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

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

#291

Post by 0x500x79 »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #281
TeMPOraL wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Several of the assumptions in your post are flawed, which undermines your whole argument. > Cheating is only a big problem in competitive gaming, where there are rewards (status, monetary, or both) for moving up the global ranking This is untrue, cheating was until recently a huge problem for team fortress 2 which hasn't been competitive for years. See also the huge cheating problems in the CoD games from the Xbox 36…

> Again this is just not true - the revenue and profit of casual games dwarfs competitive games.

This is actually very, very true. Most esports departments are not incredibly profitable (I actually worked for one of the biggest esports gaming companies for a long time and it was a constant source of friction how much money was spent on esports versus the return on it).

At the end of the day, cheating is a dopamine hit: killing the whole lobby in 2-seconds by holding down a button makes people feel good and you can't fight against that without some pretty drastic measures.

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

#292

Post by georgeecollins »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #237
narinxas wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why purposefully handicap your player base instead of letting them use whatever they want? for the same reasons giant corps do anything: Profit! they think, and likely will, sell more "official" (i.e. premium price) controllers

Realistically though, how much financial upside can we possibly be talking about here? Many controllers the enable this "cheating" were also probably +1 buys as well, not lost sales of official accessories. I just have a hard time believing that controller hardware sales are the primary driver of this.

If you sell 40m consoles in a cycle, and an xbox controller costs about $60, so lets assume $20 profit to MSFT and you sell an average of 1.5 extra controllers per console sale.. that is $1.2b of profit at stake over the course of the total console cycle. That's over something like five years and they probably get a lot of those profits anyway. But it's not nothing!

I a hundred million dollars of profit per year a big deal to MSFT? No of course not. But imagine you are in charge of the peripherals division, or even all of XBox. Then I think it is not unrealistic.

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

#293

Post by wing-_-nuts »

snarfy wrote: post #197
katbyte wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real problem here seems to be games doing aim assist in multiplayer

I'm competitive. I simply won't play FPS that have aim assist in multiplayer. If a controller has a disadvantage to KBM, they should learn to use KBM, not give them a built-in aimbot.

This is such a PCMR elitist take. Have you ever actually played on console? By and large aim assist is very subtle, but it's required to have an enjoyable experience on console.

I don't think I could bear to spend ~ 10h / day at a computer, and then spend my down time hunched over a keyboard and mouse. I like a clean break, and a completely different experience.

You're welcome to be as 'competitive' as you like, but the rest of us want to come home, sink into their favorite recliner and casually enjoy a game for a an hour or two. It's a game. Games should be fun. I swear people act like their K/d ratio buys groceries.

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

#294

Post by jeroenhd »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #236
jeroenhd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The exact opposite. I'm sick of modern software telling me "something went wrong, try again later". Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, that error code is a necessity. And nobody is going to accept a dev adding error messages to every possible error, because localisation to 180+ languages will cost a fortune. Your choice is between "something went wrong" and "something went wrong…

>Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error I mean that's not out of the question, I force that in every codebase I use. The only one I find that difficult in is Kotlin, because it's a trash language that doesn't properly compose throwables.

I don't get it, you can compose exceptions in Kotlin just fine.

I believe Jetbrains Compose adds some restrictions on try/catch but even then there are different ways you can communicate failure.

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

#295

Post by wing-_-nuts »

solardev wrote: post #140
serf wrote: post #74

This is a money grab with the polish of a pro-gamer cheat-cleanup. Why do I say that? Microsoft can fix most of the 'cheats' that a software controller can implement in software. Auto-fire is trivial to detect, as is a KBM setup where it doesn't belong. Out of the ordinary joystick characteristics/speed/hysteresis/range would make it obvious to them which controllers are aftermarket if they cared to disallow them aft…

OK, maybe I'm biased here as a PC gamer who frequently uses a controller... but why not just allow both? Some games like Gears of War on Xbox already do this. Others, like Fortnite, offer crossplay and just show a symbol over each player's head. Do mouse and keyboard players have an advantage? Sure. So do players with bigger TVs or Series X graphics or less worn controllers or the Elite controller. Big deal? The PC e…

They should simply split cross play into two groups:

1. Those with controllers

2. Those with kb/m or those 'emulating' kb/m

That's it. That's all that'd be needed to be fair.

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

#296

Post by jeroenhd »

RajT88 wrote: post #222
jeroenhd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The exact opposite. I'm sick of modern software telling me "something went wrong, try again later". Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, that error code is a necessity. And nobody is going to accept a dev adding error messages to every possible error, because localisation to 180+ languages will cost a fortune. Your choice is between "something went wrong" and "something went wrong…

Search all the *.h files in the Xbox and Windows SDK's for that hResult. AKA "Partying like it's 1999"

All of the header errors are documented in multiple languages on MSDN, I only start searching header files when I'm desperate.

Microsoft doesn't document all of their errors, annoyingly, but at least the HRESULT structure gives some kind of indication of the source.

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

#297

Post by jeroenhd »

qoi4j5ioq3j45 wrote: post #261
jeroenhd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The exact opposite. I'm sick of modern software telling me "something went wrong, try again later". Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, that error code is a necessity. And nobody is going to accept a dev adding error messages to every possible error, because localisation to 180+ languages will cost a fortune. Your choice is between "something went wrong" and "something went wrong…

> Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, Yeah, that's kinda the point. Every error code gets its own text description. That's what I do, what my company does, with our code. Because technicians don't have the ability to look up error codes like engineers can. And even if they did, the ability to look up where/when the error code was generated doesn't tell you what to do about it. Microso…

Internationalising every possible failure within a system, especially one as complex as Windows, into 110 languages seems needlessly intensive and complicated. Many details differentiated by error codes just aren't useful information to end users anyway.

I don't think Microsoft can document _every_ error, it's just not very realistic. I'd prefer it if they did, but lacking that, the error code works just fine.

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

#298

Post by wing-_-nuts »

AlexandrB wrote: post #258
belugacat wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day Valve falls, for whatever reason (greed, incompetence, some impossible to predict market shift/tech innovation... Gabe doesn't have decades and decades left as CEO after all) - the open world of PC gaming as we know it will probably fall, to be devoured by the Microsoft/Epic/Ubisoft/etc of the world. Compared to most other tech/gaming companies, it's shocking how non predatory and customer friendly they are.…

I think Valve gets way too much credit. They haven't abused their market position as much as they could have but they did normalize always-online DRM schemes. CS2 skin trading is also a hive of illegal/underage gambling and scams. If you want to valorize a digital games retailers, I would suggest GOG is a better candidate.

>I would suggest GOG is a better candidate.

I love the idea of GOG, and I ADORE that they're making old games available (GOG peeps, if you're reading this, civ 2 please!), but if I were a PC gamer I'd buy through steam just for proton compatibility on linux. It's that good.

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

#299

Post by rootlocus »

phone8675309 wrote: post #225
rootlocus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's actually a Wildstart server emulator for those who want to play after shutdown - https://www.emulator.ws/

I think my wife would love to explore the game again, and I think we could maybe tune some dungeons so they're doable by just two players, but we're parents now and some things are just not possible anymore.

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

#300

Post by Ajedi32 »

jack1243star wrote: post #63
falcolas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard is it really to have two queues based on your input type? Not to mention, there will always be a huge overlap between ok kb/mouse players and good controller players. This leads me to believe that normal skill based matching would be enough to keep the games interesting and challenging, regardless of which control scheme you decide to use.

> How hard is it really to have two queues based on your input type? Basically impossible. Some players will always try to spoof it, either for an advantage or the challenge.

Isn't banning third-party controllers equally impossible then? It's the exact same check; just a question of what you do with the result of that check (block the controller entirely, or just switch to a different queue).
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