The connectivity requirement for check-in, per Microsoft's own description, would guarantee something ranging from high-end broadband to a few seconds tethered to a mobile phone for a paltry number of kilobytes.
The former is great, the latter is just as good as connecting the console to a tin can with a taut string.
That's fine, the point is to guarantee a connection then devs can support it even if it's just latency friendly type computation. The idea is to get everyone on board and get ideas flowing and see what develops. No one here, myself included, knows what can come of cloud tech, but to discover new ideas means it has to be standard. I don't think it will go away, like I mentioned I fully expect 1st parties to make use of it, it's just the progress will be slowed because of this due to less devs committed to it. That's because it's brutally difficult to get everyone on board to support non standard features. Try it sometime in a meeting, pitch an idea using anything non standard on a console and see what happens.
I can't believe that your only motivation to buy a One was its DRM functionality...what about all the other stuff...e.g. err, never interested in the actual games?? And why in hell turn to PC, just better graphics, but all the Live functionality and convenience gone...does not compute and again seems quite overreacting?!?
It was always a borderline purchase for me. I'm not really interested in a box that just plays games, but was considering one for cloud and Kinect since those are something new and not available on pc, and the family sharing thing was a great idea that let me spoil young family members around the country, although even then I hadn't committed. When my wife pre-ordered one I figured ok I'll get to try it after all. With family sharing gone and cloud possibly compromised it became mostly a Kinect thing for me. I just really feel you need 3rd parties 100% on board to make something shine and I don't totally believe they will be on board with cloud anymore, although hopefully I'm wrong there. In any case I lost much interest in the machine after the changes as did my wife so she cancelled the pre-order. Kinect is interesting but I'll see what develops there before considering one again. Outside of that I just don't see the point in spending money on a box that just plays games, my pc outclasses it for such use so why bother? What can I say, these consoles aren't launching into an empty market anymore, so a device that just plays games is a very hard sell to us especially when it doesn't even do that as well as a pc can.
Having said that if they bring back the family sharing plan, or if cloud and Kinect really bring something cool to the table then I'll buy one. I'll keep an eye on it and see what develops.
...what makes you think 3rd parties would have actively supported the cloud if the better selling PS4 (with a bigger marketplace) doesn't offer such a feature? The lowest-common-denominator thingy you know. That is assuming, the DRM (and/or other reasons) had a bigger impact (if through bad/unfair press, who knows) on sales resulting in PS4 outselling Xbox One? At this point, I'm not sure that potential was really there to beginn with.
Because there at least is some reason for a company to stay current on the tech curve if others are doing it. With optional features like Kinect on the 360 you could safely ignore it knowing that all your competitors were doing the same thing. With cloud standard if you ignore it you risk getting left behind. It's a future play, they would risk being far behind deeper in to the generation, and then risk being in an even worse spot if it was standard on both machines next gen. They would have years of r&d to catch up on. You have to make judgment calls on what to support and what tech to go with, part of that means looking at what your competitors are doing to not be left in a bubble.
Now with only Microsoft 1st parties guaranteed to use cloud means there is less incentive to hop on board because heck even if Microsoft's research drums up something amazingly new and cool they would now likely offer it to all third parties anyways just to have a competitive edge over their competition. So now 3rd parties may as well save their dev dollars and let Microsoft do all the work, it's not like 3rd party X really has to worry that 3rd part Y will be feverishly working on cloud tech anyways. Again, hopefully I'm wrong here and everyone is spending r&d money on cloud.
As far as the potential of cloud, like I mentioned above no one knows what can come of it, it's a new idea that needs new thinking and new ideas. That takes serious manpower and years to come up with something cool. It'll come, I just think the future has all been delayed. I need to do some informal polls with old colleagues of mine. I saw some at e3 and interest in cloud was high because it was a standard out of the box thing that everyone had. Basically everyone has internet, everyone has cloud, let's go! I haven't spoken to people about it since Microsoft's reversal though, I'd be curious to see how many plans have changed because of this as it means the direction and audience of the xb1 has changed as well.
Even game developers that aren't using the cloud for their launch titles are looking at ways in which the cloud can enhance their games. DICE for instance didn't have time to incorporate cloud computing into Battlefield 4, but are looking at using it for their games in the future. The same goes for the team developing Watch Dogs at UBIsoft. Not enough time to use it for Watch Dogs, but they are seriously looking at incorporating the cloud for any future titles.
