New xbox drm and blocks used games

ancapailldorcha

Never ceases to baffle me how these companies seem to think that punishing the legitimate consumer is the way to combat piracy. It's stupid restrictions that encourage people to pirate in the first place. If I had to choose between buying a DVD with a load of ads on it or downloading the film for free I know which option I'd pick.
I'm inclined to wait for solid facts but for now I'll state that I'm unlikely to buy either of the new consoles at launch. If either firm implement this always online DRM nonsense, it could be the kick I need to finally build myself a PC. Attitudes of people like Adam Orth are nothing short of insulting

jesus_thats_gre

Captain Chaos wrote: »

MS will announce it on May 21st, put back form April 24th. Currently both consoles are due for a world wide launch in November. Currently the next Xbox will be called just Xbox. It will have a price point of $500 for the premium model and $300 for the basic console.

Sony more or less have the guts of their info out now. All they need to fix up are games and the new PSN service and pirce for everything.

MS, we don't know specs at all. What the controller looks like, games, prices.

Right now it looks like Sony have this and MS are helping them.

EnterNow wrote: »

Because peoples opinions are starting to get coloured by rumour & Chinese whispers. Its fine if your an avid reader of the whole thing & you stay up to date, but lots of peoples arn't & you can see the damage of that on this thread alone. MS are taking a battering from the rumour mill, they should set some things straight {assuming the rumours are incorrect!}

VinLieger wrote: »

Because all this negative speculation isnt doing them any favours especially now sony have let the cat out of the bag. IF they come out now and tell us yes its gonna be always online then by the time E3 comes around alot of the big talk over that will be over and they can get around to hyping it.
IF they wait till E3 then of course all anyone will be talking about during E3 is gonna be the always online thing, if indeed that is the way they are going which by all accounts it does seem to be, several websites are citing sources, who should know if it is true or not, as being pretty certain about it

I think you guys are getting a little bit ahead of yourselves. If anything, all the delay proves is that they making some final tweaks based on Sony's announcement.

All the fuss being made about the rumours at the moment will be forgotten the second the official announcement is made - assuming the rumours turn out to be just that.

stevenmu wrote: »

It's possibly a little early to be making any decisions about which to get. Literally everything we know on Microsoft's side is rumour, and even the Sony stuff is still very light on detail.

^^^ This sums up my view on it.

Add to that the amount of bull**** from the original PS3 announcement, I will take everything that Sony says with a pinch of salt.

richymcdermott

It seems Mr.orth Departs from microsoft #DealWithIt

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2013/04/10/microsoft-creative-director-departs-after-always-on-controversy?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Mr E

Inevitable, and most likely pushed.
Such a PR mess for Microsoft.

VinLieger

Mr E wrote: »

Inevitable, and most likely pushed.
Such a PR mess for Microsoft.

Inevitable and sad he lost his job but what was he thinking? Also Microsoft really should have been out ahead of this, screw their precious schedule, at this stage they are just pissing people off

riclad

The ps3 caught up in sales no,s with 360, when the reduced the price.
There,s many people who live in area,s with slow broadband,or people who just use limited broadband ,eg 10gig download cap,
SO a console that needs online drm ,or high speed broadband would not work for them.

ShadowHearth

richymcdermott wrote: »

It seems Mr.orth Departs from microsoft #DealWithIt

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2013/04/10/microsoft-creative-director-departs-after-always-on-controversy?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Not surprised. Rightly so too. I bet just to let him save his face they gave him a way out by his own , instead of kicking him out.

After all this I really doubt that MS will go for always online after this.

COYVB

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

I think you guys are getting a little bit ahead of yourselves. If anything, all the delay proves is that they making some final tweaks based on Sony's announcement.

It's a bit late for that, there's probably not much that can be changed at this stage

COYVB

Something's a-brewing in Xbox town. Just had a few emails from their head PR person asking about deadline dates and key deliverable dates in May and June

NTMK

COYVB wrote: »

Something's a-brewing in Xbox town. Just had a few emails from their head PR person asking about deadline dates and key deliverable dates in May and June

The week of the 22nd of may and e3 dates?:D

or have they slapped you with a nice fat NDA:pac:

COYVB

No NDAs, I have no actual idea what it's in relation to (well, we ALL know what it's in relation to), but there were no specifics beyond an enquiry about dates

CastorTroy

I'm guessing e3 date will be June 10th in the morning again, with Sony on in the afternoon and Nintendo on the Tuesday.

COYVB

Yeah they're always in the same slot for the most part

Grumpypants

Cliffy B sums up the whole thing pretty well. You can read the full blog in the link below.

I have never met Adam, but I have friends who know him and have told me first hand that he’s a good guy. Maybe he’s got a mortgage. Maybe he has kids. Bills to pay, just like you and I.

It’s awfully easy to sit on an anonymous forum or venue and sling mud at someone who has put themselves out there. Show me a person who hasn’t said something dumb or incorrect or yes, even cocky on the internet and he should cast the first stone.

http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/47725362941/deal-with-it

VinLieger

God Cliff annoys me with his pontifcating from up on high, yes hes right how disgusting it is that people are gleeful over someone losing their job but it still doesnt make it an any less annoying read

jesus_thats_gre

COYVB wrote: »

It's a bit late for that, there's probably not much that can be changed at this stage

Hmm I wouldn't so sure about that.

The PS3 changed quite a bit between being unveiled and being released.

Was it not mean to have two HDMI outs - both could drive 1080p res games. Think it was meant to be able to act as a router too? Also think it was mean to be able to support quite a few controllers than it does? Finally, I don't think the architecture originally specified a Nvidia GPU and that all graphics would be driven off of the Cell processor.

Working off of a hazy memory but quite a bit changed.

MS would be crazy to try and make hardware changes but software changes (like the always on internet requirement) could be changed quite easily.

Retr0gamer

Considering how many developers were surprised by the announcement of the PS4 having 8GB of RAM and not 4 and historically how the N64 was a total cluster**** with specs constantly being downgraded until a few weeks before release there's plenty of time for MS to make minor hardware changes.

stevenmu

More rumours incoming: There will be an Xbox Mini, which will be an Apple TV like device. It will have no disc drive or hard drive. It will be able to play Xbox 360 games using some kind of Gaikai like technology.

I can't tell from that article if it requires a full Durango device, or just requires one for 360 games, or if they're claiming that the Durango can do it all, I'm really not sure. The link above (microsoft-news.com) isn't very clear, and I can't get to the original source site (vgleaks.com).


edit: Ok, I can get to the VGLeaks article now. Worth a read but in short they claim
-The mini must always have a network connection (it has no disc drive or storage)
-The durango is the full console, it has always on capability but it's not a requirement and there's no block on second hand games
-I think they are claiming that you need the mini for backwards compatibility, that you can put an Xbox 360 disc into the durango, but you need the mini to play it. I guess the mini must have 360 hardware inside it?

Sounds confusing really, but that's rumours for you

gizmo

The always-on requirement wouldn't require a hardware change. As was discussed by one of the leaks from a dev earlier, it's supposedly happening in software at a system level so devs, third party at least, probably wouldn't know for sure one way or another.

If, however, you look at it in the context of the other more concrete announcements in recent times, as well as certain aspects of the leaks themselves, it's far more indicative of a far greater shift by Microsoft away from the core console gamer market. The supposed presence of HDMI-In, the foundation of studios dedicated to producing entertainment and free-to-play content, the selling off of their IPTV business to concentrate on cloud-based content, the diversification of the XBox brand to areas outside of games such as Music, the repeated references to DVR functionality in numerous leaks etc.... Of course, none of these require an always-on connection, well certain DVR functionality aside, but it'd sure as hell be an effective way of introducing people to them and ensuring they get maximum exposure when it comes to advertising, something they probably feel is necessary given the investment involved. Whether they go ahead with the requirement remains to be seen but it's sure as hell going to be interesting to watch.

Anyway, bearing all of that in mind, to pin this entirely on protection against piracy and used games is simplistic to the extreme. They know such an always-online requirement will hurt them in specific markets and they know a proportion of more core gamers will lean towards the PS4 but they'll also know that there's an extremely large market out there who would lap the entertainment side up with games being seen as a bonus and that's what they appear to be aiming for.

If that's the case then let them off, Sony have been doing a hell of a lot right in my eyes as of late. Getting Unity on board is a great move for indies of all shapes and sizes and their continued courting of such developers on both the PS3/4 and Vita is great to see from a large platform holder. On top of that they still have a larger number of quality first party studios than Microsoft who will all, I imagine, be bringing a slew of new IP to the console in the coming years. Either way, I know which console I'm looking at in the forthcoming gen.

COYVB

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Hmm I wouldn't so sure about that.

The PS3 changed quite a bit between being unveiled and being released.

Was it not mean to have two HDMI outs - both could drive 1080p res games. Think it was meant to be able to act as a router too? Also think it was mean to be able to support quite a few controllers than it does? Finally, I don't think the architecture originally specified a Nvidia GPU and that all graphics would be driven off of the Cell processor.

Working off of a hazy memory but quite a bit changed.

MS would be crazy to try and make hardware changes but software changes (like the always on internet requirement) could be changed quite easily.

pretty sure almost none of that happened

Vyse

COYVB wrote: »

pretty sure almost none of that happened

The prototype PS3 that was initially unveiled in May 2005 most definitely had two hdmi ports.

jesus_thats_gre

Vyse wrote: »

The prototype PS3 that was initially unveiled in May 2005 most definitely had two hdmi ports.

Working off of a very hazy memory but I am pretty sure 3 of the 4 are accurate - doubting the number of Bluetooth controllers though now myself.

Edit: Quick search reveals:

http://uk.gamespot.com/forums/topic/25977019

What happened to the dual-HDMI ports and three gigabit Ethernet connections that Sony hyped at E3 2005?
Scratched! Dual-HDMI would be cool, but very, very few people would likely ever be able to use it, and most people never understood the triple-set of gigabit Ethernet ports to begin with, so as these were likely to be the least-used features, Sony cut them for cost reasons. ~ IGN

jesus_thats_gre

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Working off of a very hazy memory but I am pretty sure 3 of the 4 are accurate - doubting the number of Bluetooth controllers though now myself.

Edit: Quick search reveals:

http://uk.gamespot.com/forums/topic/25977019

And:

http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/06/10/is-the-gpu-holding-the-ps3-back/

For the PS3 Sony wanted to have a technology advantage so they developed, in conjunction with Toshiba and IBM, the Cell processor. A clean sheet design with many innovations this took $400 million and four years to develop. The intention was to use two of these in the PS3, one as CPU and one as GPU. However at the last minute Sony realised that the Cell GPU wasn’t up to the job so they went to nVidia and bought their 7800GTX GPU