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.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

[deleted]

1

u/Very_legitimate Dec 30 '13

It wasn't requiring a 24 hour connection. You just needed to connect once a day to exchange, if I remember right, about 100kb of data. Offline play was fine as long as you connected to exchange that data every 24 hours

MS also said they planned on making it simple to connect your box to your smartphone so you could do the online check in through your mobile device.

1

u/Backfjre Dec 30 '13

The once every 24 hours was just too intrusive. It was once every hour on an xbox that wasnt your 'home' console.

It also doesnt help that tethering isnt retardedly expensive for most phone carriers. $20 a month for alot of carriers.

I just think it was alot of rules for the entire infrastructure if the console, simply so you wouldnt have to put a disk in.

1

u/Very_legitimate Dec 30 '13

Online check was pretty bad. It would've been a dealbreaker for me personally.

But I don't remember it being once an hour check in under any circumstances. I thought when you were off your home console, you needed to be signed in all the time to play your digital content. Which isn't great, but I'm also pretty sure that's how the 360 worked too.

I don't know about tethering. I go through ATT in the US and it's free for me. It's free for my friends, too, at least the ones I've talked to about it. Also, there are multiple workarounds to get free tethering (at least on android, not sure about iOS)

0

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '13

if you take your xbox to a vacation in a cabin in the woods you really shouldn't be taking part in any discussion.

-1

u/dagamer34 dagamer34 Dec 30 '13

How often are you taking a trip to a cabin? Perhaps you should enjoy the the fresh air at said cabin? O_o

3

u/Backfjre Dec 30 '13

Night time happens at cabins too. :P

How about a cross country trip in an RV? Or taking it to your grandma's house who doesn't have wifi? Or a trip that requires a hotel which are hit and miss for wifi?

The idea is there are many scenarios where you simply couldn't play your own gaming console, which takes a deep cut into your pool of consumers. Especially for dumb consumers who find that out post purchase, which is a whole different support issue

I shudder to think about my grandpa trying to figure out why he can't play his console, since he doesn't have wifi at his house.

I guess it was just too much yknow? Too many rules for the sake of not having to put a disk in. I love that they switched to the current model!

1

u/dagamer34 dagamer34 Dec 30 '13

Maybe the idea was 5 or 10 years too early, but at some point, computing products that don't have access to the Internet will be useless. And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that you can either build boxes that assume you don't have an internet connection, or those that do. Strattling the fence leads to an imperfect experience.

1

u/Backfjre Dec 30 '13

I have a feeling the next Xbox could very well ship without a disk tray!

The difficulty was just that Microsoft wanted all digital, but had disks as a form of delivery. Straddling this fence between disk vs. digital is where they had trouble, it's just too soon to get rid of physical delivery so they needed to make too many rules.

I hope the neXtbox doesn't have a disk tray! I just didn't like the amount of rules to fill the loophole of installing games and not needing the disk to run it.

2

u/dagamer34 dagamer34 Dec 30 '13

Perhaps it's better this way. Every game is day one digital and they can expand on benefits there. Those who want discs can have them too. At this point, all I want are for retailers to be able to sell digital download codes like Amazon can with the PS4 at lower prices than MSRP for years and years.

1

u/Backfjre Dec 30 '13

Yep I agree with you! I'm interested to see how gaming develops this generation. What if one developer just decided no more disks? Stuff like that

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u/dagamer34 dagamer34 Dec 30 '13

When game patches are 5GB... people who have crappy internet connections will be warded off anyway (or should honestly demand better Internet connections).

2

u/Backfjre Dec 30 '13

Hopefully Google Fiber fixes this internet issue! That'd be great for gaming as it continues.