OK, so I've tackled the always online and used game DRM and how micosoft just botched how they handled that. Here is my theory why they botched it; they put all their confidence in the selling power of the Kinect. Here's the problem, the Kinect was Dead On Arrival. Just by definition the Kinect is a failure. Before I get ahead of myself, let me talk about how they handled the Kinect.
OK, first a little history for the guys reading this 10 years from now. Back in the last couple of years of the XBOX360, Microsoft made a nifty little camera thing that plugs into your XBOX360 and you could do motion controls without any controllers, unlike Nintendo and Sony. I tried it, and it was kind of cool. The games were lame, like the Wii tech demo games, but it was still nifty. Well Microsoft really shoehorned it at the end of the 360 with most of the 360 exclusive games being Kinect games. Well, no one really cared about the Kinect. I give them credit for trying something different, but people really didn't care. Fast forward a couple of years, Nintendo reveled the Wii U, a console that didn't rely on motion controls, and it looked like we were just going to get back to simple gaming. Uhhh, wrong. At the revile of the XBOX ONE, Microsoft showcased the Kinect 2.0, a new and improved Kinect that can read people's faces, recognize extremities as small as fingers, automatically sign in whomever is holding the controller, and loads of voice commands. OK whatever, Microsoft made an even more nifty motion control camera. It'll be a nice little accessory I'll likely pick up on sale at the end of the console life. WRONG! Turns out, every XBOX ONE console will be bundled with it, and not only that, the XBOX ONE won't work if the Kinect isn't connected. You have absolutely no choice if you want this or not. We're doing this so developers can confidently develop for the Kinect because it has an install base. Oh yeah, and because of it, our console is $100 more than the PS4, but Sony makes you buy their motion control camera for $60, we're giving you ours for free*.
*$100 higher price is the result of an add on you don't even want.
Oh yeah, 10% of the hardware is reserved for the Kinect. Even if your game doesn't use Kinect features, you won't be able to use all the hardware.
OK, lets break this down:
1. We're forcing you to buy an add on if you buy our console
2. This add on is why we are $100 more expensive than the competition.
3. We want to make sure developers know there's an install base for it so they feel confident developing for it.
4. You have to use it otherwise your console won't work.
OK Microsoft, let me tell you about another console that shoehorned motion controls. When Nintendo made the Wii, it was pretty revolutionary. Home motion controls. Who could beat it? Wiis were flying off the shelf. Everyone was out of stock. Why were people buying it? Because it was a cool gimmick. What happened though is not pretty. No one really bought any games for it. The attach rate was around 1 to 1 (an average of 1 game per console.) People bought it for Wii Sports. The top selling game, Wii Play, only sold that many copies because it was the only way to get a second remote for the longest time. Most of the games that utilized the motion controls were shovelware. The semi-decent games botched the use of motion controls. There were only 2 really good games that fully utilized the motion controls. Everything else was lame or didn't utilize the motion controls. All those average Joe people stopped playing their Wiis after 2 years and left them to collect dust. The "hardcore gamer" didn't buy the Wii for the motion controls, they bought it for Mario and Zelda games. Nintendo realized the mistake with the motion controls and dropped them in favor of a second screen on their next console. On the 360 Kinect, shovelware. Kinect 2.0, only shovelware. People don't care about motion controls or voice commands.
OK so Kinect is a flop. How could that be the root of all their problems? Simple. They put all their eggs in the Kinect basket. Instead of trying to explain why consumers need always online or used game DRM, and explaining how that family sharing thing worked, they focused all their efforts on why you need a Kinect. All this "we built the XBOX ONE with the Kinect in mind. Everything about XBOX ONE is Kinect. We want to make sure that you get the full XBOX ONE experience and the only way to do that is by forcing the Kinect." When compared to 360 Kinect, "no that was an after thought. We built the XBOX ONE with Kinect in mind. You need Kinect." People don't care about motion controls. "That's because it's never been done right with great technology. We have super advanced tracking capabilities that make the Kinect integral to the XBOX ONE experience." What if my Kinect gets damaged? I have a cat that will chew through the cable. "Well, make sure it's safe. It would be a shame if you weren't able to enjoy the Kinect, and that's why we're forcing it." And on and on and on. They wanted the Kinect to succeed so badly.
Fast forward a couple of months,they realize that maybe requiring Kinect for the XBOX to function was a bad idea. Naturally, they make a day 1 patch that will allow you to not have the Kinect plugged in. However, they are not budging on the bundling.
"You made it so I don't need it, so why not just sell me a console without a Kinect for $100 less?"
"No no no, we only did this in case of catastrophic loss of Kinect. This way, if there's some error, you will still be able to use your XBOX. However, the Kinect is still an integral part of the XBOX ONE experience and we want to make sure developers can confidently develop with Kinect in mind."
The Kinect is the problem. If Microsoft didn't waste all of it's lipstick on the pig that is Kinect, maybe, just maybe, they could have found a way to successfully market the always online and used game DRM. As I stated before, always online could have been marketed as a positive. Used game DRM could have been worked out to find a happy medium, and we would have known how family share works. But no, focus all efforts on this stupid peripheral that no one wants and no one cares about. Want to know a funny thing? Once people got their XBOX ONE, they tried the Kinect. They say it is stupid, doesn't work properly, and would rather have their $100. The only reason they have it plugged in is because they have it so why not use it. You put so much focus on the Kinect. You felt that this was the most important thing to try to market. You thought this was more important than always online and used game DRM, that you were going to focus all your efforts on it and not try to explain why the other aspects were good for the consumer. No one bought the "this is integral to the experience" load because they knew that they would not buy games that focus heavily on Kinect. You even had the audacity to not want to include a headset "because you can just use the Kinect, it does the same thing as a headset and so much more," ignoring the fact that people don't want their conversations coming out of the TV and don't want the muffledness of yelling at a microphone that's on the other side of the room as opposed to a headset mic that's right next to their mouth. If you didn't focus heavily on the Kinect and just cut your losses on the most useless aspect of the XBOX ONE, then maybe you wouldn't have had to do all those reversals. There are people who say "I could forgive the always online and used game DRM, but the Kinect is unforgivable and I will not buy an XBOX ONE so long as it's forced into every XBOX ONE purchase."
Now as with everything else, I am not the norm. However, this time, it's
a little different. Most people don't want the Kinect at all. However, there's a part of me that does want the Kinect, but not for gaming purposes. The only reason I want a Kinect is for collectors purposes. I have a PS2 EYE, I got it for $1. I want a PS3 camera, and I'm willing to pay $10 maximum for it. I want an XBOX360 kinect, and I'm willing to pay a maximum of $15 for it with the Kinect sports adventure game. I just want them for collectors purposes, and will only pay a little for it. I don't want to spend $100 on something I won't use because I don't care about it.
Alright, I made my peace with the XBOX ONE original concept. As of right now, the XBOX 180 is much better than the XBOX ONE original idea. Until I can buy one without Kinect though, I still won't buy it. Once people start selling their XBOX ONE's to GameStop, I guarantee you that GameStop will offer to resell them without the Kinect. Well this has been Happy Gamer, and don't put all your eggs into the motion control basket, because it will break them.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Hapy Gamer Rambles, a look at XBOX ONE's used game DRM
OK, so welcome to part 2 of the XBOX ONE original design look. Last time I talked about the always online aspect. Today I'll talk about the used game DRM. Next time, I'll talk about the kinect. Now with the used game DRM, I believe Microsoft was trying to accomplish 2 things, control over the market and no more used games, and make the XBOX ONE an all digital machine.
Now like always online, you can't sell me on only digital and no used games. I'm a collector, I like my physical copies for display reasons. I also hate digital only since I've missed some digital only releases and now I can't get them anywhere. There have been launch titles that are no longer produced, and if not for used physical copies, I would be out of luck. Not only that, with physical I don't have to worry about my console running out of space. I'm only limited to how much shelf space I have. Also, as a collector, I refuse to sell games. Even if the game is utter crap, it is now part of my collection and I will not sell it. Again, I'm not the norm, but this time there are more people who would agree with me. There are a lot of people that like physical copies.
So, where did Microsoft go wrong? Well here's how they treated physical copies. "If you buy the game physically, the game is then installed onto your hard drive and is locked to your account. With this, you don't need to have the disc in the tray and you've got family share. You can't sell it unless at a specified retailer. You can only loan the game to 1 friend, and now the game is tied to their account forever. Basically, you can't simply sell or loan your games." So what's the problem here? Well Microsoft basically missed the entire point why people buy physical copies. You don't buy a physical copy to have it treated exactly like a digital copy. If you buy a physical copy, you buy it so you could easily trade with with friends, easily sell it, and play the game off the disc. If you wanted disc-less play, no way to sell your game, and no way to trade your game, you buy it digitally. Whether you wanted to control used game sales or wanted to go all digital, this was not the way to do it.
So, controlling used game sales. I can see where they come from, developers don't get money from used sales, they need to keep the servers running, and they might not have gone under if more people bought it new. Here's one thing though that I think developers forget; used games are far different than pirated games. With pirated games, one once legal license can be used entertain an infinite amount of people. With a used game however, only one person can enjoy it, and the original owner forfeits all rights to enjoying it later. With used games, people do experience seller's remorse, because now they can't enjoy that game ever again unless they buy another copy. I will save the details on my explanation of why people sell their games and how to avoid that for a later date, but here's the gist; people sell their games because they're board with them and don't want them anymore and would rather have some money. If you don't want people to sell their game, make a game they won't want to sell. Xenoblade Chronicle was going for $70 used, because that's the price it took to get people away from it. Bear in mind, new it cost $40. It was so good, people considered it worth more than the new price. If those developers released more copies at $40, they would have sold so many more. In fact, GameStop got into some trouble because they got some new copies and they opened them and called them used because it would make more money due to used costing $30 more. If you don't want people to sell your game, make a game they won't want to sell.
So I addressed preventing used games, what about going all digital. Well that's a very simple answer that developers don't seem to grasp; pass the savings in shipping and production onto the customer. When a game is physical, there's far more costs than just digital; shipping, packaging, printing, disc writing, the middle mans cut, and things like that. All in all, the developer and Microsoft might only get like $45 together after all the other costs of doing physical. So without all these added costs, how much do digital games cost? Exactly the same as if you bought it physically. Sure, developers now make more per game and financially it's the same for the consumer, but then that means that the consumer has to deal with all the draw backs to digital, aka, no flexibility on sharing or selling and hard drive space. Sure they get the perks of disc-less play, but that doesn't necessarily make up for the drawbacks. If you want people to buy digitally, make it financially advantageous. "OK physical copy costs $60, if you're going to buy digitally, we'll subtract the cost of printing the disc, making the packaging, shipping the game to the retailer, the retailer's cut, let's round that down to the nearest dollar, so now your final price is $45." That's 25% off physical. Do you know why Steam can do all those sales? It's because it's an all digital platform without any middle men or production costs, and they pass the savings onto the consumer. They did do some physical releases, but they made it better financially to buy it digitally. You make digital cheaper than physical, people will then buy digital, and you can naturally phase out physical. I fear the day when that happens, but that's how you do it.
So, when Microsoft got rid of the DRM, they got rid of the "features" like disc-less play and family share. I already addressed disc-less play and if people want that feature they'll just buy it digitally, but what about family share? Well, we really don't know what we lost with that one. The details were kind of hazy as to what that would actually do. There was something about being able to share your entire game collection with 10 people in your family, and those 10 people could use the same license. An example they gave was a dad and his 2 college sons playing CoD together off the same license with the dad at home and the sons off at their respective colleges. The way it sounds is that you could have shared your entire game collection with 10 "family members," aka friends. How would this have worked, we don't know. Would there have been 10 permanent people you call family that could use it? Would that mean you could be logged onto 10 different consoles? Would it have meant that you could call 10 consoles your "console" and everyone on that console had access to your games? No one really knows. Microsoft did try to advertize the DRM as a good thing, and to that I must give them some credit, but it ultimately failed because people still hated it and DRM is almost never the way to go. People expect a certain level of DRM with digital games. If you want to get rid of physical games, you need to make digital more appealing than physical, not destroy the whole reason people buy physical in the first place.
OK, that's enough for today. Next time, the kinect. Well this has been happy gamer, and if you want to get rid of physical copies and used games, DRM is not the way to go.
Now like always online, you can't sell me on only digital and no used games. I'm a collector, I like my physical copies for display reasons. I also hate digital only since I've missed some digital only releases and now I can't get them anywhere. There have been launch titles that are no longer produced, and if not for used physical copies, I would be out of luck. Not only that, with physical I don't have to worry about my console running out of space. I'm only limited to how much shelf space I have. Also, as a collector, I refuse to sell games. Even if the game is utter crap, it is now part of my collection and I will not sell it. Again, I'm not the norm, but this time there are more people who would agree with me. There are a lot of people that like physical copies.
So, where did Microsoft go wrong? Well here's how they treated physical copies. "If you buy the game physically, the game is then installed onto your hard drive and is locked to your account. With this, you don't need to have the disc in the tray and you've got family share. You can't sell it unless at a specified retailer. You can only loan the game to 1 friend, and now the game is tied to their account forever. Basically, you can't simply sell or loan your games." So what's the problem here? Well Microsoft basically missed the entire point why people buy physical copies. You don't buy a physical copy to have it treated exactly like a digital copy. If you buy a physical copy, you buy it so you could easily trade with with friends, easily sell it, and play the game off the disc. If you wanted disc-less play, no way to sell your game, and no way to trade your game, you buy it digitally. Whether you wanted to control used game sales or wanted to go all digital, this was not the way to do it.
So, controlling used game sales. I can see where they come from, developers don't get money from used sales, they need to keep the servers running, and they might not have gone under if more people bought it new. Here's one thing though that I think developers forget; used games are far different than pirated games. With pirated games, one once legal license can be used entertain an infinite amount of people. With a used game however, only one person can enjoy it, and the original owner forfeits all rights to enjoying it later. With used games, people do experience seller's remorse, because now they can't enjoy that game ever again unless they buy another copy. I will save the details on my explanation of why people sell their games and how to avoid that for a later date, but here's the gist; people sell their games because they're board with them and don't want them anymore and would rather have some money. If you don't want people to sell their game, make a game they won't want to sell. Xenoblade Chronicle was going for $70 used, because that's the price it took to get people away from it. Bear in mind, new it cost $40. It was so good, people considered it worth more than the new price. If those developers released more copies at $40, they would have sold so many more. In fact, GameStop got into some trouble because they got some new copies and they opened them and called them used because it would make more money due to used costing $30 more. If you don't want people to sell your game, make a game they won't want to sell.
So I addressed preventing used games, what about going all digital. Well that's a very simple answer that developers don't seem to grasp; pass the savings in shipping and production onto the customer. When a game is physical, there's far more costs than just digital; shipping, packaging, printing, disc writing, the middle mans cut, and things like that. All in all, the developer and Microsoft might only get like $45 together after all the other costs of doing physical. So without all these added costs, how much do digital games cost? Exactly the same as if you bought it physically. Sure, developers now make more per game and financially it's the same for the consumer, but then that means that the consumer has to deal with all the draw backs to digital, aka, no flexibility on sharing or selling and hard drive space. Sure they get the perks of disc-less play, but that doesn't necessarily make up for the drawbacks. If you want people to buy digitally, make it financially advantageous. "OK physical copy costs $60, if you're going to buy digitally, we'll subtract the cost of printing the disc, making the packaging, shipping the game to the retailer, the retailer's cut, let's round that down to the nearest dollar, so now your final price is $45." That's 25% off physical. Do you know why Steam can do all those sales? It's because it's an all digital platform without any middle men or production costs, and they pass the savings onto the consumer. They did do some physical releases, but they made it better financially to buy it digitally. You make digital cheaper than physical, people will then buy digital, and you can naturally phase out physical. I fear the day when that happens, but that's how you do it.
So, when Microsoft got rid of the DRM, they got rid of the "features" like disc-less play and family share. I already addressed disc-less play and if people want that feature they'll just buy it digitally, but what about family share? Well, we really don't know what we lost with that one. The details were kind of hazy as to what that would actually do. There was something about being able to share your entire game collection with 10 people in your family, and those 10 people could use the same license. An example they gave was a dad and his 2 college sons playing CoD together off the same license with the dad at home and the sons off at their respective colleges. The way it sounds is that you could have shared your entire game collection with 10 "family members," aka friends. How would this have worked, we don't know. Would there have been 10 permanent people you call family that could use it? Would that mean you could be logged onto 10 different consoles? Would it have meant that you could call 10 consoles your "console" and everyone on that console had access to your games? No one really knows. Microsoft did try to advertize the DRM as a good thing, and to that I must give them some credit, but it ultimately failed because people still hated it and DRM is almost never the way to go. People expect a certain level of DRM with digital games. If you want to get rid of physical games, you need to make digital more appealing than physical, not destroy the whole reason people buy physical in the first place.
OK, that's enough for today. Next time, the kinect. Well this has been happy gamer, and if you want to get rid of physical copies and used games, DRM is not the way to go.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
XBOX ONE always online, a second look
Hey there, I've read a couple of articles about the lack of major cloud computing on the XBOX ONE, a feature that they apparently had to drop with the offline patch. OK, so lets objectively look at idea and possibilities of always online.
First some back story. If you're reading this years in the future, Microsoft majorly botched the XBOX ONE reveal. They showcased always online requirements, used game DRM, forced kinect, and a heavy focus on multi-media and little on games; things the gaming community were not happy about. Always online, even for single player? Used game DRM? Forced kinect? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM!? Yeah, it was bad. Sony even rubbed it in Microsoft's face during their PS4 reveal, showcasing games, offline play, allowing used games, and no mandatory PSeye. When pre-orders were in the toilet and no one wanted an XBOX ONE, well Microsoft reversed those things with a day one patch. Now you could play offline, no more used game DRM, and the kinect wasn't required for the console to run, even though they still bundled every XBOX ONE with one.
Now with these reversals, certain "features" were lost. With the used game DRM, you wouldn't need to have the disk in the tray in order to play the game. There was also some sort of family sharing feature where it sounds like you could essentially share your entire collection with 10 people and you could all play with the same license at the same time. However, details are sketchy since no one really cared about it and we never saw it, so I don't know what it was for sure. With the always online requirement, developers could take full advantage of the cloud computing, so now they have the power of 3 XBOX ONEs at their disposal. And with mandatory kinect...well we don't really know. Somehow yelling comands at my TV was going to enhance my experience and by having mandatory kinect use that was going guarantee my enhanced experience. I'll address the used game DRM and Kinect later. Long story short, "you want to curb used game sales, make games people won't want to sell," and "motion controls are stupid and will only bread shovelware." But today, I will talk about always online.
First off, you could never sell me on always online. I am a video game collector, I play my consoles decades after they were supported; I was not only worried about myself 15 years from now when the console isn't supported and all the servers are off line, but also for the collector like me who will buy an XBOX ONE at a garage sale 20 years from now. If it truly needed to be online and access the server and would be a brick if there wasn't a server to connect to, then I would be angry and would weep for the future collector like myself. I would only be fine if I could get a guarantee that I could get an offline patch once the next thing comes out and the servers would then stop running. But, I am not like most people. Most people just want their device to play games now and will not care about it 20 years from now unless they want to get nostalgic. So lets dissect how Microsoft screwed up the presentation of always online.
Here's the thing, Microsoft did a horrible job explaining why they needed the always online. When asked about always online, Microsoft reps essentially said "you need it because we say so," "you don't have stable internet, well you should get with the times and get stable internet," "you have a bandwidth cap, well sucks to be you, maybe you should get a different ISP," and lets not forget, "you want an offline console, we already have that for you, it's called the XBOX360." I'm paraphrasing here, but that's essentially how Microsoft explained the always online thing. Except for the last one, Major Neilson or some other big XBOX rep guy did in fact say "want an offline console, we already have that, it's called XBOX360." They did not market this well. "Always online, well of course you need to be online to play multiplayer silly. Single player? Oh well you're still updating the leaderboards and talking to your friends through kinect, silly willy, you're still online, we're just making it easier for you by requiring that you're always online." Again, paraphrasing, but that's essentially how they explained it. You need to be online to play online multiplayer, duh. When asked about online single player, essentially it was "well there's still lots of online stuff you do anyways." That's true, but there are gamers like me who just don't care about doing stuff online; leader boards, chat, party invites, etc. If you don't care about that, you can chose to not connect your console to the internet. In fact most of the cool online stuff requires gold, and a lot of people are cheap bastards like me and don't want XBL Gold. In those cases, online is essentially pointless outside of getting updates. Microsoft basically said "you're always online anyways, so we're going to make it mandatory." That there is assuming, and when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me. Eventually people started to conspire about what the always online really was for, basically a way to spy on you and take more of your money. Somewhat far fetched, but possible. The most probable theory was so it would cut down on piracy. Whatever the real reason was, it's over now.
Now, how could Microsoft have played this so people actually liked it? Simple; instead of talking down to the consumer like they're idiots and sounding like you're saying "this is only good for us," explain to the consumer how this is good for them. Right now, the XBOX ONE is doing rather terribly in the computing department. Multi-plats are inferior in terms of frame rate and resolution, exclusives leave people wondering "why is this at such a low resolution and frame rate," and generally speaking, it under-performs when compared to the competition. What happened to the cloud and the power of 3 XBOX ONEs? Well, now that the XBOX ONE has to allow offline, developers can't count on the cloud and have to rely on the hardware of the single unit. Now I don't know much about computing power and cloud computing, except reliance on the cloud scares the crap out of me from a basic concept level, but I do know that the cloud is an online thing, and you need to be online to access it. If Microsoft did explanations as to how the cloud would be used, did comparisons of native hardware VS. native plus cloud, and actually demonstrated how always online was a feature and not a control device, then XBOX ONE would likely still be always online.
Well this is the only thing that wasn't DOA and Microsoft just failed at marketing it. The other aspects that were dropped, I'll address later. Well this has been happy gamer signing off, and don't insult your customer.
First some back story. If you're reading this years in the future, Microsoft majorly botched the XBOX ONE reveal. They showcased always online requirements, used game DRM, forced kinect, and a heavy focus on multi-media and little on games; things the gaming community were not happy about. Always online, even for single player? Used game DRM? Forced kinect? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM!? Yeah, it was bad. Sony even rubbed it in Microsoft's face during their PS4 reveal, showcasing games, offline play, allowing used games, and no mandatory PSeye. When pre-orders were in the toilet and no one wanted an XBOX ONE, well Microsoft reversed those things with a day one patch. Now you could play offline, no more used game DRM, and the kinect wasn't required for the console to run, even though they still bundled every XBOX ONE with one.
Now with these reversals, certain "features" were lost. With the used game DRM, you wouldn't need to have the disk in the tray in order to play the game. There was also some sort of family sharing feature where it sounds like you could essentially share your entire collection with 10 people and you could all play with the same license at the same time. However, details are sketchy since no one really cared about it and we never saw it, so I don't know what it was for sure. With the always online requirement, developers could take full advantage of the cloud computing, so now they have the power of 3 XBOX ONEs at their disposal. And with mandatory kinect...well we don't really know. Somehow yelling comands at my TV was going to enhance my experience and by having mandatory kinect use that was going guarantee my enhanced experience. I'll address the used game DRM and Kinect later. Long story short, "you want to curb used game sales, make games people won't want to sell," and "motion controls are stupid and will only bread shovelware." But today, I will talk about always online.
First off, you could never sell me on always online. I am a video game collector, I play my consoles decades after they were supported; I was not only worried about myself 15 years from now when the console isn't supported and all the servers are off line, but also for the collector like me who will buy an XBOX ONE at a garage sale 20 years from now. If it truly needed to be online and access the server and would be a brick if there wasn't a server to connect to, then I would be angry and would weep for the future collector like myself. I would only be fine if I could get a guarantee that I could get an offline patch once the next thing comes out and the servers would then stop running. But, I am not like most people. Most people just want their device to play games now and will not care about it 20 years from now unless they want to get nostalgic. So lets dissect how Microsoft screwed up the presentation of always online.
Here's the thing, Microsoft did a horrible job explaining why they needed the always online. When asked about always online, Microsoft reps essentially said "you need it because we say so," "you don't have stable internet, well you should get with the times and get stable internet," "you have a bandwidth cap, well sucks to be you, maybe you should get a different ISP," and lets not forget, "you want an offline console, we already have that for you, it's called the XBOX360." I'm paraphrasing here, but that's essentially how Microsoft explained the always online thing. Except for the last one, Major Neilson or some other big XBOX rep guy did in fact say "want an offline console, we already have that, it's called XBOX360." They did not market this well. "Always online, well of course you need to be online to play multiplayer silly. Single player? Oh well you're still updating the leaderboards and talking to your friends through kinect, silly willy, you're still online, we're just making it easier for you by requiring that you're always online." Again, paraphrasing, but that's essentially how they explained it. You need to be online to play online multiplayer, duh. When asked about online single player, essentially it was "well there's still lots of online stuff you do anyways." That's true, but there are gamers like me who just don't care about doing stuff online; leader boards, chat, party invites, etc. If you don't care about that, you can chose to not connect your console to the internet. In fact most of the cool online stuff requires gold, and a lot of people are cheap bastards like me and don't want XBL Gold. In those cases, online is essentially pointless outside of getting updates. Microsoft basically said "you're always online anyways, so we're going to make it mandatory." That there is assuming, and when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me. Eventually people started to conspire about what the always online really was for, basically a way to spy on you and take more of your money. Somewhat far fetched, but possible. The most probable theory was so it would cut down on piracy. Whatever the real reason was, it's over now.
Now, how could Microsoft have played this so people actually liked it? Simple; instead of talking down to the consumer like they're idiots and sounding like you're saying "this is only good for us," explain to the consumer how this is good for them. Right now, the XBOX ONE is doing rather terribly in the computing department. Multi-plats are inferior in terms of frame rate and resolution, exclusives leave people wondering "why is this at such a low resolution and frame rate," and generally speaking, it under-performs when compared to the competition. What happened to the cloud and the power of 3 XBOX ONEs? Well, now that the XBOX ONE has to allow offline, developers can't count on the cloud and have to rely on the hardware of the single unit. Now I don't know much about computing power and cloud computing, except reliance on the cloud scares the crap out of me from a basic concept level, but I do know that the cloud is an online thing, and you need to be online to access it. If Microsoft did explanations as to how the cloud would be used, did comparisons of native hardware VS. native plus cloud, and actually demonstrated how always online was a feature and not a control device, then XBOX ONE would likely still be always online.
Well this is the only thing that wasn't DOA and Microsoft just failed at marketing it. The other aspects that were dropped, I'll address later. Well this has been happy gamer signing off, and don't insult your customer.
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