Weekly Roundup: Microsoft losing touch with gamers

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Download attachment: usedgame.png

Microsoft seemingly squandered its chance to redeem itself at E3, and afterwards they only continued to shove their foot deeper down their own throat.

Will 24 hour check-in render games useless at the end of new generation?

http://kotaku.com/mi...layab-513602148

"No one wants to buy a $60 Xbox One game to discover they just had it for a 10-year rental."

Microsoft dodges the "region free" question.

http://kotaku.com/mi...-free-513494440

"For reference, the PS3 was completely region-free. The PS4 is as well. The PS3 even allowed different international accounts on the one system.The Xbox 360 wasn't locked at the hardware level, but some publishers chose to implement their own region blocks."

Xbox One's reputation system isn't troll proof.

http://kotaku.com/xb...ust-m-513480515

"Each Xbox One game with an online component can include the ability to recognize griefing behaviors and react to them accordingly. Even if no one reports you for flagrant team killing or purposefully driving the wrong way in Forza, the games will know you've been naughty, and you could get dinged for it.There's potential there for hiccups and exploitation, but there's real potential here. It may strip players of their "right" to freely act like an obnoxious asshole online, but I'm willing to take the hit for the good of Xbox Live society."

Microsoft fails to sell possible positives for "Always Online"?

http://kotaku.com/a-...es-fo-513295925

"Those worlds can live on in between game sessions", he adds, drawing a line under games that would make this an extra and those where it's part of the game itself, the world updating every day. "If one player drops out, that world will continue on and can experience the effects of time, like wear from weather damage, so that when a player comes back into the universe it's actually a slightly evolved place in the same way that our real world evolves a little bit from the time we go to sleep to the time we wake up. Game developers have given us incredibly positive feedback on the crazy different ways that they can use this incredible new cloud power resource."

Microsoft tells customers to buy a 360 if they don't want to check in online.

http://kotaku.com/ca...x-360-512742247

"The 360 ecosystem is a great ecosystem for somebody that's in a purely disconnected state for long periods of time. We have built a natively connected device with Xbox One and we think the experiences are moving in that direction."

Click here to view the article

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I don't understand Microsoft's positives for always online.. they basically described MMO games..

 

"If one player drops out, that world will continue on and can experience the effects of time, like wear from weather damage, so that when a player comes back into the universe it's actually a slightly evolved place..."

 

Unless the games are exclusives to Xbox One, all of the games being made will be multi platform and have all the same features.. I don't see why a company would want to put the extra time into an Xbox One game to add more complexity, especially considering many game developers will have their own dedicated servers that handle all their 'shared game states' that have nothing to do with Xbox's cloud servers.. unless MS is going to force game developers to use Xbox One cloud servers for games on their systems, which I highly doubt EA would agree to.

 

http://gizmodo.com/the-good-news-about-xbox-one-that-microsoft-brushed-rig-513494087

 

As an alleged Xbox One engineer said in this email leaked on Pastebin [all sic]
 

 

The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for shit value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.

 

The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)

 

t's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm shit as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted shit.

 

Considering that PS3 and Xbox 360 both already offer DRM digital sales on their existing consoles and neither offer large discount sales like Steam does, I highly doubt Xbox One will have steam like discounted sales. So this argument for always online and DRM to compete with steam makes no damn sense considering they could have already been doing it for years with digital sales.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

From what I remember, I didn't pay $500 to download Steam. Give me an Xbox One for free and maybe I'll accept those terms. They've really got their heads up there ass right now. They'll either learn like Sony did, or end up as relevant as Nintendo.

 

If X1 forces developers to do anything, it will be the equivalent to Sony not working with 3rd parties about the specs of their Cell processor. Making games was such a pain in the ass for PS3 because of this, it really hurt Sony.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Xbox is trying to compete with too many competitors.. they should have focused more on their own product and become more appealing to increase their fan base. I love that MS jumped into the video game market all those years ago, because with Sega gone and Nintendo doing their own family friendly thing, Sony has had only Xbox as competition. But with Xbox potentially going their own direction, Sony could potentially only have PC's to compete against in the future. I blame Microsoft's leadership.. first they screwed up with Windows 8, and now they are screwing Xbox. Even steam has been moving away from windows 8 in favor of linux.. Microsoft is setting itself up for failure in terms of console and PC gaming.

[Myk JL 1,731]

I don't think MS should've even came into the Game Console Market to begin with.

1. Had they stuck to PC we'd all be talking about digital downloads through Games For Windows instead of Steam.
2. Their games prior to the Original Xbox were meant to be played on a console. That basically damaged Age Of Empires & MechWarrior.
3. They're buying Rare from Nintendo has been mostly bad as Rare did better on Nintendo than they have ever done with Xbox.
4. Halo could've been way more awesome if it wasn't bought buy MS & dumbed down for the Xbox. Then again maybe Halo will die off if MS could ever buy CoD Franchise off of Activision.
5. Original ideas like Voodoo Vince get neglected by while such games as LBP with Sackboy by Sony get way more attention.
6. Cult Favorites like Crimson Skies are pushed aside just for not being big enough instead of trying to be improved upon.
7. And the final nail in this coffin for me was the poor transition from The Original Xbox to Xbox 360. Not just in how bad it was to make the games backwards compatible but also how MS created the Xbox 360 chip in controllers. It was done solely to make 3rd party controller manufacturers pay to make controllers for Xbox 360. It also helped prevent the Steel Battalion Controller from ever being able to be used with Xbox 360. So now not only is my copy of SB: Line Of Contact useless unless I find other means to play it online but this chip basically ruined the entire franchise even when they did make a game that tried to use Kinect controls.

Only in a perfect world would MS had never even touched console gaming. Steel Battalion would or could have waited till PS3 or been on PC. And if it was on PC I could only dream of how many more giant robot games we might have had by now. (I also think I remember hearing how MW3&4 somehow used the SB controller.)

 

The only nice thing I have to say about MS consoles right now is I bought a Refurbished 320GBs Gears Of War Xbox 360. So I could get "Free Games" (Currently Fable 3) from Xbox Gold. But even then the other part of that factor is how much Windows 8 sucks. And if anymore Xbox 360 Games were ever available on PC it would be through Windows 8 instead of Windows 7.

 

That & I also bought a preowned copy of Kinectimals With Bears.... I couldn't help it.... I wanted a pet Cheetah. The Kinect was also refurbished.

 

*Edit*

The Jimquisition this week!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7533-PS4-Doing-Nothing-Meaning-Everything?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all

Edited June 17, 2013 by Myk JL

[Kite 3,263]

[Sledgstone 8,672]

That was a good Jimquisition. Pretty accurate too.

 

I've never seen a Steel Battalion controller in person. But from looking at some videos on youtube, it looks like a good accessory. It must make a huge difference in gameplay compared to using a regular controller.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I remember thinking I was the shiznit using a Sidewinder joystick to play mechwarrior 2 back in the day

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Nice. I always liked the logitech joysticks back in the day. I remember owning a decent one, but my computer couldn't play the few games for it worth a crap.