Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience" • Hacker News Board

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#241

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

Sharparam wrote: post #229

paulryanrogers wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games. Sometimes. Depending on the game, Linux distro, library versions, hardware driver support, etc. I can also bake my own bread. But I'm tired of all the tweaking and debugging at the end of the day.

Most games. Most of the time. You make it sound like there's only a small subsection of games that can be played on Linux when that hasn't been true for some time now. There definitely still exist games that have issues running on Linux, but they are few and far between now.

Quality versus quantity problem. The most popular games not made by Valve tend to not work at all, and a quick look at Proton DB shows of the top 100, only about 20% are in the "no issues" (platinum) category. Gold is "playable", and from experience, there is a lot of variability there. It includes problems that would lead to refunds and bad reviews on the original platform.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#242

Post by jabroni_salad » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

rootlocus wrote: post #82

TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem though: pampering to competitive gamers ruins the experience for the vast majority of people, who just want to, you know, enjoy a game . Unfortunately, competitive gamers are the only ones that matter - they're the cash cows of this part of the industry, which now focuses on creating as many such players as they can, and milking them for all they're worth. Consider how cheating was handled back bef…

This reminds me of Wildstar. The MMO was intentionally dedicated to hardcore players, making progression nearly impossible for casuals. They were pretty smug about it as I recall. It eventually died, as there weren't enough players paying micro-transactions to keep the servers online.

Wildstar was the game that made me realize I was done with MMOs. Not only was I not really looking forward to the attunement flowchart (I love raiding but jeeze) but around level 12 I realized I didn't want to play the game you have to play before you can play the game. I've come to really appreciate round-based lobby games since then.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#243

Post by fennecfoxy » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

Tbf on one hand, 3rd party controllers are often absolute crap for all platforms, cheap shitty stuff.

On the other hand, this is just blocking out competitors/money grab as other comments have mentioned already. But I mean...why are people so upset they're doing it? Plenty of other companies already do this, especially Apple (which many of you seem to adore).

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#244

Post by VikingCoder » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

If you want to enforce this in competitive e-sports situations...

...or allow a specific game to say "this server is 1st party controller only" or something like that, yeah, maybe, I can see the logic.

But a blanket block-out is obviously bullshit.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#245

Post by vel0city » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #107

mschuster91 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you can google for the error code, instead of having to search for a textual phrase and wade through countless pages of not-at-all-related crap.

> At least you can google for the error code And find what information? Try turning it off and on again, update & reboot, then clean the registry?

The solution to every error code in Windows these days is sfc /scannow and dism /Online /Cleanup-image

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#246

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #164

endisneigh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t see the difference between an Xbox and a gaming pc running windows?

Sure there's a difference, an XBox sucks. Besides that? Not particularly. The input devices are worse, the underlying hardware and software is worse, the fact it only supports a measly 60hz at 4K^1 blows. I used to love XBoxes and have many great memories of my original and 360, but ever since the XBox One it's just been a bloated, slow PC with a bad interface front for Windows. I own one because occasionally I like…

I'm not gonna disagree with your reasons for liking or disliking a gaming console. Gaming consoles are for fun, your preferences don't have to make logical sense. But...

     but ever since the XBox One it's just been a 
     bloated, slow PC with a bad interface front for Windows.

Huh? The original XBox and 360 were also slow (relative to higher-end PCs of their day) systems running Windows variants.

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#247

Post by permo-w » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #238

busterarm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macro controllers and AI controller inputs are a thing and are actually rampant in certain games. Just look on youtube for some of the Street Fighter 6 cheat videos that have popped up in the last few weeks. Also if you play games like Apex, Valorant, etc, there are macro controllers that will not only perform movement tricks for you but will do things like correct aim for automatic fire drift/spread or even (on PC)…

I just don't get it. I genuinely don't get it. If you're cheating, you're not winning; the software or hardware is. What is the point? What do people get from this?

in some games there's a certain degree of "everyone else is doing it, so I have to in order to compete", which I can somewhat understand, but obviously the game has to get to that point in the first place, and a lot of that is probably just children

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#248

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

OGWhales wrote: post #205

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re literally talking about creating a walled garden around what is currently an open ecosystem in which devices already purchased by people - including people with limited financial resources - will no longer work. All under the justification of ‘it solves cheating’. PC games have cheaters since forever, they’ve worked around that problem despite having less operating system and hardware control. Not to mention t…

> PC games have cheaters since forever, they’ve worked around that problem despite having less operating system and hardware control. Have they though? Cheaters are rampant in most games, meanwhile consoles have been highly successfully in preventing cheaters from using things like wallhacks and aimbotting.

Please quantify "rampant". How likely is the average player to encounter cheaters?

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#249

Post by ethanbond » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #217

ethanbond wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the relevance of this. Are you saying that aggressively targeting cheaters is pampering to wannabe pros or that not aggressively targeting them is pampering wannabe pros? Another thing that has changed in FPS land is game modes making cheaters WAY more frustrating. It used to be that you get into a lobby, see someone cheating, and could leave and find a new lobby right away. Now with the extremely…

I'm saying is that it's a problem companies created themselves, and are subjecting customers to increasingly dystopian measures in a futile attempt to manage it. Pro gaming and casual gaming don't mix well. Cheating is a self-solving (or at least self-regulating) problem if you let people freely associate and host games. Cheating is only a big problem in competitive gaming, where there are rewards (status, monetary,…

So I agree with the overall thrust of your argument here in that I far preferred the world of casual servers you could hop on with your friends, make goofy rules, ban whoever you wanted, etc., and I see how dissolving that into shared servers with automated matchmaking makes certain anti-cheat measures infeasible.

What I’m not sure of is to what degree the new shared servers/auto-matchmaking pattern is due to catering to competitive gamers? Is that really the reason?

(I legitimately have no idea so I’m curious how you’ve come to this conclusion)

Re: Xbox will block third-party controllers to "preserve the console experience"

#250

Post by vel0city » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #62

wernercd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think the vast majority of this is about online. Keeping a clean and hack free experience isn't just about selling proprietary controllers - it's also bout blocking cheating and keeping things sane. (and single player games have Trophies which is online so... depending on how much you value pixelated trophies? those would be affected by "cheating in single player") Remember... this is Microsoft. The sam…

You’re literally talking about creating a walled garden around what is currently an open ecosystem in which devices already purchased by people - including people with limited financial resources - will no longer work. All under the justification of ‘it solves cheating’. PC games have cheaters since forever, they’ve worked around that problem despite having less operating system and hardware control. Not to mention t…

PC gaming is loaded with tons of cheaters despite rootkit level anticheat systems. Having locked down hardware ecosystems reduces the rate of cheating, I've had far fewer times of running into cheaters on console games than on PC games.