"We suck at telling the story" Microsoft engineer telling us how it really is
- Thread starter Meatspinner
- Start date
Recommended Videos
The thing is, they aren't doing anything about "pushing the medium" forward, backward or any which way. The only changes seem to be in delivery, and as yet not a single change seems to be for the our benefit. The hardware is better, but the games, the controller, the kinect are all the same as the 360. What they've changed is the inability to lend or resell games, the ability to take games away from you, the ability to hear and record everything in your living room 24/7 and the inability to play offline.omega 616 said:
All the innovation seems to be aimed at "television", which to be honest, is what I and most other people have televisions for.
I have steam, i can tolerate it. And now Microsoft wants to sell me a version of steam for more money with less options that will stop working when offline.
I don not think this business strategy is very wise.
I don not think this business strategy is very wise.
Just like in politics, "if you?re explaining, you?re losing" and Microsoft is 100% in explaining mode.
I hardly see how Microsoft thinks once a day internet is a must. Cloud computing doesn't require bandwidth when you're not playing, making literally the only reason DRM.
I'm still EXTREMELY skeptical about the kinect for TV, as Yahtzee pointed out, it takes more effort with less reliability to bark "TV!" at your xBone rather then reaching over and pressing the "Input" button on your remote.
Microsoft seems to be trying to emulate Steam without realizing why Steam works. Most people have multiple PCs or replace their PC every couple of years or so. By contrast, most people (or atleast me) keep their one console as long as they can. Digital distribution is far more valuable on a PC then on a console. Not to mention, you know, Steam has offline mode, lower prices, free multiplayer and amazing F2P games like TF2 and DOTA2 to keep in alive.
I hardly see how Microsoft thinks once a day internet is a must. Cloud computing doesn't require bandwidth when you're not playing, making literally the only reason DRM.
I'm still EXTREMELY skeptical about the kinect for TV, as Yahtzee pointed out, it takes more effort with less reliability to bark "TV!" at your xBone rather then reaching over and pressing the "Input" button on your remote.
Microsoft seems to be trying to emulate Steam without realizing why Steam works. Most people have multiple PCs or replace their PC every couple of years or so. By contrast, most people (or atleast me) keep their one console as long as they can. Digital distribution is far more valuable on a PC then on a console. Not to mention, you know, Steam has offline mode, lower prices, free multiplayer and amazing F2P games like TF2 and DOTA2 to keep in alive.
Excuse me? Does this guy really work at Microsoft? If he does, man, those people just love to insult people don't they? I don't much appreciate being called simpleminded simply because I don't like the fact that they won't let us own the things we buy. Wow.
Also the Steam comparison simply doesn't work. I have absolutely NO faith that they will sell AAA games as cheap as Steam voluntarily, and Steam actually works offline.
Correction: the only way MS is going to be able to win back the wallets of the majority of their target market at this point would be to say.UnnDunn said:
"Alright, enough is enough. Clearly the market has spoken and if we hope to stay alive in this business we understand we're going to need to make some changes. For starters: we're pulling the online requirement. Secondly: games won't have to be installed. And finally: the Kinect will be sold with the console but will be entirely optional (this would be a MUCH better solution for the Kinect. If it was sold with the console but was optional, it's much more of a "give it a try" type of scenario rather than stuffing it down people's throats)."
There's just no other way for them to stand a chance. They can try to dussy it up however they want. Apply as much marketing spin as they want, but they can never escape the fact that those three things are, at their core, three things that gamers hate.
Online Only: look at the precedent set by SimCity and Diablo III, the outrage was rampant. I'd say that minus an order of 400 cupcakes, the rage towards those two games at their launch was equal to that of the ending to Mass Effect 3. It doesn't matter how they try to say "Oh but there's so many advantages!" People don't care what advantages there might be, because they're already fully aware of the disadvantages, and they absolutely despise them.
Game Installation: "You can share it with ten friends instantly and digitally! Have access to your library no matter where you are!" Or I could enjoy the old way in which I could rent games without worry about extra fees, buy used games without worry about extra fees, share those games with however many people I want as many different times as I want, and if I really want to play a game I own over at someone else's house, I just take the disc and go...really isn't that inconvenient.
Kinect: I believe I've already covered this with you in another topic, it sold like radioactive dog shit. They literally couldn't give the things away. Your counter was "They sold 7 million units!" Yeah, that might be a decent pull for a game, but for a console accessory? That's horrible. Consumers said they didn't want the damn thing, and now MS is forcing it on people and not only that, they're making it creepier than ever. Face it: the Kinect was the Power Glove of this generation. The difference is that while the Power Glove was a horrendous abomination that didn't work, the concept and look of it was at least neat.
I think this is incredibly fake.Meatspinner said:So according to this guy XBone is just like steam, only better. Color me sceptic
http://pastebin.com/uCmdh9jB#
The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for shit value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.
>The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)
>It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm shit as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted shit.
>Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.
>Competition is the best man, it helps drive both to new heights. See technology from the Cold War. If we had no USSR, we'd be way worse off today. TLDR: Bring it on Steam
2/4
>Yeah we passed that around the office at Xbox. Most of us were like "Well played Sony, Well played". That being said they are just riding the hype train of ZOMG THEY ARE TRYING TO FUCK US FOR NO REASON. Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back... [...] just simpleminded people not seeing the bigger picture. Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded.
>Everyone and their mother complains about how gamestop fucks them on their trade ins, getting 5$ for their used games. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games and everyone bitches at MS. Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4.
>The goal is to move to digital downloads, but Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Amazon are KIND OF FUCKING ENTRENCHED in the industry. They have a lot of power, and the shift has to be gradual. Long term goal is steam for consoles. [...] If you always want to stay with what you have, then keep current consoles, or a PS4. We're TRYING to move the industry forwards towards digital distribution... it'sa bumpy road
>Publishers have enourmous power. Microsoft is trying to balance between consumer delight, and publisher wishes. If we cave to far in either direction you have a non-starting product. WiiU goes too far to consumer, you have no 3rd party support to shake a stick at. PS4 is status-quo. XB1 is trying to push some things, at the expense of others. We have a vision, we'll see if it works in the coming years
>Living room transformation. We want to own the living room. Every living room TV with an XBox on input one. It's the thing that gives the signal to your TV, everything is secondary. The future, where games, TV, internet telephony, all that shit happens magically on some huge ass screen with hand / voice gestures... That's our goal.
3/4
>Google TV + PS4 + Minority report level gestures, that combined with a sick second screen experience (which is really hot for TV, I know I know.. tv tv tv tv tv... but it's fucking sick when you have it). Games will be the same, there are more exclusives to MS then PS atm, and Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy.
>By default it's on, listening for "Xbox On". You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off. OFF off is required for Germany / other countries that require it (no vampire appliances) [...] It has to be plugged in for the console to post. You can turn off everything it does from the settings. Think of it like airplane mode for the iPhone. You can't just unplug the cellular radio, but you can turn it off.
>Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day. And if you don't. Don't buy an Xbox 1. Just like if you didn't have a broadband connection don't get Live, and if you don't have an HDTV the 360 isn't that great for you either. New tech, new req. This allows us to do cool shit when we can assume things like you have a kinect, you have internet, etc.
>Current plan is basically you're fucked after 24 hours. Yeah... I know. Kind of sucks. I believe they will probably revist the time period and / or find a diff way to "call in" to ensure you haven't sold your license to gamestop or something... but there is no plan YET. I'm hoping the change it, but I don't work on that so I don't have much influence there /sigh
>If the power goes out you ain't playing shit. I'm assuming you mean the internet goes out but you have power for TV and Xbox. Yes, You're fucked for single player games. Again, that's the PoR (Plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 clusterfuck
>What fee? There is no fee to play your games at your friends house. Never has, never will. Even x360 digital downloads could do that.
4/4
>The cloud capabilities is the shit they like the most. We basically made a huge cloud compute shit and made it free. What people are doing with it is kind of cool. THe original intention was to get all the Multiplayer servers not requiring 3rd party costs (Like EA shutting down game servers to cut costs), as well as taking all the games that servers hosted by the clients (Halo, etc), and have all that compute done in the cloud allowing more CPU cycles for gameplay. That will really expand what developers can do. Anything that doesn't need per frame calculation and can handle 100ms delays can be shifted to the cloud. That's huge.
>SmartGlass + IE is going to be pretty freaking sweet. 1 finger cursor, 2 finger direct manip. Basically if you think of a laptop trackpad where your phone/ slate is the trackpad and the monitor is your TV... it's that. The tech is there, just needs to be applied. There is some really cool shit going on with Petra + controllers that pairs people with controllers. So if person with controller two trades controlers with controller 1, their profiles magically switch. It's sick. What does this matter? Now if you lean left/right it knows which person is leaning, even if 4 people are all int he same room. It's awesome.
>New service using Azure for cloud compute. Allows developers to not use clients for hosting multiplayer servers, or other tasks that do not require per frame calcuations. It's pretty sweet.
>Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.
This was all from the Microsoft engineer that was on /b/ last night.
>It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want.
M$ would come out and say this if it was true, because it would be GREAT press. Instead? Not a peep.
FAKE!
Honestly, if a Microsoft engineer wanted to try to clarify the Xbone, there are plenty of better sites to do it on than 4chan. Hell, going out in Times Square and just shouting this stuff out would be more believeable. The "arguments" the poster makes just screams fanboy.
Can't believe everything you read on the internet guys, people lie all the time. Trust me on this, I work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC. The chef here cooks whatever I want, go ahead and call to verify.
Can't believe everything you read on the internet guys, people lie all the time. Trust me on this, I work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC. The chef here cooks whatever I want, go ahead and call to verify.
Funny, Steam never makes me feel this way. There are ways to do digital distribution that suck, but these days I see having physical copies as an inconvenience. With digital copies, I'm free to download on all the OS's it's offered on, so if it's on Mac then yay but otherwise I can just get it on Windows. Or if it's both, then I can do both. Physical discs can get damaged and scratched, and you have to keep track of them and all those stupid little key codes. But the way Steam does it, you can download as many times as you need to and no stupid codes.Souplex said:
I don't care that I can't return them or trade them in. With sales and special offers I've saved so much on the games already that being able to trade them in or buy used isn't as great of a concern.
No noes, how do all the simpleminded people not realize the benefits to not having to keep track of all those expensive discs they bought? You'd think the simpleminded masses would be the ones who have trouble with losing them! /sarcasm
Could argue against all that, but its just bullshit. Fake as fuck and rofl at the only person backing up the post is a brand new poster with 1 post.
Could argue against all that, but its just bullshit. Fake as fuck and rofl at the only person backing up the post is a brand new poster with 1 post.
[HEADING=1]Cool-aid Drinker[/HEADING]
This poor employee has drunken the Microsoft Cool-aid. Or maybe he's just using it to justify what their higher ups -- those greedy suits -- have done to their console. Here's the fundamental truth:
[li]There is too much System Regulation to Foster Competitively low prices of Steam (or any online distributor for that matter).[/li]
A console is a closed PC platform. SONY understands this, and which is why they aren't trying to compete with that market. SONY will rock the industry by supporting quality indies, engaging more friendly third-party initiatives and pushing out more truly unique and diverse 1st Party triple-A titles.
[li]The TV features only works if you provide exclusive Microsoft channel content.[/li]
This is the problem that Netflix keeps running into. They can't seem to make enough exclusive video content to keep the internet talking. HALO's series won't be enough. Microsoft will end up pouring millions into episodic movies, wasting time and money that could be going to titles. They don't understand the future costs of providing a television centric-service.
SONY, and which owns tons of entertainment media, won't dare touch that kind of service and compete against Netflix, Amazon and other online content providers.
This poor employee has drunken the Microsoft Cool-aid. Or maybe he's just using it to justify what their higher ups -- those greedy suits -- have done to their console. Here's the fundamental truth:
[li]There is too much System Regulation to Foster Competitively low prices of Steam (or any online distributor for that matter).[/li]
A console is a closed PC platform. SONY understands this, and which is why they aren't trying to compete with that market. SONY will rock the industry by supporting quality indies, engaging more friendly third-party initiatives and pushing out more truly unique and diverse 1st Party triple-A titles.
[li]The TV features only works if you provide exclusive Microsoft channel content.[/li]
This is the problem that Netflix keeps running into. They can't seem to make enough exclusive video content to keep the internet talking. HALO's series won't be enough. Microsoft will end up pouring millions into episodic movies, wasting time and money that could be going to titles. They don't understand the future costs of providing a television centric-service.
SONY, and which owns tons of entertainment media, won't dare touch that kind of service and compete against Netflix, Amazon and other online content providers.
Yeah, it's much harder to bother with trying to resell a used game even if it was possible on Steam. Due to the lower cost for a lot of games, a vast majority of my friends would have the game already due to said lower price point, and the remainder wouldn't care for it. Then try extending that market penetration to the whole player-based, people are willing to bite the cost of a $5 or $10 game and just have it sit in their library, uninstalled. And a lot of people I know get Humble Bundles too, just to support the studios. All digital, no material costs = all profit and easier to swallow prices.Lilani said:
If the post is true, it echos my own theory of what MS is aiming for (dominate living room, migrate to digital, much like the Windows 8 Store). I think the big problem is that they basically dropped their load right away, trying to force the market acceptance, instead of easing the gamers into it, like how Steam did it over the years.
Don't get too complacent though, Sony appears to be doing the same thing with trying to push PS+ subscriptions. They're just being much smarter about it and having some patience, but they're still playing us.
And oh god the Summer sale is going to happen soon isn't it? D:
There are already some PS3 games that take up gigabytes in the 40's. Killzone 3 is a prime example, though if I recall correctly that's partially because there's very little compression on any of the audio.J Tyran said:
OT: Meh, I'll believe it all when I see it, the big problem here is that it lacks any of the advantages of Steam... it's like using a gaming PC without the benefits of a gaming PC, and as a result has none of the traditional benefits of consoles...
love the attempt of association , lets say steam so many times people will think this is a good service to!!
the only thing in that which is genuinely good is if MS are hosting a massive amount of servers to allow dedicated server Multiplayer, i dont understand how the current generation gets by on peer to peer servers its awefull spoiled by PC i guess but go dedicated or go home imo.
this whole own the living room thing is a great idea but the massive elephants in the room are the smart glass and IE , who the fuck wants to use IE more than once and thats to download chrome/firefox or lets be honest any other browser. IE is a steaming pile of crap and i cant belive they are calling it smart glass, when googles glass was first and better.
pay 500 bucks to get an inferior product when a smart TV has the same abilities and better software.. not a great idea imo.
and to claim xbox games are expensive because of used game sales is a steaming pile of crap , xbox games are that expensive because MS are price gougers abusing the monopoly they have on what gets published, lets whack 30 bucks licence on each game and charge 10-20k for devs to patch. then turn around and blame your consumers for selling their own possessions only MS has the upfront balls to be that brazen as they bend you over.
the only thing in that which is genuinely good is if MS are hosting a massive amount of servers to allow dedicated server Multiplayer, i dont understand how the current generation gets by on peer to peer servers its awefull spoiled by PC i guess but go dedicated or go home imo.
this whole own the living room thing is a great idea but the massive elephants in the room are the smart glass and IE , who the fuck wants to use IE more than once and thats to download chrome/firefox or lets be honest any other browser. IE is a steaming pile of crap and i cant belive they are calling it smart glass, when googles glass was first and better.
pay 500 bucks to get an inferior product when a smart TV has the same abilities and better software.. not a great idea imo.
and to claim xbox games are expensive because of used game sales is a steaming pile of crap , xbox games are that expensive because MS are price gougers abusing the monopoly they have on what gets published, lets whack 30 bucks licence on each game and charge 10-20k for devs to patch. then turn around and blame your consumers for selling their own possessions only MS has the upfront balls to be that brazen as they bend you over.
Right. Right. Lower prices.
what's this then?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125059-First-Party-Xbox-One-Games-Will-Cost-60
what's this then?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125059-First-Party-Xbox-One-Games-Will-Cost-60
Also in this day and age people have tablets and smart phones for there online usage. They might not want to pay extra money for an internet connection just because Xbone needs for it to work.
Quick question: Who here has actually had problems with scratched discs? This seems to be one of the big benefits they keep dropping about digital gaming, but despite owning well over three hundred disc-based games (going all the way back to PSX) I have never had an issue with scratched discs.
It's not even down to me being a hyper-protective, wrap-everything-in-cotton maniac, either, because about a hundred of those games are used, so unless I am the luckiest ************ on the planet, I think they're really grabbing at straws here.
It's not even down to me being a hyper-protective, wrap-everything-in-cotton maniac, either, because about a hundred of those games are used, so unless I am the luckiest ************ on the planet, I think they're really grabbing at straws here.