Microsoft: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t

The email makes no sense

1) we are to believe there are people working on Durango that don't know if it is always online or not
2) the author of the email, the one who knows that durango is not always online, sends a NDA sensitive email about Durango to a group of people not on the durang project.

I'm sorry, but like all the pro xbox720 rumors concerning always online, this does not pass the sniff test.

I don't truely believe durango will be always online, but I honestly believe all these "leaks" and "rumors" saying Durango is not always online are all hoaxes from fanboys that are biutthurt from the initial Edge rumor.

 
Hurray.gif
 
Always online - low power mode, 24/7 download/patches/whatever
Online required - Console will not work at all without internet connection

It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?
 
The email makes no sense

1) we are to believe there are people working on Durango that don't know if it is always online or not
2) the author of the email, the one who knows that durango is not always online, sends a NDA sensitive email about Durango to a group of people not on the durang project.

I'm sorry, but like all the pro xbox720 rumors concerning always online, this does not pass the sniff test.

I don't truely believe durango will be always online, but I honestly believe all these "leaks" and "rumors" saying Durango is not always online are all hoaxes from fanboys that are butthurt from the initial Edge rumor.

Uh

It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?
Where?
 
I honestly believe all these "leaks" and "rumors" saying Durango is not always online are all hoaxes from fanboys that are biutthurt from the initial Edge rumor.

Ars Technica are Microsoft fanboys. Seriously.

In case you didn't get the hint though, one of the reasons why this email would be sent and that many working on Durango would not know of it's policies are because they were changed, possibly in light of Sweet Billy-gate.
 
Consumers won as one comment on ARS eloquently states.

His comment means absolutely nothing. If there weren't unfounded rumors, there would be no need for an internal memo. The memo in absolutely no way confirms that a change in policy has occurred.

And now Kotaku and Edge can claim, "Hey our reporting was accurate. They must have changed things. Aren't we great?!"
 
Exactly. Them continuing with the status quo isn't worth praising.

No one's praising them for that, specifically. People are just happy that there's a credible answer to a vicious-sounding rumor because things only really got bad once the 'three minute shutdown' scenario rumor hit. Now that things are reasonable again, people are just relieved and now want to hear more instead of spending posts damning MS and the next system. People on one side of the fence fanned those flames pretty hard, so it got out of control and MS should have probably done something sooner to address it instead of refusing to comment. The Orth thing was like a gasoline can being thrown onto the fire, seemingly confirming it. Whether MS changed their minds on it in midstream or if it was never quite the case the way the speculation got out of hand, we may not know. On a sidenote, I'm totally excited to read about this if Dean Takahashi is covering it again. If MS did this in response, good on them for listening to reason. If they didn't, okay, fine.
 
It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?

They...have...not...officially...announced...anything..yet..so..there...is...nothing...to...refute
 
The info in the OP did.

I believe it's a reference to the idea that publishers will be able to decide whether or not their games will require an always-online connection. Sony said something similar that there won't be an always-online connection for the console, but publishers have discretion with their games if they want to require it. (It was some interview, but I don't recall where I read it.) I would be surprised if MS was doing anything different.
 
This reads as instructions. Note the email doesn't say that Durango DOES do those things. It says that users "expect" it to do those things and that it "should" do those things.

Why is Microsoft only sending these instructions to the Xbox dev team now? Aren't they revealing this thing in like 2 weeks?
 
It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?

Microsoft has not released anything about the Xbox (publicly)...
 
Consumers won as one comment on ARS eloquently states.
Of course, the existence of such a mass e-mail implies that this is a recent change in policy. My work never sends an e-mail to everyone to say, "Just FYI, the policy we've had this whole time is still the policy. Keep doing what you've been doing."
That could be right, and would explain why there was so many rumors about it leading up til now.
 
Consumers won as one comment on ARS eloquently states.

Companies reiterate policies if there is confusion or uncertainty all the time. Or perhaps they may want to reaffirm their team to make sure that everyone is on message if there was some horrible PR nightmare going on in case they deal with the public in the future. Of course if the actual intended audience was not the recipients of the email and the goal is to leak it to the public then you know why they sent it quite clearly. It's likely a combination of these factors in this case.
 
In case you didn't get the hint though, the reason why this email would be sent and that many working on Durango would not know of it's policies are because they were changed, possibly in light of the Adam Orth fallout.

This is what is happening. At one point always online was certain but because of all the bad press they have gone back on it.

All the rumors were true but they have changed their minds as anyone with half a brain would have considering the disastrous feedback.
 
It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?

LOL what? They've literally released nothing other than an invitation to its unveiling. The docs from them that did leak mentioned absolutely nothing about forced-online. The only thing that was mentioned in the docs was that Kinect was mandatory for the device to function.
 
If that was the case, why didn't MS squash the rumors when they first appeared? It doesn't make any sense to allow months of negative publicity to continue if it wasn't true.
 
This is pretty much expected news. Of course it does these things in offline mode. People thinking the thing would do absolutely nothing when it's not hooked up to the internet was just crazy. Hearing on a podcast someone going "well, it has to be able to do something offline so you can set it up the first time," I was thinking "are you stupid? Do you think the fucking thing will just say '404' if there's no internet?"

Durango playing blurays in offline makes sense too. I mean, it's not like it's in MS' best interest to insure that that Miramax movie is legit.

Now what's going to be interesting is what MS does with the 'always online' mode they're supposedly including. There's some cool possibilities there.
 
It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?
like what?
 
There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status.

This is good news, but I can't shake the small sense of foreboding I'm getting from possible interpretations of saying something will "just work." I think this whole business has made me paranoid :p
 
If that was the case, why didn't MS squash the rumors when they first appeared? It doesn't make any sense to allow months of negative publicity to continue if it wasn't true.

Maybe it was intended and after seeing the outcry of people pissed at the idea, they changed course. Which, if so, good on them for listening.
 
If that was the case, why didn't MS squash the rumors when they first appeared? It doesn't make any sense to allow months of negative publicity to continue if it wasn't true.

Because letting it fester and then coming out to claim it's not true is actually not terrible for them. If anything, it lets them get away with whatever is actually a negative to their device and services. I don't care what anyone says, XBOX live is still a scam.
 
If this email is real, then Durango is the confirmed codename of the project.

Has durango ever been confirmed? I thought it was still a rumored codename.
 
If that was the case, why didn't MS squash the rumors when they first appeared? It doesn't make any sense to allow months of negative publicity to continue if it wasn't true.

Because for months it was true and they hoped they could spin it. They saw that they couldn't and had to patch that stuff out of the console. Now they will try and play it like it was a rumor all along lol.
 
His comment means absolutely nothing. If there weren't unfounded rumors, there would be no need for an internal memo. The memo in absolutely no way confirms that a change in policy has occurred.

And now Kotaku and Edge can claim, "Hey our reporting was accurate. They must have changed things. Aren't we great?!"


So ARS is colluding with Kotacku and Edge?


This was a memo to people working on Durango within Microsoft, no third parties. This was a controlled leak.
 
If that was the case, why didn't MS squash the rumors when they first appeared? It doesn't make any sense to allow months of negative publicity to continue if it wasn't true.

Those months of negativity won't mean anything once they reveal the official information. On May 21st, they'll push the "reset" button, and all discussions about the Durango will start from scratch again.
 
Great news.

One thing I did notice, however, was absolutely no mention of allowing used games.
 
As stated multiple times in this thread, the Devkits were most definitely required to be online to prevent them to get sold.
 
It's great to have come up with distinctions yourself but why hasn't Microsoft come clean already. They have released so much info about the unit already why not this? Could they actually be less capable of communicating their intentions than you are?

Feel free to link us to all this info on the unit Microsoft has released.
 
This rumor confirms "always online" was the original policy. Now the rumor is that they have changed their minds on it.

Not certainly.But it can be seen as internal clarification to re-introduce the next xbox vision and scope, since the always online rumor is widely reported.

The always on-line function is pretty software parts, you can't assume all other function group like mechanical, design, testing, sales department,etc, know how some specific function will go on.
 
from the way the email reads, it looks like MS is nixing whatever shenanigans they were up to due to public outcry. Sounds good to meeee! FUCK forced 'always online' bullshit! :-D

Great news.

One thing I did notice, however, was absolutely no mention of allowing used games.

FUUUUUU!!!
 
We still dont have a clarification regards to used games. I dont see why we are celebrating, its almost as if we are over-the-moon regarding having the lesser of two evils.
 
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