Xbox One sort of redeemed?

Looks to me as if stuff that don't interest you are what interest you the more.
 
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For all the negativity on the Xbone, I have to admit it's a bit….. silly in light of other media evolution. Not to necessarily side with MS on this one, I cringe too at the DRM shittiness, and always-on digital eyeing, and all that.

But if this truly is a thread about the "redemption" of the console, let's think about it a sec.
#1 - RE-SELLING GAMES.
Really, are we still doing this? This is my hobby, and these are objects in my collection. Last time I moved, I tried getting rid of a box of games and ended up turning the truck around at the last minute. I just cant toss Lords of the Realm. I dont care if I never play it again, it's part of my collection. If i ever should WANT to play it, it's there. I fired up Re-Volt after a decade just recently and played the hell out of it.

I dont sell my games, ever. Chances are, a game I want will be half-price for a new copy in 6 months, later on even less so buying a scratched disk for a few bucks less becomes less attractive.

So I dont give a shit about that.

#2 - IT CHECKS IN
So it basically authenticates your software, or you cannot use it. Kinda like Steam, which we all howled in protest at, way back when. Now I have 184 games. I load up steam, i play my games. Or I fucking dont, and they sit there collecting virtual dust. Life goes on.

See the computer games section lately? Why buy a boxed copy for 19.99 when it's going to be on digital download for 2.99 soon?

20 years ago, the concept of all my music being digital would have been anathema to my ears. Now, I cant remember the last physical cd I bought. I buy the MP3s off Amazon, burn a disposable copy for my truck and file it away on all my players. I dont buy DVDs, or even go rent a physical copy. Not even smut (then again you'd be stupid to pay for that at all these days) It's all streamed.

So theyre envisioning taking the console to the next evolutionary step, as pretty much all other media have gone, including computer games. They have to be able to weather that initial storm tho, people are never going to be happy about DRM in any way. I'm not happy about it, it's change and it's big-brother reaching into my life, but I can understand it. Look around you, it's the way things in media overall have been heading for the last decade, games are not going to be the exception for very much longer.

I wonder if I'll ever have to physically defend my stash of game discs and cartridges from rampaging nerds, should the apocalypse truly happen and the net goes dark.

Half drunk and rambling, it happens **hiccp
 
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For all the negativity on the Xbone, I have to admit it's a bit….. silly in light of other media evolution. Not to necessarily side with MS on this one, I cringe too at the DRM shittiness, and always-on digital eyeing, and all that.

#1 - RE-SELLING GAMES.


#2 - IT CHECKS IN

I am having a hard time following much of your logic, as you seem to be randomly drifting between what YOU want and what the BROADER MARKET should want.

First off, your needs should dictate your wallet. I am a PC (and Mac/Android/iOS) gamer, so on my own I wouldn't buy either console. But my older son is a big console fan, and my younger son lesser so ... but they are the reasons for the Wii, PS2 and X360.

But to your broader questions:

#1 - RE-SELLING GAMES.

There is a HUGE market in used games. GameStop owes its existence to it pretty much since it is the highest profit margin portion of their operation. Then there are sites like CAG, GameTZ, Goozex and so on that are all about buy/sell/trade video games.

So while for PC games many of us have been mostly digital for nearly a decade ... in the console camp there are loads of kids still bringing a pile of games to GameStop to get $3 each for them to help fund their latest purchase.

#2 - IT CHECKS IN

Well ... Steam allows an off-line mode that appears to be much more friendly than the XBOne. But I get what you are saying about the concept. But we are used to our computers being always connected.

I think that the issue is that the focus of the consoles is *still* young males 18-24, and more than ever they are still living at home or taking these to a dorm ... and therefore connectivity can be an issue. And if not, there are the numbers showing that even with the XBO360 *most* consoles are used in essentially offline mode. So requiring a 24-hour check in is a step change.

And yes, this is even in households with computers connected.
 
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Frankly, I see what MS are doing with Xbox One as part of the inevitable evolution of the current industry.

Reselling games and the whole concept of games being almost a physical product you can own and call your property is going away. There's just no way around it. I'm surprised it's taken this long, to be honest.

I think that's a good change, actually, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Online-only is another super obvious future development. I expected this to happen years ago - and there's just no way around it.

Another good change - and things like this will help promote online capability for everyone - which should have been completely standard by now.

The pricing is questionable - I suppose, but no matter how you look at it, you do get a pretty cool setup compared to a similarly priced PC. I could do without most of the things - but as a modern media/gaming center in your home - it's not all that bad.

MS are being targeted - but I see everyone doing the exact same thing (or worse) in just a few years.

People are being silly, if you ask me.
 
Frankly, I see what MS are doing with Xbox One as part of the inevitable evolution of the current industry.

I agree - but I also see why MS in particular is catching so much flack.

First, you cannot be a PC gamer and NOT think that physical ownership of games and a non-online reality (even for single player offline games) is just a quaint silly notion from the past.

Further, in an era where smartphones and tablets dominate the mobile game space, it is hard to see why people would have such a hard time with 'transient property'.

BUT ... Microsoft walked into their intro and E3 with a total sense of arrogance and condescension - with all of the answers nobody cared about, flippant dismissal of the questions people DID care about, and such lack of gaming focus that it really invited scorn.

Honestly I think it would have been easy for Microsoft to have anticipated these things and addressed them. Look at how Steam moved from online-only to allowing an offline mode temporarily for offline games. Given PR nightmares for online-required offline games during server outages, this should have been anticipated. As for 'used games', that is simply a transition people need to make.

I think MS could have won considerable good will by (a) being ready with something gamer-centric (b)anticipating the prominence of 'last gen' centric questions and (c) work in backwards compatibility (at least to X360) to be able to TRULY call themselves the 'one box for your living room'.
 
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Well, I don't really care about people being arrogant - which is probably why I'm not bothered by that.

I don't buy the people - I buy their product.

As I said before, the only thing I care about is what games will be released for this platform that no other platform will carry.

Beyond that, I will take note of how they're going to exploit the hardware and the kinect thingy - because I certainly wasn't impressed by what they did with the previous version. But I wouldn't rule out something great happening with that.

But I'm a PC gamer first and foremost - and I don't see that changing until consoles allow the same kind of flexibility and multipurpose capacity.

I tend to buy all consoles of any generation - because they all have exclusives.

I would never take anything they do personally - and I appreciate how I'm different there.

As far as I'm concerned - they're all in it for the money, and whatever their attitude - it's just their best efforts to exploit the audience. Arrogance or humility won't make the slightest difference. Only the actual product and what I can do with it will matter.

Well, unless they actually do harm in an area I care about - which would be actual harm to real people. Not pleasing their audience - which generally consists of consumers who want everything as cheap and as convenient as humanly possible - I couldn't care less about. The only difference between the audience and Microsoft is the job they happen to have.
 
Frankly, I see what MS are doing with Xbox One as part of the inevitable evolution of the current industry.

That's what I believe as well.

I call it "natural evolution", driven by the forces that want more and more profits.
It's just natural evolution.

And now I read about Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas saying similar things about the movie industrie … Oh, my, I've been right all of the time …
 
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Well, I don't really care about people being arrogant - which is probably why I'm not bothered by that.

Well, I get what you are saying, and really being offended by a company out to maximize their income is very silly at best.

But in general you SHOULD be concerned by a corporate sense of hubris and arrogance and non-focus on core principles - because it is a direct reflection of how they WILL treat their customers. Just look at Sony as a great example.
 
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If I cared about company's being arrogant I wouldn't own an ipad. Can't stand MS stance on a lot of things but Apple is still #1 in arrogance IMO.

As for the Xbox one. Most consumers will just adjust and conform as they always do. It will be a nonissue for most. They will bring their new box home plug it in to the Internet and never realize or know about always on requirement. If their Internet goes out they will call and tell support that there xbox is broken, support will say no you have to be online to use it. The customer will then hang up and call and bitch at their ISP.

If they try to sell their games and are told they can't, they will say that sucks and tell their kids they can't sell them and move on.

The majority of customers MS is targeting do not vist gaming sites on a regular bases or have any idea what they are buying other than its the new Xbox, our kids will love it.
 
Well, I get what you are saying, and really being offended by a company out to maximize their income is very silly at best.

But in general you SHOULD be concerned by a corporate sense of hubris and arrogance and non-focus on core principles - because it is a direct reflection of how they WILL treat their customers. Just look at Sony as a great example.

Well, you see, I don't think bad PR is the same as being worse than companies with good PR.

That kind of consumer illusion is something I've never bought into, but then again - I didn't grow up in corporate America.

As I said, they're all looking to do the same thing - and the only thing that actually matters is whether their product is worth the money they're asking.

That's what I care about.

If their arrogance means they're stupid (and it does in a way, because obviously most consumers don't like overt arrogance) - then their product is likely to have flaws.

The flaws in the product is what I will take note of - not the flaws in their PR.

How they treat their customers? They're going to treat their customers in the way they think will generate the greatest profit. PR - to me - is not actual "treatment", it's just smoke and mirrors.

Obviously, they made some serious errors in judgment here - and they're ahead of the times in some ways. I don't know if I would call that arrogance. Maybe just bad research or sheer bad luck. It can be really hard to predict the audience - and if PS4 wasn't there to compare directly with, I don't know that the consumers would have reacted so passionately against Xbox One.

On the other hand, they don't seem to be having much success in general these days. Windows 8 was very underwhelming - and their Surface tablet doesn't seem to have taken off - or maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

Seems to me Microsoft are sort of incompetent these days. Not unusual for a big company, though.

Sony has certainly been through worse - and look at how much respect they're suddenly getting.

The audience is a fucking joke - really. They're so inconsistent and fickle - I can think of no other word than joke for them.
 
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I agree that public image of an enterprise is com not core. But arrogant would require a definition in that context.

I suspect it means ignore consumers reactions. It's a com strategy applied to hide a weakness or a negative critic that could be well founded or not. Sometimes it could work because not enough consumers will care and then a vast majority will just ignore the problem. Sometimes it will work because time will make clear it was a false weakness.

But in that case it's perhaps the only solution they see, can they say, ok a group of consumers are right and we drop our project and start a fresh new on new bases? The problem to apologize or enter in complicated arguing at first negative critic is that it can lead to a com disaster.

I also suspect that the console price is an argument everybody ignore now, but at release of each console it will be a major element. The type of consumers reacting on power problem could be just a minority of those buying the consoles. For that majority the console price could make a difference. Or eventually this power problem will make enough noise so consumers that wouldn't care will take care of this anyway more than console price.
 
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Lol, with the rumors of Steam going to implement a game sharing system, it's rather funny.

Eventually that will become the worst decision ms ever did. The main problem is Torchlight series and Torchlight 2, ie A release at budget price since the release.

It's quite probable that, because the Torchlight team wants have fun and make new stuff and new challenges, more than exploit and develop a series, the series won't grow up to be a symbol of an evolution or possible evolution to AAA release at budget prices.

But there's a clear threat against any physical box system.

There's still two big barrier for digital:
  • The first is mainly coming from non adult players and young adult players with low income. The ability to resell games, and as a consequence, to buy through a large and recent choice of used games a bit cheaper. The digital seems bound to never solve this equation.
  • The second is coming from the immaterial nature of digital, its strength and its weakness. For sure Steam partially target this second problem but it's not a true solution, but it setup a base idea for a possible solution.

So let start first with the second point.

How make digital material?
The notion of collection, playing, stats, communities, comment games you own and not those you pirated, and so on, there's three existing systems that could throw on the table the base of a solution. Steam, lastfm and bandcamp users collections.

It's not a hazard if those three examples are pure digital actors, and on area the most concerned by digital, music (a disaster) and video games. There's clearly a slow clash coming and rising in video games, digital vs boxes, but the history already wrote the end of the scenario, dinosaurs died. But when is another question, possibly I won't be here anymore to see the evolution…. not that I care.

Lastfm is the core of this possible solution because it has the base, be an aggregation not be a proprietary system like Steam and bandcamp are.

The goal is setup a system with accounts links defined by the user. Let name it lastplay, so lastplay provide:
  • A secured api to link to a lastplay acount, for example gamersgate adds it and the user choose or not to connect his gamersgate account to his lastplay account. On this base users can define authenticated games collection. No need to have a fully identified lastplay account, it's user choice.
  • Provide to users plugins allowing register their playing stats if they want. Not sure consoles are enough open to allow it but I'll ignore this point.
  • Provide to dev plugins/simple lib so they could submits in their games the achievements to lastplay, this allowing them use the label "lastplay support".

Ok the bases but why anybody will enter the system? Perhaps:
  • Entrance point, the users. Provide them plugins for as many platforms than possible, to compute if they want their game stats. Around this, communities, users created groups including private, rate and comment systems, lastfm model mainly, Steam a bit.
  • Second entrance point, still the users and open services. Allow access users stats through a user anonymous id, lastplay does the link between the real user and the id, and the user provides the id to the plugin and to lastplay. Also lastplay offers neutral accounts, no real names address and so on. This will allow first generations of users features, like game genre clouds (a cloud of game genres played for example RPG very big and small 4X or the reverse, based on users stats), top ten games played on a time elapse or all time, and many more, old school gamer label or rate (time spend on old games), it's open to let imagination and expectations have a free space.
  • Third entrance point, the dev and the achievements. Provide to dev api/plugin and a label "lastplay support", expect the users pressure on small indies then bigger indies, then on the whole market.
  • Fourth entrance points the lilliputian PC digital sellers, GamersGate, Gog, anything but Stream because Stream will be the last. Linked accounts, automatic collections filing, and finally authenticated games making digital concrete if the user wants it. There's no need to link with stats and each user hardware, only between accounts the user choose linked.

Ok that's a vision of future, sort of simple SF, but no imagination here, purely based on existing elements, it's more SF à la Jules Verne. :)

So the second point, resell digital games. Well post long enough, business plan for another day. ;)
 
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Wow! Xbone=pwnd!
shows what a category 5 nerdstorm can accomplish, nice!

The best thing about starbucks, in summertime, in southern Cali...
Ah the girls, good Lord of the Tigers
This is a little slice of heaven right here **sips tiger drink***
='.'=
 
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