Those weren't features. They were bugs.
The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
151–160 of 206 posts
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
It's interesting, because in this whole thing I've noticed that there's a reason that I am ok with Steam on my PC when I'm not ok with digital downloads for a console. Primarily, it's because of the kinds of games that are released and played on them. On PC, I have games that are inherently ALL about the online experience, games like TF2, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Counter Strike, ARMA, and many more. Th…
Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, Just Cause 2, and Civilization are just a handful of mostly single player games I saw scrolling through my library that I and I would guess most gamers would prefer to play on PC even though they're also on consoles.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#153I think the OP here is giving MS more credit than they are due. I don't believe they were trying to build a car, and I don't believe they had a messaging problem. I think they were trying to pull a bait and switch. Pitch a car and sell a faster horse. They got caught, and the Internet won. You can easily get to that conclusion by gauging the HD storage shipping with each unit. Add to that the average speed of Interne…
It's not even a simple question of the average speeds of internet connections in America. It's a question of whether there is ever a legitimate reason for the XB1 to be disconnected from the internet. I have an okay connection speed most of the time, but a month ago, over a course of a couple days, my connection started to get really erratic and eventually died. My cable modem had died. I went over a week dealing with terrible Comcast customer service. All I wanted was for them to send a repair person to replace the modem as soon as possible.
But for Comcast, it was all about the up-sell. You see, they didn't want to just replace my old modem, they wanted to use the "opportunity" to push me to a more expensive plan (as I later found out) with useless "features" like IP-based voice call service. I had no interest in these features but the customer service rep assured me that my bill wouldn't increase and my connection speeds would be higher. What's not to like in this deal?
Of course, I find out when my bill comes that the new plan is $20+ higher due to the useless voice calling. People complain about NSA wiretapping but I would love to have access to the recording of that conversation to prove that Comcast lied to me.
Now imagine what would have happened if I had to be connected to the internet once every 24 hours to play games. It was bad enough that I had no internet for 7+ days but now I wouldn't even be able to entertain myself with single player games. I know it's beating a dead horse but the fact is that I should not be hindered in any way from playing Angry Birds on my console just because Anonymous is DDOSing Microsoft's servers or I just moved to a new apartment and don't have internet service or my internet took a dump because the cable modem kicked the bucket or because I'm just lazy and don't want to enter my WPA key into the console.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#154Maybe sharing their libraries with their friends wasn’t something they were looking forward to. Maybe they liked having to bring all their physical discs along wherever they went. Maybe they didn’t care about having the ability to sell their digital games after they’re done playing. I don’t know. I really despise conversations that take this turn, to wit: "maybe the people I'm treating like idiots really are massochi…
Along with this, everyone praising the supposed benefits of digital lending forget that they had no actual idea of how it would work. There are no details. Microsoft never defined what "family" meant, and nobody has any idea of how the system would be implemented. People were praising a feature that literally didn't exist.
[Phil] Spencer: We don't have a lending solution today.
Kotaku: You might have one?
Spencer: We don't have a path... I don't want to make a commitment to somebody without a plan of record on how that lands. I could over-promise, under-deliver on the features. I don't want to do that. I want to make sure. I understand how gifting is going to work. I understand how the secondary market is going to work.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#155Bullshit. If Microsoft had any guts, they woulda done this but only for non-physical copies. Then the consumer would have a choice on whether they liked the direction things were going or not and there would have actually been some benefit from the status quo for the consumer.
You know what the difference between the console based DRM schemes and Steam is? A worse situation was already emerging on PC. Publishers were starting to employ draconian DRM policies that eliminated any chance of resale or sharing, but also didn't work properly and made pirated games a significantly better choice than buying a game from a store.
Steam gave you a better experience with the same limitations as the sell-side of the market was starting to demand and enforce.
If you think Microsoft made a bad move, you are plainly ignoring the history of PC gaming and trying to imagine that the status quo was how it always existed.
Oh, hey, you know what else MS could have done if they had guts? They could have made it an option to add a disc game to your permanent library, allowing a consumer to voluntarily give up their right of resale for permanent digital access.
Of course they're cowards, smart cowards, but cowards.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is STEAM an option? Only if I do not wan to buy certain games. Two games I bought in a big box store REQUIRE a Steam account to play. Perhaps you have heard of the Civilization series? More than once when Steam had a problem or I had one with my provider I could not play certain games off line. I don't like Steam, I do not like the idea I have to have their permission to play a game I paid fifty bucks for and have th…
"Is STEAM an option?" It is. If certain games require it, then it is something forced by those games, not by the service itself. Just as those "off the shelf" games that are account tied, as Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2, it does not imply that all physical games are account tied. An exception does not a rule make, while in the case of Microsoft that would have been "the rule".
> If certain games require it, then it is something forced by those games, not by the service itself.
So you don't buy games that require XBox One?
You had a choice before. Now that choice has been removed.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#157> You could buy a digital copy and sell it or gift it to a friend (a previously unheard-of policy in digital games) Steam??
That was my first thought... But remember, this is in the console arena where everything seems to lag behind PCs.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, we're always given a choice in the end: buy it or don't buy it. That works with grocery, baked goods, music, perhaps even computers (if you opt not to look at the CPU inside), but game consoles? You can hardly say "fuck Sony, I'm going to buy Final Fantasy for Wii". This only works on a free market, which is a rare sight these days.
You still have a choice! "Can play Game X" is a feature of the platform just as much as as its hard-drive space or lack of DRM or whatever. Luxuries always have an element of consumer choice involved. It's only, in fact when you start talking about essentials such as food, housing and basic services where you can claim you're forced to buy something. And I'm not even sure where you were trying to go with that music c…
Why not apply it to the life itself? I mean, people who can't afford food are free to die, aren't they? It's not like anyone is forcing them to live or something. Using this kind of logic, anything can be turned into a choice.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#159The 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.
Gamers seem to love Steam.
Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can only spin the "DRM is good for you" message so much. Most people are smarter than to fall for it.
Gamers seem to love Steam.
Steam's DRM stays out of my way, in the same way iTunes' used to. Microsoft's DRM forced me to play in a way they saw fit.