X-Box one: A comedy of (t)errors

[Brian]

You may also enjoy:

[Anastasia]

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-Games-E3-Were-Running-Windows-7-With-Nvidia-GTX-Cards-56737.html

A general case of Microsoft being Microsoft. The bits at the end about Windows 8 are meatier than the first part, but it still fits here.

[Dracos]

eh, Sloppy, but smoke and mirrors are expected at this point.  For reasons I can't go into, it'd be a bad time to show things running on actual dev units for both consoles and in either case, not really representative of what they'll be at launch.  That isn't a comment on whether either will be good at launch or other things, but just that for either team, running on the live hardware was unlikely to be the right choice with many months before ship.

[Brian]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/06/16/why-oddworld-is-coming-to-every-platform-except-xbox/?partner=yahootix

I'm personally tired of hearing how 'indie is the future of gaming', but ... what the hell?  For one thing, it seems off to me that Oddworld is an 'Indie' franchise, considering they used to be considered at least AA titles, possibly AAA, but that aside--  Microsoft is 'Anti-indie'?

Seriously, are they trying to make their console fail?  Do they have some crazy switcheroo planned where they think that they can win adoration by suddenly reversing these stances?  I swear -- it's like they're trying to become a parody of themselves....

[Dracos]

That company has been releasing games for longer than I've been in the industry.  If they can't get marked down as publisher for self-publishing, I have trouble buying that it is microsoft's fault there.

Microsoft though is currently fighting hard to retain it's title: Worst PR job in the history of the industry.

[Brian]

Just imagine the possibilities if they were to buy EA.

[Brian]

It seems that the 'no indies' thing may be overblown hype.  If I find out more, I'll add that.  In the meantime, Hal found this gem:

https://twitter.com/XboxSupport1/status/345338828606812160

And I felt the thread deserved a rename.

[Dracos]

Yeah, not surprised.  Not sure what's worse: The policy makers or the marketing team.

[Dracos]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/19/4445984/xbox-one-policy-reversal-changes

Linking anywhere non-kotaku.

Well, thats 1 less  stupidity.


•   No more always online requirement
•   The console no longer has to check in every 24 hours
•   All game discs will work on Xbox One as they do on Xbox 360
•   Authentication is no longer necessary
•   An Internet connection is only required when initially setting up the console
•   All downloaded games will function the same when online or offline
•   No additional restrictions on trading games or loaning discs
•   Region locks have been dropped

[Brian]

You know, I'm really not at all surprised.  It does beg the question of how convinced they were they could sell it in the previous state.

[Brian]

From Iddy:



I haven't seen confirmation on the price drop, but it'd be the smarter move on Microsoft's part.

[Grahf]

And now there's a bunch of people complaining that they liked it the way it was.

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

[Brian]

From what I understood, the ability to lend your game that you weren't playing to someone else easily was kind of cool.  I don't know if there's a compromise to have that _and_ retain the ability to resell the games, and to avoid easy-mode piracy, the checkins would be needed to support it.

But any of those unwanted features could just come back in a late update, tied to other, more desirable features.  "Want to share games?  You just need to add this service (which neatly requires daily checkins), and so does the friend you want to share the game with!  It's not built in, so there's also a fee!"

Edit: I am now massively suspicious of this.  Something isn't playing right; that link you gave, Grahf, points out sharing of digital content, not just physical disks.  There is absolutely no reason for them to take away the potential of sharing digital content, and having disk-based games just work off disks.  They could even bundle the 'daily checkin' as an incentive to enable digital sharing, so people could have the best of both worlds and either not subscribe to the DRM, or opt-in and get 'perks'.  Something about this scenario is very, very wrong.

[Dracos]

There's lots of rumors on that going around.

*fishes out the original press release*

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update

It seems to say they are.  But this is the Microsoft of LEGENDARILY BAD PR COMMUNICATION.

[Grahf]

Edit: I am now massively suspicious of this.  Something isn't playing right; that link you gave, Grahf, points out sharing of digital content, not just physical disks.  There is absolutely no reason for them to take away the potential of sharing digital content, and having disk-based games just work off disks.  They could even bundle the 'daily checkin' as an incentive to enable digital sharing, so people could have the best of both worlds and either not subscribe to the DRM, or opt-in and get 'perks'.  Something about this scenario is very, very wrong.

That's what a few people have picked up on already regarding this. The whole point of not needing to take away the functionality but not making it mandatory either. Like if you want to play the game discless, check in once a day; if you don't do that then you have to use the disc. It was something simple, and also something that didn't need the 24 hour check in to be absolutely mandatory either. Other aspects are being called into question as well, such as how many games will still force people to be online via cloud gaming, and of course the largest concern is whether or not Microsoft plans to reintroduce all of the limitations via patches that are lawyer jargonized to hell and back.