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The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

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Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#91
I think the reality is they will slowly reintroduce the features they've now taken away. Or perhaps none of those features have been taken away, and they're just adding new ones that allow for play w/o an internet connection.

In any case, I think when the dust settles, most everyone will be content with the options given. This was just a PR disaster, not a poorly engineered game console.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#92
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft on the other hand has a history of just shutting down their DRM servers without making it right for the customers who bought into their DRM'd products. Source? Microsoft is incredibly well known for supporting products int he long term. They only shut down Xbox Live for the original Xbox in 2010. And Windows XP is still infamously supported.

My Kin studio and Zune say otherwise.

IIRC Zune still works, since Xbox Music is a rebranded Zune Marketplace. Even if it doesn't, it's a device, it doesn't need internet.

The Kin is partly Verizon's fault, really.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft on the other hand has a history of just shutting down their DRM servers without making it right for the customers who bought into their DRM'd products. Source? Microsoft is incredibly well known for supporting products int he long term. They only shut down Xbox Live for the original Xbox in 2010. And Windows XP is still infamously supported.

When what's being created is a timeless piece of art, 10 years is not long-lived support. People still play NES games, and I want to be able to play my current gen games 30 years from now.

And I'm sure there's some sort of long term solution that would disable the 24 hour check (which obviously doesn't need to happen anymore) when the authentication servers were to be decommissioned.

This isn't Microsoft's first rodeo.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it different than Steam, other than the point than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now They don't allow developers to self-publish, and Valve is privately owned by a benevolent dictator who won't be prone to public investor pressure for short term quarterly profits. People trust Valve to do the right thing. Microsoft on the other hand has a history of…

> Microsoft on the other hand has a history of just shutting down their DRM servers without making it right for the customers who bought into their DRM'd products. Source? Microsoft is incredibly well known for supporting products int he long term. They only shut down Xbox Live for the original Xbox in 2010. And Windows XP is still infamously supported.

MSN Music http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/04/drm-su...

"The news will likely upset a number of Microsoft's customers, who bought music from MSN Music before the company launched the Zune Marketplace and decided to ditch the old store. Microsoft's decision to turn off the MSN Music authorization servers serves as a painful reminder that DRM ultimately severely limits your rights. Companies that control various DRM schemes, as well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any moment—no matter what your expectation was when you bought it. Some Major League Baseball fans learned this the hard way last fall."

I wouldn't trust anything from Microsoft where in order for it to keep working, it would have to phone home to MS DRM servers. MS will eventually shut down those DRM servers without giving their customers a solution to use their DRM'd products post-shutdown.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#95

The gaming industry as a whole has gone backward. The idea that a game would ship which allowed users to set up their own networks and play their buds seems alien. Instead, many franchises shut down their subscription service after a couple of years - e.g. to force the upgrade from FIFA 12 to FIFA 14. I remember Quake - the free demo, and fragging my coworkers over the Novell after hours to the point that my wife wou…

Quake wasn't made by a marketing team. Also, here on the PC side, things still seem fine as ever, maybe even better when you consider the fact that we have fully drm-free options these days.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#96
post #69
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they could have sold their console with online retail only, a la Amazon. That would have been really innovative.

>That would have been really innovative. And a great way to lose out on billions of sales.

Ask Amazon how it turned out for them with the Kindle. Sold only online. No retailers. They crushed all the other physical ebook-readers re-sellers.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we're always given a choice in the end: buy it or don't buy it. It's what I've done in the past, and it's what I'll do now. I'll just not buy it. Because if you complain, but buy it anyway, you're really saying that it's still worth while to you.

Sure, but then you were also given a choice with the Xbox One all along. It sounded like you were saying that people should get a choice between the old system and new. But that's silly, and never happens in the real world anyway.

That is really not the case. Even on the Xbox 360 today, you can either buy a disc or download a game from the marketplace. Physical and digital distribution models have coexisted since the '90s.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#98
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have small kids in the house, it also saves you from the inevitability of these expensive discs getting scratched.

That actually is a great reason for going all digital. The other reason (I don't think it was mentioned in the article) is that over the years (PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360) disc drive failures have been one of the biggest hardware problems I've faced with consoles.

I actually rip digital copies of my kids' DVDs, then stream them to the TV over my network for precisely this reason. Left to their own devices, they will trash any given DVD in under a week.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#100
post #40

> You could install all your games onto your hard drive and not have to get up all the time to swap discs Holy crap, that's lazy. Who wrote this, Eric Cartman? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRjjVtvxRMs

Exactly! That's why I never use remote controls for any television in my house. I want to live an active lifestyle
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