Ubisoft CEO Thinks Gamers Are Ready For Always-On Consoles

[Lightknight]

No Ubisoft, no. If you are reading this, and you're not, you'd understand that the requirement of "Always Online" is only a detriment to the user. Optional online use is the one with the benefit for people in the mood to socialize. Say I want to take a real friend along with me while questing in the next Elder Scrolls game. Great, I'll turn my social feature on. If not, I want to be able to drag my system to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and play as desired. We're not just unhappy about it because your servers are so damn unreliable. We're unhappy because sometimes the internet doesn't work or sometimes we don't want to be on the internet at all. And 10 years down the road, we want these games to be playable, assuming they're good games.

So, Ubisoft, if you want it to be a benefit to us at all, you're going to have to establish why it's better to not be able to turn online features off or on as desired. We don't have a problem with the Online part, we have a problem with the "Always". I'm glad you seem to be further ahead the competition than other companies at understanding some of the major problems. And maybe creating a reliable service will be enough to persuade a lot of people. But YOU can never gaurantee that I'm going to have a stable internet connection. No matter how good your servers are. Not unless you are also my internet provider.

 

[Lightknight]

None of this really matters, hundreds of thousands of people will still buy the consoles, nothing will change and us as the consumers will lose again because we let them get away with this shit. I'm sticking to PC and old consoles it seems, the last generation was my last.

If you have the money for a good pc, then that's a great way to go. It's the route I'm currently well invested in and completely happy.

Hopefully this will bottleneck at a console level. If MS goes always on, I hope to see the PS3 gain significant market share. This is the way we can see people punished for forcing this on consumers.

 

[dementis]

None of this really matters, hundreds of thousands of people will still buy the consoles, nothing will change and us as the consumers will lose again because we let them get away with this shit. I'm sticking to PC and old consoles it seems, the last generation was my last.

If you have the money for a good pc, then that's a great way to go. It's the route I'm currently well invested in and completely happy.

Hopefully this will bottleneck at a console level. If MS goes always on, I hope to see the PS3 gain significant market share. This is the way we can see people punished for forcing this on consumers.

I agree thoroughly, I didn't really have the money to build a PC quickly, took a year of buying and saving each piece but I finished it a few months back and my consoles mostly gather dust apart from when I feel like playing the old PS2.

It really does look like I'll be giving the next generation a miss considering what I've heard about both new consoles.

 

[Headsprouter]

Do you guys intentionally look for what news stories will cause the most controversy?

Controversial topic means it's a scoop for the journalist. It comes with the territory that they fuel controversy. It keeps people on the site when they argue and discuss.

ANYWAY:

PC gaming, consolefags?

No, seriously, in empathy with the console gamers, as one with a moody Internet connection, I love a good offline game, it would suck if I couldn't get full access to it even when it doesn't require an Internet connection. There's also the whole privacy thing. Why do they want us always online? Are they sapping info from our actions? Why must they insist? I thought they were trying to sell consoles, if people don't want you to do it, DON'T. I thought giving the people what they want was a winning business tactic. Are they so desperate for innovation that they MUST have this new feature to look forward-thinking?

 

[Otaku World Order]

No Ubisoft, no. If you are reading this, and you're not, you'd understand that the requirement of "Always Online" is only a detriment to the user. Optional online use is the one with the benefit for people in the mood to socialize. Say I want to take a real friend along with me while questing in the next Elder Scrolls game. Great, I'll turn my social feature on. If not, I want to be able to drag my system to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and play as desired. We're not just unhappy about it because your servers are so damn unreliable. We're unhappy because sometimes the internet doesn't work or sometimes we don't want to be on the internet at all. And 10 years down the road, we want these games to be playable, assuming they're good games.

So, Ubisoft, if you want it to be a benefit to us at all, you're going to have to establish why it's better to not be able to turn online features off or on as desired. We don't have a problem with the Online part, we have a problem with the "Always". I'm glad you seem to be further ahead the competition than other companies at understanding some of the major problems. And maybe creating a reliable service will be enough to persuade a lot of people. But YOU can never gaurantee that I'm going to have a stable internet connection. No matter how good your servers are. Not unless you are also my internet provider.

And given how good Ubisoft has been with it's use of "always on" I think we have every reason to be worried. Our need for stable internet connections are only part of the problem. Ubisoft switched authentication servers last years and legit consumers were locked out of their single player games.

Ubisoft, we have plenty to be worried about and no amount of telling us "No! Really! It's totally going to work this time!" is going to convince us.

And given that Microsoft already charges us a subscription fee for online play, I have zero faith that they can pull this shit off.

CAPTCHA: dog's breakfast

Damn straight it is.

 

[Zanderinfal]

Jesus CHRIST! What is up with developers in the last 4 months?! Microsoft, EA, Crytek and now Ubisoft have all said outrageous things this year.

"Gamers will embrace it when they can stop worrying about it"

So, never then? I live in Australia where our internet in general is some of the crappiest of the western world (to my knowledge anyways, I could be wrong) so an always on console would pretty much fuck me from playing games on said console.

 

[babinro]

I agree with the title.

Gamers have proven they play online through purchases of MMO's, heavy multiplayer online games like CoD, and use of online services like netflix on consoles. Shifting to an online only console would NOT automatically lead to catastrophic failure in and of itself.

The question is will the company be more profitable by going online only?
Ideally the added DRM barriers will lead to more legit purchases. Will that added revenue make up for the thousands (possibly millions) in lost sales from poor internet connected regions?

My theory is that very few console sales would be lost to 'boycotters'. Gamers seem to utterly fail when it comes to voting with their wallets. We cry about valid issues like lack of backwards compatibility but then just give in and buy the console anyways. Ultimately, the software or the eventual price drops brings us back.

 

[Porecomesis]

I wonder if you all will like this story.

Over the past week, my Internet was rapidly fluctuating before it went down entirely yesterday. In response, my mum bought a 3 GB wi-fi USB stick which will hold us over hopefully over the weekend until we get a replacement modem, and even then we don't know if it's the modem itself that's screwing us over.

We have been using three gigabytes of Internet since thirteen and a half hours ago. I can't even use Steam or watch Youtube clips. If I couldn't listen to Gavin's Dream of the Sky, I may have just given up entirely (or focused on my university work). Even if everyone in the entire world had access to the Internet, it won't do us much good if it DOESN'T EVEN WORK.

Sorry for that sob story but I figured you might all have wanted to know this.

 

[likalaruku]

I knew it was only a matter of time before Ubisoft returned to the dark side.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

Definitly getting my PC sorted. My internet is set to go off at 11 every night because my Step-dad is a dick. Always online shall kill the sale for me and I simply won't buy a console thats always online.

 

[The White Hunter]

It's a really good thing that I don't indulge in Ubisofts products anymore. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to know I don't have to arse about with their totally-not-DRM-but-just-as-annoying approach.

 

[Rossmallo]

Am I the only one who's thinking being part of the PC Gaming Master Race is becoming a more attractive prospect every single day recently?

 

[Heronblade]

I agree with the title.

Gamers have proven they play online through purchases of MMO's, heavy multiplayer online games like CoD, and use of online services like netflix on consoles. Shifting to an online only console would NOT automatically lead to catastrophic failure in and of itself.

The question is will the company be more profitable by going online only?
Ideally the added DRM barriers will lead to more legit purchases. Will that added revenue make up for the thousands (possibly millions) in lost sales from poor internet connected regions?

My theory is that very few console sales would be lost to 'boycotters'. Gamers seem to utterly fail when it comes to voting with their wallets. We cry about valid issues like lack of backwards compatibility but then just give in and buy the console anyways. Ultimately, the software or the eventual price drops brings us back.

Catastrophic failure? not really the concern

The issue here has more to do with the fact that "always on" is an unnecessary feature that, at least so far, provides zero benefit to the consumer while opening the door to quite a few annoying problems. We deal with the annoyances when it comes to online games without complaint, because amazingly enough we are capable of realizing it is necessary. The vast majority of games however do not in any way shape or form benefit from anything more than a sporadic internet connection.

These companies have been pushing the line in terms of abusing their customers for quite some time, and this is a big push. I cannot say for certain whether or not this is the point where gamers collectively start "voting with their wallets" in the same direction as their complaints, but it is getting close.

In my case, I've already shifted almost exclusively to PC gaming, and the only reason I haven't done so entirely is that some good console games don't port well if at all. These guys keep it up however and I will, so to speak, cut my losses and give up.

Hell, I've even got an old desktop and the right equipment to completely replace a living room console for multiplayer games like halo.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Do you guys intentionally look for what news stories will cause the most controversy?

Yes. They get revenue based off how many page views they get.
OP: Try it tough guy.I play Magic, table-top games, and I read a lot. Let us see who breaks first.

 

[Atmos Duality]

My theory is that very few console sales would be lost to 'boycotters'. Gamers seem to utterly fail when it comes to voting with their wallets. We cry about valid issues like lack of backwards compatibility but then just give in and buy the console anyways. Ultimately, the software or the eventual price drops brings us back.

I don't. I stick to my "boycotts". I haven't given any money to EA since 2007, Sony since 2009, or Blizzard since 2010.
No exceptions.

It's true that many gamers have been gleefully letting themselves get assraped by overpriced junk for years; so I can't fault the assumption that such idiocy could prevail when it has before. (I still remember the petulant Left4Dead boycott...it was so fucking stupid.)

But even an idiot will balk when their games are consistently unplayable for the first week of launch, and for non-MMOs, the first two weeks (arguably just the first) is what makes or breaks a game's sales.

If Microsoft (or anyone) is pushing an always-online console, they had better get that service quality to sterling on day 1 for every release, or you can bet your ass an army of angry gamers (some more stupid than others) are going to bomb metacritic, tell their friends, and those extra fixed costs on the servers are going to add up real fucking fast.

Not that I'm confident anyone could pull it off in the primary markets.
If an online giant like Blizzard couldn't get their shit squared away week 1 with Diablo 3, how the hell are we to expect an entire console library to do better?
Not every game follows the MMO model, and trying to force them into such a model is foolish to an extreme.

One thing I am almost certain of with an always-online business: pre-orders are going to become PIVOTAL for their bait-and-switch scam-power like what happened with Aliens: Colonial Marines, or for getting idiots to buy into overhyped turds like SimCity and Diablo 3 months in advance.

Finally, I am getting sick of the argument that compares video streaming services like Netflix directly to games.
Quite frankly, it's misleading and/or ignorant.

Video streaming is INFINITELY simpler than any modern video game. At worst, videos can buffer to account for network lag because their content isn't function-based, it's just a static file being read in chunks. Most games (non-turn based) lack such workarounds because they're processed in real-time.

Introducing a constant internet requirement not only increases the cost to the publisher (hosting services costs money) but it also introduces a needless major potential point of failure to the user.

So, what can be done? Grace periods?
Well, if a game can work with something like a 1 minute offline grace period, then it's obviously a game that doesn't need to be always online in the first place.

 

[stabnex]

Ever since AC2 I haven't bought a single Ubisoft PC item once. Nor every. Single. Title with DRM. Since.

And I really, really wanted the new SimCity until I found out about the DRM death-coil it had been strung up to, like a noose on a tree outside Salem.