Xbox one: It might not be *as* bad as you think.

[TehCookie]

How does comparing it to Steam make it better? All DRM is terrible, Steam included. I can't lend or sell games or play them offline (inb4 there's an offline mode, you have to go/be online to go offline). That's the main reason I switched to consoles from PC. Sure there's sales but used games cost the same and you get a physical disc you can do what you please with.

I'm going to insert the caveat first that this obviously doesn't apply to everybody (though I'm not sure why it doesn't), but here's how offline mode works for me. If I download a game, and then have launched it just once while online, I can then play that game with my ethernet cord removed 100% of the time. I don't have to switch to an offline "mode", it just lets me play it because it was launched once (and I suppose activated) while I was online. To make it simpler, if my modem exploded, I can play every game I've ever launched once before with no issue. Also, for quite a few games (mostly older ones), you can just go to your steamapps folder and launch the executable.

So every time I download a game on Steam, I launch it once and set the graphics/other options to what I want and then exit (unless I want to play it right away) so that it's available all the time no matter what.

Seeing how you defend Steam I'm going to guess you like it and use it a lot.

Do you run Steam in the background? Everyone I met who says you can play offline is always connected every other moment. If you're online and your connection drops Steam still works. If you've logged in recently it will still work. If you haven't been on Steam in a while and go to play it offline is when you get the problem.

 

[J Tyran]

People keep saying "well steam doesn't let you sell your used games" but I think that's a stupid argument. See, the thing about steam is that it has tons of sales. Absolutely ridiculous sales, where new games are regularly priced at 35% to 75% off. Because of this, inevitably a large part of your library ends up being games that you got on sale, so for most steam users, they've actually only paid about 50% of what their library should actually cost (in some cases more, in some less).

You can get the same deals with console games, Steam sales are for games that have been out a while but for brand new games you pay the full price. Same for console titles, you can pick them up for as low £12 after a year and usually around £20 for around 12 months or so and £25-30 after six months when you consider major brick and mortar retailers charge £40-45. Thats close to the levels of Steam discounts.

Gamers still insist on going to Gamestop, Gamestation and Game and having their wallet molested, they need to get games online and save themselves some cash. They come down in price faster and are often cheaper in the first place.

 

[aba1]

The difference between Steam and XBone is that the XBone is a system you buy and pay for, Steam on the other hand is just a free service provider it doesn't cost me a thing. Sure the games are digital but they cost a fraction of the price and it doesn't cost me to buy the service and it doesn't cost me a monthly charge like Xbox Gold.

Consoles need to concentrate on the few advantages they have instead of trying to be like computers cause they will only lose.

 

[Something Amyss]

Again with the Steam comparison.

Look, if I'm going to have something similar to Steam, I might as well buy from Steam. At least then I get the ridonkulous sales and future compatibility. Already I know my games will work on my next PC, which I know my XBox games WON'T do.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The Kinect2.0 is always on, can always see you no matter what the light-level in your room and, it can read your heart-beat (thus gauging your emotions). The XBone simply can't function without the Kinect2.0 and for that reason alone, there is nothing that can be done or said to make me want one of those entertainment centers. The always-online is only going to work as well as the microsoft servers. I love Sonic 06 but if it was released on the XBone, it would have been taken off of the servers within a couple of years and been made unplayable. Same with Vampire Rain, Alpha Protocol and, every other bad game that I would want to play later on in the console's life cycle. Not being able to play multiplayer is no big deal but these servers control single player in addition to multiplayer. Once those servers are down they're not coming back.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

The argument "BUT STEAM DOES IT AS WELL!" is silly. Xbone is giving you all the downsides of Steam with none of the advantages of it (and of the PC in general).

To make a rough analogy: Imagine Steam as a hot girl you can have sex with, but she has a mild case of Gonorrhea. So a lot of people figure that the Gonorrhea is worth the sex with a beautiful woman. Now, Xbone is like some guy offering to inject you with a syringe full of Gonorrhea and when you say you don't want Gonorrhea, he points out that the girl you are having sex with also has it. Yes, but then I at least get laid and you're just a crazy person injecting people with STDs...

Hahahaha nice analogy. Awesomeness!

Anyways...

Throwing STEAM into the argument makes no sense. Digitally downloaded games on ANY system aren't lendable or sellable, the difference here is the fact that people do not like the idea that Physical copies, or going to utilize the same system as digitally downloaded games. The no lending or selling. It has nothing to do with the STEAM model, because that model is already in place for Xbox live purchased games, which also includes being able to play them offline (as long as your licenses are tied to THAT hardware).

Try that bullshit will physical media, and there's your problem.

Steam DOES pull that bullshit with physical media though. Most of my Steam library was bought at retail; NOT on Steam's store. You can't avoid it either; if you want to play PC games in the modern day, you NEED a Steam account. It's not a good defence of the Xbone, though, because defending crap by pointing out that people already put up with other crap is silly. Plus, as has been pointed out, the Xbone won't give us the advantages of Steam, only the downsides.

Also, there's this: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/139706-microsofts-new-kinect-patent-goes-big-brother-will-spy-on-you-for-the-mpaa

 

[slobolobo]

People are forgetting that Steam isnt the only way to play games on a PC. If we had the option to use the Xbone another way apart from install, online registered etc then it wouldnt be an issue. But there isnt that option its Microsofts Way or the highway. They have removed a lot of choice from the equation, and given us very little information in return and what information we do get is in drips and drabs. Why are they not being upfront about it?

Also as people have pointed out you can wait for a steam sale and get the game you want for a much much lower price. So in essence its like waiting for the preowned copy. Plus i get to play many of my old games without issue, I get access to a wide range of indie titles and free to play games.

I already have a TV, not that the live tv feature works in England, my phone has chrome browser and Skype and touch screen input makes it allot easier than the xbox controller typing. I do not need any of the features the xbox one brings at all. If i want to search something while gaming i can use a tablet, laptop, phone or even my pc since i have my xbox near my computer.

The only thing that I dont have an issue with is the size of the console, after all they squeezed the xbox 360 into the smaller box and had huge overheating issues. So i guess it shouldn't be an issue here.

 

[Baldr]

People keep saying "well steam doesn't let you sell your used games" but I think that's a stupid argument. See, the thing about steam is that it has tons of sales. Absolutely ridiculous sales, where new games are regularly priced at 35% to 75% off. Because of this, inevitably a large part of your library ends up being games that you got on sale, so for most steam users, they've actually only paid about 50% of what their library should actually cost (in some cases more, in some less).

Why does this matter? Well, when someone sells their game back to gamestop, or wherever, they usually don't get a ton of money back for it, maybe $15 on a $60 game. If you sell all your consoles games back to gamestop after playing them, the cost of your game library would be similar to the cost of your library had you bought all your games on steam (even if only 1/3 of the games were bought during steam sales) the difference being that with used games, once you have sold them back to gamestop you wouldn't have them anymore, whereas with steam you buy the games on sale and then you still have them.

So the argument that it's ok for the xbox to disallow used games, or to make you pay for the "privilege" to sell your games used all because steam doesn't let you sell your "used" games is stupid, because while it's true that you can't sell those games, the entire cost of building your steam library is less, so it more than balances out against the ability to sell your games used.

Now if the Xbox forces you to pay $5 or $10 or however much they decide on to allow you to play used games, that becomes a staggeringly worse deal than steam.

Used Games sales undermine the ability for new titles to go on sale. Every-time the price is lowered, retailers will undercut it with a used game price, so it not financially helpful to put a new game on sale after release. Publishers and Developers only make money on new copies, so if a customer buys a used copy instead of a new, that is one less sale.

 

[Baldr]

People are forgetting that Steam isnt the only way to play games on a PC. If we had the option to use the Xbone another way apart from install, online registered etc then it wouldnt be an issue. But there isnt that option its Microsofts Way or the highway. They have removed a lot of choice from the equation, and given us very little information in return and what information we do get is in drips and drabs. Why are they not being upfront about it?

Unless it is exclusive, you can always buy it on another platform.

Also as people have pointed out you can wait for a steam sale and get the game you want for a much much lower price. So in essence its like waiting for the preowned copy. Plus i get to play many of my old games without issue, I get access to a wide range of indie titles and free to play games.

Retailers would undercut new games with used games on sales prices. There is no point for a new game to go on sale in the physical market.

I already have a TV, not that the live tv feature works in England, my phone has chrome browser and Skype and touch screen input makes it allot easier than the xbox controller typing. I do not need any of the features the xbox one brings at all. If i want to search something while gaming i can use a tablet, laptop, phone or even my pc since i have my xbox near my computer.

They are just added features. At the end of the day it is still going to be a gaming console.

The only thing that I dont have an issue with is the size of the console, after all they squeezed the xbox 360 into the smaller box and had huge overheating issues. So i guess it shouldn't be an issue here.

This is sorta a United States Mainstream thing, they want a gaming console, but don't want it to look like they own a gaming console in their living room.

 

[loa]

The whole reason I even use consoles is their simple "put game in, play game" mechanic without all that phoning home jazz and whatnot.
I'll be able to play dark souls in 10 years from now since I have the disc (if my xbox survives that long) and I can still play my entire ps2 library.
Your point is irrelevant to me.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

People are forgetting that Steam isnt the only way to play games on a PC.

No, but it's the only way to play Spec Ops: The Line, Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dishonored, Fallout: New Vegas, Metro 2033 (and probably Last Light), Darksiders, Total War: Shogun 2 and many more games legally on the PC. I either bought these games at retail or on other sites and all of them were then tied to my Steam account and cannot be traded or lent to my friends. In the case of Shogun 2 it also cannot be played because of a mandatory 12GB update my internet isn't really equipped to handle at the moment.

Steam isn't as bad as the Xbone *seems*, but it still severely restricts the way you can use the physical media that you have bought.

 

[Grape_Bullion]

On a scale of one to grasping for anything, you're grasping for anything.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

one word:
kinect.
two words:
Big Brother
hree words:
do not want!
four words:
see it for yourself:
http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...4".PGNR.&OS=DN/20120278904&RS=DN/20120278904)
(including wonderful sentences like:
" continuously monitoring a number of users at a display device during the performance of the content.
and
"determining a user view by determining at least a number of users within a display area of a display device for a duration of the presentation exceeding a threshold."
as well as:
" identifying specific users within a display areaof a display device and associating a duration of the presentation with each user, and determining a user view when performance of the content to an identified user exceeds a threshold."


face recognition?
heart rate?
that thing seeing how much of my imagined friends are at my place( i dont have friends but thats not the point) and konpwing WHO of the bodoies is which person?

sure

it might not be as bad as i think...

IT IS WORSE

 

[Prosis]

But Microsoft wants to have this large accounts database with all the users having all their games pinned to their accounts so they wont have to search for the gamediscs all the time.
Which is the same as steam does, but you can't sell your old games on steam, fee or no.

First off, there is no used game market for the PC. Period. Steam, GoG, or brick n'morter stores. There is none. This is because it is extraordinarily easy to rip a disc on a pc, install fully, and then resell the disc. Yes, you can rip console discs, but generally you need some sort of modded/hacked system to get them to work.

Secondly, people like steam because the sales drop older games to incredibly low prices. Console players can obtain cheap games via used game sales, and Steam users can obtain cheap games via Steam Sales.

If they'd come out and say that they wanted to make the gaming as convenient as it is on steam but with the ability to sell your old titles People would have cheered.

It is not as convenient as it is on steam. Steam features heavy price cuts, and allows you to go offline for weeks at a time. XboxOne does not. Furthermore, Xbox is not providing any sort of ability to sell your old titles. You have to find a buyer, and you have to sell them the physical disc. Xbox is not creating "Steam but with game sales," as Xbox360 and Xbox owners have already been able to sell their games.

Then they could've said that re-arranging gametitles around from account to account while making sure that people don't get to play games that they've sold costs money and if you buy used games, you pay that money. Merely to keep that database running that allows for that convenience.

False. Much like PC has never had a used game market, consoles have always had a used game market. No matter how you spin it, it is a tax on the entire used game market.
This kills game rentals entirely. Blockbuster and small-store rentals will not be able to rent games. Most rentals are around $5-$10, so even a $5 fee doubles the price.
This seriously harms the used game market. If the used game is $40, $5 is a 12% increase in price. If the used game is $20, it is a 25% increase in price. And, as you said, we don't know the price yet. It could be $5, but it could be $20. It could be $50.

It would have been good to be able to download and sell direct download titles on a service run by microsoft; in which you could buy used licenses to download and play a game. Microsoft gives you digital money reimbursement for a digital game you sell and then someone else could buy that license to download that game for about double the price you sold it for. Still better then gamestop and Microsoft earns some dough as well.

That would be neat. But this not what they're doing.

I have not found anything to defend the other points i find disturbing about the xbox one; every console that tried to be a multimedia machine has failed spectacularly. If you try and have a machine with many function so that everyone has something he likes then everyone will have something that he doesn't like and doesn't want to pay for.

People aren't angry about the multimedia factor. They're angry because the presentation sold multimedia as the primary goal of the system, rather than gaming. As it is now, they've talked more and emphasized more about multimedia, meaning that for right now, it sounds that gaming is less important.

No one want's to *have* to be online every 24 hours. Wanna visit your parents and they don't have good Wlan in the room you'll be staying in? Well, sucks to be you then. Go buy a cheap feature phone and connect the xbox via the phone unless you want to pay the tethering fee for smartphones or something.

Yeah, those guys who can't afford internet in their house, live in the middle of nowhere with only dialup, or live in other countries that don't have an entire wired internet infrastructure can just suck it up. It makes sense that they should have to buy a smartphone to 3G their internet in order to play offline video games on a console.
In the past 6 months, Comcast has had to come out here 5 times to fix their stupid wiring. Sucks to be me if I want to play video games, amirite?

But what does "connect every 24 hours" really mean? It means if there's a new firmware update, you'll have to download it (just look at the PS3's updates). It means that if Xbox's servers are down, you can't play ANY of your games (look at Ubisoft's always online DRM problems). It means that if some bug or glitch occurs between your xbox and the server, you can't play your games (look at the problems people had with Origin deleting their games).
Requiring a sign-in every 24hours provides ZERO benefit to the consumer, but causes the potential for tons of problems. I've yet to hear an arguement that explains why connecting once every 24 hours is beneficial to the player, rather than connecting when you feel like it.

But i get the used games fee. Paying fees isn't one of my favorite past times but it's still better then steam.

You'd rather pay additional fees on Used Games, rather than the base price, just so you don't have to use a service not available on consoles? Ok.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

That's only one of dozens of issues about the XBone. For example:

It sees you when you're sleeping.
It knows when you're awake.
It knows if you've been bad or good,
and will get bricked if you so much as blink at Microsoft out of step
So be good for goodness' sake.

238U

 

[MrWunderful]

Isn't everything hearsay until official, concrete details are released?

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Snip

Seeing how you defend Steam I'm going to guess you like it and use it a lot.

Do you run Steam in the background? Everyone I met who says you can play offline is always connected every other moment. If you're online and your connection drops Steam still works. If you've logged in recently it will still work. If you haven't been on Steam in a while and go to play it offline is when you get the problem.[/quote]

I wouldn't say I came to its defense, just clarified something based on my personal experience in the interest of knowledge for you or anyone reading. I don't run it in the background if I'm not playing anything. I have msconfig setup to not allow it to start when Windows starts, and I only open Steam when I run a game that uses Steamworks. I don't like anything using processor cycles and taking up RAM if I'm not actively using it. I'd say the longest I've gone without connecting, and then launching a game without any internet, is about 2 weeks. If I had previously launched that game before while online, it let me do it.

I really only like it because of the sales. I actively fucking hated it when Half-Life 2 launched, and deemed it as the start of insane DRM and unnecessary roadblocks between me and my PC games. I had dial-up back then, and it took like 2 days before I could launch and play Half-Life 2. The account stayed dormant for years until boxed copies of games used Steamworks as DRM and I had to go back to using it in order to play those games.

To clarify, I don't like what Steam represents, or how Valve held Half-Life 2 ransom to force our hands into installing a separate program, or the gamification/trading card crap and how it's become the Xbox Live of PC gaming. But it's one of those "I pretty much have to use it a lot, and it could be a hell of a lot worse" kind of things. What makes the thing about boxed copies using Steamworks even funnier is that the DRM sucks as far as protection goes. It's a security blanket at best, like paper armor against a Dark Souls drake. But I digress, and probably clarified and qualified myself to much farther an extent than was necessary.

 

[SageRuffin]

And you know what? It probably won't, but a) the reveal and subsequent articles found both here and on a plethora of other websites have left a very, very, VERY sour taste in many a people's mouths, and I'm talking a taste most foul as to cause severe vomiting. And b) we won't know otherwise until we, the people, physically get our hands on a physical console. Then and only then will anyone see what's good and what's really good.

Again, all we have is speculation based on facts, and since those facts point to the worse, we're appropriately speculating the worse.

 

[SageRuffin]

Isn't everything hearsay until official, concrete details are released?

That's the problem. MS almost refuses to explain anything else on the matter, and when they do finally explain something, their responses are so wishy-washy that nobody knows what to believe anymore.

There's a common phrase in the [US] military: "Hope for the best, expect the worst." The numbers that partake in the latter far outweigh those in the former and for good reason.