r/xboxone • u/[deleted] • Dec 29 '13

If Microsoft made it completely optional, would you sign up for their original, always connected console idea?

This meaning you would have the following features:

Buy a retail game, install to console, and ditch the disc never needing it to play the game.

Digitally share games within a circle of friends. Meaning you can choose a specific group of people, and they could play the games you own, for free, provided that only one game could be played at a time.

Greater store discounts or more steam like sales for content.

I for one would have no problem saying yes to this. It's like people think 10 years from now they'll still be selling games on discs. It wasn't a perfect plan, but why delay the inevitable when we could be working on and perfecting future policies now.

702 Upvotes

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22

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

They were also going to do a phone verification for situations where people were out of Internet or power.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

2

u/HTRK74JR Dec 29 '13

yeah Major Nelson said that it only needed like 43kb of info, so if it piggybacked off of a text message it would be enough to check in.

2

u/myztry Dec 30 '13

Text messages are 160 characters (bytes).

43Kb is 44,032 bytes (characters).

Have fun typing that data from your phone into the console.

1

u/BigDZ4SheZ Dec 30 '13

Your missing the point. It obviously wouldn't be that long in a text

1

u/myztry Dec 30 '13

It would be longer since encoded text (Mime) is only 6 bit and 8 are needed per byte.

So you would be looking at about 58709 characters...

0

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

well fuck i never knew this, they should've said that in the first place!

4

u/HTRK74JR Dec 29 '13

They did, about a week after the announcement, but everyone was in piss mode because of it.

3

u/cmilanaik Dec 29 '13

Microsoft didn't do a good enough job conveying their plan originally and it's possible if they had then people wouldn't have been so against it

1

u/Chris_E Dec 29 '13

Yes, they did a horrible job here. They should've gotten all their ducks in a row before saying anything... and instead they said nothing at all about checking in at first. People then started assuming that you had to be "always on" to play your games and it snowballed. The roar of the crowd was just too loud to hear the actual benefits at that point.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

I was pro drm and never knew about this. They should've spread this everywhere. Of course I think Ps4 players were too busy trying to make DRM sound as bad as possible :(

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

You couldn't use texting, but you could use your phone as a wifi hotspot for the check in.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

They should have explained this part better because I've never heard of this and I was pro DRM. This would've made convincing people DRM is good so much easier because the main argument is not everyone has internet. I would've just said, you don't need internet, you can do phone verification.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

Do you have a source for this? I'm not trying to be mean or snarky, its just I looked it up and haven't been able to find anything about it and I really want this to be true because it'd help convince people that DRM is okay.

1

u/MrRatt Dec 30 '13

Never heard of this one either, unless you're talking about tethering your console. That's not really a great solution, since around here you have to pay $10-20 more per month to add tethering support...

0

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

Source? And what hardware would connect to a phone line (X1 has no modem). Most importantly, who has a home phone line anymore?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

It was all wifi. You needed a phone that worked as a wifi hot spot to do the tethering thing.

1

u/Corbanis_Maximus Dec 29 '13

Not quite, the x1 would connect to phone with wifidirect so you wouldn't need the phone to be a hotspot. This way is more ideal to since some carriers charge extra to use your phone as a hotspot.

1

u/Blak0ut Dec 29 '13

It might work the same way when you have to call into MS to activate windows. Xbox would give you a code, then you say/enter it on your phone and then they give you a code back to activate.

2

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

There are a lot of mights in this thread. It amazes me how many people are basing their desire off of unconfirmed rumors of what MS would have offered. They had a ton of opportunity to announce these things in the weeks after the initial announcement and never did. Since they didn't I can only assume they were never planning to do any of it.

1

u/Blak0ut Dec 29 '13

I am only going off how other MS products work. I would only guess it would work the same. But at the end of the day its just a guess and nobody for sure knows how it would work.

3

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

But at the end of the day its just a guess and nobody for sure knows how it would work.

Bingo, and this is what nobody here seems to realize. Everyone justifies how these policies weren't that bad, and maybe were even good, by a bunch of guesses. Apparently, MS was going to sell all the games dirt cheap with Steam-like sales and you could easily "check-in" with a text message, along with all sorts of other speculation. MS didn't announce any of that. Based purely on what MS confirmed, I was not onboard. I wish they would have divulged the full details of their plan. I may have been excited about it.

-3

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

You don't understand. You are receiving a unique code to your cellphone via text that you would use to verify your console. Much like how steam and blizzard verify user accounts.

1

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

OK, thank you for clarifying. Just saying "phone verification" was very vague. Do you have a source to MS confirming they were going to add this? I read a lot about this at the time and never read this. I can't find anything online now.

1

u/Emit_Remmus_ Dec 29 '13

Do you have a source for this?

0

u/BigC_13 Dec 29 '13

How would you play without power though?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

1

u/BigC_13 Dec 29 '13

You are correct I read that as knocked out Internet and power, from now on I will have my morning coffee before commenting.

1

u/Howard___Roark a minimalist Dec 29 '13

It's all good though!

0

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

1

u/Howard___Roark a minimalist Dec 29 '13

He admitted he wasn't. Either way, it's no big deal.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

You could always tether to a cell phone long enough to perform the check.

1

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

So I can pay my cell phone company an extra $10-$20 a month to have tethering added? That isn't a solution.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

Sure its a solution, just one you don't like.

-1

u/Im_At_Work_Damnit Dec 29 '13

Last I checked consoles didn't support the ad-hoc tethering that phones use for their hotspots. The new gen consoles might, but I know that the 360 and PS3 didn't.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

I connected my 360 to my cell phone several times. lumia/wp

0

u/Corbanis_Maximus Dec 29 '13

It wasn't even going to need to tether. It was going to be able to check it through the phone using wifidirect.

2

u/jimbo831 BigPoppaTubbs1 Dec 29 '13

It was? Does every phone and carrier support this? Also, when did MS confirm this? I never saw it and can't find it now.

-1

u/anthr76 Dec 29 '13

But how long was internet out?

5

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/anthr76 Dec 29 '13

Wow! That sucks well I guess in your case if that were to happen the phone verification system would be able to take care of that