A Winner Is You

[weirdee]

I'm glad we're all still enjoying the image of Kirby having a bomb with a large spike implanted firmly into his forehead.

 

[Lightknight]

SNIP

I think you are right, I think we do agree on some aspects of this.

But your feeling that, as long as they can release DLC to change the ending, it doesn't matter and is all good, comes incredibly close to making them "choose your own ending" type games, which I think would be a horrible state of affairs, were it to become common (beyond the whole "multiple ending" thing that has become common). There has to be some kind of emotional integrity for a story to have any meaning, and giving people the ability to choose which one they want, in my view, dilutes, or I dare say, obliterates that meaning.

I'm not seeing the problem with "choose your own ending". ESPECIALLY in a game like Mass Effect where the odds of your story being exactly like my story is unlikely anyways.

Again, there's little difference between this and movies that put out alternate endings when they sell their DVD. There's little difference between this and when artists would paint 40 variations of their work. You may not be aware of this, but some of our most famous arts of work are just the "best" of many. Especially when you get into people's works like Picasso. Damned if he wasn't obsessed with Velasquez's Las Meninas painting.

Creating DLC that may be added to a game, that's new art. That's a different version of the game. There's the original and this is v 1.1. Both are slightly different works of art and it does help to think of it that way. It isn't like painting over a previously painted work of art (like some asshole classic artists have done repeatedly). The original isn't gone for ever and to play 1.1 entirely up to your discretion.

And I disagree, I think that even poorly-handled endings (and all parts of a story, for that matter) are still a part of the creator's vision, and must be respected, even if that is not the ending we want to see. Besides, one man's poor ending is another's masterpiece. Just look at St. Elsewhere. The ending to that series is the greatest form of cop-out in my opinion, but to many other people that ending was a perfect twist ending for the series. I have to respect the creators' decision, even if they chose one I didn't like. They don't owe me a certain ending. I can be angry about it, sure, but to expect them to retroactively change it just because I got invested enough to care is beyond absurd.

Must be respected? We don't owe them anything. They are a service provider and when their work sucks they don't deserve anything. If Picasso went through a special brown period where he crapped on his canvases and sold them as is, they wouldn't necessarily deserve praise just because they were part of his artistic vision. Works of art, literature, everything else MUST stand on its own to gain any sort of respect. The name of the person behind it or their actual intention shouldn't matter at all because years after their gone that's all that's going to still exist. Goya's black paintings haven't been preserved because Goya painted them. They exist because they're evocative and legitimate works of art. If he'd just done hand paintings over the walls with no rhyme or meaning then they'd have been destroyed a long time ago.

 

[80sboy]

"...Nintendo, assuming they could bring themselves to acknowledge that The Internet exists."

Nice one Bob! Nice to see you can swing the criticism both ways now and then, because sometimes I worry about you and your rampant Nintendo favoritism.

:/

 

[Waaghpowa]

I agree that Sony, given different circumstances, would have, or could do the same thing down the line. Big companies have way too much power over us, especially in north america, and it shows in some of their practices.

People are far too passive when it comes to big companies like Microsoft, and I'm surprised they didn't get away with it this time.

Remember, you always have a choice. If both companies are being restrictive anti consumer douche bags, you can choose neither. Companies rarely understand anything except NOT making money.

Don't give me the "we don't have a choice bullshit", none of them is a choice, just grow a backbone and say no. The "I don't have a choice, I'm invested now" excuse is what I hear from Apple slaves who are too passive to take the massive corporate dick out of their rear and tell them to screw off with their proprietary bullshit.

I'm still not getting an Xbox one for various reasons.
Microsoft's arrogance in attempting to implement such restrictions to begin with
The mandatory requirement of a Kinect, essentially shoving it down our throats.
The centralized idea of making it a TV box. I don't watch TV, and people aren't buying these things FOR Tv
My general distrust in Microsoft in general (reasons for which are for a different discussion)


Also, no. I probably wont be getting a PS4 either. I need more time to see what Sony is "up to" to make a proper decision.

 

[deathjavu]

Well that is all nice and dandy but here is what everyone is not talking about?

What price will we pay for keeping region free games, used game sales and always online requirement? Be certain we will pay a price. Thats the nature of things and dont delude yourself that your proclaimed victory came at no cost at all.

Here is what the consumer wants, the same thing as before, just improved in its existing attributes. That's the extent of his phantasy. You will always find a majority of customers to back these demands.
Great. Now here is what the same majority of consumers will not ever provide you. innovation.

Innovation is the forte of enterpreneurship. Where once there was ice in the winter, there was soon ice home delivered from a central artifical cooling unit and soon after there were affordable home cooling units.
Customers didnt evision and put them into your homes. Visionaries who sold the idea to you did, even though you were doing just fine before.

If you got that, let it sit for a moment. You killed of innovation for the sake of focusing on improving existing distribution systems. Don't think that the next time some ventrue capitalist looks at this market, he will have forgotten the shitstorm you unleashed.

Contratulations, once the dung of the shitstorm has settled it will kill of the seed of enterpreneurship that the industry as a whole has nutured so carefully over the last 10 years.

This isnt the end of the world however. There will still be people who innovate. There will still be new ideas and new concepts. Just less and more restriced than there eventually would have been.

Which brings me to a closing question. Can it be that our generation of 20-30's something largely male gamer demographic is actually afraid of major changes?

A) There's nothing in digital downloads of games that requires always on internet connections, single-installation discs or mandatory kinects.
B) I have an "innovative" toilet for you to buy. It has spikes on the lid and removes waste via a firehose nozzle. It may not be user friendly, but it sure is innovative, isn't it? Innovation for the sake of innovation is dumb.
C) I'd rather screw over the people who hungered for "innovation" rather than soldiers, hospitals and people in regions outside the US.
D) Seed of entrepreneurship? (learn to spell btw) This is such a blatant lie/corporate pr speak blowjob I can only assume you are a shill.

 

[Arawn]

Bob certainly does have a way with words. Who else thinks he should join the poetry run down?

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I utterly agree with you, but I am afraid I'm going to be a dick here.

'Similarities it wouldn't share' is an oxymoron. If it doesn't share it, it's not a similarity.

 

[Farther than stars]

A bit much pathos, but otherwise not a bad stance to take. Personally I will be voting with my wallet - that is: by not buying a next-gen console.

Ironic that Bob takes this stance, when he blasted the same culture who complained about the poor quaility of the Mass Effect 3 ending, Because like the Xbox One, the company in charge of that product essentially bullshitted the fans and screwed them over.

I don't think it's fair to equate creative freedom with practical utility. Whether or not you liked Mass Effect 3's ending is a matter of taste, which can be different for MovieBob than it is for you. But restrictive features like always-on DRM is detrimental to all consumers.

Not having backwards compatibility is suffering an indignity now? Isn't that a little dramatic?

No, I don't think it's dramatic, but you're only suffering the indignity when you actually buy the console. And that is the sole reason that I will not be buying a next-generation console.

 

[Rakschas]

SNIP

Your language is colourfull. You are also impolite and wrong.

Your assumptions about my person are irrelevant, because a thing like an assumption only has worth if the person behind it has credibility.

My proficiency in the english language is indeed questionable, as it is not my native language.

The toilet you mention is not innovative. I can however, given your overall tone understand why you have choosen to outfit it with spikes and a noozle. Please take to Guy Kawasaki for a short entertaining lesson.

Your choice not to inconvenience the unfortunate minority for whom excemptions from the guidelines could have been made postlaunch is very honorable. I'm sure innovation works best when being mindfull of minorities. Except, you know it does not.

I am quite certain no one mentioned "single installation discs" when he talked about digital retail. Oxymeron.
Digital retail is not innovation for innovations sake, it is DRM and maximizing profits by cutting out the retailer and forgoing distribution costs of physical copies as you surely know.
A always on cinnect may be moraly questionable, but Im sure noone wants to watch what overpriviledged overweight shirtless white 20's something basement dwellers in their heaps of mountain dew cans do when playing 8 hours of skyrim a day in the middle of summer.

/sarcasm off

As i mentioned before, i have deliberately exagerated the post you refer to. The industry as a whole has, as Jim has very accurately described on destructoid, a lot to prove to its customers. The PC had to go a long way of trial and error to arrive at the point digital marketing is now and to work hard for its customers trust.

In a world with finite resources there is always a choice to be made between improving upon existing possibilities and exploring completely new ones. A huge imbalance in the distribution of resources devoted tends to be a problem though. I see a temporary tendency towards that.

Only visionless tools devise and market a product towards a very defined demographic and clientel, even IF that means creating a product for any and all. What you try to do is to provide a product that is both unique and valuable.
If a product is not unique but valuable you have to compete on price.
If a product is unique but not valuable, congratulations you have created a retarded unicorn.
If a product is not unique and not valuable, you have officially fucked up.
But - IF - you have a unique and valuable product and you can convince your customers that this is what you offer, you are a winner. Microsoft tried to tell customers thats what their product is and for various reasons they failed.

This already went on too long. Im sure anyone can figure out the rest in time.

 

[Farther than stars]

If people want to say that video games are art, then people need to stop getting indignant every time a game doesn't end the way they want it to. Books don't all have happy fun-time endings. Movies don't all have happy fun-time endings. Why are gamers entitled to dictate that a game series should?

You can't have it both ways.

What? Are you aware that the practice of having artists and writers change things has been going on for some time in every form of media? Hell, people bitched at Charles Dickens about the original ending of Great Expectations being too sad and so he actually changed it.

But just because people have changed endings before doesn't mean that they were right in doing so. And while I disagree with the statement that changing an ending disqualifies something from being art, I do think that it diminishes it. After all, something that is great art already doesn't need changing and I don't think I've ever seen an instance where changing an ending made something so substantially better that you could almost objectively say that it had been elevated to great art.
Mostly the opposite is true. "I am legend", for instance, had a far better ending in the book, but the film made it far more mundane and simply took away all the depth that was present in the writer's original artistic and intellectual drive. You simply can't mimic originality.

 

[Carlos Storm]

I'm genuinely surprised he didn't hop on his soapbox and call gamers "entitled crybabies" for complaining about features of the xbox one they didn't like, and that microsoft giving in has set the gaming industry back 10 years.

 

[Simalacrum]

What we have to do here, I think, is create a 'culture' based around this event.

The current (or previous?) culture kind of went like this: corporations would do something, consumers would eat it up while a vocal minority raged against it.

What we need to do now, (not just in gaming but rather in society in general now that I think about it), is create a culture of protest. A culture in which it is not the exception but the norm for people to shout out and say "no" to what they do not wish for. We need to push further: Microsoft is down now. Who next? Third party publishers? You gonna try and push on DRM and used-game restrictions again? Have you seen what we did to Microsoft?

 

[lastjustice]

Nice Article Bob. On a side note, I hate to bRuin your day...but GO HAWKS!!! (3-2...you're going down.)

 

[Uri]

The only video I can find of Jimmy Fallon and the Xbox is him drooling all over it like a tool. Where is this infamous reaction clip I keep hearing about?

yeah thats what my google-foo showed me too

 

[Rakschas]

I've tried to catch up with all that Jimmy stuff and all I've seen were basically two shows. One in which MS presented the xbox one and Jimmy was a pandering tool, trying his best to make his guest make look good.
The second was him having the guy Sony send over, this time feeling much more natural and officialy admiting to the spirit of the elephant microsoft left in the room, saying sony did a good job at recognizing consumers wants and needs.
I wasnt into Jimmy before and from what Ive seen of him during this video game e3 week thing he didnt strike my fancy.
I have found links to the respectove shows on destructoid if you wanna take a look yourselves.

 

[TomWiley]

This article feels like it's been written specifically to express exactly what consumers want to hear. I think the reality is a bit more complicated like this

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

 

[Deadcyde]

i got a little bit of a hard on reading this... I need an m60 and a hill to stand on with shit blowing up. Yeah. *Fist pump*

 

[Waaghpowa]

This article feels like it's been written specifically to express exactly what consumers want to hear. I think the reality is a bit more complicated like this

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

And the author of that sounds like a corporate apologist with too much faith in Microsoft. He believes that Microsoft had entirely good intentions and will do things like drop prices on digital titles because it's the only sensible thing to do. Microsoft has done little, if anything, to earn our trust and this whole Xbox One controversy is in part proof of that distrust. Perhaps people would be more open to these ideas if they had garnered more good will.

It also doesn't help that Microsoft PR had been incredibly dodgy and deflective with questions regarding the Xbox One and it's features. The behaviour of MS PR didn't do anything to help the growing suspicions and distrust regarding the system and Microsoft themselves.

Perhaps you, and everyone, should read this comment I found on the article. It presents the most reasonable argument in why Xbox Ones new features were change and I find it sad that the author will probably never read it.

Spoiler: Most reasonable comment on the whole article

I'll have to politely disagree, because frankly, I'm tired of cat fights.
Given that this is a matter of faith on Microsoft, but I have a hard time seeing prices going down, and several other speculations made on why it's worse now only because of DRM.
I'll repeat once again something that I said on other discussion: Comparing it to Steam is not fair, isn't accurate, and is very very misleading.
If we were comparing it to a console system by some other company that switched DRM on and that this suddenly provoked a drop of prices, then yes.
Steam is running in a whole other environment, and I absolutely disagree with the idea that only because Steam games became cheap, it must mean that a similar system in a console should also make that happen.
Microsoft has no competition inside the XBox One, it will only sell games that has publishers behind them, and the games are all for XBox One (I mean, no backwards compatibility).
Steam not only has tons of other similar markets that are popping up everyday following it's success (at any time some other service could just open with better options, more exclusive titles, and a cross platform integrated system to be a big competition to Steam), lots of the games available there could also be bought sometimes directly from developers, or on other digital shops.
Steam is competing against indie bundles, GOG, and exclusive shops like Origin.
It's open to indie developers, and that's were you'll find most outrageous sales. Big games are also forced to drop prices because of that. And then comes the fact that tons of games on sale are x years old - no need to worry (much) about backwards compatibility.
And then, numbers. From Steam's statistics, we have currently 3 million users logged in, and a peak of 4 million today. Varied tastes and a huge library of games to buy. They can do huge sales because they can almost always guarantee that the number of units sold will be enough to justify the price. Will that really be the case for XBox One? No one can tell for shure.

But here's the thing: in the end, Microsoft is the only one to blame.
People who criticized the new system had all the reasons to do so, and this is a consumer win, not otherwise.
If it had incredible new uses and features for shure, it made a piss poor job at marketing it. If they were so shure that the new features were worth the flak, they wouldn't have backpedaled on them.
For those who are feeling grateful to Microsoft for hearing the complaints, feel no guilt about it.
Also, if Microsoft has big reasons for the benefit of gamers behind the policies, they can just prove to us later on, and put the whole thing back in place. It was easy to withdraw, it's easy to turn back on too.