Slashdot Mirror
Xbox One Launch Woes Were Preventable, Next Console Likely Digital Download Only
MojoKid writes: Microsoft's Xbox One launch didn't go off exactly as planned in late 2013. Before the console's release, the company was dogged over DRM restrictions with the console and concerns over its high price tag compared to its counterpart, the Sony PlayStation 4. Microsoft would attribute the higher price tag to the included Kinect camera — a peripheral that many gamers didn't particularly care for. Former Xbox Chief Robbie Bach offered his two cents recently on the Xbox One — a console that launched years after he announced he retired from the company in 2010. Bach noted, regarding the Xbox One's rocky launch, "...gosh, I think some of that was predictable and preventable." As for the future of physical game media, Bach doesn't think that the future will be so bright when it comes to DRM and always-connected requirements in the next generation of gaming consoles. He said that the next Xbox would "probably not" have physical media to speak of, with consoles adopting digital-only distribution.
So long as they offer an experience comparable to Steam, including weekly sales and the deeper discounts around Summer/Winter. I've got no issues with always-on, since I'm always connected anyway. Just give users a sane amount of offline time and it's all good.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
To them the "woes" were the customer revolt that forced them to backpedal on always-on connectivity, the invasive 24/7 HD spy camera and microphone, and disabling of second-hand games. And they think "preventing" that is merely a matter of tightening the lockdown.
you get a disc that tells it to download a 20gb "update" that is actually the whole freaking game.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And how will you play Borderlands 2 after a meteor destroys all life on Earth?
You didn't think of that, did you? BOOM!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Get a replacement at GOG.com for a cheaper price than Steam and without any DRM.
I honestly don't care what the medium actually is, I want media. I don't want a company to be able to take away titles that I've bought because they screwed up somehow. Same reason why I have not yet subscribed to a paid movie service, I want to be able to watch the movies that I have access to forever, not simply for the time that a particular service temporarily has rights. I want to have access to a permanent library, not something temporary and based on shifting license agreements and shifting tastes coupled with limited storage.
The real example was, ironically enough, 1984 that was yanked from networked ebook readers of a certain variety when there was a dispute. Sorry, I'm not going to have that happen to my movies, my books, my games.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I have personally tried to restore Steam backups, so I know the drill. You cannot play the backups without being online. And last time I checked, the Steam installer would refuse to install if it was old, and the download for the new one still won't resume. You either get the file all at once, or not at all.
It's really pathetic that someone is actually shilling for Valve here on Slashdot by modding down my factual comments. It's sad if they pay for it, and it's even sadder if they don't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've got an XBox One and currently a really shit internet connection (digital nomad in Spain sharing wifi across 3 different flats).
When the internet goes dodgy and the XBox One loses access, I can't save my game and the games start missing features.
Sure my predicament is a bit odd, but I can't be the only person with flakey Internet. Not being able to save a single player game just because you aren't online is a bit off imo.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I think letting him off by saying it's just because he was leaving understates the issue. Let's be clear, Don Mattrick was an anti-consumer arsehole who simply had no idea what he was doing.
Since he left Microsoft's Xbox division has done a complete u-turn, they're actually incredibly responsive to user demands now, and seem genuinely sensitive to gamers concerns going so far as to ditch their previous pet project Kinect from the majority of console bundles a while ago and providing dashboard changes and functionality people actually asked for, usually within short order.
I suspect the reason Mattrick was looking for a new job in the first place was because no one else at Microsoft liked or trusted him either, it's pretty obvious the whole culture at the Xbox division changed when he fucked off, and that couldn't happen if many other people there agreed with his direction, the fact the change happened so quickly and was night and day suggests he was using his position of authority to make a lot of staff implement a lot of things they didn't actually want to implement.
The problem is that the damage Mattrick did is lasting, people still parrot a lot of myths about the X1 based on things that were, once, in the product development plan under Mattrick but ditched even before the console was released and thankfully never came to fruition (e.g. you could always disable the Kinect camera and unplug it and stuff worked fine, right from day 1). Similarly console sales have really struggled to recover because of this early damage and it's still lagging against the PS4.
I think it's safe to say that Mattrick is the biggest failure in the world of gaming in the last decade. He's the Stephen Elop of the video game world. He should probably be relegated to something like sweeping the streets with a brush or something where he can't do as much financial damage as he did to the X1 programme.