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

Thinking about this logically there is no way they can do what the rumour suggests. The second live goes down the entire user base will have consoles that dont work that is just a giant lawsuit waiting to happen surely?

Wasn't live down for a couple of weeks at one point?

Surely any judge in the land would side with the consumer in this case as it's completely unnecessary to check the game every single time it's loaded. Initially yes, check and register online then surely after that a simple media check would suffice. Yes this is the media I was installed from I will play sort of thing.
 
The arguments are poor.

If a vacuum cleaner that was much the same as another but didn't require electricity was available you would buy that instead.

You would buy the mobile that had the same features but didn't require a network provider.

The biggest problem for MS if they go this route is that they will be the only ones doing it. If all consoles were people would complain still but would live with it as they would have no choice, but in this case they have other options.

If having the console requiring an internet connection to start games and apps brought with it some compelling functionality then it could offset some of the negativity, but we havent seen anything to suggest it will so far.

Its at the point now that im thinking they really must have something special up their selves that we are all missing.

-tkf- said:
There is no need for this with consoles or a pc. Imagine mircrosoft going through a Sony disaster where no one can use their console for 24 days!
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I suspect Xbox Live will become a prime target for hackers if they go with always online DRM.
 
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I assume gold or premium service paying members might see this 3 min pingback turned off or time interval greatly increased. So that leads to the question of is it mostly just for a DRM check or is it to ensure some base level of connected experience for some if not all games?

Edit: Whatever the reason for them to consider implementing it must be worth it to them revenue wise at the cost of annoying or losing users who can't or don't want to be connected all the time, at least reliably. And that's probably from increased worth of ad dollars gotten from being able to acquire more detailed info from a user of a persistent connection.
 
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Durango - the always online ad delivery platform!

What's the betting that some of the memory in that always resident 3GB (or whatever) OS partition is used to stuff adverts into your face whenever you seamlessly bring up the dashboard apps mid game? Every tab on the new Xbox 360 dash has something like 7 adverts shown simultaneously, with a bare minimum of screen area used for stuff you already own or platform features you want to access. MS has been butthurt ever since Google showed them how pro-grade advert force feeding was done and MS want to counterattack.

And I guess Kinect 2 will help them target their never ending stream of ads based on number of people, age, and possibly keywords that the mic pics up (assuming you've ticked the relevant "help MS improve services" privacy box).
 
I try to give every company the benefit of the doubt since they all generally are able to provide me with experiences that I enjoy. However if this type of attitude reflects the mindset of the rest of the people working on the xbox, well they can count me out on a sale if they think they can force online as a requirement.

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-There are vaccuum cleaners that work on batteries.

-I wouldn't sign up with a phone carrier that has a poor connection.

You see there are options for both of these poor examples he tries to use, just like there are other options for video game consoles like the PS4 or PC.

Also that "Why on earth would I live there?" comment just really bothers me even though I live in a big city. That's arrogance at it's worst and not the way you should be talking to your potential consumer-base.

Last, yes, that Kaz account is a fake joke account. :p
 
Watching movies dont fundamentally require internet connection, but streaming only services do require such connection. Why do people choose a streaming only service? Because the value they get in return.

The question becomes what does MS offer consumers in return for going "always required"?

Unless MS is totally naive, they were bound to know that "always on" in and of itself would cause a major backlash with the possibility of crippling their platform. Gamers' great resentment to all things DRM that inhibits their experience is well known and well documented. So what is MS going to offer to make "always required" easier to swallow? I am pretty sure that those opposed to this feature might not be under certain circumstances.

For example what if MS has turned to a subscription model thats basically the equivalent of a cable service in exchange for "always on"? Games initially released as retail-only but after sales fall off then going to library available to all subscribers who pay $15-$20 a month. For the cost of 20 games purchased over a life of a console you get access to 400-800 titles.
 
Honestly, in the last 14 years of broadband service I've had maybe 5 - 10 total days of downtime because of serious weather incidents or ISP problems. Do many people experience frequent loss of access? If you look at the explosion of tablets in North America, and other countries, that tells you how many people have wifi at home. A LOT. My only worry is how sensitive their online requirement would be to small hiccups in service because of ISP or wifi connectivity. The people who are complaining that they have "offline" consoles in their house most likely have wifi in their home that they could connect to. Since they were going to use it "offline" anyway, there is little reason for them to be picky about the quality of the wifi connection. Always online is probably there to kill piracy as much or more than any other justification. Piracy using offline consoles was a lot more common on the 360 than PS3.

Edit: I guess what I don't understand is the "outrage" some people are experiencing. If you live in a place where you have spotty Internet, don't buy one. It's as simple as that. Why be upset about something you don't own, or plan on owning, especially when you don't even know what that product is or does yet?
 
Scott_Arm said:
Edit: I guess what I don't understand is the "outrage" some people are experiencing. If you live in a place where you have spotty Internet, don't buy one. It's as simple as that. Why be upset about something you don't own, or plan on owning, especially when you don't even know what that product is or does yet?
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To that end, for all intents and purposes, home computers are 'always online' aren't they? If you look at the data Microsoft is pulling from to determine the feasibility, im certain they are using Windows 7/8 and the activation requirements as a guide line of 'always on' broadband penetration.

And you're right, we don't know this works, "spotty internet" may be more than enough for the unit to phone home and validate an account or a serial number burned on a disc.

The only real use case i see as a problem for me is losing internet during a hurricane or blizzard (which we have a had a few in the northeast US) and i lose internet, am stuck in the house, and cant use my xbox for playing games.

EDIT: Actually, i could even use my smartphone hotspot just to get me online and talk to the mothership, so even thats not an issue but I'm sure a lot of people don't have that fallback plan.
 
I get disconnections from Xbox Live even in ideal circumstances when my broadband has been up for weeks. And it's not just my 360 - sometimes my Windows phone can't connect to Xbox Live either.

My Internet has in the past had sketchy periods of limited download and frequent disconnects. Total down time was low (normally only a few minutes or less at a time) but it screwed royally with online services like, er, Xbox Live.

There are also events like the one where my internet was fine and dandy but the Steam client couldn't connect to the Steam servers. Because it detected working internet it had tried to authenticate, but it hadn't been able to complete the job and so it locked me out of all my games. But because it had tried to authenticate I could no longer switch to offline mode - even with restarts of the client and even rebooting. No PC gaming for me that day.

Then on top of all that there are other cases, like when a game comes out and demand causes everything to fail. Like the days I couldn't connect to the Halo 4 matchmaking servers because load was too high, or when no-one could play Sim City because EA.

If Durango is "always online" it's quite possibly because MS want to sell adverts.
Hey you just got a message! AND AN ADVERT.
Hey, your friend wants to Skype you ***DATE HOT GERMAN MOMS NOW!!!***

Dat third display pane gotta pay for itself.
 
expletive said:
The only real use case i see as a problem for me is losing internet during a hurricane or blizzard (which we have a had a few in the northeast US) and i lose internet, am stuck in the house, and cant use my xbox for playing games.
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have you had cases of a blizzard knocking out your Internet but not your electricity? I haven't. In fact for me it's the opposite, we had a blizzard knock out our electricity and almost everyone else's, but the Internet was still up. (My modem and router are on a UPS). My Internet has been down less than a full day in 13 years. Now, admittedly, I'm in a high availability area, but I suspect Microsoft is banking on telecom advances putting everyone in a high availability area in the next few years, just like Sony was banking on DVD becoming big when it planned the PS2, and on blu-ray winning when it planned the PS3.

Last I looked there's something like 90 million households in the US alone with always-on broadband. That's a pretty big addressable market, over 80% of the households in the country.
 
My ISP is down at least one a month for some length of time, my cable TV maybe twice in the last 20 years (same source as my internet). Power is about as stable as cable for me.
 
I guess always online would mean they could offload the voice processing for Kinect input to the cloud - save on hardware and OS updates for the system, improve accuracy and allow them to gather huge amounts of data for building better voice libraries (and adverts).
 
bkilian said:
Last I looked there's something like 90 million households in the US alone with always-on broadband. That's a pretty big addressable market, over 80% of the households in the country.
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I think the issue is not necessarely is the internet available - I think the general concern is rather is the connection between your Xbox (sitting behind your LAN) and the Xbox-Live server available?

There are many many many reasons why it might not be always. Packet loss, overloaded router and/or internet-connection, ISP issues, Xbox-Live down etc.

If this happens now days, people can still play their games offline. In fact, that's what I've been doing when wanting to play online with my mates and due to maintenance I couldn't. Doesn't quite work like that, if rumours are to be believed that you will not be able to continue even playing like that over an extended time period.

We've come to expect working internet connections yes - but every once in a while when it all hits us that the internet connection may not work for some reason - it's nice to be still be able to use your devices. Imagine a world so reliant on working internet that when one day your modem or router does break, you can't even watch a fricking DVD because your *super always-on futuristic dvd-player* will say "sorry, no internet - please try again later or contact your network administrator". :LOL:
 
function said:
I guess always online would mean they could offload the voice processing for Kinect input to the cloud - save on hardware and OS updates for the system, improve accuracy and allow them to gather huge amounts of data for building better voice libraries (and adverts).
Click to expand...

Isn't that a bit stupid to do.
People wanted faster response times with kinect why would travel back and forth over the internet. But then again it is voice command.
After getting burned by diablo3.
EA saying this will not happen to us we will have enough servers.
Then simcity 5 happened got burned even worse then with diablo3.

My experience with always online is a bit biased against it.
 
bkilian said:
have you had cases of a blizzard knocking out your Internet but not your electricity? I haven't. In fact for me it's the opposite, we had a blizzard knock out our electricity and almost everyone else's, but the Internet was still up. (My modem and router are on a UPS). My Internet has been down less than a full day in 13 years. Now, admittedly, I'm in a high availability area, but I suspect Microsoft is banking on telecom advances putting everyone in a high availability area in the next few years, just like Sony was banking on DVD becoming big when it planned the PS2, and on blu-ray winning when it planned the PS3.

Last I looked there's something like 90 million households in the US alone with always-on broadband. That's a pretty big addressable market, over 80% of the households in the country.
Click to expand...

Ive definitely been in the house with power and no internet, I'm not sure if i am the rule or the exception in that case but i think it has something to do with the route the two utilities take to my house (i.e. power lines are mostly underground whereas the Fibre has some areas outside of my neighborhood that are still above ground and susceptible).

I am making a similar point though, MS knows very well based on its experience with connected home computers that "always on" will not limit their footprint in a meaningful way this generation.

In reality, is the $399 console customer really not going to have internet of any sort though? I have to assume always-on has nothing to do with distribution so they wouldn't need to have 30/15 internet, there is no indication that this is a distribution requirement (e.g. STEAM), just an authorization one.


dobwal said:
The question becomes what does MS offer consumers in return for going "always required"?
Click to expand...

Is there a 'cost' for users have an always on internet connection that requires a reciprocation?

When i got broadband for my computer at home (many years ago), it was great, no logging in, chat programs connected automatically and stayed connected, people could message me when i wasn't there, i could download things and walk away without worrying if the dial up connection would drop etc. I imagine that it will be similarly convenient with the xbox. Plugging it in to broadband doesn't cost me anything extra, why should i need anything more than the awesomeness of an always on console? :)
 
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Some of these posts are truly fascinating. Is internet really that primitive and unreliable where y'all live? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this given that I've had always on broadband internet since 1996 in the USA where internet is supposedly more primitive compared to other parts of the world. Yet here we are in 2013 and apparently no one except me seems to have a reliable internet connection. I swear I thought it was just third world places that were still stuck in that predicament, but yikes I guess not. Learn something new everyday.
 
Phil said:
I think the issue is not necessarely is the internet available - I think the general concern is rather is the connection between your Xbox (sitting behind your LAN) and the Xbox-Live server available?

There are many many many reasons why it might not be always. Packet loss, overloaded router and/or internet-connection, ISP issues, Xbox-Live down etc.

If this happens now days, people can still play their games offline. In fact, that's what I've been doing when wanting to play online with my mates and due to maintenance I couldn't. Doesn't quite work like that, if rumours are to be believed that you will not be able to continue even playing like that over an extended time period.

We've come to expect working internet connections yes - but every once in a while when it all hits us that the internet connection may not work for some reason - it's nice to be still be able to use your devices. Imagine a world so reliant on working internet that when one day your modem or router does break, you can't even watch a fricking DVD because your *super always-on futuristic dvd-player* will say "sorry, no internet - please try again later or contact your network administrator". :LOL:
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Its not necessarily my connection to the internet that worries me, its my connection to the XBL servers. By implementing this kind of DRM, MS will instantly make XBL a major target for hacktivists. There are jerks out there that will do everything they can to take XBL down just for kicks.

OTOH, there will still be mods and custom firmware that will find a way to get around "always online" DRM. It wont stop piracy. It will just inconvenience legit users, as DRM always seems to do.
 
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