Kotaku: Next Xbox will require online connection to start games

There are just so many rumors about this that it's hard to imagine it won't require a constant connection at this point...
 
You got me. Whenever I'm playing Bioshock and Skyrim and Spec Ops I'm always asking myself how much better they would be if they were more like Farmville.
Some of the social gameplay mechanics in Farmville would make a game like Skyrim far more appealing to people. There are tons of people addicted to MMORPGs who spend ridiculous sums of money on them who would never touch a game like Skyrim because it is an offline anti-social experience.

My personal preferences may be for offline disconnected anti-social gaming experiences like BioShock and Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't change the reality of the market. Social games are more popular, make more money, and stay popular for much longer. If you are a publisher you want World of Warcraft and Call of Duty size hits, not Bioshock Infinite.

And designers like Ken Levine are openly questioning whether the games they're making are outdated and going to become irrelevant. To his credit he says he is willing to change and make the games that consumers want. Bioshock Infinite is a game going upstream and Ken Levine acknowledges it. How many developers are making offline campaign-only single player first person shooters? He could create the best single player FPS ever and it still won't sell a fraction of the worst Call of Duty game.
 
I own all major consoles but 95% of my gaming is on the Xbox 360. I have over 60K achievements & have spent god knows how much money over Xbox Live. But if this rumor is true, I'm staying on 360 & switching to Playstation for my next gen gaming. This is BS.

Honestly, i could definitely see them doing this but im fairly positive that they just mean that it'll just be like when you turn off your 360 with a background download going. Its still online, but off. Itll be like that but all the time. Never completely turns off. Like that, you could even queue downloads from your phone, their site and whatnot, and not have to wait to get home, turn on your xbox, and have the download start. This way your be able to literally queue downloads at anytime, anywhere and it will start instantly regardless. I definitely see this as a possibility from them.

edit: And add to that how they want games to be installed, well now, this gives them the possibility to update your games instantly whenever they want. Go in, boot up the console, boom, notifications telling you "your game as been updated" or just new dlc maps, new sp levels are now available in such and such game, already installed, just waiting for you.

You like shooters, set the console to automatically download anything regarding "halo" and "dlc maps". Boom, everything is done instantly as soon as its released, without even needing the users input. Just get home, boot up the console and everything is waiting for you.

The possibilities are endless.

Of course this is where they wanna go with the next console. You cant say that doesn't sound better than what we have now.
 
I find it hard to believe that after seeing the PS4 conference someone at MS would paint such a big target on their backs.

"PS4 had a great conference, how can we make their console seem even better for them?"
 
How is Minecraft proof of a 'different era of gaming' coming in?, its a simple fun game where you mess around with on your own or with friends, its fun but pointless and does get old (like all games).
It really grates on me when we get some new thing that gets popular and people start saying that gaming is changing and everyone only wants to play Farmville now, its simply not true.
Its like 'experts' saying that no one wants to play console games now, they just want to play 5 minute long throw away games on their phones and tablets, its simply not true.
 
Microsoft were pretty quick to deny the rumours that the next Xbox was DD only and had no disk drive.

They were also pretty quick to deny the rumours that it was going to be unveiled at E3 2012.

They were also pretty quick getting those leaked durango PDFs vanished.

THESE rumours though, they say nothing about.

yeah and isn't this rumor amongst the oldest? i remember hearing about the online-required to launch thing since before all of the leaks for PS4 and 720 started hitting.
 
I think this rumor is false. Microsoft would be crazy to shoot themselves in the foot like that. I know a few people with PS3s and 360s who don't have their consoles connected to the internet. If they want to reach out to casual consumers, asking them to always keep their console online is ridiculous. Common sense dictates that you should be able to at least play games you've bought on the system without it being online. I just don't see the point, unless they want to block used games.

They should be dropping the annual fee to use Xbox Live instead of pulling crap like this.
 
Some of the social gameplay mechanics in Farmville would make a game like Skyrim far more appealing to people. There are tons of people addicted to MMORPGs who spend ridiculous sums of money on them who would never touch a game like Skyrim because it is an offline anti-social experience.

My personal preferences may be for offline disconnected anti-social gaming experiences like BioShock and Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't change the reality of the market. Social games are more popular, make more money, and stay popular for much longer. If you are a publisher you want World of Warcraft and Call of Duty size hits, not Bioshock Infinite.

And designers like Ken Levine are openly questioning whether the games they're making are outdated and going to become irrelevant. To his credit he says he is willing to change and make the games that consumers want. Bioshock Infinite is a game going upstream and Ken Levine acknowledges it. How many developers are making offline campaign-only single player first person shooters? He could create the best single player FPS ever and it still won't sell a fraction of the worst Call of Duty game.
Thats not really fair as FPS are by far the most played online genre there is, anyway how many FPS come out without a campaign?, exactly.

Also nothing sells as much as COD bar GTA, if developers want to hit COD level sales with most games then we may as well end gaming now.
 
PS3 price ends up ludicrous, and then.... upgrade my pc with mid priced components, and just be on steam, and whatnot. It won't be so bad right?

Yep, that's what I'll be doing too. If Sony fucks up their next system as bad as MS is rumored to be doing and as bad as Nintendo already has, I see a really nice PC in my future. And no fucks will be given.
 
I really hope the NextBox will be so so powerful with awesome specs and ... always connected feature.

I'm pretty curious to see how many people will buy the NextBox ...
 
Microsoft were pretty quick to deny the rumours that the next Xbox was DD only and had no disk drive.

They were also pretty quick to deny the rumours that it was going to be unveiled at E3 2012.

They were also pretty quick getting those leaked durango PDFs vanished.

THESE rumours though, they say nothing about.

Any links to their denial about DD only and no E3 2012 reveal? Didn't know they flat out denied both.
 
Some of the social gameplay mechanics in Farmville would make a game like Skyrim far more appealing to people. There are tons of people addicted to MMORPGs who spend ridiculous sums of money on them who would never touch a game like Skyrim because it is an offline anti-social experience.

My personal preferences may be for offline disconnected anti-social gaming experiences like BioShock and Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't change the reality of the market. Social games are more popular, make more money, and stay popular for much longer. If you are a publisher you want World of Warcraft and Call of Duty size hits, not Bioshock Infinite.

And designers like Ken Levine are openly questioning whether the games they're making are outdated and going to become irrelevant. To his credit he says he is willing to change and make the games that consumers want. Bioshock Infinite is a game going upstream and Ken Levine acknowledges it. How many developers are making offline campaign-only single player first person shooters? He could create the best single player FPS ever and it still won't sell a fraction of the worst Call of Duty game.

And how does any of that justify preventing people accessing content they have purchased if their internet goes down for any reason?

Don't just keep ignoring that and talking about social games interspersed with marketing buzzwords like stickiniess and upstream.

Explain to me.

What does it benefit a consumer to deny them consumption of a product without online, instead of allowing additional content with?

EDIT:
Any links to their denial about DD only and no E3 2012 reveal? Didn't know they flat out denied both.

Not offhand, but you could probably google them or GAF search for them.

IIRC a WSJ article confirmed the disk drive and a Verge article confirmed no show at E3 2012
 
I can imagine it now, getting home from a release party, brand new game in hand, load up the old Durango at 1am aaaaannnnnnnnnnd there is no internet connection cos some drunk guy has taken out the Telecom box down the road.
 
I am now trying to think what disc-based Xbox exclusives I really play/need to play are now. I am not a Halo, Forza, or Gears of War fan (I will play them, I just don't really need to).
 
I own all major consoles but 95% of my gaming is on the Xbox 360. I have over 60K achievements & have spent god knows how much money over Xbox Live. But if this rumor is true, I'm staying on 360 & switching to Playstation for my next gen gaming. This is BS.

Same boat. Got my first 360 back in May 06, been on XBL forever. 50k+ gamer points etc. thousands spent on all manner of 360 related stuff. And i'm done. I've been maneuvering myself to break off. But I think this does it. Doesn't even have to be true at this point. I'm moving on. Only way I come back is if the paywall for online play is gone, and there is no always online drm. Both have to be met.
 
I find it hard to believe that after seeing the PS4 conference someone at MS would paint such a big target on their backs.

"PS4 had a great conference, how can we make their console seem even better for them?"

I think its down to the same kind of arrogance that Sony had before the PS3's launch. Basically, they think there shit doesn't stink and the consumer will buy said shit in droves.

There has certainly been warning signs along the way. Ex-Bizarre Creations creative director went on record saying that the success MS had against Sony this gen, had made them "corporate & cocky"
 
Honestly, i could definitely see them doing this but im fairly positive that they just mean that it'll just be like when you turn off your 360 with a background download going. Its still online, but off. Itll be like that but all the time. Never completely turns off. Like that, you could even queue downloads from your phone, their site and whatnot, and not have to wait to get home, turn on your xbox, and have the download start. This way your be able to literally queue downloads at anytime, anywhere and it will start instantly regardless. I definitely see this as a possibility from them.

edit: And add to that how they want games to be installed, well now, this gives them the possibility to update your games instantly whenever they want. Go in, boot up the console, boom, notifications telling you "your game as been updated" or just new dlc maps, new sp levels are now available in such and such game, already installed, just waiting for you.

You like shooters, set the console to automatically download anything regarding "halo" and "dlc maps". Boom, everything is done instantly as soon as its released, without even needing the users input. Just get home, boot up the console and everything is waiting for you.

The possibilities are endless.

Of course this is where they wanna go with the next console. You cant say that doesn't sound better than what we have now.
This is what I had thought/was hoping. But if the "after 3 minutes it tries to diagnose connection" thing is true...well, that throws that idea out.
 
Well this certainly makes the next gen choice a very easy one. I dunno what the thinking is over there in Microsoft land but I want no part of this.
 
My personal preferences may be for offline disconnected anti-social gaming experiences like BioShock and Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't change the reality of the market. Social games are more popular, make more money, and stay popular for much longer. If you are a publisher you want World of Warcraft and Call of Duty size hits, not Bioshock Infinite.
And just one other aside: single player is not the same as anti-social. There's quite a world of difference there.

This is what I had thought/was hoping. But if the "after 3 minutes it tries to diagnose connection" thing is true...well, that throws that idea out.
I honestly wouldn't worry too much about the *3* minute cut-off in particular. Something like that, at the system level seems like a trivial thing to change, and something you might want set to a very low value in a test environment.
 
This is what I had thought/was hoping. But if the "after 3 minutes it tries to diagnose connection" thing is true...well, that throws that idea out.

How so? If your connection is up and working, why wouldnt that stuff work? Do you turn off your internet connection when you leave your house?
 
Gonna love the E3 presentation when they try to justify always online XD

They wont say it outright. They will do a bleak reference to it and even then lavish it with window dressing. Leaving all of us wondering if they just announced an always online console.

So in short the spin doctors will lead us on a merry dance
 
Non issue for someone like me that's always online with every device that's capable of it, even while playing my singleplayer console games.

Wake me when Microsoft is forcing everybody to buy an Xbox Live Gold account. You would swear that Microsoft killed some people's pets lol.

After reading so many of these next gen threads it is entertaining to see the same people justify almost anything that their company of choice does.
 
This rumor doesn't just keep popping up for no reason, there has to be some truth behind and there must be a good reason why Microsoft isn't denying it.

See, here's what worries me. It has been said that the PS4 will leave this kind of thing up to the publishers. Well, if every game on the 720 is always online, then PS4 ports will have it too.

Anyway, my internet has been unstable for a few months. Eventually I will have my ISP come out and take a look, replace what is failing but the point is that these outages are fresh in my mind. They can and they do happen and I can't always control them. I won't be held hostage to my ISP or Microsoft's servers.

I have no love for the WiiU but if we see always online DRM on the PS4 too (at the will of the publishers) then I will be WiiU bound. Nintendo save us again.
 
This is what I had thought/was hoping. But if the "after 3 minutes it tries to diagnose connection" thing is true...well, that throws that idea out.

I just had a horrid thought, picture this -

You're playing a FPS, you're fighting on the streets in New York city and you take cover in the local pizza joint and a pop up comes up in the corner of your screen with the latest Pizza Hut offers and links............'gulp'

They would never pull some shit like that would they?, that would be the final straw for me seriously.
 
You're playing a FPS, you're fighting on the streets in New York city and you take cover in the local pizza joint and a pop up comes up in the corner of your screen with the latest Pizza Hut offers and links............'gulp'

They would never pull some shit like that would they?, that would be the final straw for me seriously.
Anybody could do that right now if they wanted to.
 
Pretty much any article you will ever read states that we lag behind globally when it comes to broadband speeds. Obviously I'm not comparing us to countries like Afghanistan or something.

Our broadband connections are slower and our mobile connections are even slower.

France or Germany are third world countries?, even in your own country people claim in this thread to have a crappy connection. Yeah, we all are now living in Korea, some of you guys sound like if your have never go out of your suburbia neighborhood.
 
How so? If your connection is up and working, why wouldnt that stuff work? Do you turn off your internet connection when you leave your house?
No, but I've had trouble with my internet in the past. Not too worried about that, as usually I just need to bounce the router, which doesn't take long. It would still be annoying, but not a dealbreaker.

No, what really bothers me is that XBOX Live was out for an entire week after I bought a 360. It's entirely possible that all the new connections on launch day and Christmas could bring XBOX Live down. If internet connectivity is required, every single system will be rendered useless in that situation.
 
And how does any of that justify preventing people accessing content they have purchased if their internet goes down for any reason?

Don't just keep ignoring that and talking about social games interspersed with marketing buzzwords like stickiniess and upstream.

Explain to me.

What does it benefit a consumer to deny them consumption of a product without online, instead of allowing additional content with?

This Internet going down thing is a nonsense argument. This is not going to scare people away. How many people won't subscribe to cable or satellite because there are occasionally service interruptions? Do these people say I'm cancelling Comcast/DirecTV and going back to rabbit ears antenna and watching TV shows on DVD?

No the bottom line is that the content that people want access to are exclusive to the connected experience so they deal with limited service interruptions. If the service interruptions are so frequent or severe then they will change providers.

Do people say I'm not using my iPhone and pay $100 a month for service anymore because it drops calls so frequently? I'm going to go back to using pay phones because it's more reliable and cheaper. No at worst they switch to Verizon or AT&T.

Service interruptions are a part of modern life. We deal with it, complain about it, and come back because we are addicted. When my Internet connection goes down essentially everything I rely on for entertainment or information is down. My PC is a useless paper weight as is my Xbox. It's no different than losing electricity. I'm already living in this reality. I would never turn on my PC or Xbox if the Internet wasn't present. I've been living in that reality for most of the last generation.

And BTW the concept of "stickiness" is not just a buzz word. It has real meaning to publishers. You guys are all really high on Bioshock right now, but in a few months nobody here is going to be still talking about that game or playing it. The game has nothing in it to keep it in heavy rotation for a long time. It is a shortlived experience, in otherwords it's not sticky. You play it for a week and then trade it in at Gamestop. It may be a great single player game, but it's not going to end up being a long lasting money generating hit like many social games are.
 
Am I weird for not giving a flying flub if any of these new consoles require online. I can't tell:(


Always online in itself isn't a bad thing if its used for good things like downloading updates, receiving messages, downloading games you bought, etc.

Always online doesn't always equate to a DRM mechanism.

But in this case it seems Microsoft is heading that direction and so its understandable why people would be upset.

If it was simply always online, but no DRM mechanism, I would say people are being stupid and bitchy, but as of right now, definitely legitimate concerns.
 
No way they are this stupid.

Look how Sony's arrogance worked out for them last gen. It took years to win back many fans let alone the media and casuals. If this is true they'll be pimping the hell out of apps and so many super-duper media features, and after the conference in interviews and * footers saying you must be online to play to hope it flies under the radar of people who don't pay attention.
 
I just had a horrid thought, picture this -

You're playing a FPS, you're fighting on the streets in New York city and you take cover in the local pizza joint and a pop up comes up in the corner of your screen with the latest Pizza Hut offers and links............'gulp'

They would never pull some shit like that would they?, that would be the final straw for me seriously.

Won't be pop ups. Billboards will be of actual products, it will be an endless bombardment of advertising in virtual space next gen. You'll toss around dominoes pizza boxes at your enemies, drink pepsi, and eat doritos at the vending machine. It will be as in your face as possible without the hammer that are on screen pop ups.

I'm really just waiting for them to beam the ads straight to my brain.
 
Or can you imagine all the goodwill and good publicity they would get if all these annoying rumours turned out to be false!, conspiracy theory?.

Are you saying that MS are deliberately making themselves look bad just so an MS exec can say at durango's reveal "online is optional, so we are not the wankers you thought we were?"

Not bloody likely!!!
 
I'd be surprised if Microsoft went down that road alone. Either both competitors will go for always-on or neither of them. Potential buyers would for the most part eat it up as long as there's no alternative, but if it went down like this MS would make a pretty compelling argument to get a PS4.

I still think the most likely outcome is that they'll both leave DRM up to the publishers and provide them with the necessary tools, also for requiring an internet connection for their game if they so desire.
 
How so? If your connection is up and working, why wouldnt that stuff work? Do you turn off your internet connection when you leave your house?

Don't forget a lot of people have download caps with their internet, some with awful download caps so i could definately see many people not wanting the 720 always connected and downloading stuff in the background using up all their bandwith and possibly costing them extra download fees.
 
Top Bottom