Ubisoft CEO Thinks Gamers Are Ready For Always-On Consoles

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Ubisoft big dog Yannis Mallat says gamers will embrace always-on gaming as soon as they're able to stop worrying about it.

Or ...

How I stopped worrying and learned to love embracing always-on gaming between my buttcheeks.

Spoiler: kinda like this

Except the plane is Ubisoft, the bomb is always-on gaming, and the target is our ass. Yannis Mallat will of course be playing major Kong.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

I could live with the next xbox been always on as long as it doesn't turn into a terribly expensive paperweight if your connection drops for longer than 3 minutes. I have a reasonably stable connection but it's not unknown for connection to drop for hours at a time.

 

[VladG]

Why does Ubisoft remind me of a dog that pissed the carpet, got whacked with the paper, moped around a bit and just when everything seemed to be going well he's back sniffing the damp patch?

 

[dragongit]

I know people have already pointed out, but allow me to make the point again just because of the Irony from Ubisoft.

If you can't even keep a game like Assassin's Creed 2 up and running on the PC due to DRM and failing servers, how can you expect consumers to be "ready" for always on consoles? an MMO is one thing, but a console game or any single player game that requires the internet to function is awful. What about lag? Diablo 3 has proven to us that a single player game can have latency and lag. What if more games connect to a server and will lag if it's busy?

Unless the world has been given garented super fast reliable internet, not everyone will be ready for always online gaming.

 

[Ldude893]

Something is going to explode in Ubisoft's faces in a few days.

 

[Triaed]

Oi, Yannis, "suck it up" is not a valid reason to shove your business models on us. We are not ready!

And stop calling games a "service"; if you want to do that, do all the processing work in the cloud and then sell us a dumb-terminal that has the same specs for everyone (so that I can buy it from Sony, or Toshiba, or Lenovo for that matter) and play the streamed game there. Otherwise it is not a service. I have no idea what you call a "service"... the ability for you to track my online activities? To push ads on me and my family? To peddle other wares? To provide to me the "social" experience? To check that the products I own are legit? As I tell the annoying telemarketer at dinner time "If I were interested in what you are promoting I would go out and look for it".

Screw you Yannis and get out of my living room

 

[senordesol]

I can play 15+ year old games on my Super Nintendo. Games I bought with good fucking money.

Will I be able to play games 15 years down the road on my NeXtbox? Games I bought with good fucking money?

Tell me, which 'service' is 'better'?

 

[gigastar]

Do you guys intentionally look for what news stories will cause the most controversy?

Since nearly all of the news posts here are sourced from other sties, id think so.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

This reminds me strongly of this stolen pixel comic: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/7265-Stolen-Pixels-175-Ubisoft

They are late to the party, don't understand the real problem, but put maximum effort in putting their foot in their mouth. The main problem is not the day-one-server-problems, the problem is, that they tack an alway online DRM on a single player game and try to sell it as a "experience enhancing feature" or even as an MMO. They want to take away the game from the players. Modding is evil, since it leads to piracy and free content for everyone, where they could sell their precious DLCs. I know, they try to and have to make money, but this is just plain dumb. The whole thing. The idea of an enforced alway online DRM which is already built into the hardware, and also the statement from Ubisoft.

I have to browse some picdumps now, I am so angry...

 

[Cid Silverwing]

For god's sake, what's so hard about not pissing your customers off?

We had this exact same argument from Orth, albeit phrased differently. And it's still plain wrong, because the premise is wrong. We don't need always-on anything. We need optional online benefits.

This man speaks the TRUTH! *hippie-hair*

There is nothing to NOT worry about concerning Always-On bullshit. It is absolutely nothing BUT a fascist anti-consumer pro-corporate flimsy scheme to fight imagined boogeymen (pirates) to maximize their short-term profits. I swear these fuckernauts never learn from their mistakes.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

In essence: When Always-on stops sucking, people will stop thinking it sucks

I'm not a fan of Always-on on general principle (it's unnecessary), but I can't say he's wrong as far as popular opinion goes

 

[L34dP1LL]

And here I was, thinking Ubisoft might actually become the least-bad of the Big Four (EA, Actizzard, Ubisoft, Squeenix) ...

Welp, guess I was wrong. For god's sake, what's so hard about not pissing your customers off?

We had this exact same argument from Orth, albeit phrased differently. And it's still plain wrong, because the premise is wrong. We don't need always-on anything. We need optional online benefits.

Lol, SQUEEE!!nix, sounds cute.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Oh look, he's late for April Fools...
I do want to be able to use my hardware and games years after the companies that made them have gone bankrupt and the servers have been shut down.

 

[BabySinclair]

Ubisoft big dog Yannis Mallat says gamers will embrace always-on gaming as soon as they're able to stop worrying about it.

Yup, of course that'll just require an adequate and worldwide broadband infrastructure that everyone has 24/7 access to. Then I won't mind an always on, because I'll never worry about my connection, nor will anyone else. This won't happen for another decade so while your statement is correct, your time frame is a bit off.

 

[Little Gray]

In a hypothetical world, where every home has access to stable, secure, constant and fast internet. Where the companies using this always online service have constant, secure, stable and fast servers, yes, always online can have a lot of benefits.

We do not live in such a world. We live in a world where the vast majority of the world do not have internet connections good enough for this to be a good idea. A world where the wealthiest game developers on the planet cannot launch a single online always title, without massive issues.

You are forgetting though that we have had equally as large titles go off without a hitch. Sure SimCity and Diablo had problems but funny thing the last four COD's worked just fine even when there was millions online playing multiplayer at once on launch day.

 

[mysecondlife]

Yep. That's something Ubisoft would say.

Sony, one thing worse than always-online console is when you promise for no such feature but do it anyways. Keep that in mind.

 

[teqrevisited]

Of course I'm ready for always-online consoles. Why do you think I have a hunting shotgun?

In a perfect world where services work all of the time and are available everywhere then yes, why not. At the moment being consistently functional is far away enough, let alone perfection.

 

[MattAn24]

And here I was, thinking Ubisoft might actually become the least-bad of the Big Four (EA, Actizzard, Ubisoft, Squeenix) ...

Welp, guess I was wrong. For god's sake, what's so hard about not pissing your customers off?

We had this exact same argument from Orth, albeit phrased differently. And it's still plain wrong, because the premise is wrong. We don't need always-on anything. We need optional online benefits.

...I've definitely heard of the Big Four.. But Squeenix was *never* in that list. They don't push/force online requirements.. Well, their first-party games, at least.. They're still complete, single-player experiences. I happen to know how dev teams at Squeenix work, I know how much detail and love they put into their games for people. They're nowhere near as lazy as the other three you mentioned. Microsoft Game Studios is the one you're missing.

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ANYWAY.. This isn't to sound paranoid, but it's also been revealed that most loyalty cards and memberships for places, etc are literally there to spy on your purchases and information, which is sold to other third-parties for advertising purposes, unless they *explicitly* say it isn't (and even then..)

So.. I highly doubt an always-online console is as good as the minority of people think it is. Say, you want to play a SINGLE-PLAYER game. Entirely single player experience. "NOPE, FUCK YOU, GOTTA BE ONLINE." ...How is that logical!? The argument of "you're online anyway lololol" is bullshit because connections drop out, servers fail. Internet not working? NO GAMES FOR YOU. Console is completely worthless. It should *always* be an optional choice. Hell, Sony has the neat feature of syncing your trophies with the account you're signed in on if you happen to be playing games while not "online", when you're next online. I don't recall Microsoft having this for the Xbox.. Syncing achievements. No, if you're offline, they're only received "offline", they don't sync with Xbox Live the next time you sign in.