The Glade 4.0

Microsoft is going to register every game disc that you put into your console to your specific console. If someone else gets your disc, they wont be able to play the game unless your registration code is transfered over to them. Big diff.

What's your SLA with your ISP, and what's your SLA with Xbox Live?

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P.S. Another reason I would only consider PS4 at this point, MS currently has no plan for game rentals. Period. No renting a game for the XB1 at all. Most of the games I play are rented, played once, and returned, and a lot of times I'll even rent before purchase just to make sure they're worth it. Cutting rentals out entirely is a no purchase for me.

Sufficient that I haven't had problems. My connection hasn't gone down for more than a couple of hours at a time in the past 12 months. Even if it does, I have a cellular backup connection if its *really* critical that I get online. I work from home, so internet is a necessity, and I'm using it 12+ hours a day, every day. That said, if my internet *is* down hard, I have other non-internetty things I can do. Like reading a book, or going for a ride or watching TV or whatever.

I understand that people's mileage may indeed vary, but online gaming needs a connection anyway so really, its molehill/mountain to me. If you can whine about it on the internet, the connectivity thing will likely have zero impact on your gaming experience.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yup. The X-One.

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Holy shitsnacks!

That's really beside the point. The onus should not be on the consumer to have contingencies for design problems of the product. Plus, I notice you can't actually identify what your SLA is with your ISP, just that your service has been sufficient for you so far. "So far". SO FAR. All it takes is one backhoe in the wrong place and you've got problems.

Meanwhile, yes, online gaming by its nature requires a connection. Offline gaming, on the other hand, does not. Microsoft has had some rather spectacular outages in the past 12 months, some of which would have been sufficient, under XBOne design restrictions, to have disabled usage for the entire userbase. Again, what's your SLA with Xbox Live? What are they going to do for you when that happens again? Maybe you should ask them up front.

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This is entirely hypothetical, but what if the requirements to publish on X-Box 1 include offering a downloadable demo, the way XBLA requires?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I would if I cared to wade through the TOS documents. Anytime I have had an outage with my DSL, its been resolved in a few hours. As far as Xbox live, I have not had any problems with connectivity. And as a consumer, I understand that it may not be available all the time, **** happens. Hell, I think WoW was down hard more often than Live was. Even if its down long enough that the 24hr check in is going to be problematic, I can simply do something else for that time, it'll be back up shortly.

Would it be better if it didn't have it? Sure. Am I going to not get a One if its not changed? No. I'll be getting a One because I like the other things it can do, and I like the exclusives.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I hope you get exactly the product you deserve.

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Deserve? Meh. There would be far more blowjobs involved.

Want? Hmm, no. Also blowjobs.

Of the two though, the X-Bone tickles my fancy more just with the Cable TV integration stuff.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Personally, wouldn't sway me. I've seen too many great demos that turned out to be the best part of the game (Just like some trailers are the funniest parts of a film). I rent because I can pay for 3 months of Gamefly for the price of 1 game. In general, there's always something new to play. If it can keep me from buying one bad game in those 3 months, it's paid for itself. I don't revisit titles very often, they really have to stand out.

Which I get. But you have to think about what you're saying, here, and why publishers aren't keen on the rental business.

The irony, here, is that Microsoft is taking it on the chin, PR-wise, for a bunch of features it's added to woo publishers (who will likely end up staying with Sony anyways if Microsoft takes too big a market share hit). Console players have had a pretty sweet de facto status quo while the rest of the world has been trying to wrap its head around how to balance intellectual property, right of first purchase, digital rights, etc.

And it's cost the publishers, and affected the kinds of games they're willing to release.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Ditto.

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Tycho at Penny-Arcade has the right of it. Microsoft delivered features the game publishers wanted, and all Sony had to do was NOT announce their console until Microsoft did. I still know more about the XBONE than I do the PS4, but I know everyone responding to this thread except me has already picked Sony.

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I don't know if I would agree with you on the point of "it's affected the kinds of games they're willing to release". There have always been some types of media more profitable than others. A sequel to an existing franchise that was a huge success is a much easier sell than an original property. Granted, it seems to have become even more difficult as production costs have increased to release original IP, but I still don't know that I would say that's because of ownership. (And it's also created a budget-indie-game boom that has produced some really excellent releases.) Arrested development (the new season) is one of the lowest pirated series in history, while Game of thrones is one of the highest. Why? Because of cost of admission. People are willing to pay for a netflix digital account. It's a reasonable amount to them. HBO is not, so people, in their inability to afford it, steal it. It has been proven time and time again that when people feel like a product's cost is appropriate, the majority of them will pay for it. (Granted, a few will always steal it, regardless of cost.) A rental /= a lost sale, a used game sale /= a lost new sale. Would I have purchased more games if I was unable to rent them? Probably. Would I also have just not played quite a few games that I was marginally interested in because I didn't want to purchase them at full price? Most assuredly. Consoles benefit has always been ease of ownership, mobility, and lack of the issues that plague PC gaming (compatibility, patching, an infinite amount of platforms running an infinite amount of drivers). That line has blurred in the last generation, and in this generation, we're basically looking at cheaper DRM-locked PC's with massive restrictions pretending to be "consoles". The failing of these publishers/producers has always been their inability to adapt to the changing market. AAA blockbuster game? 60 bucks. New IP? 60 bucks. Throwaway trash movie tie-in? 60 bucks. PC gaming has adapted and even thrived (as evidenced by the number of publishers attempting to create their own "steam" platform) while console gaming has taken the Record producers route and said "CD's cost 20 dollars, whether it be the greatest artist ever or someone you've never heard of." You adapt to the market, the market does not adapt to you unless it has a good reason to.

You don't know, Darkroland?

Two types of games get greenlit by publishers today:
Multiplayer/online-centric games and Annual franchise sequels.

The production costs are also a symptom. You have to WOW people to sell your game and recoup your investment.

Because the used/rental market eviscerates any profit they could make on a 10-30 hour single player campaign of GOOD content. You don't buy your own copy of that. You buy it used and sell it back to Gamestop in a week or two, one of 3 or 4 guys whose plays send 1 new purchase to the publisher's pocket, or you rent it, which is even worse.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Sony! I knew my devotion to thee was not in vain!

P.S. -- Sup everyone?

Darkroland:

Microsoft tried to adapt to the market. They tried to deliver a product that met the stated demands of the developers while innovating on input, capabilities, and device utility for the consumer. They apparently so seriously miscalculated that Sony has already won, and that's bad for all of us as gamers.

I mean, hell, apparently I'm the only person who remembers the PS3 and the CELL Broadband Engine were being engineered for an always connected, distributed processing device that would require online access through a proprietary Sony ISP only. That's, thankfully, not the product they actually delivered; but where was all this vitriol when this was Sony's idea for a console?

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I'd love it if you could produce ANY marketing material or policy taking this stand. Even if it was Sony's internal intent at the beginning, I'm almost positive they never made an announcement like that. Nor did they try to defend such a stance in the face of overwhelming consumer unhappiness.

Ahem.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Back into the fire, I guess:

We've heard Sony's talk, but now we need to see the walk. I agree with Khross's earlier comment about knowing more about the XBone than the PS4. Devil you know vs devil you don't know and all that.

Taking the reverse stance of MS might have been great PR, but how will it translate into practice?

I'm pre-ordering neither system until I have more information and a set launch/near-launch list.

Initial Announcement
http://www.gamespot.com/news/playstatio ... 06-6124681
Always on, always connected, that was late in the press cycle. Incidentally, if you read even that announcement, you get an idea of how many features Sony didn't deliver on that they showed in tech demos at E3.

http://news.cnet.com/PlayStation-3-The- ... 66288.html


Yeah, so ...

Oh, right, Arafys hates Sony, too ...

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First quote, okay, I'll give you that one. I still think it's different than MS's current vision of always-on, always-authenticated though. The second quote seems like it just turned into Folding @ Home, which was a completely optional program anyone could run. Or it could have been referring to the PS3's old ability to install Linux and chain them together like the military did.

Neither scenario turns the PS3 into a useless machine if you don't have an internet connection.

<Charles and Rudy>Thank you.</Charles and Rudy>

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Holy shitsnacks!