Imagine, if instead of pumping money into being so goddamned worried about being first or offerring extraneous features; MS took all that extra money tossed around the past couple of generations and just funded some damn games. I mean, seriously.
Also, even more obvious; if they can spend 1 billion on servers for graphics and engine augmentations, why not just spec the Xbone with better hardware?
Also, even more obvious; if they can spend 1 billion on servers for graphics and engine augmentations, why not just spec the Xbone with better hardware?
Microsoft, like pretty much every supplier that isn't Amazon, is desperate to prove public clouds are cost-effective and capable of all all kinds of fantastic feats, even if that means they have to hire themselves. _________________
On the question of whether physical or digital goods are more secure, physical goods can be protected by insurance. I'm not aware of any insurance against loss of digital purchases(yet). Also, it is quite naive to assume that digital goods are 100% safe from loss. Just ask DIVX early adopters. Granted DIVX was tied to a physical disc, but the point is the service went down, which left everyone with DIVX discs SOL. I'd be surprised if any relevant Terms of Service agreement out there doesn't have clauses stipulating the tenuous nature of the consumer's purchases, just in case the company has to make some kind of major adjustment to their services.
In short, if I used steam, I'd be cracking and backing up every steam game I bought. PC does have the advantage in that it is easier to take matters into your own hands. _________________ PSN: TaipeiGamer
It's mostly a matter of what kind of security you actually want. If I want to be able to play my games in 10 years, it seems physical copies with no DRM is probably more secure than digital purchases (I tend to think I can take better care of my stuff than some transnational corporation will care to maintain an aging DRM scheme). (Also, insurance only gives you money, not games. You may get your $120, but you'll lose your rare N64 cartridge forever.) If I want to be able to play my games in 1,000 years, well actually I don't want to cause I'll be dead, and that kind of archiving ain't my job. _________________ Let's Play, starring me.
Wow. I want to see martial arts sparring matches filmed in that "muscle man" mode. Or fencing. Or a gymnast landing a vault.
I need this to be in future Olympics broadcasts.
For video games though, man, that looks like nearly 200ms of lag.
Another video on the show floor of that demo from Tested (Along with a look at the new pad). The presenter is right in the face of Kinect and it's still picking him up. It still has noticeable lag but it's a heck of a lot more impressive than it was. And Microsoft are pushing it as a user interface rather than a controller outside of some games like Kinect Sports Rivals so we will probably see a lot more use of it in different ways like the one in Dead Rising 3 where they mentioned sound in your real room can be used to distract and attract zombies.
Also apparently there's a lot of rumours swirling Microsoft will be announcing something regarding Indie self publishing and dev kits for XBone at BUILD today on top of that. _________________
Somewhat tangentially and not particularly apropos of anything, but I have a co-worker who refuses to buy anything digital because he's convinced it's not "real" and that without a physical copy, his games can vaporize at any time. I always like to counter this argument by pointing out that I had 60+ Dreamcast games and a modded console, and they were stolen from my home and I was shit out of luck.
That's not much of a counter-argument, really. First, things getting stolen is not a normal occurrence and punishable by law. Second, accounts can get stolen as well.
The problem your co-worker rightfully points out is that the future of your digital purchases is always at risk because it's tied to the DRM platform. If they decide to discontinue the platform or they go bankrupt, your digital purchases become useless as soon as they need to phone home to make sure you're still allowed to have them.
One great example of the reality of this is the PSN outage back in 2011, which rendered digital games you legally purchased that needed you to be signed in to your PSN account unplayable.
1. It's a LOT easier to return a stolen account to its rightful owner than it is to return stolen goods. You have to locate both the thief and the goods before they can be returned. With an account, you just make a phone call, provide some details, and your account is returned to you.
2. Steam games don't need to phone home by default. The vast majority of games do not unless it's something the developer specifically puts in there, and they usually get yelled at for it (see: Ubisoft). Obviously, you DO have to be online in order to download the games in the first place, and if you bought a game and didn't download it and then the internet disappears forever overnight then yeah, you're SOL, but that's a risk most people seem to be willing to take. In the meantime, you can indeed make physical backups of Steam games, and these backups do not need to phone home to be used. There's a dropdown menu to burn a disc right in the Steam UI. If you desire to make hard copies of every single Steam game you purchase and throw them in a sealed box that is to be buried in the desert somewhere to preserve them, the only thing stopping you is your tenacity.
The reason nobody thinks you can do this is because it's a giant pain in the ass, and nobody's actually tried. Making physical backups once you get above 500 games or so is rather insanely time consuming.
So does this mean that, in theory, right now, I could burn a bunch of backups of games from my own account and give them to someone to play on an offline computer and they'd work?
Yes. Yes, that is exactly what that means. In fact, you don't even need the physical backup part. Boot up another computer, log into your Steam account, download a bunch of stuff, then take it offline and fire them up. Your games will still work.
That is how Steam has always worked, and it's kind of alarming how few people believe me when I say this. By all means, give it a shot! Steam will go "Hey, I'm offline! Play anyway?" and you go "Yes please." and it goes "Well, I'd like to log in when I can!" and you say "Sure thing, but for now play it offline." and it'll say "Okay" and away you go.
That's the thing. Steam is really pretty shitty as a DRM platform, and it's that way by default. It's much more of a Storefront/Organizer/Social Platform than a DRM scheme. Ditto for PSN -- once the game is actually on your console, you can take the console offline. The whole "you can't play if you're not connected!" argument really, truly doesn't hold up 99% of the time, but the people making that argument generally can't/won't actually test out their own theories, so you get a lot of circular arguments where a bunch of people propagate a myth to each other to give themselves a reason to avoid digital.
Like the PSN outage. I have a PS3. I was able to play my games just fine during that outage 'cause I had them downloaded. I don't even think there ARE any PSN games that require you to be logged in to play that aren't MMOs. But Benren, you're not the only person to drag that argument out and try to use it. I hear it all the time and I'm really wondering where it comes from because it's not true for PSN or Steam. Xbox Live is a little stranger when you start digging into XBLA titles, but by and large it still works the same way for most of its games as well. One of the reasons people were so up in arms over the Xbone is that it was actually going to implement the DRM schemes that people usually use as a rationale to avoid digital download.
I've also come to the conclusion that some people will simply never use digital no matter what until it is absolutely forced on them, at which point they will simply stop buying new games. And, well, okay, sure. Seems kinda silly to me but whatever.
I remember talking to/yelling at someone on Insert Credit about this like years and years ago, and they basically flatly refused to believe I was telling the truth about how Steam worked even after I provided links to my own Steam account, Valve's policies, testimonials from other places, etc. etc. They'd always drag up some new (usually untrue) reason why all the money I've spent on Steam over the years was going to simply disappear into nothingness because Valve might just disappear overnight (pretty much impossible barring the outbreak of WW3 in which case we've got other problems besides games to worry about) and take all my games with them, and then even the ones I'd already bought and downloaded would stop working (not true) and physical backups would be useless (also not true) and there would be no way to access any of these games ever again they are gone forever and ever and there is no other way to play them and blah blah blah blah blah
This was in like 2007, 2008? Whenever Deus Ex came out on Steam, because my purchase of that meant an implicit acceptance of the horrible doom of the industry that was the Steam platform, and that was Bad™ and I was a Bad Person™ for buying into the Terrible Lie™ and I wouldn't I feel silly when The People™ rose up en masse to send this horrible abomination back to hell and the $10 I'd spent on Deus Ex would be swallowed by oblivion when the service became unreachable.
I've kind of just come to the conclusion that there are people out there who have an impossible mental divide between the data that composes a game and the medium used to deliver it and that this is not a thing that will change in their lifetimes. To them, The Game as a concept is the disc, or the cart, or what have you. The mental safety blanket that these games will still be playable in 30 years if you throw them in a vault or whatever is nice and all, but ignores a looooooot of other factors like hardware accessibility, advances in emulation, advances in mobile/wearable tech, and so on.
I mean, I can bust out my phone right now and play the CD version Sam and Max Hit the Road on it, complete with touch controls (if I want). I can pipe that information to my PC and play it there. I can hook it up to a TV and play it there. Back when this game came out, that was entirely inconceivable.
I do not think it is at all out of the realm of possibility that in 10 years or so, you can access the entire PS3 back catalog via the internet and slap that shit on some kind of physical storage medium the size of a fingernail.
When any kind of DRM scheme fails and the company goes under, the associated games don't simply vanish into the ether and become forever unplayable.
You will still be able to play your games. Physical medium was only ever a means to an end, and it is losing its reason for existence with each passing second.
1. It's a LOT easier to return a stolen account to its rightful owner than it is to return stolen goods. You have to locate both the thief and the goods before they can be returned. With an account, you just make a phone call, provide some details, and your account is returned to you.
Unless, of course, they don't give a fuck and blame you for getting your account stolen. Microsoft has been particularly unhelpful on this front, especially when it comes to purchases made with your compromised account.
Quote:
2. Steam games don't need to phone home by default.
Okay, but Steam isn't the only DRM platform out there.
Quote:
Ditto for PSN -- once the game is actually on your console, you can take the console offline. The whole "you can't play if you're not connected!" argument really, truly doesn't hold up 99% of the time
I gave an example of how extreme it can go. Obviously this is not the case with all of the games.
The problem is that from time to time, your PSN purchase will want to check if it's still valid. I admit to not having extensive knowledge of this, but not long ago a friend turned on his PSP that he hasn't used in at least a year, and it required him to connect to PSN to verify one of his purchased games. This is the kind of stuff I'm worried about.
Quote:
When any kind of DRM scheme fails and the company goes under, the associated games don't simply vanish into the ether and become forever unplayable.
Legally, many do become unplayable. Thank you, DMCA. _________________ Get Xenoblade Chronicles!
udoschuermann wrote:
Whenever I read things like "id like to by a new car," I cringe inside, imagine some grunting ape who happened across a keyboard, and move on without thinking about the attempted message.
Too lazy to requote all that plus I gotta get to work, but, in order:
1. That's true. Never had to deal with Microsoft, so I'll take your word for it. Valve and Amazon.com have been very helpful, though.
2. Yes, you're right, and that's why people prefer Steam a vast majority of the time. I am not going to use a DRM platform that requires games to phone home before I can use them. Valve has said they won't ever do this and they haven't lied yet. (If they ever do, expect Bellvue to get burned to the ground, something I'm sure Valve are aware of.)
3. Never had this happen, but I'll give you that. I'm of the pretty firm belief that a game can request to phone home (maybe there's a patch, or whatever) but if it refuses to play if you decline, that's bad. Haven't seen Sony do it yet, and never seen Valve or even Origin (which I'm forced to use for some games and loathe) do it. If a platform started locking out games that can't phone home, I'd stop using it immediately. Even Blizzard's games, which kinda-sorta need that online connection to function on a lot of back-end stuff, I try to avoid using if possible. EA's flat-out lost me as a customer recently because of the bullshit they try to pull with games like Sim City. So yeah, I'm not defending DRM, I think online DRM is idiotic. I'm defending digital download as a distribution method that's got a lot of advantages as long as people can wrap their heads around the "you're buying a license for this data" thing, which admittedly sounds gross and pointing out that technically that's all you've ever been doing even for hard copies all this time doesn't help. It's in the manual, though. Those old NES carts? Technically, you're paying for the right to use the software in your home, not the right to the software itself; it just so happens that they only way they could get that software to you was burned into some chips and planted in a plastic board with a label on it. There was even DRM back in the day, but because it very rarely affected the end-user, nobody noticed.
4. Yeah; and fuck that. If I can't legally get a game I paid for, then it's illegally downloaded, cracked and archived right then and there. I'm all for spending money on games I like so the creators get paid, but if that's not going to happen and/or there's no way for me to legally obtain the game anymore, oh well. I've got no compunction about ignoring laws that are idiotic and written by people who don't understand how this stuff works. _________________
1. It's a LOT easier to return a stolen account to its rightful owner than it is to return stolen goods. You have to locate both the thief and the goods before they can be returned. With an account, you just make a phone call, provide some details, and your account is returned to you.
Unless, of course, they don't give a fuck and blame you for getting your account stolen. Microsoft has been particularly unhelpful on this front, especially when it comes to purchases made with your compromised account.
As much as I dislike Microsoft's attempted DRM schemes, I can say from personal experience that they haven't been that bad with theft issues.
In 2012, I encountered two scenarios:
1. My account was hacked, and people bought $100 of Microsoft points on the account. At that point I noticed, changed all my passwords and called Microsoft, and they did fix the issue. Refunded my money and removed the unauthorized purchases. My account was down for several days as part of their "investigation", but I think they gave me a 3 month XBLA gold subscription for the trouble (I didn't use it because I really don't care about Gold's features). They DID try to cover up these hacking stories in the media, because it was definitely a widespread thing (and I had a unique password that I NEVER gave out to anyone). But as far as putting me personally back in the position I would have been in if my shit didn't get hacked, MS handled it well.
2. House was broken into when I was on vacation, and my 360 and PS3 were stolen along with a stack of PS3 games (and a notebook PC). I filed an insurance claim and after paying the deductible did get the money to replace the hardware and stolen physical games. My many downloaded XBLA games were actually quite easy to replace on my new 360. A bit of hassle of having to go into download history and set everything up to re-download, but it was a really easy process once my account was set up on the new console.
It was a significantly bigger hassle to make an insurance claim for the physical games that were stolen and then go buy them (most were easily available in a trip to a couple stores and a visit to Amazon) than it was to replace the console and just re-download my digital purchases already linked to my user account. PS3 was equally easy, for what it's worth. Thankfully the people didn't steal my Wii, because that would have been a much bigger pain in the ass to replace downloaded games that are attached to a specific system rather than a user account (at least without going through Nintendo to transfer an account to a new system, which I hear they will do for theft with a police report).
Still doesn't change that things like online check-ins are really worrisome to me. I fear that those authentication servers very well may go offline one day, and my old games could stop playing without some kind of hack that may or may not be developed. As someone who was playing Yoshi's Island this weekend, I care about playing my games that are quite old so that troubles me a lot.
A friend of mine had his Xbov Live! account hacked about a year ago, and after researching the issue didn't report it and just changed his password. Why? Because his research showed lots of stories of people who had the same thing happen to them, reported it to Microsoft, only to have their account deactivated for months so they could "investigate", after which they were told that there's nothing they can do. _________________ Get Xenoblade Chronicles!
udoschuermann wrote:
Whenever I read things like "id like to by a new car," I cringe inside, imagine some grunting ape who happened across a keyboard, and move on without thinking about the attempted message.
Life update: Tired has turned into Very Unwell by way of Attempting to eat something and having my stomach immediately and violently reject it. Hooray for spending a whopping 2 hours at work before tapping out for the day. _________________
A friend of mine had his Xbov Live! account hacked about a year ago, and after researching the issue didn't report it and just changed his password. Why? Because his research showed lots of stories of people who had the same thing happen to them, reported it to Microsoft, only to have their account deactivated for months so they could "investigate", after which they were told that there's nothing they can do.
Maybe I was lucky, but all I can do is speak from my own experience in the exact same situation around the same time. MS was pretty on top of things for me. Took one phone call to correct and I think maybe I had to respond to a follow-up email. Account was inactive for a matter of days, maybe around a week? Not a crazy long time, and for that inconvenience I was compensated with free Xbox Live Gold for a significantly longer period than my account was inactive.
I wouldn't discount the possibility that the research your friend did turned up reports from people who were either lying, repeating rumors, or just outright stupid. Maybe I'm competely wrong and I just lucked out, but judging from my smooth experience I'm skeptical.
Again though, none of this excuses additional awful DRM schemes now or in the future. Just an example that the one particular talking point of "MS won't help you if your account is hacked/stolen" wasn't true for the incident that actually happened to me.
Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: A constant state of flux
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 7:31 pm
DJ wrote:
Like the PSN outage. I have a PS3. I was able to play my games just fine during that outage 'cause I had them downloaded. I don't even think there ARE any PSN games that require you to be logged in to play that aren't MMOs.
Actually there are a few non-MMO PSN titles that have DRM locking (probably no more than 5 or 6), with the most apparent being Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 which was released a week or two before the outage. Other games are all Capcom as well.
Yeah, I even pointed out as much earlier in the thread when that exact subject came up.
Now I wonder why that part didn't ring any bells when I read it. _________________ Get Xenoblade Chronicles!
udoschuermann wrote:
Whenever I read things like "id like to by a new car," I cringe inside, imagine some grunting ape who happened across a keyboard, and move on without thinking about the attempted message.
Like the PSN outage. I have a PS3. I was able to play my games just fine during that outage 'cause I had them downloaded. I don't even think there ARE any PSN games that require you to be logged in to play that aren't MMOs.
Actually there are a few non-MMO PSN titles that have DRM locking (probably no more than 5 or 6), with the most apparent being Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 which was released a week or two before the outage. Other games are all Capcom as well.
Didn't they rescind that? I remember hearing something about it but dunno for sure.
To be fair: The blame there is solely on Capcom, not Sony. That is a restriction Capcom put on their own game because they weren't happy about Sony's relative lack of DRM, basically. _________________
I still feel that the problem with DRM is basically a question of ownership rights which should be different for company and consumer. I think being tied down to physical objects as the primary method of determining ownership has put a rather problematic stress on videogame companies to prove software ownership, when they really shouldn't have to (my own personal thoughts on this are that the onus of ownership should be on the reproducibility of the process, rather than the product).
That said, even though that's ostensibly what the controversy's about, ownership, the probable reality is that DRM is all about trying to stop piracy, which it has thus far failed spectacularly at. It's actually caused an enormous backlash, and has really just made the companies' positions that much worse. _________________
The very nature of DRM means that the processes required to enable it cause you to lose control over your own software. This is, in and of itself, not bad; you can think of downloadables as addons for a given platform.
Now, when there is no competition or alternate usage on a platform, there is an issue. See also: WinRT apps. No approval from me here.
I'm entirely fine with platforms that have alternative stores, more or less. Even Steam has competition. But for xbone and WinRT, the only option is Microsoft. That's not acceptable to me. _________________ twit
Fwiw, I have about 50% of my steam library backed up to an external hard drive. I started doing it when I had a couple of Gb free and some games, and now when I install a new game that's reasonably updated I back it up right away.
Granted, I do this mainly because I have a shitty internet connection and having to wait a weekend when you want to reinstall GTA 4 sure kills that "pick up and play" impulse, but the added benefit is that I've been steadily building a "just in case" backup archive with very little hassle. It's just a matter of adopting the habit of backing up every game you install. _________________ Guayaba 2600
That's great until your external hard drive fails at the wrong moment. ;) _________________ Get Xenoblade Chronicles!
udoschuermann wrote:
Whenever I read things like "id like to by a new car," I cringe inside, imagine some grunting ape who happened across a keyboard, and move on without thinking about the attempted message.
I don't think you get forced out of being the head of a division to go be the head of a whole company, even with the Xbone's bad publicity and especially in light of all the money he made them
My guess: He fucked up so badly that he knew he was done at Microsoft; Zynga's struggling currently and was ripe pickings, so he jumped ship on the hopes that he could turn Zynga back to being profitable and thus regain some value in the industry instead of winding up as "The Guy Who Killed The Xbox One".
Now, if the Xbone fails, there's not much MS can do to him (as opposed to openly fire him in disgrace if he had stuck around). If Zynga fails, he can say "Well they were doomed anyway and I tried" which doesn't make him look good but is at least somewhat understandable (plus he probably makes more as their CEO than he did at MS). On the other hand, if he actually turns Zynga around, he's a hero who atones for his Xbone flub. It's actually a pretty smart move on his part the more I think about it.
Whether it was a smart move for Zynga, eh. Hard to say. It's a step up from Pincus who was pretty reviled by everybody, but they're replacing one disgraced CEO with a guy who was disgraced out of his previous company, which should give you an idea of the straits Zynga is in right now. It's sort of a "make the best of a shit sandwich" move for everyone involved, and it *might* work? I'll actually admit, I can't even begin to predict this one so I'm watching it with quite a bit of interest to see how it shakes out.
I will say, this is the beginning of the end for Pincus. This is how you oust uppity CEOs who are sitting on money and don't know how it got there. Sharks are circling, and him ceding the captain's chair was the result of some gentle "It's okay, you'll still get a say in how the company is run!" pillow talk. If he's smart, when (not if) they offer to buy him out in a year or so, he'll take the money and run. If he doesn't, expect a corporate knife in his back pretty fast unless he keeps his mouth shut.
tl;dr Mattrick is saving face by taking over a failing company run by an idiot manchild and hoping he can turn it around. I give it 50/50. _________________
I am hearing now that Mattrick took his salary as 95% stock options? In Zynga? Uh. I am not sure how true that is; always figured Zynga actually had a good amount of liquid capital in the kitty, at least enough to buy him at a legit salary until he decided to stick around or bail anyway, but let's go ahead and say that he really did go with stock, just for funsies: If that's the case?
Nevermind what I just said, the man is a fucking nutbar and this is going to be a Titanic-fucking-the-Hindenburg grade disaster. Get popcorn. _________________
but anyway, i don't care about any of this and i really just wanted to comment on how steve ballmer has the empty eyes of a man who wouldn't hesitate to eat you if you were the only edible thing around _________________ letterboxd | last.fm | steam
I am hearing now that Mattrick took his salary as 95% stock options? In Zynga? Uh. I am not sure how true that is; always figured Zynga actually had a good amount of liquid capital in the kitty, at least enough to buy him at a legit salary until he decided to stick around or bail anyway, but let's go ahead and say that he really did go with stock, just for funsies: If that's the case?
Nevermind what I just said, the man is a fucking nutbar and this is going to be a Titanic-fucking-the-Hindenburg grade disaster. Get popcorn.
I've heard Zynga is lobbying pretty hard to get online gambling legalized. If that happens and people can gamble right through their iPhones Zynga will be worth a ton.
I am hearing now that Mattrick took his salary as 95% stock options? In Zynga? Uh. I am not sure how true that is; always figured Zynga actually had a good amount of liquid capital in the kitty, at least enough to buy him at a legit salary until he decided to stick around or bail anyway, but let's go ahead and say that he really did go with stock, just for funsies: If that's the case?
Nevermind what I just said, the man is a fucking nutbar and this is going to be a Titanic-fucking-the-Hindenburg grade disaster. Get popcorn.
he's getting payed 1 million per year + stock options.
SWAT teams breaking into your apartment the moment you unplug the Kinect (tm) from your XBox (tm) One (tm) due to EULA infringement.
Actually, I can see a market for "dummy Kinects", that you plug into the USB port and just retransmit the information of a single white male person in their late 20's, sitting alone, forever. _________________
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
