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.
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