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"Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

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Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#61

I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realisticall…

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Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#62

He seems to be suggesting that Xbox One games will be cheaper because of the lack of used sales. I don't see what their economic incentive would be to lower the prices (at least to below prices for a similar PS4 game), usually if there is less competition in a market and demand stays constant the price goes up. In the case of Steam , they have to be cheap because their competition is TPB which is the cheapest game st…

I don't think digital goods / things that are very cheap on the margin really subscribe to the same laws of supply and demand.

For example, most people would probably agree piracy drives the price of photoshop up for the people that actually pay for it. In the eyes of supply and demand though what should happen is more piracy == less demand for legal copies -> lower prices.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#63

To be honest, the only thing that annoys me is the 24 hour check-in thing, and here's why... On average I've moved house once a year for every year since I moved to London in 2007. There was one place I stayed in for 18 months, but everything else was 12 months. In all these moves except one I've had to wait 3-4 weeks (sometimes more) to get my broadband connected, so essentially for 1/13th of a year the only interne…

And yet the 24 hour checkin doesn't make sense in the case of digital downloads, the other app stores dont require it. If a digitally signed receipt for the game is on your system, who cares if the next time you validate against MS servers is in 24 hours or 24 years.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#64

I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realisticall…

>"It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want."

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#65
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they still understood the consumers- better, perhaps, than the consumers did. MS is arguably misunderstanding them, in this case.

I don't get that conclusion. Steam does it and they're applauded, even by many who "hate" DRM. Microsoft does it (and maybe doesn't detail the entire vision/value well) and gets shit on. Much like a lot of things that MS does.

Steam is applauded for the incredible sales and cheap access to games. Also the convenience.

I have a steam library worth several grand, but I only paid a few hundred for it. Is anyone really convinced you will see Steam style sales on Xbox 1?

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#66
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once the XB1 lifecycle is over, I have no guarantee I will be able to play the games I bought. Sooner than that though, right? Weren't they shutting off Halo servers when new Halo games came out during the same console lifecycle? Of course that is a problem you'll have with multiplayer on all the consoles I guess. Maybe gamers are okay with that. I would be bummed as hell if I couldn't play the occasional quake mat…

Halo: CE (i.e, Halo 1) didn't support online play, as it was released before Xbox Live was available. Halo 2 was released in 2004 (on the Xbox!), and the online play servers were just shut down earlier this year. Given that the platform it was released on has nearly been superseded twice by now (first by the Xbox 360, and soon by the Xbox One), I think they've given it a fair run. As far as I'm aware, all of the othe…

Wikipedia has Halo 2 multiplayer on the xbox being shut down in April of 2010 (while on the PC it lived until this year). That is not the sort of lifecycle I expect from a game that I enjoy (I still play Doom on occasion, and that was released two whole decades ago. Half-Life, from 1998, is still played online as well. Halo 2 was only from 2004, was massively successful, and is dead.)

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#67

I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realisticall…

It's a terrible thing when somebody (Microsoft Engineer or not) tries to make sense of all the fact'less back n' forth about how much Microsoft sucks and they can't do anything right.

If more people stopped to think what the Master plan here might be, we would all be better off.

Instead we're entrenched in cold-war-like mentality of Apple-FRIEND, GOOGLE-FRIEND, SONY-BEST-FRIEND, ... Microsoft-ENEMY.

Microsoft stopped being a monopoly long, long time ago (in internet time), yet everybody still continues to hate.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#68

Microsoft really did a terrible job at messaging on this. I'm even annoyed, and I don't play much, and everything I buy is digital download, not physical media, so the whole disc selling thing doesn't even affect me. Even so, it feels nasty. MS has basically said fuck you to gamers, without any justifiable reason. Taking down Gamestop doesn't require anything but a better Gamestop replacement. This dev complains abou…

> The fact Xbox tosses ads in your face on every single home screen except settings is also extremely distasteful, and MS burned a lot of goodwill on that. This is the single biggest thing that puts a bad taste in my mouth from my Xbox. Am I a customer or a product? Companies should pick only one. If I pay money, I don't want to be sold.

> If I pay money, I don't want to be sold

Ever watched TV? Ever been to the cinema? Ever read a newspaper or a magazine? Get real.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but that could just mean that COD is priced too low even under the current system (where games are always $60 max not including DLC etc).

Or the effort spent to resell is valued more than the resale value of the game (whether it is true or not) or it's because COD has a higher resale value. Although I'd guess that people's gaming budget isn't as simple as X number of games @ $Y max each and so-called blockbuster titles could easily start charging more without losing too much of their fan bases.

They could go for a bigger % cut of gamers disposable income, the same way smartphones have done for the cellphone market.

Videogames are also somewhat addictive, so the supply curve might look more like tobacco or alcohol.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#70
post #54
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the link? Your post sounds like every other one discussing MS's strategy without taking into account anything the linked page said. I'm not saying it's true or that it'll succeed, but it doesn't describe MS trying to "stretch" at all.

"The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping ... bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins" Makes me sad that execs actually sat round a table listed those as objectives.

Unless you wanted single player modes only those have been dead for a while, on both XBox and PS3. Ever heard of online codes?
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