*spin-off* Always on/connected... stuff

I'd be willing to bet that the number of hacked 360s for pirated games is in the millions.

I don't doubt it. Problem being that DRM doesn't create money for these people or necessarily positively impact sales. I know guys with thousands of pirated games, but it's not like they ever play them all and they certainly would never buy them just because that avenue became unavailable.
 
I don't doubt it. Problem being that DRM doesn't create money for these people or necessarily positively impact sales. I know guys with thousands of pirated games, but it's not like they ever play them all and they certainly would never buy them just because that avenue became unavailable.

I agree that there's probably only be fraction of pirated games that could have been sold if they couldn't have been pirated. But if that fraction adds up to a hundred thousand copies of a title, out of a million pirated copies, that's still a lot of money for a publisher/dev. Multiply that by the number of titles a publisher/dev will release over the course of year and it could be the difference between staying affloat/employed and shutting your doors.
 
This all just noise now, theres no real understanding of the use case that may or may not reduce functionality. In my view, an always on machine can only be a plus. If you have no internet, or XBL servers are down, we're only guessing that you wont be able to play games.

True, but if what is being described comes to fruition and an competitor offers an alternative product that provides a comparable experience. Why choose a loss in functionality when doing so doesn't offer you anything in return. Everything else being equal.
 
True, but if what is being described comes to fruition and an competitor offers an alternative product that provides a comparable experience. Why choose a loss in functionality when doing so doesn't offer you anything in return, everything else being equal.

Then people will spawn a new thread and storm the castle. Not necessarily in that order. :)
 
I don't see parallel between increased profits and game budgets/quality.

Why not. Its not absolute. But high quality full retail titles aren't made for pennies. Games like GT and GTA development budget are driven by their profits.
 
Your Internet was down for a few hours in an entire year? How did you survive?
First world problem sarcasm detected. Yeah, internet access going out a few hours per year isn't much of an issue - if it indeed is just a few hours per year and not a few hours per week - or even day.

Even so, there's no good, credible reason to foist always-online on everyone. It's of no benefit to any customer, and especially not to those with unreliable connections.
 
Your Internet was down for a few hours in an entire year? How did you survive? There may be support programs you can attend to help you get through whatever post-traumatic stress you may be experiencing.

I survived because my consoles don't have online DRM...isn't that clear??

Scares you to death?

To be honest: people defending such things..really scare me. You scare me, trying to argue in disguise that it is good having online DRM. Joker scares me...I rather take the 50 million dollar game than a 70 million dollar game with online DRM!
 
Then people will spawn a new thread and storm the castle. Not necessarily in that order. :)

LOL.

Me personally I couldn't care less since I am a multiple console user. It has its perk like no need for Xbox Live. I'll just add "no need to worry about loss of internet connection" to my perk list and keep it moving.
 
When has DRM ever been of benefit to the quality of games in the past, why should we expect it would be so in the future?

My experiences with DRM are that it has always been a way to punish honest paying customers. If developers and publishers want to change that perception they have a shit load of work to do.


it really points to less game used game sales, more new game sales, more revenue for pubs and maybe make a profit instead of gambling on folding for some devs. So more income for their work could/should mean better games, less stress of utter failure due to not reaping all of the potential sales poached by used.


Also I think this is less MS/anti-consumer and more publisher driven. Pubs can and will choose to make there games online only on PS4 if they se it working for them..

MS would not do this unless they have plans in place and a reason behind it and I wager it's what the industry wants... there may be other reasons related to being used as Set top box or Kinect related or cloud processing etc but we won't know until they tell us. ;)
 
Honestly, in the five years or so that I've had xbox, I have not seen frequent or lengthy downtime on Xbox Live. I think most years I have not seen any downtime at all, unless it was a problem with my home network (switching ISPs, new router config, new modem config etc). Maybe that is regional, and Xbox Live in Canada is vastly better than in other parts of the world, but I doubt it. My guess is that Xbox Live sees downtime in the range of a few hours in an entire year.

"Honestly" i can recall at least 3 times where the son wanted to play minecraft and the usual sign of no Live was there. And he doesn't play everyday, every week and in no way as often as usual players do.

Maybe it's because we are up while the US is sleeping and they do their maintenance there. From what i have seen (except the epic 24 days) PSN is more stable than Live, my stats are useless i know.

I look forward to those planned downtimes that take 24 hours :)

But like the others i fail to see why anyone would actually think this is a good idea, the IQ of gamers fell sharply during this generation?

"I SUPPORT THIS THOUGH IT'S MAKES THE PRODUCT WORSE"
 
I can not recall the last time Live was down for me... years... and my internet either... knocks wood


for some people it could be as simple as their router settings for live. When I can get on the internet but not live I just reboot my router and back on
 
I can not recall the last time Live was down for me... years... and my internet either... knocks wood


for some people it could be as simple as their router settings for live. When I can get on the internet but not live I just reboot my router and back on

Then you don't play enough :)
 
Now let us move onto the other issue concerning always online DRM:

What benefit does the consumer see?

^^this one stumps me because i cannot think of a single thing that would negate the pitfalls of an always online DRM.
Playing the game without the disc in the drive. If the amount of whining we see every time a 2 or more disc game gets released is any indication, this is a _huge_ benefit. Heck, as I recall, there was months of whining because you couldn't eject the disc tray remotely.

But let's get serious here for a second. They don't need always-online for DRM. The Steam model uses online activation, and doesn't require always online. So let's get it straight: always-online is not a DRM thing. You can lock down piracy perfectly well with one-time codes and online activation, which only requires a connection the first time you start a game. In fact, that would even work for not requiring the disc in the drive.

Always online is a feature that developers can rely on being there, something they cannot do with a current console, or even PC. Like the hard drive in the PS3, or analog triggers on the controller. Requiring always-online is telling the developer: "Don't be afraid to incorporate features that rely on an internet connection, we will guarantee it is there". Things like a RTS game that uses google maps as it's terrain engine, or persistent online worlds, or integrating an ARG into the gameplay. Consider Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs with a modification of the game phoning your actual phone and interacting with you as if you're in the game world.

It's the next logical step in gaming. We can quibble about whether now is too soon, but it's going to happen regardless, if not this coming generation, the next one.
 
Online requirement as a benefit towards gameplay could always be done on a title by title basis though, and clearly marked as such on the game case or description in the store.

Until the rumors are cleared up as to why exactly this 3 min interval check is needed it's a free for all of speculation and backlash.
 
Always online is a feature that developers can rely on being there, something they cannot do with a current console, or even PC. Like the hard drive in the PS3, or analog triggers on the controller. Requiring always-online is telling the developer: "Don't be afraid to incorporate features that rely on an internet connection, we will guarantee it is there". Things like a RTS game that uses google maps as it's terrain engine, or persistent online worlds, or integrating an ARG into the gameplay. Consider Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs with a modification of the game phoning your actual phone and interacting with you as if you're in the game world.

Developers can adverting you on the box, "you need an internet connection". I think it's not a need to make it a system option.
 
"Honestly" i can recall at least 3 times where the son wanted to play minecraft and the usual sign of no Live was there. And he doesn't play everyday, every week and in no way as often as usual players do.

Maybe it's because we are up while the US is sleeping and they do their maintenance there. From what i have seen (except the epic 24 days) PSN is more stable than Live, my stats are useless i know.

I look forward to those planned downtimes that take 24 hours :)

But like the others i fail to see why anyone would actually think this is a good idea, the IQ of gamers fell sharply during this generation?

"I SUPPORT THIS THOUGH IT'S MAKES THE PRODUCT WORSE"

What country are you in? My xbox automatically signs into live when I turn it on, and though my use has fallen off in the last six months I was a very heavy daily user for the most part and never once saw a full 24 hours of downtime. This could be a regional issue, but I'm more inclined to believe that Xbox live "drops" are usually on the LAN side, rather than on the provider side, at least in North America.
 
True, but if what is being described comes to fruition and an competitor offers an alternative product that provides a comparable experience. Why choose a loss in functionality when doing so doesn't offer you anything in return. Everything else being equal.

Who cares? Do you have a vested interest in whether Microsoft is selling consoles to people who do not have Internet service?

If you don't like it, you buy something else. If you feel the benefits outweigh the limitations, then buy it. There's so much anger directed towards a product that's unannounced, not for sale and you do not have to buy.

This whole thread can be summed up as, "If you don't like it, don't buy it. Microsoft seems perfectly confident that they can sell it to someone else."
 
What country are you in? My xbox automatically signs into live when I turn it on, and though my use has fallen off in the last six months I was a very heavy daily user for the most part and never once saw a full 24 hours of downtime. This could be a regional issue, but I'm more inclined to believe that Xbox live "drops" are usually on the LAN side, rather than on the provider side, at least in North America.

I just read about 24 hour maintenance i never actually experienced it myself since i hardly play it i guess it's usually when they do there big upgrades? It seems so after looking at google.
 
Playing the game without the disc in the drive. If the amount of whining we see every time a 2 or more disc game gets released is any indication, this is a _huge_ benefit. Heck, as I recall, there was months of whining because you couldn't eject the disc tray remotely.

Amazingly how that is going to be solved now that installs are likely to be freely sized and doesn't have to be artificially limited to support the DVD is enough notion.

But let's get serious here for a second. They don't need always-online for DRM. The Steam model uses online activation, and doesn't require always online. So let's get it straight: always-online is not a DRM thing. You can lock down piracy perfectly well with one-time codes and online activation, which only requires a connection the first time you start a game. In fact, that would even work for not requiring the disc in the drive.
You actually just need Sony's protection with the proper salt to generate keys :)

Always online is a feature that developers can rely on being there, something they cannot do with a current console, or even PC. Like the hard drive in the PS3, or analog triggers on the controller. Requiring always-online is telling the developer: "Don't be afraid to incorporate features that rely on an internet connection, we will guarantee it is there". Things like a RTS game that uses google maps as it's terrain engine, or persistent online worlds, or integrating an ARG into the gameplay. Consider Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs with a modification of the game phoning your actual phone and interacting with you as if you're in the game world.
It's the next logical step in gaming. We can quibble about whether now is too soon, but it's going to happen regardless, if not this coming generation, the next one.

Nothing is stopping the developers from creating always on games if their game requires it by design, but they should stay away from anything else. So far not a single good reason for having every game relying on always on.
 
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