Is it too early to beging nominations for the 2013 Understatement of the Year?
MS PR and communication is astonishingly bad. The Xbox brand used to be the exception, but they’re apparently finally gotten Ballmer’s “Only say things that make us sound out of touch and exploitative” menu.
As somebody who really, really likes a lot of their products, it’s infuriating. They can’t communicate their strengths, always manage to accentuate their shortcomings, and effectively ruin a lot of great products and services simply by driving away users.
I wonder how much any fo this is going to affect average console gamer Joe though?
My console friends had 0 clue that E3 was happening. Didn’t catch much about it at all. The only thing they had to ask was if the next Halo was going to be a launch title.
I don’t think they would know what DRM is, much less care.
It’s supposed to be fixed now. I have had my internet go down and Steam asked if I wanted to use offline mode. Never had to set it up. Years ago it didn’t work in a similar situation.
Some people do still have problems, but it seems to be a file getting corrupted when a computer is shut down without Steam fully closing first. Other than that, you are supposed to be able to use offline mode indefinitely with no need to set it up at all.
I don’t know if it will stop them from buying it, but it will affect them quite a bit when Microsoft’s system goes down and they can’t play their games. This is my biggest problem with the required connection. My internet is great, it hasn’t gone down once that I’m aware of in years. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen an online service that can say the same. Netflix goes down from time to time. So does Hulu. Even the SDMB has issues now and then, if you can believe it! And so does Microsoft. Xbox Live has fucked up before. It will fuck up again. At least when it does it now you can play single player games. With the Xbone, well, that’s that until they fix it. When that happens, and I’m convinced that it’s a matter of when, not if, the howling rage is going to be absolutely incredible.
We’ll see about the rest, but definitely the $100 price difference will have an affect on Joe Average Gamer/Consumer.
I understand most of the difference is due to the Kinect and there’s likely to be some differences in game exclusives and what-not, but if we’re positing the stereotypical Joe Average Gamer/Consumer, will they care enough to research any of that or are they more likely to just go with the price tag?
I’m wondering if the MS PR staff is dizzy from all the spinning they have to do to justify a more expensive console than their competitors. Sony went through a similar experience with the PS3 and it took them 7 years to catch up.
Maybe they should ask the Sony guys for some tips on how to handle that.
I can confirm it works. My cable internet was very flaky last week for unknown reasons but Steam prompted me for offline mode when it couldn’t connect and I was able to play my games just fine. It worries me that, with the XBox1, I’d be SOL. And my confidence in Comcast reliability improvements in the near future is non-existent.
I think I can count, on a few fingers, the number of days that Xbox Live has been down for no online play. They’ve got a pretty damned good track record in this regard.
While true, the Xbox One is much more dependent on online. I know they’re adding servers, but if this thing gets too popular too fast that’d be great for Microsoft but bad for players.
There’s also the whole problem of ticking off a fair number of tech-savvy geeks. You know, like Anonymous. Who are perfectly capable of running a DOS attack against XBox servers for a couple weeks (minimum) after its launch.
That’s happened before to PC games to protect stupid always on DRM. That would be… an interesting launch for the Xbox. Imagine people are on the fence on xbox vs PS4 and waiting to hear reviews over the first few weeks - and Xbox live is down half the time. Microsoft is setting up for catastrophic failure.
That’s because the NSA can’t spy effectively on our troops with the PS4! How else are they going to catch filthy whistle blow… I mean terrorists! Why do you hate America?!
Shoot, doesn’t even need to be a protest. Yeah, it’s Microsoft, they should know how to handle things, etc–but we could have said the same thing about EA’s SimCity launch…
Where did you get this from? A device that so mandates its camera and microphone that the box doesn’t have an on/off switch, requires to phone home once a day providing IP geolocators and information gathered from its camera/microphone, requires you in the terms of use to be OK with the provision of any amount of information gathered from the camera/microphone to be provided to third parties without your OK, has a sensitive enough camera that it can detect individual faces, heartbeats, emotional states and facial expressions and looks like it’ll probably be banned from sale in Germany and Australia as a “surveillance device”…
And they’re saying the other one will be banned from the military?
They said that it’ll be able to be put in a state where the only input it’ll react to is someone waving at the screen or saying “Xbox on” - because, lacking a power button, that’s the way you turn the Xbone on.
Unstated but implied is that in order to see if you’re waving or to interpret every word it hears to listen for someone giving that command, it’s still going to have to monitor audio and video at all times.
