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

I understand a lot of folks are upset over the supposed always online requirement, but personally I just see it as a necessary evil to combat pirates & hackers, which I'm neither. Good thing I always have my Xbox connected online. In fact, I think I've had my connected online ever since 2007. So bring it on. I'm buying it regardless. "When" is my only question. If it's $400 or less I'll be getting it at launch.

Tommy McClain
 
yeah, i'm not in love with this news, but i'll still get it. it's really not that big a deal.

it's not like my 360 hasnt sat connected to the internet nonstop for the last 8 years. i mean my wi-fi router sits right under my tv, why wouldn't it? oh and now i have the model with built in wi-fi anyway.

it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, though, with regards to backlash.

and i have a hunch sony might follow suit as ms tends to be more forward thinking with regards to online imo.

i thought somebody had posted somewhere that 40% of 360's weren't online. if that's true (huge if), that's a lot of market to give up potentially.

it sort of smells like a attempt to force more gold subs too. it's hard to imagine having a 360 online without gold...

in the end it might even be more profitable to have a smaller install base, but more gold subs. maybe it's a trade they're willing to do.

Thinking about positives, for years people said "PS3 is awesome cause devs can count on an HDD in every box!". Doesn't something similar apply to internet connections? If devs know EVERYBODY has it, maybe they can do cool things with it that they couldn't otherwise.

for the negatives, i dont relish some sort of potential no-more-true-single-player-really world at all, since i'm a single player guy.

always on is itself a touchy subject. it needs to be calibrated such that a 5 second or 1 second internet disruption doesnt affect things. i think someone was saying 3 minutes before the game/app stops and network connection wizard kicks in, that's reasonable.

They aren't, even Proelite, who is a huge Xbox fan and works for MS, hasn't heard anything about a clock increase (or any kind of spec related improvements).
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no offense to him, but proelite has never been a reliable source imo. he works for ms, but afaik has no legit access to anything xbox related anyway. he also has trollish tendencies, he vacillates (or used to) between "durango is secretly a massive 7970 beast you're all in for a huge surprise i know something you dont haha" to "ms is doooooomed they suck". i think of late he's just settled on the latter...
 
The always online would be fine in my house, no issues.

Where it breaks down for me is when I travel, it is fairly easy to take a console with me. Our last trip had horrible cell coverage, no internet either, but I could still play games.

It also just does not make any sense from a business point of view, and I still think it is just mistaken quotes. Always On makes sense, works fine, very few devices that I own are not already this. I see this getting confused with always online, even today with twitter and Kotaku, add in some GAF. Keyword was "On" not "online" but the uproar was seemingly over the latter.

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
 
dobwal, can't write much right now, I am in a hurry. I will try to reply to you later, if only briefly.


liolio said:
More bad "news/noises" from Kotaku
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Not only that, Microsoft's Creative Director Adam Orthy got in huge trouble when he began tweeting about the "always online" issue.

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He also behaved in a very, very cynical and inmature manner and had to protect his twitter account:

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Kaz Hirai also replied:

juDiybQ.jpg


Thanks to wayne_rooney for the pictures. -dunno if he is reading this anyways- :smile:
 
Cyan said:
dobwal, can't write much right now, I am in a hurry. I will try to reply to you later, if only briefly.


He also behaved in a very, very cynical and inmature manner and had to protect his twitter account:
Click to expand...

Not really. He made (somewhat) reasonable arguments imo.

And I find it funny all these people *tweeting* that their internet is down. I wonder why we all ignore the contradiction, or how foolish that actually is.

Hint, if your internet is down, you cant tweet. Yes, now we'll get into that presumably theyre tweeting from their phones or iPad's, but it's still internet, always on internet in that case LOL.
 
Rangers said:
Not really. He made (somewhat) reasonable arguments imo.

And I find it funny all these people *tweeting* that their internet is down. I wonder why we all ignore the contradiction, or how foolish that actually is.

Hint, if your internet is down, you cant tweet. Yes, now we'll get into that presumably theyre tweeting from their phones or iPad's, but it's still internet, always on internet in that case LOL.
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Uhh are you talking about the "sorry i couldn't tweet earlier but my internet was down" ?

He made shitty arguements, this boards members did a better job and now he is getting burned. Considering just how the XBOX is when Live or the Internet is down i cant begin to think just how crappy it will be if this is a reality.. which i doubt very much.
 
Rangers said:
Not really. He made (somewhat) reasonable arguments imo.
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Are you talking about that MS suit, orth whatsisname fella? IMO, he behaved like a right twat, and rightly deserve whatever pastings he's liable to get from the internet at large, or possibly/hopefully also his bosses. Last thing a company needs is a PR mouthpiece who acts arrogantly and condescendingly towards current and prospective customers alike.

Hint, if your internet is down, you cant tweet. Yes, now we'll get into that presumably theyre tweeting from their phones or iPad's, but it's still internet, always on internet in that case LOL.
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You know, it could be meant as a sarcastic joke. Hirai's definitely falls into that category.

Anyway, there's no reason to require a constant internet connection to run software in general on a console, that's just screwing with your customers for no genuine reason.

Presumably, MS is doing this because they have some sort of hypervisor/"warden"-type hardware and/or software running on their machine, monitoring memory and registers to watch for mod chip type activity in the system, reporting back home to MS central repeatedly. Smacks of paranoia and privacy invasion.
 
Kaz Hirai also replied:

juDiybQ.jpg


Thanks to wayne_rooney for the pictures. -dunno if he is reading this anyways- :smile:
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Thought that account was fake, but that is pretty funny.

Both consoles will always be online so I dont really see the problem with that. I guess it's the implication that games won't start without the console being connected which is causing issues. I agree with orly I want all my stuff online but no ones internet connection always works not even Microsofts.
 
-tkf- said:
Uhh are you talking about the "sorry i couldn't tweet earlier but my internet was down" ?

He made shitty arguements, this boards members did a better job and now he is getting burned. Considering just how the XBOX is when Live or the Internet is down i cant begin to think just how crappy it will be if this is a reality.. which i doubt very much.
Click to expand...

no, the first of the internet down tweets was some sony guy who tweeted "oh darn, just got home and my internet is down" or something like that. i guess the second guy was more clever, even though he was pretending as well, of course

Which I just thought funny, given it was you know, a tweet. On the internet.

and i dont think his arguments were terrible. if only the internet focused 1% of this passion on things that actually matter, you know, like politicians. this stuff is bordering on the insane, the really truly insane, between this and the intensity of the sim city backlash.
 
Rangers said:
no, the first of the internet down tweets was some sony guy who tweeted "oh darn, just got home and my internet is down" or something like that. i guess the second guy was more clever, even though he was pretending as well, of course

Which I just thought funny, given it was you know, a tweet. On the internet.

and i dont think his arguments were terrible. if only the internet focused 1% of this passion on things that actually matter, you know, like politicians. this stuff is bordering on the insane, the really truly insane, between this and the intensity of the sim city backlash.
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I agree with the passion part, but not the arguments.

I think he was being stupid and most likely sarcastic, not one convincing argument was made. Comparing a a 720 with a vacuum cleaner and mobile phones does not convince anyone of the need for something that isn't needed :)
 
I think we have to assume that the Microsoft bosses aren't ivory tower dwelling idiots, there must be a financial reason for this decision. At face value this seems to be cutting off huge amounts of possible revenue, there are going to be substantial regions of developed countries that aren't going to have adequate, stable, internet access during the life of Durango, these are guaranteed lost sales. Major share holders would be up in arms, if we assume the same 360 business model is being repeated. But I don't think it is.

I'm taking from this that games are no longer that important to Microsoft. No longer their major revenue stream. For me it seems that they've gambled that they can make more money from on-line services and subscriptions than they can from game sales, even with the lower user base. If you don't have adequate internet access then you can't spend money on their services, and they'd rather not have you buying a console sold at a loss or break even.

Maybe inspired thinking, maybe crazy, but certainly a gamble. Personally, I own a console purely for playing games on.
 
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DJ12 said:
Thought that account was fake, but that is pretty funny.
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It is a joke account. But whoever runs it is sharp as hell.

Both consoles will always be online so I dont really see the problem with that. I guess it's the implication that games won't start without the console being connected which is causing issues. I agree with orly I want all my stuff online but no ones internet connection always works not even Microsofts.
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The PS4 will be "always online" when a net connection is available. It won't go into the panic mode described in the Kotaku article and refuse to run any games or apps if the connection drops for even a few minutes. Sony specifically announced in their Feb 20th event that games can be played offline. It's looking increasingly likely that the Durango just self-bricks any time your net connection dies. That's not just a pain for people who live where internet connections may not be reliable, that will be a problem for anyone who might have flaky wifi or a dodgy router.
 
-tkf- said:
I agree with the passion part, but not the arguments.

I think he was being stupid and most likely sarcastic, not one convincing argument was made. Comparing a a 720 with a vacuum cleaner and mobile phones does not convince anyone of the need for something that isn't needed :)
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I think mobile phone is a decent analogy.

My mobile phone is never offline, that I know of. When I'm at home it's on wi-fi, out it's on 4G. Neither is my desktop PC, really.

This Xbox thing is a bigger story on reddit than headlines of North Korea moving nukes around in an aggressive fashion today, lol. So I guess people are more concerned with Xbox than if they become crispy critters.

I'm not really "for" an always online console. My friend recently had a household wiring problem and his internet was down for two weeks or something while the cable co fixed it. In such a situation, one's always online console would be useless.

But it's probably the future anyway.

I find rumors the Durango isn't especially powerful, a whole lot more important than always online.
It is a joke account. But whoever runs it is sharp as hell.
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Ot/the fake steve jobs twitter account I used to follow (before he died) was a whole lot funnier imo. Then, Apple shut all Jobs parody accounts down. Only fricken Apple, there's parodies of pretty much every other public figure under the sun, but no not Steve Jobs!!! We'll sue!!!"
 
Rangers said:
I think mobile phone is a decent analogy.

My mobile phone is never offline, that I know of. When I'm at home it's on wi-fi, out it's on 4G. Neither is my desktop PC, really.

This Xbox thing is a bigger story on reddit than headlines of North Korea moving nukes around in an aggressive fashion today, lol. So I guess people are more concerned with Xbox than if they become crispy critters.

I'm not really "for" an always online console. My friend recently had a household wiring problem and his internet was down for two weeks or something while the cable co fixed it. In such a situation, one's always online console would be useless.

But it's probably the future anyway.

I find rumors the Durango isn't especially powerful, a whole lot more important than always online.

Ot/the fake steve jobs twitter account I used to follow (before he died) was a whole lot funnier imo. Then, Apple shut all Jobs parody accounts down. Only fricken Apple, there's parodies of pretty much every other public figure under the sun, but no not Steve Jobs!!! We'll sue!!!"
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The point is, you need your phone to have a connection, if not it's purpose is not full filled.

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!
 
Sometimes my Xbox Live disconnects even though my internet is still working.

That Adam Orthy is a proper asshat and a PR nightmare. There's a big difference between something that's as connected as possible to be as useful as possible to you, and something that at your inconvenience requires a connection not to add things but to allow someone else to take things from you.

If my phone loses its connection it is for reasons of geography and can't be helped, but my phone continues to operate as fully as possible in the mean time to minimise inconvenience. That's sensible. If my games consoles stops me playing Call of Duty campaign because a server somewhere can no longer keep track on me to check if I'm a thief or - even worse - playing something that I acquired legitimately and ethically 2nd hand, then that is an additional and unnecessary inconvenience that is entirely avoidable and entirely for someone else's benefit.

Even if they can't articulate it, even a hormone enraged brofisting teenage Xboy knows there is a difference between something being as connected as possible (or inherently requiring a connection) and something requiring a connection for reasons of DRM, advertising and spyware. And so Adam Orthy's comments have the effect only of being clearly disingenuous and annoying, like a stranger splashing piss on you at a public urinal and then getting all passive aggressive when you point out that there's no need to do that.
 
Rangers said:
I think mobile phone is a decent analogy.

My mobile phone is never offline, that I know of. When I'm at home it's on wi-fi, out it's on 4G. Neither is my desktop PC, really.
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If you're talking about making calls and sending texts, yes, you need to be on a network. Of course, you understand that those fundamental functions have that fundamental requirement. No such condition exists for many games. There is no technical reason for a single player game to turn itself off just because it can't ping a server somewhere. In any case, the modern smart phone doesn't refuse to work at all when it can't find a network. You can still listen to music on them, play games on them, many even cache offline maps so GPS functions will continue to operate.
 
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