Goodness, way too much to reply to, but I still think most people are both completely missing the point and also totally disregarding history in the process.
The whole "without the online requirement embedded in the console nobody will make us of teh cloud!" argument is stupid.
No, I'm saying now that it's optional it will take far longer to become used to it's potential, just like anything else that's optional. History has shown this many times.
There's already a genre of games that target people with (somewhat) stable online connections, even when the platform doesn't guarantee it. You may have heard of them, from what I gather they sell very well. They're called ONLINE MULTIPLAYER GAMES.
The multiplayer space has moved forward at a glacially slow pace because it's been optional. I guess people are forgetting how primitive it was in the ps2 era. It limped along that entire generation because it was optional, before it finally took off in this generation. That's a really long time! Look at the pc space as well, they had internet available forever yet how many years did it finally take for someone to take a chance on an mmo using that optional internet connection? And that's on heavily connected pc's! Now imaging how that affects consoles.
If the cloud is so amazingly great for gaming, where are the goods? Didn't Microsoft designed the Xbox One to be always online from the beginning? Where are all the amazing features only possible because of the cloud? They don't exist because it's only PR vaporware.
They don't exist because it takes time, c'mon now you know this as I presume you are a coder. New ideas don't get coded overnight, why are suddenly people expecting revolutionary ideas before the damn device is even being sold to the market? It takes years of joint worldwide effort for the killer ideas to hit and it also takes standardized features. Now it will take much longer because it can't always be counted on to be there hence it will be treated like an optional item, just lime multiplayer was treated on the ps2.
The reason for games having to cater for Xboxes without hard-drives is a platform holder choice. It wasn't like devs could plaster that "HD" required sticker on their own will. For BIG games like GTA5, they have to make compromises to their platform guidelines. (even then, GTA doesn't really require a HDD add-on, it will work with 8GB USB flash disks). MS can bend the rules for such games. I think, otherwise, making your game hard-drive only was not something you could really choose on the Xbox platform, but I'd like to be proven false with design documents.
Going hdd only was a sales death wish, there is no way that would be approved by your publisher. Good luck with that. Hdd being optional is why it wasn't made mandatory in games.
Also, you still haven't addressed how this new police reduces the amount of connected devices.
If you can't guarantee it, you can't guarantee being allowed to use it by your dev manager and publisher, simple as that.
There's 0 evidence that making a console not mandatory online will make online only games obsolete
It won't make them obsolete, it just means they will take far longer to become mainstream.
The 24 hour mandatory online check still does not guarantee a uniform user base even for latency insensitive cloud application because:
*It was primarily devised to control second hand market and not guarantee cloud application, blocking you from playing single games.
*It tells you nothing about the quality of connection.
*It tells you nothing about the bandwidth caps.
*It tells you nothing about whether the user has unlimited data plan or limited data plan.
Argh, this is getting a bit frustrating, why can't people see this? You don't need a 1 ms ping 30000mbps connection with 75TB monthly bandwidth to make cloud useful. Even a 24 hour latency and bandwidth limited cell phone connection speed can be incredibly useful if you can guarantee it, because the point is you just have to guarantee internet being there to get everyone coding for it. My goodness, that's the point guys! It's like people have blocked out history here. Make it standard and the worlds brainpower gets behind it, that's when good things happen. Look how long it took the cd drive to become useful in games. For ages it was optional and hence was treated as such, it limped around for countless years before it's potential in games became apparent because it was optional. The same with online, it's been available for what 15 years and yet we're just now getting new match making techniques. Look at multiplayer in detail, it's taken an *eternity* for it to get to where it's at now because being optional means it was still largely treated as such. Yes multiplayer is expected in many games today, but look at what multiplayer support games typically get, it's the same things that have been offered for years. People seem to have revisionist history here, everything that has been optional hasn't necessarily died, but it's taken decades to reach it's potential as they plodded along at the speed of optional.
So taking features that were available for PC online MP shooters and bundling it on a console is innovating?
No, the general state of online now points to why more innovation is needed. Online really hasn't changed much in years, making internet and cloud standard could have helped accelerate progress in that realm.
You can't really believe that. That's driven by market economics and where publishers are willing to invest.
They are willing to invest where they are allowed to. Something being optional generally means they are not allowed to invest there.
...and then you posted this OT complaint about how cloud computing has been killed off because MS backed down from always online
If your internet connection is optional then yes, for this new generation it has been effectively killed off. Has it been killed off long term? No, it's inevitable. But look at multiplayer on ps2 to get a feel of how anything optional gets treated in a generation. Just like the modem peripheral on ps2, or the cd peripheral on the turbo grafx, or whatever other optional items you care to mention, they get support but it will never be supported like it could have been if it was guaranteed to be there.
This isn't some random peripheral we're talking about, the Internet itself is readily available, and can be counted on to be there in very high %'s.
No it can't be counted on being there! It's now officially treated as optional, assuming you've been in the business means you should know exactly how anything optional gets treated. What do you think would happen now if you suggested using cloud on xb1 in a meeting? If you said "internet can be counted on to be there" how do you think others would respond to you? The answer is a resounding "no", it can't be counted on to be there so now you have to fight to support it. You know exactly how that goes, unless you have serious pull at the company you work at or if Microsoft is bankrolling it, then good luck!
It's not analogous to a peripheral, it's not analogous to writing platform specific code. It's a service, that is available today, right now, in massive quanities for low prices. If Dev's need it, if they can justify a real use for it, they can use it.
I completely disagree, it's not the same thing whatsoever. Platform specific code is just that, code written for pieces of hardware unique to a platform that are guaranteed to be there. IF a piece of hardware was optional to a platform, like the hdd on the 360 or the ram expansion unit on the Nintendo 64, then it largely gets ignored.
The future is not hostile to the user, it does not assume the user is a thief.
This is the fundamental problem with most people, they think always connected always implies they are a thief. It's also why things get held back for so many years as we wait for old limits to die off and new more accepting users to come into the fold.
As for everyone else, it will take too long to reply but I'll just repeat my main point here. No, cloud hasn't been killed, I still think it's inevitable. It has just been slowed to a crawl by denying mass developer acceptance. Sorry but this has been proved time and time and time again over the years with cd drives, gpu's, multiplayer, etc. No those things didn't die off but they took decades to become what they became rather than what they could have been in a far less time if they were accepted as standard. Optional == delayed, simple as that.
