The Tale of M and S

[Howling Din]

Methinks Mr. Yahtzee is thinking too hard about the new consoles. Or should I say thinking too much? Find something new to ponder over, Mr. Yahtzee, or your audience might grow bored with you.
Ah, who am I kidding, you're almost the only interesting guy on the internet.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

 

[sagitel]

im gonna assume this is what actually happened with the PR department of M$. i mean they cant be that stupid!

any way a very nice article Mr.croshaw! bravo!

but i wanted MR.N to come in too!

Except this is the fourth or fifth time he's wasted an article/video on this topic and it's always the same answer. This isn't seeing in black and white, this is just basically pointing out what's really wrong with this "story" and that Yahtzee needs to get off his soapbox.

sorry but i dont see how he "wasted" an article/video on the subject. right now the biggest thing going on in the video game world is the next-gen consoles coming and his job as a video game critic is to comment on that and say how he thinks. and he thinks PC is better (which i agree with. go PC master race! ) oh and saying Xbone and PS4 are shity does not actually mean that PC is good. they are two completely different things. shocking right? (but there is that one sentence saying new consoles are essentially PCs in a shiny box. but hey who says thats not true?)

 

[Lightknight]

Of course it's a false conspiracy but holy hell if I wouldn't read any book that Yahtzee wrote. I mean, wow, that cat can write.

 

[Thespian]

A whole fuck-bunch of you need to reread the first part of this article.

This story is entirely fictional and was written by a mentally unbalanced man who doesn't believe that anything like this actually happened.

Like, geez.

But yeah, pretty cool little story. Me likey

 

[UNHchabo]

Sorry Yahtzee but wasting your novelist experience dressing up yet another PC elitist load of BS like the last 3 times does not magically excuse for well making another PC elitist load of BS.

Did you miss the last 5 years, where he's been saying that he has been almost exclusively playing console games, and tends to prefer them? It's pretty much only been PC exclusives that he's played on PC.

The whole "PC Master Race" thing was in reference to The Witcher, and how the controls were overly complex, and how the devs used most of the buttons on the keyboard just because they could.

I get the impression that Yahtzee really wants a console that's good for the consumer, but he doesn't see one on the market, so he's begrudgingly accepting that PC is the way to go this time around.

 

[JenSeven]

Yahtzee, this is nice an all, but Mr. M hasn't backtracked at all.

Mr. M did revoke some bad points but he's lying about others.

Region Lock is gone. The once every 24 hour internet requirement is gone and so is the console locking.
However Mr. M is not as honest about the offline gaming.

I'll explain. They claimed you can play an offline game on an offline console.
However they did not explain what an offline game actually is.
I asked around, here's what I was told.

An offline game is a game without ANY features that require an internet connection.
Optional multiplayer and co-op? Online game.
Social media interaction? Online game.
Micro-transactions? Online game.
Posting highscores, achievements or other things online? Online game.
General "Cloud Interaction"? Online game.
Ability to put a save file on "the cloud"? Online game.

This means that there will hardly be any games that can be called offline games.
And all those online games? They require a CONSTANT internet connection.

So no. There will be no offline gaming since there will be no offline games.
They left the DRM up to the publishers and we know what publishers will do.
It's that plain and simple. We're still going to have a console with a constant internet requirement because all the games will have a constant internet requirement and Microsoft is all to happy to make that happen.

 

[Wicky_42]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - Hanlon's Razor

You forgot the second half: Don't assume malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation. At least, not the first time. Ian Fleming further explained it as "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Shall I count off all the seemingly stupid/malicious things Microsoft has done or said this year?

Ah yes, thanks - that makes me loath it somewhat less when people swinging that Razor around EVERY time a company does something anti-consumer for the billionth time; just another miss-use of a truism. Cheers

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

The saddest part is that even though I know this next generation only looks good because the Xbone looked so bad, I still have the desire to buy one of them. Mr. M and Mr. S are crafty ones indeed.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

I thought with the title we would read S&M...

*Flushes out of the forums*

 

[Hyakunin Isshu]

Sorry Yahtzee but wasting your novelist experience dressing up yet another PC elitist load of BS like the last 3 times does not magically excuse for well making another PC elitist load of BS.

It's somewhat insightful to get this glimpse into how insane the contents of one's post can seem when they see everything as a stark realm of black and white: where if you're aren't actively fanwanking over consoles than you're some kind of PC elitist.

Except this is the fourth or fifth time he's wasted an article/video on this topic and it's always the same answer. This isn't seeing in black and white, this is just basically pointing out what's really wrong with this "story" and that Yahtzee needs to get off his soapbox.

This! I agree 100% with you, LordTerminal. Mr. Croshaw just seems crazy now. He's even now making crap up to make us see things his way. When he ignore simple human facts just to make an argument, then no one should care what he has to say.

 

[Muspelheim]

Soapboxing? How dare he.

Sit still, shut up and don't rock the boat.

 

[Orekoya]

Sorry Yahtzee but wasting your novelist experience dressing up yet another PC elitist load of BS like the last 3 times does not magically excuse for well making another PC elitist load of BS.

It's somewhat insightful to get this glimpse into how insane the contents of one's post can seem when they see everything as a stark realm of black and white: where if you're aren't actively fanwanking over consoles than you're some kind of PC elitist.

Except this is the fourth or fifth time he's wasted an article/video on this topic and it's always the same answer. This isn't seeing in black and white, this is just basically pointing out what's really wrong with this "story" and that Yahtzee needs to get off his soapbox.

This! I agree 100% with you, LordTerminal. Mr. Croshaw just seems crazy now. He's even now making crap up to make us see things his way. When he ignore simple human facts just to make an argument, then no one should care what he has to say.

This story is entirely fictional and was written by a mentally unbalanced man who doesn't believe that anything like this actually happened.

Seriously man.

Side note: What are simple human facts? Are there different types of facts for different species?

 

[mjc0961]

I dunno. With how willing Mattrick was to make a massive ass out of himself with his "we have an offline product called Xbox 360" statement, I would have assumed Mr M would have been jumping at the chance to be the one to take the fall.

Then again, that could have just been Mattrick not giving a flying fuck because he knew he was going off to Zynga soon anyway.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

That's more cynical than usual. I like it.

 

[Jenny Jones]

"Fame is more important than competence"- Dogbert.

While I like the story and it's plausible, I think Mr.M just pandered to publishers and Mr.S waited to see what was in Mr.M's jizz and vomit sandwich before unveiling their slightly soggy BLT.

I just don't like how people are now championing the XBOneeighty as being a great console after some back peddling on their horrible policies. If they can remove them so fast then they can also re-introduce them just as fast. I dare say M$ will be trying to make it harder to get a physical disc copy of a game than to buy from the XB marketplace. When you buy from the marketplace it will be just as restrictive as it was proposed to be.

People won't migrate away as they've already committed to the console and then this kind of DRM stealth's in and becomes the norm so next generation (in 5-10 years) all this super restrictive DRM will earn the lazy "meh I already have that with the XBOne so it's nothing new" free pass.

Oh and don't try to trace me I have at least 50 proxies bouncing me all over the globe + I live on a boat at sea so you have no way to find or arrest me for thought crimes, especially as all this red paint blocks your reading equipment!!!

 

[hermes]

Mehhh... I don't know. Personally, I think you are over-thinking it.

Besides the point made by several that this whole episode seems more likely to be attributed to Hanlon's Razor and M and S has never been companies that enjoy cooperation between themselves, there is the fact that S does NOT have the TV market to go back to (PlayStation is, allegedly, the only division that gives revenue), and M has a LOT more than the gaming market (Xbox is less than 10% of MS revenue).

 

[knox140]

I would have switched the two letters in the title but otherwise great read.

Amazing.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Sorry Yahtzee but wasting your novelist experience dressing up yet another PC elitist load of BS like the last 3 times does not magically excuse for well making another PC elitist load of BS.

It's somewhat insightful to get this glimpse into how insane the contents of one's post can seem when they see everything as a stark realm of black and white: where if you're aren't actively fanwanking over consoles than you're some kind of PC elitist.

Except this is the fourth or fifth time he's wasted an article/video on this topic and it's always the same answer. This isn't seeing in black and white, this is just basically pointing out what's really wrong with this "story" and that Yahtzee needs to get off his soapbox.

This! I agree 100% with you, LordTerminal. Mr. Croshaw just seems crazy now. He's even now making crap up to make us see things his way. When he ignore simple human facts just to make an argument, then no one should care what he has to say.

Well you have to keep in mind that none of his columns or videos are supposed to be taken seriously. He's just not a serious guy (oh yeah, read Mogworld, it's awesome). That being said, for a "game journalism" site, there seems to be an overabundance of slander coming out of the Escapist recently. If MS and Sony were truly the faceless evil corporate entities depicted here, they would have sued the Escapist into oblivion and beyond by now.

 

[knox140]

The reason I'm buying a console rather than a PC is mostly to do with price. I COULD buy a fantastic gaming PC for £1200 that can run Crysis at full graphics, and 3 years later it needs an overhaul costing me £400, gets viruses etc., or I could just buy a console for $400 that plays games well with few problems. Yahtzee's main bugbear about the PS4 seems to be the share button and the lack of backwards compatibility, the former of which I also find kinda redundant, but it's not like it detracts from the overall experience, and since the latter was taken out as the X-86 is easier for game developers to work with than the Cell, making games cheaper, I'm also OK with. Sure, you get fewer games than on PC, no mod support, no steam sales etc., but for the vast amount cheaper you're getting it for, I'm fine with that. Indie games that aren't on PSN can run on my laptop so I'm not missing out there. I can see that for people with the money, PC is the obvious choice, but for me, a student, I have to go with consoles this gen. Just an opinion, of course.