They didn't kill a car for a better horse. They killed a bus for a better car.
The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
111–120 of 206 posts
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#112Try hard as they might, it's impossible to make those "features" sound good. This one is especially amazing: "You could re-sell your physical disc game to Gamestop or any participating outlet that opted into Microsoft’s revenue sharing system." Gee, thanks, Microsoft! It's not like those outlets will pass the cost right onto the consumer or anything (oh wait, they will). It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Lo…
>It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Look at that money over there. Let's take it!" What's next, Wal-Mart charging Ralph Lauren every time a customer comes in wearing a Polo shirt (because why should other clothing companies get free advertising in their store)? Could you explain this analogy because it makes zero sense to me. >The other issue? For the author to be completely honest, every "benefit" mentioned…
"How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)?"
The main difference is that Steam is an OPTION, not the ONLY WAY.
I can get most of the games on Steam off the shelf, either used or new, as a physical copy, or from another digital source (even indie games have most of the time the option of buying a digital copy from their site).
It's a forced comparison: there are ALREADY services, both for xbox and PS3 that do exactly what Steam does, that is to say, provide games as a digital downloads, as an alternative to pysical copies. Steam makes it very convenient to use their service, but it's not something that is forced on you.
What Microsoft was planning was removing any choice. If they come up with a similar service that is convenient and with actual benefits respect to the normal way of doing things, people will start using it by themselves, without it being forced on them.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#113disagree on this:
• You could install all your games onto your hard drive and not have to get up all the time to swap discs
just allow the user to do it if the user agrees to have the 24h online check.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with convert to cloud is that it would require every Xbox to go online in order to check with the mothership before running the game, even from a disk. Otherwise you'd be able to share the disk with offline users who could continue using the physical copy. They had two choices: Require an internet connection before running a game. (the 24 hour check) or The disk must be present at all times.
You're thinking a bit closed minded. There are other ways to tackle the problem depending on how user friendly or user unfriendly you want the console to be. For example: 1. Converting to cloud could require users to trade in the physical disk at a local store for a digital CD key. A pain for users but by making this a known requirement up front, users won't be able to complain about it and it may convince users who…
You're still thinking inside the box a little. Gamecube used a variety of patented format cds and encryption keys stored in a small area of the cd for their copy protection. [1]
Or, you know, just turn off the always-online or check-in-each-24h requirement and just lock down the hardware from sideloading games onto it. Even without that, something tells me people would still buy games.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_optical_disc#Nintendo_...
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#115Blame EA for this. The Sim City debacle soured a lot of people on the requirement for Internet connectivity for games that they have purchased.
Also that fast Internet speed is still widely available to many people in India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam. That's a big chunk of game console market.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WE WERE NOT GIVEN A CHOICE As consumers, we are rarely given a choice.
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.
I can conceivably see the case where someone'd just like to argue "this, very much yes, but not this" - the whole idea that one thing should just then be a "deal-breaker" is more a reflection of the fact that the only substantial way we can then make the argument is through a binary buy-or-don't-buy.
So I don't mind the rhetoric - someone shouldn't have to claim ultimate and eternal loyalty to a product (lest they risk being attacked with a perceived inconsistency pointed out) to argue with and about a product. Of course it makes it no more effective - but it's slightly more truthful.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#117Try hard as they might, it's impossible to make those "features" sound good. This one is especially amazing: "You could re-sell your physical disc game to Gamestop or any participating outlet that opted into Microsoft’s revenue sharing system." Gee, thanks, Microsoft! It's not like those outlets will pass the cost right onto the consumer or anything (oh wait, they will). It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Lo…
>It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Look at that money over there. Let's take it!" What's next, Wal-Mart charging Ralph Lauren every time a customer comes in wearing a Polo shirt (because why should other clothing companies get free advertising in their store)? Could you explain this analogy because it makes zero sense to me. >The other issue? For the author to be completely honest, every "benefit" mentioned…
How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)?
On Steam I can play my games while being offline, I can play my games on multiple computers (the games are bound to the account, not the computer), I have good prices, I can install and deinstall games as much as I want, the amount of choice is incredible and last but not least if I don't use my account for one year and log in again, all my games and savegames are there.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#118The main issue is how badly Microsoft marketed the XBOX One. They completely failed to get their message across. As a result they were getting shit on by Sony. Facebook and reddit have seen a huge number of anti-XBOX posts.. I don't know what pre-orders were looking like but I would imagine they aren't great because of all the bad publicity. I wonder how things would have looked if Microsoft had a decent marketing te…
You can only spin the "DRM is good for you" message so much. Most people are smarter than to fall for it.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#119I don't really see how the features they removed are incompatible with not requiring online checkins every 24h and certainly not with the used game policy. I don't see why they couldn't have made the online checkins optional, but required to do any of the game sharing, and if you don't check in within 24h it just disables games that aren't yours and doesn't let other people play yours. Sure, that could be gotten arou…
I think the problem happens when Person A buys a game disc and lends a digital copy to Person B. Person A then disconnects from the Internet and plays using the game disc and Person B plays with the 24H online check in. Now you have two people playing the same game at the same time with only one copy of the game bought.
how about this:
before A can lend a digital copy to B, A must turn on his internet connection and tell MS's server that he is now lending to B.
B can now download A's game to play.
A cannot play his physical copy until B returns the copy back to the server (some state must be kept in A's console to remember this).
if B's connection goes down for more than some period (could less or more than 24hr, configurable by A), his copy is automatically relinquished.
does this solve the "only single active copy" issue?
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#120For example, if Apple had listened to prevailing wisdom in 2007, the iPhone would have had a physical keyboard.
If. Fucking. Only.