• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

EDGE: The next Xbox: Always online, no second-hand games, 50GB Blu-ray and new kinect

Less visibility for videogaming at retail = less consumer awareness of the hobby. For those people who are deathly afraid of an iOS-like world filled with "casual" games, this is one more step toward exactly that on consoles.

Gamestop is a huge vehicle for awareness of new videogames. Without it, gaming becomes even more niche all over again.

Did Blockbuster closing hurt movie awareness? Indie record stores fell like flies during the 90s and 2000s, I think music survived. People will still find what they need, and the message about a games existence will still reach the masses. To claim Gamestop dying turns gaming into a niche is just ridiculous.
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Less visibility for videogaming at retail = less consumer awareness of the hobby. For those people who are deathly afraid of an iOS-like world filled with "casual" games, this is one more step toward exactly that on consoles.

Gamestop is a huge vehicle for awareness of new videogames. Without it, gaming becomes even more niche all over again.

Gamestop is a dinosaur. They will evolve or die, no one would miss them anyhow.
 

Eusis

Member
Did Blockbuster closing hurt movie awareness? Indie record stores fell like flies during the 90s and 2000s, I think music survived. People will still find what they need, and the message about a games existence will still reach the masses. To claim Gamestop dying turns gaming into a niche is just ridiculous.
I think more likely it'd compromise mid tier and niche games really badly. I wonder how music sales are for their equivalent versus the big pop stuff.
 

Tobor

Member
I think more likely it'd compromise mid tier and niche games really badly. I wonder how music sales are for their equivalent versus the big pop stuff.

The games you're talking about are already moving to digital distribution, if they haven't already. Digital distribution has been a boon for niche gaming. The Kickstarter explosion wouldn't have been possible without it.
 

mack999

Banned
The majority of the people I know with Xboxes have never even had the 360 plugged in online. They have zero interest in online gaming. I imagine if they hear this news when the 720 is launched they'll probably just think I won't bother and find a new hobby.

No way will this happen. Why would you go out of your way as a business to alienate customers?
 

Linkified

Member
I dunno, I'm rethinking my plans already... 35 years on this planet and I've learned there's never smoke without fire.

But also sometimes with anything new the information where it comes from almost turns into Chinese whispers ... I'll wait till it comes from the horses mouth in regards to both MS/Sony/Nintendo and then even after wait until its in the field being consumed...remember when Cammy said the Wii was region free ... yep.
 

Sothpaw

Member
I don't play console games, but I have been "always online" since 1997. Console gamers are just going to have to accept this or nor buy consoles. You may not like it for a while, but you will get over it.

Feel free to throw a tantrum and scream into your pillows in the meantime.

The majority of the people I know with Xboxes have never even had the 360 plugged in online. They have zero interest in online gaming. I imagine if they hear this news when the 720 is launched they'll probably just think I won't bother and find a new hobby.

No way will this happen. Why would you go out of your way as a business to alienate customers?

They would give up their hobby because they don't want to do a one time wireless key input? Sounds perfectly reasonable.
 

Zaphod

Member
I don't play console games, but I have been "always online" since 1997. Console gamers are just going to have to accept this or nor buy consoles. You may not like it for a while, but you will get over it.

In the end isn't this more a problem for the console makers than the gamers though?
 
I think more likely it'd compromise mid tier and niche games really badly. I wonder how music sales are for their equivalent versus the big pop stuff.

Those games have been appearing on PSN and XBLA for years. Steam as well. The future isn't brick and mortar. Unfortunately for Gamestop. That doesn't mean people wont find out about the games.
 

Rumble19

Member
The majority of the people I know with Xboxes have never even had the 360 plugged in online. They have zero interest in online gaming. I imagine if they hear this news when the 720 is launched they'll probably just think I won't bother and find a new hobby.

No way will this happen. Why would you go out of your way as a business to alienate customers?

In other anecdotal evidence, I have never met anyone who owns an Xbox who doesn't have it always online. Hell, until recently every one of my friends was still paying for gold.
 
In other anecdotal evidence, I have never met anyone who owns an Xbox who doesn't have it always online. Hell, until recently every one of my friends was still paying for gold.

Ditto. I don't know a single person that doesn't have it attached and using XBL. The ones that have it but don't game use it for XBLA (a lot of minecraft), a media server, Netflix, Amazon, HBO Go etc etc. I don't know a single person that owns any console that isn't attached to the Internet. Even Wii.
 

mack999

Banned
They would give up their hobby because they don't want to do a one time wireless key input? Sounds perfectly reasonable.

I don't know, probably. A lot of people are just not tech savvy. A lot of people are just thick and wouldn't know what an IP address is if you explained it for 4 hours. They have a console, they put a disc in and the game plays. They don't want to know about geeky things. I just know they won't bother with it.
 

Tobor

Member
I don't know, probably. A lot of people are just not tech savvy. A lot of people are just thick and wouldn't know what an IP address is if you explained it for 4 hours. They have a console, they put a disc in and the game plays. They don't want to know about geeky things. I just know they won't bother with it.

Oh come on. My 62 year old mother knows how to connect her laptop to the wifi. That's not nearly the problem it was back in 2005. Speaking of which...

The original 360 didn't even have wifi. You had to pay $100 for an adapter or run an Ethernet cable to the TV. Had they included wifi back in 2005, the percentage of connected consoles would have been higher.
 

Kusagari

Member
How?

When one steps foot into a Gamestop, it's undoubtedly with the decision to look at and/or purchase something video game related. If Gamestop is not there, the desire to purchase a video game does not vanish alongside it, simply the means through which it is purchased will change.

Unless of course you're including Used Games, to which I'll answer, the developers/publishers really wouldn't give a shit.

People not being able to easily trade their games in at a Gamestop could easily mean they won't buy as many new games.
 

Mithos

Member
Oh come on. My 62 year old mother knows how to connect her laptop to the wifi.

Is that because all she need to do is flip the router/modem upside down and just copy the key printed on it and type it in when her laptop asks for it?

Or is she technical enough to find the ssid inside the router (if its not broadcasting it) and eventually find her laptop mac-address and add it to the authorized mac-addresses in the router (if that's how the router/modem is configured)?
 

Tobor

Member
Is that because all she need to do is flip the router/modem upside down and just copy the key printed on it and type it in when her laptop asks for it?

Or is she technical enough to find the ssid inside the router (if its not broadcasting it) and eventually find her laptop mac-address and add it to the authorized mac-addresses in the router (if that's how the router/modem is configured)?

The first, which is all you should need to get a console online.
 

Quasar

Member
Ditto. I don't know a single person that doesn't have it attached and using XBL. The ones that have it but don't game use it for XBLA (a lot of minecraft), a media server, Netflix, Amazon, HBO Go etc etc. I don't know a single person that owns any console that isn't attached to the Internet. Even Wii.

Which makes sense given what Netflix has said about their streaming numbers and platforms. And ontop of that is the MS statements about more people using the 360 for media than games.
 

quickwhips

Member
Everyone is going to be in for a treat when xbox 8 is announced. The tears are going to be awesome. I feel like its going to be FF13 for xbox announcement all over again.
 

Eusis

Member
Those games have been appearing on PSN and XBLA for years. Steam as well. The future isn't brick and mortar. Unfortunately for Gamestop. That doesn't mean people wont find out about the games.
Not the ones I'm most interested in (usually), and PSN and especially XBLA games have been of a smaller size and lower scale. There IS an issue about a growing rift between AAA and lower budget titles that wasn't the case before. That, and I am mainly interested in handhelds for lower end games, but unfortunately Nintendo's DD set up is kind of crap and Sony overcharges on cards, so in neither case would I really want to go all out on DD anyway.
Everyone is going to be in for a treat when xbox 8 is announced. The tears are going to be awesome. I feel like its going to be FF13 for xbox announcement all over again.
If this is all for real it better be $599.99 instead. That single moment where enthusiasm deflates and all that's left are endless mocking and a few diehard fans sticking around anyway.
 
I'll believe that we'll see more frequent sales when it happens. I don't see them in any way resembling Steam, like some think, if this happens.

I can't come up with a reason why it wouldn't be like Steam.

Pubs are happy, users are happy, devs are happy, Valve is happy. It's the blueprint for success.

The only reason why they wouldn't follow that model is that they want to continue to protect retail stores, and the physical market. Allowing retailers to sell game codes, and sell them on their own terms like they currently do with PC games, keeps them in the game for easy money. Physical copy pricing may lose out, but people will continue to buy them because either they can't get the DD version, or would prefer a disk.

The wheel has already been invented.
 

mack999

Banned
Oh come on. My 62 year old mother knows how to connect her laptop to the wifi. That's not nearly the problem it was back in 2005. Speaking of which...

The original 360 didn't even have wifi. You had to pay $100 for an adapter or run an Ethernet cable to the TV. Had they included wifi back in 2005, the percentage of connected consoles would have been higher.

My mother's internet went off just last night, I had to drive down and sort it for her, it was quicker than talking it through step by step on the phone. But I blame Windows 7 for that, hiding everything away, her internet connection bars weren't even on the task bar next to the clock. Why would they want to hide that away?

Do 360's have built in wifi now? I didn't even know that. My Xbox is 4 years old and I connect it to a laptop to get xbox live.

I just know from experience that lots of people are thick. I fix the simplest of things that you would take for granted and they think you're an IT wizard. They don't even know how to create an e-mail address. I'm not talking youngsters, more middle aged friends of the family. Maybe MS & Sony want to forget about them and just woo the youngsters who are tech minded but I know that any decision they make will be to make money and line their pockets, none of it will be for the consumer good.
 

DasMarcos

Banned
I will not believe that the next Xbox will be an online only console. If steam allows me to play its games without a working internet connection then there is no reason the next Xbox should be any different.

However, I do feel that to take advantage of its full capabilities and features it will almost always have to be connected to the internet, there is no doubt there. When I access my 360 without internet (on the off chance it is down) the experience is not the same as when I have the capability to use internet explorer, ESPN, Live, Netflix, Univision, etc. It really just becomes a different console without internet access.

So again, I very much doubt that it will always require access to the internet but those who cannot EVER connect their console will be at a huge disadvantage.
 

Durask

Member
I don't know, probably. A lot of people are just not tech savvy. A lot of people are just thick and wouldn't know what an IP address is if you explained it for 4 hours. They have a console, they put a disc in and the game plays. They don't want to know about geeky things. I just know they won't bother with it.

And these people are much more likely to walk into Gamestop and buy a used game, as such they are useless as customers to MS/Sony/devs.

In general tech savvy customers are the ones more likely to be spending more - on XBL/PSN sub, on DD sales, on DLCs to their existing games. It makes more sense to cater to them than to the the crowd who try to plug HDMI cable into their left nostril. Casual gaming crowd will probably be happy with their smartphones and tablets, not sure it makes sense to cater to them, Wii-style.
 

Tobor

Member
My mother's internet went off just last night, I had to drive down and sort it for her, it was quicker than talking it through step by step on the phone. But I blame Windows 7 for that, hiding everything away, her internet connection bars weren't even on the task bar next to the clock. Why would they want to hide that away?

Do 360's have built in wifi now? I didn't even know that. My Xbox is 4 years old and I connect it to a laptop to get xbox live.

I just know from experience that lots of people are thick. I fix the simplest of things that you would take for granted and they think you're an IT wizard. They don't even know how to create an e-mail address. I'm not talking youngsters, more middle aged friends of the family. Maybe MS & Sony want to forget about them and just woo the youngsters who are tech minded but I know that any decision they make will be to make money and line their pockets, none of it will be for the consumer good.

Yeah, the 360 comes with wifi now, and the new one will certainly come with it. If they keep it simple to connect, and make you sign up immediately. People will get online with it. People know how to do this now. They have smartphones and tablets on wifi right now.

The way to look at it is this. The customers spending money on Call of Duty and Halo are online. The customers who spend money on DLC are online. The customers who will spend money on F2P games are online.

Is everyone in the country online? No.

Is the market that Microsoft is selling to online? Yes.
 

Eusis

Member
And these people are much more likely to walk into Gamestop and buy a used game, as such they are useless as customers to MS/Sony/devs.
Uhhh, maybe, but that requires an amount of gaming savvy still. Most of those people are actually probably more likely to just go to Walmart and buy the system and a few games that interest them, and if they have trouble setting it up they'd probably take it right back and forget the system exists. Nevermind that the people who feed the used game system do so to buy more new games, and in any case for Microsoft they get ad revenue, so more eyeballs period helps there.
 

AkIRA_22

Member
Who here believes MS will come out and say "this requires an always on connection and will there fore mean you can not play 2nd hand games"? What a load of bullshit, they will feed it to us in some euphemistic marketing speak that makes the morons out there believe it's GOOD for them to have an always on connection which takes away their basic consumer rights, that of ownership and possession. They will not say "no more 2nd hand games".

What I love is on Rebel FM (one of my favourite gaming podcasts, mainly because of Anthony) Aegies saying it was probably Sony that would most likely do something like this, fuck off, now the tentative consensus is it's MS, he will start saying how it's great for the industry.
 

MoxManiac

Member
I don't play console games, but I have been "always online" since 1997. Console gamers are just going to have to accept this or nor buy consoles. You may not like it for a while, but you will get over it.

Feel free to throw a tantrum and scream into your pillows in the meantime.



They would give up their hobby because they don't want to do a one time wireless key input? Sounds perfectly reasonable.

PC and consoles are pretty different, though. My main concern is if everything is tied online, what happens when the service is no longer up?
 
Who here believes MS will come out and say "this requires an always on connection and will there fore mean you can not play 2nd hand games"? What a load of bullshit, they will feed it to us in some euphemistic marketing speak that makes the morons out there believe it's GOOD for them to have an always on connection which takes away their basic consumer rights, that of ownership and possession. They will not say "no more 2nd hand games".

What I love is on Rebel FM (one of my favourite gaming podcasts, mainly because of Anthony) Aegies saying it was probably Sony that would most likely do something like this, fuck off, now the tentative consensus is it's MS, he will start saying how it's great for the industry.

He's a Microsoft shill.
 

Reiko

Banned
Remember the PS3 outage?

It rendered the game Bionic Commando on PS3 unplayable.

This is why part of this info is horseshit:)
 
Did Blockbuster closing hurt movie awareness? Indie record stores fell like flies during the 90s and 2000s, I think music survived. People will still find what they need, and the message about a games existence will still reach the masses. To claim Gamestop dying turns gaming into a niche is just ridiculous.

Are you seriously comparing Blockbusters and movie awareness to gaming? You and I and most people here breath, eat and live video games. Most people do not, especially the "casual" video game players. Their source of video games information is Game Stop. People like my in-law and several co-workers who only buy few games a year, don't keep up on game release, they buy games when they feel like playing or when they goes to Game Stop to browse the shelf. While I don't think Game Stop dying will turn gaming into niche since there are other avenue to buy games, but it will seriously hurt the sales.

Personally I think the recent downward slope of video games sales is because of all the anti-consumers behavior by publishers and developers. On-line pass, removal of contents for DLC, games that last 5 or 6 hours and expect people to buy on-line contents. Your trade in worth less and less, you can't share game with your family because your on-line pass and contents are lock onto your account.
 
Remember when Playstation Network was out for THREE WEEKS?

If they were an activation-required platform back then, they literally would have gone out of business.

edit: dammit beaten by Reiko



Forget about Bionic Commando being unplayable, can you imagine what would happen to their business of for three weeks all discs in the stores were unplayable? Buy a game, take it home, stare at case. People would have switched to 360 en masse.
 

McLovin

Member
With no used games I'm guessing microsoft isn't going to leave that used game/rental money on the table. Whats the possibility of digital game rentals coming next gen?
 

Eusis

Member
I think it's possible the "always online" portion of this rumor isn't true, but the blocking used games part is.
Yeah, at worst always online is PROBABLY just that there's so many features that the system feels barebones without it, like a house without electricity these days... but you're not booted from the house or anything, you could just read, sleep, whatever that doesn't require electricity constantly flowing in. Similarly you'd be able to play single player games, just no online or new games added.

Though I still think blocking used games will be bullshit, especially if they don't guarantee immediate digital availability.
 

Reiko

Banned
Remember when Playstation Network was out for THREE WEEKS?

If they were an activation-required platform back then, they literally would have gone out of business.

edit: dammit beaten by Reiko



Forget about Bionic Commando being unplayable, can you imagine what would happen to their business of for three weeks all discs in the stores were unplayable? Buy a game, take it home, stare at case. People would have switched to 360 en masse.

Very true.

Not being able to play online pissed off PS3 gamers already. Not being able to play your games at all would be the nail in the coffin for Sony's business.
 

Petrie

Banned
With no used games I'm guessing microsoft isn't going to leave that used game/rental money on the table. Whats the possibility of digital game rentals coming next gen?

Unlikely. There's a reason we don't see it on PC, can't see this being different.
 

Bsigg12

Member
Unlikely. There's a reason we don't see it on PC, can't see this being different.

With PCs, it would be easy to break the security being used to actually keep the game from being kept and fully playable. On closed platforms it could work much more easily since you don't have access to everything a PC is capable of.
 

mack999

Banned
Yeah, the 360 comes with wifi now, and the new one will certainly come with it. If they keep it simple to connect, and make you sign up immediately. People will get online with it. People know how to do this now. They have smartphones and tablets on wifi right now.

The way to look at it is this. The customers spending money on Call of Duty and Halo are online. The customers who spend money on DLC are online. The customers who will spend money on F2P games are online.

Is everyone in the country online? No.

Is the market that Microsoft is selling to online? Yes.

I know people who use 2 gig a month limit dongles to access internet. They won't buy anything that is "always on". I don't get it. What business decides that losing customers is good? I don't think this has been thought through but they hate used games enough to lose these customers I guess.
 
Top Bottom