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

joker454 said:
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.
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You are pretty late to the party concerning other countries internet connections, remember that MS is not only selling consoles in countries with reliable internet infrastructure and don't forget the low population areas as they usually get ignored by ISP companies as they bring little income.

Also i hear there are many places in the US(MS biggest market) that have unreliable connections.

Now let us move onto the other issue concerning always online DRM:

What benefit does the consumer see?

^^this one stumps me because i cannot think of a single thing that would negate the pitfalls of an always online DRM.
 
joker454 said:
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.
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I guess it is not about primitive but the overall town planning in given areas.

I lived in Ohio for almost 1.5/2 years, the "density" is not that high as far as towns are concerned, it takes its toll on infrastructures. Especially in areas where storm can be violent Internet can go down, I spend actually more than 2 days without power during this summer, and power went down multiple times (though lesser duration). Though at this point... when power is down, always on-always connected is not an issue :LOL:

I can definitely see how in some states in the US were density drops lower and still facing pretty extreme meteorologic events how the Internet (and more) can go down pretty often.

Another thing I notice in US is that lot "wiring" (be it power or communications lines) are not underground thanks to the sheer size of the country and the pretty low density urban area, that is prone to failure.
 
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joker454 said:
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.
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No one except you is a bit of an exaggeration, but if you live out on the countryside - some westerners still do that, alledgedly - it can be a crapshoot wether your *DSL connection works that day or what speed it will give you.

I have a mate who lives out in the forest, he has grud knows how many kilometers to the DSLAM and depending on air moisture, temperature and so on may not even get ANY megabits at all out of the ~3 he has on a good day (while paying for "up to" 8). Landline hanging off of poles that have been cut by falling trees about a million times isn't the best medium for data traffic, and 3G wireless is even worse for him, with horrific latency added on top of other issues.
 
Maybe MS plan is if they offer 3rd parties the ability to block used games in return MS gets lots more exclusive content.
 
novcze said:
There are people without internet connection that want to play singleplayer games, paying mobile internet connection just to play singleplayer games is preposterous idea.
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Ok well let me play devils advocate for a second. If publishers are more comfortable with always on drm to where it lets them justify spending more time, money and resources on games hence creating more elaborate and better looking products, then why should I, someone that has always on internet and has had it for ages be punished by others who don't have a reliable internet connection?

Or to flip the question around, if a publisher that is normally willing to commit 50 million to a project would be willing to commit 70 million to it if the project had always on drm, then why are the people that don't have reliable internet justified in holding me back from getting the better product given that my internet is reliable?

Or let me word it a third way. If always on drm is proven to increase sales and hence increase game budgets and the quality of the games we get, do you all feel that is a bad thing?
 
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joker454 said:
Ok well let me play devils advocate for a second. If publishers are more comfortable with always on drm to where it lets them justify spending more time, money and resources on games hence creating more elaborate and better looking products, then why should I, someone that has always on internet and has had it for ages be punished by others who don't have a reliable internet connection?

Or to flip the question around, if a publisher that is normally willing to commit 50 million to a project would be willing to commit 70 million to it if the project had always on drm, then why are the people that don't have reliable internet justified in holding me back from getting the better product given that my internet is reliable?

Or let me word it a third way. If always on drm is proven to increase sales and hence increase game budgets and the quality of the games we get, do you all feel that is a bad thing?
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Well, there's that, but I think the more obvious thing is that *if* the console requires an Internet connection at all times, Microsoft must think it's worth chasing money from people who do not have Internet connections. It is a business after all. There should be enough Internet connected people worldwide to sell to, and maybe selling a console at a small loss, or marginal profit, to someone that isn't going to consume Internet features is not worth it. Basically all that you get from them is whatever profit you get on the unit (historically negative, and at best little to none) plus whatever disc royalties they get (if that person isn't pirating games). The alternative is that people actually pay a price for their consoles that would allow for a reasonable profit on each unit, but that would cause "mass outrage" too. Entitled gamers want a subsidized console with no DRM restrictions and cheap games.

Also, Internet stability is impacted heavily by home networking gear that the users have no idea how to configure. Live disconnects are most likely caused by the home network and not the ISP.
 
joker454 said:
Ok well let me play devils advocate for a second. If publishers are more comfortable with always on drm to where it lets them justify spending more time, money and resources on games hence creating more elaborate and better looking products, then why should I, someone that has always on internet and has had it for ages be punished by others who don't have a reliable internet connection?

Or to flip the question around, if a publisher that is normally willing to commit 50 million to a project would be willing to commit 70 million to it if the project had always on drm, then why are the people that don't have reliable internet justified in holding me back from getting the better product given that my internet is reliable?

Or let me word it a third way. If always on drm is proven to increase sales and hence increase game budgets and the quality of the games we get, do you all feel that is a bad thing?
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When has DRM ever been of benefit to the quality of games in the past, why should we expect it would be so in the future?

My experiences with DRM are that it has always been a way to punish honest paying customers. If developers and publishers want to change that perception they have a shit load of work to do.
 
I live in a big city in Germany and have 100Mbit connection flat. But even for me, I had situations where internet was down for a view hours the last year. If I wasn't allowed to play my 70Euro games on my 500Euro console during this time...well, fortunately I could because there was no always online DRM.

I really hope that MS and Sony don't go this route. This would be a really big issue for me: with the limited time I have, I want to play games whenever I want and have freetime...and I don't want to wait for my internet to work again, or wait till EA or whoever gets the servers up running again....this scares me to death!!! Also, people defending online drm...scare me to death!!!
 
AlphaWolf said:
When has DRM ever been of benefit to the quality of games in the past, why should we expect it would be so in the future?

My experiences with DRM are that it has always been a way to punish honest paying customers. If developers and publishers want to change that perception they have a shit load of work to do.
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Its not the DRM thats leading to better products, its the developer doing an ROI analysis on investing more resources on a platform that will yield them more revenue (due to less piracy).

I have no problem with the concept of DRM, companies just suck at implementing good ways to enforce it. Its not different than them making buggy games, bad graphics, crappy gameplay. It starts with requirements and goes through to execution and somewhere along way it turns to crap.
 
Is piracy on current consoles so rampant that negatively impacting user experience so likely to give them a higher ROI? I doubt 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.
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It's a two fold thing, your ISP is the least of your problem, you have your isp, then whatever that is between that ISP and Microsoft, and finally XBOX Live itself.

Live just needs to be down for a few minutes to create a potential problem, and it's not like Live is 100% reliable. I see Live problems more often than i have ISP problems.

It's just like wow, when i wanted to play sometimes the servers were down, since my gaming window isn't 24/7/365 even 3 hours at the wrong time would be a real pain. For something like this to work Microsoft would have to up it's game tremendously to keep people satisfied and still face angry customers when something else breaks that Microsoft can't help.
 
Billy Idol said:
Also, people defending online drm...scare me to death!!!
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This.

It angers me a lot more to see people willing to relinquish their right to play the games they're paying for whenever they want, than to see some dimwit suits babbling about how much money they can make with freemium models.

It's like watching people voting for a party that freely admits it will practice a corrupt and severe dictatorship.
 
Billy Idol said:
I live in a big city in Germany and have 100Mbit connection flat. But even for me, I had situations where internet was down for a view hours the last year. If I wasn't allowed to play my 70Euro games on my 500Euro console during this time...well, fortunately I could because there was no always online DRM.

I really hope that MS and Sony don't go this route. This would be a really big issue for me: with the limited time I have, I want to play games whenever I want and have freetime...and I don't want to wait for my internet to work again, or wait till EA or whoever gets the servers up running again....this scares me to death!!! Also, people defending online drm...scare me to death!!!
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Your Internet was down for a few hours in an entire year? How did you survive? There may be support programs you can attend to help you get through whatever post-traumatic stress you may be experiencing.

Scares you to death? We're talking about video gaming, not access to life-saving medication.

I don't like DRM at all, but hopefully they'd at least put a system in place that works, rather than the weird DRM you get on PC that doesn't work and causes a myriad of problems because of the openness of the platform. In the end, it's a business and with publishers and developers going out of business left and right, it's pretty much inevitable that they're going to do something to stay afloat. It isn't a worry for me, but the biggest problem I could see with DRM is handling households that have more than one console where you want to be able to use the disc on both.
 
expletive said:
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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The actual cost to the user doesn't have to be significant, its the perception that matters because its perception that drives sales. Look how this issue is riling up some of the posters without any one of them having concrete proof of how "always required" will actually affect them. Yet if it drives them to an alternative gaming platform then it ultimately affects MS's bottom line. It doesn't matter if you can legitimize or illegitimize their concerns, ultimately they have to be comfortable with their purchase.

DRM and adverts are probably two of the biggest and most volatile issues/noise generators when it comes to gaming and MS has tied those two issues together with a loss in functionality. If MS is going to encumber Durango with such issues Durango would better served by MS offering a compelling differentiator that makes gamers focus on the value gained not the value lost.
 
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-tkf- said:
It's a two fold thing, your ISP is the least of your problem, you have your isp, then whatever that is between that ISP and Microsoft, and finally XBOX Live itself.

Live just needs to be down for a few minutes to create a potential problem, and it's not like Live is 100% reliable. I see Live problems more often than i have ISP problems.

It's just like wow, when i wanted to play sometimes the servers were down, since my gaming window isn't 24/7/365 even 3 hours at the wrong time would be a real pain. For something like this to work Microsoft would have to up it's game tremendously to keep people satisfied and still face angry customers when something else breaks that Microsoft can't help.
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Honestly, in the five years or so that I've had xbox, I have not seen frequent or lengthy downtime on Xbox Live. I think most years I have not seen any downtime at all, unless it was a problem with my home network (switching ISPs, new router config, new modem config etc). Maybe that is regional, and Xbox Live in Canada is vastly better than in other parts of the world, but I doubt it. My guess is that Xbox Live sees downtime in the range of a few hours in an entire year.
 
AlphaWolf said:
Is piracy on current consoles so rampant that negatively impacting user experience so likely to give them a higher ROI? I doubt it.
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I dont have the data on that but given the amount of effort going into curbing piracy, its probably a meaningful number.

That said, it is rampant on PC and making the "best" version of a game on a protected console platform could help them drive freeloaders towards actually paying for it.
 
expletive said:
I dont have the data on that but given the amount of effort going into curbing piracy, its probably a meaningful number.

That said, it is rampant on PC and making the "best" version of a game on a protected console platform could help them drive freeloaders towards actually paying for it.
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I'd be willing to bet that the number of hacked 360s for pirated games is in the millions.
 
dobwal said:
The actual cost to the user doesn't have to be significant, its the perception that matters because its perception that drives sales. Look how this issue is riling up some of the posters without any one of them having real proof of how "always required" will actually affect them. Yet if it drives them to an alternative gaming platform then it ultimately affects MS's bottom line.

DRM and adverts are probably two of the biggest and most volatile issues/noise generators when it comes to gaming and MS has tied those two issues together with a loss in functionality. If MS is going to encumber Durango with such issues Durango would better served by MS offering a compelling differentiator that makes gamers focus on the value gained not the value lost.
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This all just noise now, theres no real understanding of the use case that may or may not reduce functionality. In my view, an always on machine can only be a plus. If you have no internet, or XBL servers are down, we're only guessing that you wont be able to play your games. For all we know the console may only need to phone home once avery 24 hours for validation, which could greatly reduce the impact of such an issue. Theres no meaningful perception out there that cant be flipped with a 5 minute presentation of how the damn thing actually works.
 
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