Has consumer pressure ruined gaming for the next decade? *spawn

[zupallinere]

Because we are all of us crazed console warriors right?

I'd just like to see all of the ideas already mentioned, implemented and expanded upon in lots games. Cloud compute is an extra ingredient.

Certainly not crazed

Well "next generation stalled" isn't the same thing as "extra ingredient". I would like to see all of this as well but I still think it is going to happen unlike others who see very little to no hope. For all of the Infinite Power and Boundless Horizon talk there seems to be lots of narrow thinking when it comes to the future influence of the cloud infrastructure on games because of one change in MS minimum requirements.

I restate the fact that the Internet is not the Kinect 1 or a PS EYE or a Wii Fit board. People are going to continue to use it all the time. Tons more money is going to be made because of it. Lots of Cloudiness on the horizon I promise.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

No actually the previous policy didn't guarantee that everyone had internet. It only guaranteed that the console was connected once every 24 hours.
What did that guarantee developers seeking to use cloud? In theory what could be achieved with a console connected for a few seconds once a day? Not much I imagine.
Thats is why this was always going to be viable or not independent of MS basic requirement.

Incorrect, it guaranteed developers that Xbox One users would have a 1.5 Mbps connection 99% of the time. As it required a 1.5 Mbps connection.

The 24 hour check was to allow for that 1% of the time that someone might not be able to connect for some amount of time.

In other words, 1.5 Mbps online connection required. But we're not going to be dicks about it and not allow you to play a game which can gracefully handle being offline if your internet service is interrupted for any reasons. But we're also not going to be naïve and believe that there isn't some amount of people that won't attempt to use this to abuse the no-disc required to run games policy.

Also remember that some of the Xbox/Microsoft management team were pushing for as little as only 5 minutes of tolerance for a console being offline.

Basically, except for very rare instances where someone's internet connection is interrupted, Xbox One users were expected to have their consoles always connected to an online connection capable of 1.5 Mbps.

That 1.5 Mbps connection is what MS was then guaranteeing to publishers that Xbox One users would have available and thus they could safely code their games to use offline compute that required that much data transfer and be at fairly certain that anyone with an Xbox One would then be able to run their game.

That is now no longer the case as online is option and hence there is no minimum online connection speed required for the Xbox One.

And thus with it being option and no minimum speed guaranteed, adoption of online compute will be hampered.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Cloud is MMO for my single player game. And since I've played MMOs few years in real time in past 16 years, I don't need it. I'm glad that it at least somewhat failed to catch on.

I don't care how many mobs cloud/MMO can track at the same time. I don't care how many other players appear on my screen. I don't care about billions of items in auction house. For me everything like that just means more lag, rubberbanding, server sync issues, duping, glitches, dropping thru game world, warping thru walls, dropping from edges... Single player games are already buggy enough, I certainly don't need extra layer crap from server side.

If MMO like features was all Microsoft intended for cloud compute, then 1.5 Mbps wouldn't have been the minimum required for Xbox One's online connectivity. As I mentioned in almost anything other than raid situations, a 56 Kbps analog modem (likely connecting at anywhere from 28.8 Kbps to the 50 Kbps) can handle pretty much any MMO in existence.

That is a very paltry amount of data exchange between console and compute servers. If that was all that was intended they could have only required a 512 Kbps connection and still had way more than enough bandwidth for Xbox One gaming duties.

1.5 Mbps as a minimum means there is the capability for compute beyond what an MMO does.

Regards,
SB

 

[zupallinere]

Incorrect, it guaranteed developers that Xbox One users would have a 1.5 Mbps connection 99% of the time. As it required a 1.5 Mbps connection.

So how exactly does MS guarantee a 1.5 mbit connection ? Is it because they have statistics saying that 99% of internet connections are a minimum of 1.5 mbits or that the xbox 1 will not 'run' on a connection that is sub 1.5 mbits ?

 

[hesido]

So how exactly does MS guarantee a 1.5 mbit connection ? Is it because they have statistics saying that 99% of internet connections are a minimum of 1.5 mbits or that the xbox 1 will not 'run' on a connection that is sub 1.5 mbits ?

"Signing out of Xbox Live. Your bandwidth benchmark: 1 Mbits connection. Required: 1.5 Mbits. Please stop all downloads on the network".

"Unable to launch Castle Crashers 2: This title doesn't require cloud but your connection seems too slow for us to let you play your games, because we have to make sure devs can do wonderful things. Wave to re-start benchmark."

BTW, Xbox didn't require 1.5Mbits, that was the minimum recommended speed to optimally utilize the Cloud. It didn't guarantee anything.

"For an optimal experience, we recommend a broadband connection of 1.5Mbps. (For reference, the average global internet connection speed as measured recently by Akamai was 2.9 Mbps). In areas where an Ethernet connection is not available, you can connect using mobile broadband."

The mobile broadband sure does guarantee 1.5Mbps? I'm guessing if a place has not land-line broadband, it won't support 3G / 4G.

 

[temesgen]

"optional" was a failure only when the userbase was fragmented just as in the case of peripherals. Now its not. If it has to be forced to the gaming community to use it and call it "progress", then sir there is something wrong with the way you perceive "progress". If the developer isnt self-motivated to use it thats because they see no real benefits to add it unless by exception. If it opens the door of the potential they were seeking for they will use it. If its such an awesome progress like you claim they will use the cloud almost as a standard even if its optional.
You are self-convinced its a feature that needs to be standard and you want it FORCED. If its FORCED to the developer to be implemented dont expect the developer to start inventing meaningful ways to use it just because. The game could make online checks and do nothing meaningful in the cloud.

Forcing it is not progress. Increasing its adoption in time is real progress as the market and technology advances. As most people have internet, people will have the chance to try cloud based games and their adoption will increase in time.

In addition you are delusional if you think "an always online" console would have motivated every developer to also use the cloud creatively. Just as the example above, if the developer isnt self motivated to use cloud he would make a game that doesnt even use it meaningfully except by exception regardless if its "always online" or not. Because just as it has been many times proven to you, its applications are either limited or doesnt always provide meaningful advancements in gameplay and not all developers are trying to shove cloud based augmentations when the game they want to make doesnt need it.

I'm not seeing any arguments in this thread which convince me this needs to be mandated. I'd like someone to explain how the cloud is any different for example than making a online MP game in the sense that MP in an of itself didn't have to be forced onto all console owners. Some of the biggest games and most compelling IPs in the past decade are based around online MP and the marketplace has done a good enough job making the case for online multiplayer.

 

[hesido]

I'm not seeing any arguments in this thread which convince me this needs to be mandated. I'd like someone to explain how the cloud is any different for example than making a online MP game in the sense that MP in an of itself didn't have to be forced onto all console owners. Some of the biggest games and most compelling IPs in the past decade are based around online MP and the marketplace has done a good enough job making the case for online multiplayer.

I don't think anybody in their right mind could claim Xbox would sell MORE with those restrictions, so I am guessing, they believe having 30 million guaranteed to be online consoles is better than, say, 40 million online consoles and 10 million offline consoles, because they think devs would want to ALSO cater for that extra 10 million, making the cloud obsolete. And for that, they are not angry at the devs for not being brave(?) enough (I should remind everyone wants COD sales, whose community is mainly about multiplayer, so I don't believe for a second the not-mandatory nature of consoles should affect any decision that requires online, and you don't even have to be brave to go cloud just because you are not sure everyone is connected), but they are angry about users who want an option to also be offline, all of whom are aware that they cannot play a multiplayer only game if they choose to go offline.

They conveniently omit or assume some things:
*PS4 was not a mandatory online console to begin with. Devs would have to have a fallback for PS4 anyway, according to them, because they couldn't guarantee every PS4 would be connected. So why be angry at consumers wanting a similar environment to PS4's?
*Single player games would probably need some fallback mode anyway, so why not enhance the game for those with connections, and use the fallback mode for the offline consoles?
*Requiring internet for your game is not a bold decision anymore. Giving your platform and offline path as an option is not as detrimental as they'd like use to believe. And I still dare say, devs will have MORE people to sell their internet only game. So if you'll be angry for lack of cloud innovation, you have no one but the devs to be angry at, not the consumers who wanted an option.
*They also assume just because everyone is connected, there is going to be innovations on the cloud, and just because everyone isn't connected, there's not going to be any innovations, or that those innovations are going to be considerably later than in a scenario where everone is connected, late enough to be angry at consumers who wanted the offline option.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

They conveniently omit or assume some things:
*PS4 was not a mandatory online console to begin with. Devs would have to have a fallback for PS4 anyway, according to them, because they couldn't guarantee every PS4 would be connected. So why be angry at consumers wanting a similar environment to PS4's?
*Single player games would probably need some fallback mode anyway, so why not enhance the game for those with connections, and use the fallback mode for the offline consoles?
*Requiring internet for your game is not a bold decision anymore. Giving your platform and offline path as an option is not as detrimental as they'd like use to believe. And I still dare say, devs will have MORE people to sell their internet only game. So if you'll be angry for lack of cloud innovation, you have no one but the devs to be angry at, not the consumers who wanted an option.
*They also assume just because everyone is connected, there is going to be innovations on the cloud, and just because everyone isn't connected, there's not going to be any innovations, or that those innovations are going to be considerably later than in a scenario where everone is connected, late enough to be angry at consumers who wanted the offline option.

There's also nothing to say that they wouldn't have just made their game exclusive to Xbox One until such time as they determined there were enough people with PS4 broadband connections of 1.5 Mbps or higher that were always connected to support porting their game to PS4. According to Titanfall developers the main reason Titanfall is exclusive to Xbox One was because Microsoft made cloud compute accessible (and cheap) for them. Without that, I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that Titanfall would have been multiplatform at launch.

I wouldn't be surprised if EA are now wondering if that was a wise investment now that it isn't guaranteed that all Xbox Ones will be always connected.

Regards,
SB

 

[hesido]

I wouldn't be surprised if EA are now wondering if that was a wise investment now that it isn't guaranteed that all Xbox Ones will be always connected.

EA should be more worried about XBox sales as general, and the damage that has been done by Microsoft for not communicating their message and vision, to the point that turned off many people including people with broadband connections.

EA should be happy about the reversal as people on the fence about Xbox due to those restrictions are more likely to buy the console.

Again, suggestion that EA should be worried assumes that less people will have connected Xboxes with the new policy, and I honestly don't understand how such claims can be made.

 

[Gubbi]

So how exactly does MS guarantee a 1.5 mbit connection ? Is it because they have statistics saying that 99% of internet connections are a minimum of 1.5 mbits or that the xbox 1 will not 'run' on a connection that is sub 1.5 mbits ?

They just looked at internet use from the likes of Akamai, Speedtest.com etc and saw that 90% of all users in their primary markets, North America, all of western Europe and large parts of the rest of Europe, Korea, Japan (irrelevant, I know) had at least 1.5Mbps. The probably estimated the remaining 10% to not care for console gaming (or didn't care).

Cheers

 

[ninzel]

Incorrect, it guaranteed developers that Xbox One users would have a 1.5 Mbps connection 99% of the time. As it required a 1.5 Mbps connection.

The 24 hour check was to allow for that 1% of the time that someone might not be able to connect for some amount of time.

In other words, 1.5 Mbps online connection required. But we're not going to be dicks about it and not allow you to play a game which can gracefully handle being offline if your internet service is interrupted for any reasons. But we're also not going to be naïve and believe that there isn't some amount of people that won't attempt to use this to abuse the no-disc required to run games policy.

Also remember that some of the Xbox/Microsoft management team were pushing for as little as only 5 minutes of tolerance for a console being offline.

Basically, except for very rare instances where someone's internet connection is interrupted, Xbox One users were expected to have their consoles always connected to an online connection capable of 1.5 Mbps.

That 1.5 Mbps connection is what MS was then guaranteeing to publishers that Xbox One users would have available and thus they could safely code their games to use offline compute that required that much data transfer and be at fairly certain that anyone with an Xbox One would then be able to run their game.

That is now no longer the case as online is option and hence there is no minimum online connection speed required for the Xbox One.

And thus with it being option and no minimum speed guaranteed, adoption of online compute will be hampered.

Regards,
SB

This was their confirmed official policy? If so I stand corrected but I don't remember hearing a thing about that before the policy change.
Just to be clear about required single player wouldn't work unless you were connected 99% of the time?

 

[zupallinere]

They just looked at internet use from the likes of Akamai, Speedtest.com etc and saw that 90% of all users in their primary markets, North America, all of western Europe and large parts of the rest of Europe, Korea, Japan (irrelevant, I know) had at least 1.5Mbps. The probably estimated the remaining 10% to not care for console gaming (or didn't care).

Cheers

So the guarantee of 1.5 mbits for developers is based on some good statistical data. Sounds reasonable to me.

So my question would be couldn't a good statistically based guarantee be given to a publisher to show that there will be a connection available ? If a statistically derived 1.5 mbit guarantee is good enough to code for why wouldn't a statistically guaranteed connection rate. Of course the only issue here is single player games since the multiplayer game would take care of itself when it comes to online functionality.

 

[Gubbi]

So the guarantee of 1.5 mbits for developers is based on some good statistical data. Sounds reasonable to me.

So my question would be couldn't a good statistically based guarantee be given to a publisher to show that there will be a connection available ?

ERP answered this earlier. The difference is that publishers don't know how many consoles are connected to the internet when it is not a requirement. With always on, you know 100% if users have a connection.

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Zuppallinere is saying use the platform stats. Sony knows how many PS3's are online for example, because every time you are connected to the internet and run a game, it checks for an update. That'll be the vast majority of PS3 users who have connected their PS3 to their home internet even if they don't use PSN multiplayer. You also know from subscription services how many are always only, so a cloud based game would target exactly the same populace as an online game. It's not as if a cloud-based target could find itself with a paltry 3% of the gaming populace able to use it.

 

[Cjail]

Achievements and Trophies also are used for stats tracking.

 

[zupallinere]

Because we are all of us crazed console warriors right?

I used the phrase the "faithful" in jest for the most part but it is does not go unnoticed that all of this strum und drang is predicated on the idea that ONLY Microsoft is going to move the ball in terms of innovation this generation. For Microsoft's sake I hope they have a bit more perspective on the situation.

 

[ninzel]

I just reread MS official press release at the time and it said nothing about a 1.5.Mbs persistent connection being required only recommended.

 

[zupallinere]

For the forlorn there is a petition to bring back DRMax to Xbox

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/online_petition_demands_return_of_xbox_one_drm.html

One hopes this will save the next console generation from being just another version of the Atari 2600 !!!

 

[dobwal]

Zuppallinere is saying use the platform stats. Sony knows how many PS3's are online for example, because every time you are connected to the internet and run a game, it checks for an update. That'll be the vast majority of PS3 users who have connected their PS3 to their home internet even if they don't use PSN multiplayer. You also know from subscription services how many are always only, so a cloud based game would target exactly the same populace as an online game. It's not as if a cloud-based target could find itself with a paltry 3% of the gaming populace able to use it.

Its not just about knowing who has an online connection. It was to ensure that a high percentage of XB1 were readily connected to the internet.

If you want devs to integrate online as a standard that encompass the entire platform's library of games, then high and persistent connectivity across your console userbase is practically a must.

How many devs want to target just 360 gold members when creating a title? How many devs would want to target that crowd if every 360 owner was a gold member?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many devs want to target just 360 gold members when creating a title? How many devs would want to target that crowd if every 360 owner was a gold member?

If enforcing every console is online comes at the cost of half the potential console owners (if 50% don't buy the console because it phones home every 24 hours), it doesn't make any difference. 50% of 40 million consoles == 100% of 20 million consoles. We can all guess whatever figures to make whatever arguments, but the companies have enough real data to know what percentage of consoles are connected to the internet, and enough publishers are choosing to make online only games (effectively in some cases, with short offline campaigns) that it can't be a problem, and proportion of offline consoles will surely decrease over time as the world and users become more internetted in general.