Oh they would so love to do it ...
all of them. But it would be a stupid move until uncapped high-speed broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity.
A high-flying Microsoft creative director has quit after enraging Xbox owners with a widely publicised tweet saying they should get used to consoles being constantly connected to to the internet. A week ago, Adam Orth provoked the wrath of bedroom-bound gamers and industry experts alike after sharing his thoughts on the always …
You can pretty much bet where there this rumor originated from, it was hoped to gain some acceptance of Mcirosoft's plans by pretending it's usually silent competitor is doing the same, however Sony care out and said 100% that it's not happening on the PS4, which put a spanner in Microsoft's machine.
However quite clearly Microsoft have little choice. The Xbox has been piracy central this generation, where the PS3 is pretty much piracy free. Studios are already voting with their feet and heading the Sony way, so Microsoft have little choice but to do always on....
Microsoft has gotten cocky as to even entertain the notion of persistent online requirement is ludicrous. One of the reasons consoles overtook PC gaming is that they "just worked". Microsoft should really look no further than Sony to see what happened to them last time they got cocky.
I predict that it's next quarterly report that reflects sales of Windows 8, Surface, Server 2012 and nokia phones (what's a nokia?) will come with a prescription for humble pills attached. Hopefully, then we can see them care a bit more about what their customers want. That or they can crawl under a rock and die - ether's fine by me.
Even then I'm not sure it would work.
I'm fortunate to live in an area with at least 3 competing high speed providers. So from home devices can be constantly connected. But when I ride the train, I don't have that kind of connectivity. And that's when I like to pop out the laptop and play a game. So for me, being required to hook up to register isn't a problem, and to some extent I'm willing to do that. But I don't expect to need to be constantly connected to play the game, and I'd be pissed if after activating it properly they yanked my license to play the it because of some alleged security breach related to the key used to activate my game.
when stuff like this happens.
Society has gotten to be so over sensitive and paranoid. Some places better than others still. When the president of the U.S. feels he needs to apologize for complimenting another person it.. well I don't have words to describe this. Other than *big sigh*
When you turn on the lights you don't send the generating company a request for permission to turn the lights on. You pay the utility's bill, after that you and only you control the use.
With "always on" games you control nothing. You only beg the games publisher (which is not even the "utility" providing your connection) to please, kindly let you play the game. They make the decision what you are allowed or not to do in your home.
This is not acceptable.
He does have a point though. Although our current "always on" for phones and home WiFi is "always on bit a bit spotty".
I can watch Netflix 24/7 for instance.
But this is clearly not something we're ready for yet, and we're a fairly well equipped nation... in many countries consistant broadband is a bit of a luxury.
no he dosent. my phone is "always on", but if i turn off the data i can still make calls or play games, or take photos. By linking his tweets (twats?) to electricity he basically said if the xbox isnt "always on" it wont work at all. Thats a huge shift.
" we're a fairly well equipped nation... in many countries consistant broadband is a bit of a luxury."
It might be interesting if you could tell us to which country you referring to. It sure ain't the UK.
Here it's a post code lottery and just being in the centre of a town does not guarantee a good connection and as for us dwellers in the outer darkness, a minimum of 2Gb , as promised in this quote from the gov.uk website: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/local-authorities-meet-deadline-for-broadband-plans.
"The Government has allocated money from a £530 million fund to each local authority in England to help provide 90 per cent of homes and businesses with superfast broadband access and everyone with access to at least 2Mbps."
That's not superfast, it's not even fast, it is the bare minimum that BT and its friends in Whitehall can get away with. Perhaps they should speak with telcos in Romania, Latvia, Ireland or Hong Kong to see how it's done.
Romania? I ask you!
Yep.
Kids, here's a tip for discussing a product that has implemented a business model at cost of some customers. When the lost or under served customers are mentioned, acknowledge the inconvenience and say we'll be thinking them in future iterations. You aren't, and their ability to be customers depends on technology advances or infra-structure improvements, i.e., things beyond your control. If satisfaction is not in the cards, empathy is a good alternative.
Forced to resign because of a simple opinion.
No, Microsoft can be a really weird bunch but I'm quite positive its the combination of things. First he's an executive, one should be able to expect that those guys know how to share an opinion in a non-insulting manner. Then there's the sheer arrogance of it all, in the end it isn't merely showing but actually radiating.
It's simple; if you make it very clear that you seem totally incapable of even considering the way the other person in a discussion feels like then how the heck are you going to lead your own department? I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that guy doesn't have the foggiest of ideas what's going through the minds of his co workers ("now why would I want to associate with them?"). Not saying this is the case, but he sure makes it look that way.
When you are an identifiable decision maker for a corporation and you are commenting on areas that are within the realm where you exert control and/or influence, you are expected to be aware of the implication and effects your statements will have on the sale of your product. The reaction was predictable and managers are expected to avoid that sort of bad PR when possible. Frankly I'm surprised he lasted past the FIRST tweet. And no I haven't looked at the tweet thread.
Why, because you're in a 'senior' position should you reign in your personal thoughts?
Yeah it sucks if you have crappy broadband - I had it for years, but fucks' sake. Some people need to grow up, grow a sense of humour and perspective and worry about things that fucking matter.
My friends and I all frequently wind one another up about where come from - sometimes, shock horror, on public forums. We're all in senior positions. So what? If he'd made direct comments about the kind of people living there, perhaps but come on...
>Why, because you're in a 'senior' position should you reign in your personal thoughts?
Its one thing if your "personal" thoughts have very little to do with your company but when they are directly related to your job and or company products and worse intermixed with your controversial opinion then of course bad things can happen.
MS needs to get rid of all it's employees with that kind of mentality, starting with Balmer. I'm fed up with this "We'll give the customer what we want and they will LIKE it!" attitude from big corporations.
A message has been sent about Windows Phone. Another sent about Windows 8, Still another with Office 365, on and on, etc, etc.......
How far does a company have to have sales slip before realizing they can't do it anymore?
Oh, and for Adam Orth, if he's a fool and quit, along with that attitude, he may soon find out what it means not to have lights, much less an "always on" internet connection.
No more than your PC is... you might have only have turned it on to watch a locally-stored movie, but if it finds an internet connection it will still want to check for updates etc I can always turn off my WiFi or unplug the ethernet cable, though.
Two minutes sounds a little excessive to connect to XBOX Live, though.
Silent Hunter, had the very first version of that.....
Chess Master.... somehow (probably their fault) the connecting to the online games stopped working, so did logging into my account - to play chess online, and despite a bunch of emails to them, they did fuck all and never fixed it.
I never supported piracy of that game, I just kept on forgetting who's place I left the DVD at.
What is that term, Malicious Obedience?
I'd say that Ubisoft's losses are due to them being a bunch of arrogant arseholes.
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Sorry I have sympathy for people being hounded to quit because they have made a silly comment on twitter without knowing better. But Adam Orth should have known better (I assume he does now or maybe he is just bewildered). Tech company execs should realise that what they post is closely examined in the context of their role by the community they cultivate to promote their goods.
Remember Steve Jobs on the iPhone 4 antenna issue? He only got away with that because of who he was but there were a lot of people thinking what IS he doing getting involved.
Executives of any stripe should watch what they say in public. An executive IS always on & they are compensated for that. What they say does matter & when they say stupid shit they deserve to be reprimanded.
All things being equal though, he's probably an arrogant horses ass at the office anyway & nobody is too sad to see him go. If he wasn't already walking a fine line he probably would have just been made to swallow his pride and watch his mouth in the future.
It's not the fact he expressed an opinion that "always-on" should be the way forward for MS. It's the way he responded when it was pointed out to him that "always-on" doesn't "always-work". Instead of answering with a variation of "we're working on mitigating these problems" he answered with caustic remarks about people living in low-service areas.
*That's* why he should be (rightly) grilled and lightly sautéed.
There's no guarantee that the servers would be, as evidenced by Simcity.
I've put about 3 hours into SimCity in the last month, mainly because every time I go to play I think - what if the server cuts out halfway through? What if I play for 2 hours and the server doesn't sync, losing my save (it's happened before)? Once they've got my money there's no incentive for them to maintain the quality of the experience, and anyone so motivated by penny counting as to require always on is probably not going to be concerned about server issues after a sale is made.
Even if Adam Orth's views "do not reflect those of Microsoft's", I find it unlikely that his attitude won't pervade his decisions at the company. Legally Microsoft might felt as though they've clawed their way out, but IANAL, and I care nought for their "legal" position.
Even with ADSL, we simply can't get better than about 1Mbps due to the distance between the CO and our luxurious and extensive grounds waterfront estate (LOL). If two people in the house are watching YouTube, then the available residual bandwidth goes to zero. This happens all the time in our household.
I'm happy to see that this message (killing the false assumption) is getting through. The world would be a better place if they'd stop making false assumptions about Internet access.
How come Windows doesn't take more control of *all* the software updates? Force the programs' update process, including Java and iTunes (everything!), through a single control point. This single point of control would allow the human to assert more control. Presets might include (for example) "Internet connection through Inmarsat satellite at $10 per MB, stay off my expensive connection you damn update routines!". There could be a big red f-off button to dedicate the connection to only direct human use; or a green "Have at 'er" button for when you're going to walk away to eat dinner. Ideally this facility could even manage the update process, carefully deselecting the f-ing Ask Toolbar option and automatically updating Java for the thirty-seventh time that week.
Instead the give us Windows 8. Crazy.