have spilled over into Windows Phone which is why only games from big publishers ever end up with the Xbox Live connectivity. And therein lies the problem. There seems to be this arrogance to Microsoft that they've always got the big developers to fall back on and so the indies are irrelevant.

Based on what my friend has told me, however, the future isn't the PS4. Sony has gotten better, but they're not great. Nintendo has been making great strides over the past year to lure indie developers but it seems to be too little too late. Nintendo didn't consider them crucial back during the success of the Wii. Most indie developers apparently struggle to be profitable on Android, so that basically stunts the growth of Android-powered consoles right out of the gate. So you're left with iOS and PCs. iOS continues to be attractive, even if it comes with it's own host of issues, one of the big ones being restricted to touch screens, at least for now.

According to my friend, one of the most profitable platforms for them has been Steam. They don't have to deal with much in the way of profit sharing or licensing. Steam let's them do whatever they want, set whatever pricing they like and even give away as many free download coupons as they like. They get immediate and timely updates on sales. And the platform gives them access to one of the biggest gaming markets out there.

This is Microsoft's biggest problem and it will eventually bite them in the ass. Everything else is kind of irrelevant as it's an extension of everything else already present in gaming. But growing up as a PC gamer there's something satisfying about gaming's return to the platform.

turn linux or bsd into console, why not?

[Vince6791]

It would be nice if the gaming industry(or nvidia since they are not invited to the next gen party) came together with the open source community and develop a linux or bsd (single, just one that's it not hundreds) console distro, turning any pc into a console system with a xbox 360 or ps3 type UI to make things simple and friendly, no full linux OS desktop. Fuck directx. ps4 will be using a modified opengl anyway.

It's ridiculous that you still have to purchase a console dev kit(stiff requirements) these days especially when the hardware is not unique but off the shelf pc parts.

With the 24 hour activation requirement for the xbox one, I doubt it will sell well. Not sure about the ps4, they might also take this route.

I'd like to see the source for that claim.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go on, who is this friend?

And they haven't lost a penny to piracy. They haven't made a sale.

Lost fuck all.

So can I get a full refund, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they changed their mind about selling me a PS3 with OtherOS capability, then change your mind PROPERLY. Let me have my money back, you can have your PoS3 (and the games) back and we're all happy.

What's that? I've had use of the system in the meantime? Well, they've had use of my money.

Still even stevens and all that.

Market share

[advantis]

Is it me, or is Microsoft trying *really hard* to lose customers? And the idiots just won't leave! Of course, they can't just say "stop buying our stuff".

Feels like MS got a friendly letter about their dominant position from the DOJ or the EU, and they're trying to tell them that even if they build high walls and put large chains and locks on their gates* people still want to get in.

*somebody, somewhere, is now imagining Bill Gates with large chains and locks around him, and smiling.

I keep hearing this comment

[rsilvergun]

and I hear a lot of complaints from all my hardcore gamer buds and I've seen several rants, but they've all ending their rant with "...but I'll probably buy one anyway".

Am I missing something

[rsilvergun]

or are they not really an Indie anymore, are they? I kept reading the phrase "published by Microsoft" and I get the sense that this bloke now has Microsoft publishing his games. That's great if you won the pot last gen when XBLA was free to all comers, but what if you're just getting started? Or did I miss something? If this guy really doesn't have a publisher then he won't be making XBox One games. If Microsoft will act as his publisher that's great for him, but it still leaves real "Independent" game devs up a creak....

GREAT SONG FOR MICROSH*T

[Anonymous Coward]

Na, Na, Na, --- Na Na Na--, Hey Hey Hey Goodbye!!!!

And so it ends

[The Cat]

The console makers strangle each other in their hysterical paranoid greed, leaving the PC as the undisputed king of gaming platforms forever.

The PC always wins. It destroyed console gaming. It will destroy the mobile market next after Apple and Google are found with their hands around each other's throats.

IBM, Valve and Linux win!

hahahahaha

Re:Great News For PC Gaming!!

[CronoCloud]

My C-64 had a cartridge port on back AND a keyboard with an OS that you could program.

You did know the C64 was originally designed to be a sort of console/computer hybrid, right? And was released as such in it's original form (less RAM, no serial interface) as the Max in Japan? Commodore decided to turn that thing into a computer later in it's development. In fact it's console roots still exist in the "ultimax" mode.

Let's also not forget the 64GS

Many C64 users only used their machines in a console sort of way, only using them for games and only knowing enough basic to: load "*",8,1

Only parents who hated their kids bought them a dumb device like a console.

Or parents without the money for a full C64 system. Adjusted for inflation the C64 alone, without disk drive or printer or monitor would cost $1400. Which is why though it seems every suburban upper middle class nerd on Slashdot had one...the actual household penetration rate was low...much lower than that of the Atari 2600

Re:Great News For PC Gaming!!

[CronoCloud]

You, are ignorant, do you know why? Because console gaming in the home pre-dates PC gaming. Before PC's of any kind, whether Apple, Atari or Commodore 8-bits or the IBM PC achieved any real household penetration, there were consoles. They were simply much more affordable. and much more common. Sure the more affluent kids may have had a C64, or Atari 8-bit, but everyone else had a 2600. Even then household penetration was much lower...don't the the 2600 ever got above 25 percent, which was considered GOOD and much above that of home computers.

Re:Great News For PC Gaming!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, Fuck you and your cloudy thoughts. Consoles are for parents who don't like watching their kiddies. Pong and those other single game systems weren't consoles. You are just a troll.

PS. We made PC's so we didn't have to have the corp office snoopin our terminals. Now you corp fucks are moving everything to clouds so you can mine our personal data like you did your business data. Anyone who supports cloud technology for Personal Computing needs to be shot in the forehead. Over and Over and Over. Until all the evil juice soaks into the ground.

zenlessyank was here

Meanwhile, at Sony's secret underground bunker...

[tjonnyc999]

...the head of Corporate Espionage is congratulating the field agents who have successfully infiltrated Microsoft's strategy meetings and planted this idea.

"Bonuses for you and PS4 consoles for your kids, all around! Good work, team!"

Valve Steam Box?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Oddworld Inhabitants should consider going this direction. I've been playing Half Life 2 on the Linux verson of Steam and it seems much more smooth than the Windows version. I'm curious as to how well the Steam Box will play out...

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/valve-steam-box-release-date-news-and-features-1127072

OK, how hard is it to be a publishing co-op?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, given the answers identifying retail sales as the core problem, why not form a sort of indie publishing co-op? Presumably, at least a few of the most successful indie devs have one retail game. Could they band together along with a bunch of other indie devs to form an entity which meets the MS definition of "Publisher"?

- T

market + competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Market + Competition will even the playing field and given enough lost business MS will come to the table and play fair. Or, they will exit the game. They almost were the only game in town, but Sony has rebounded and new systems abound. âoeEveryone" wants a slice of the pie.

WTF is a "publisher", in this context?

[RockDoctor]

Given that the total spend on games for our 5 (I think) year old console is about 6-beers (in inter-cultural value units), brought on CD at second-hand shops, then I'm really unclear about what the fuck a "publisher" is in this context.

So, what does a publisher do?

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