Xbox One Backlash Was "Unfair," Molyneux Says

[SovietSecrets]

A disaster of a console that even MS refused to standby it. They saw that they were going to lose money and quickly reversed everything. It still stands for me that no matter what MS does to fix the Xbone, I refuse to buy one simply because they tried to push these ideas and tell us that they were mandatory for the system to work. Now as it turns out, most of the mandatory things aren't at all. No trust in the company at all.

 

[DaWaffledude]

You know, I've yet to see anyone actually explain what these supposed advantages to being always online are.

 

[Atmos Duality]

You know, I've yet to see anyone actually explain what these supposed advantages to being always online are.

They can't, because there aren't any advantages. For the customer anyway.
It's why they have to resort to this wishy-washy experience nonsense.

Its not unfair to call them on their corporatism mentality, Microsoft attempted to sell its ability to take ownership away from gamers who buy a product and own it, and then claim its the way of the future.... Yeah right people saw right through their bullshit, and they they cry foul? I guess they forgot consumers make them who they are not the other way around, but i guess we needed to remind them of that and they did not like it.

Way of the future? I thought it was the way of the past. (ie Steam)

Wouldn't Steam technically be the way of the Present?

 

[madhax]

3 pages of MS flame... not too bad. I'm surprised the escapist team isn't in this as well.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Edit: Godwin's Law reached 20 posts in! This topic is over.

I know right? I think we need a 'Godwin Awareness Week' or something.

Why does anyone bother listening to Molyneux? This is the man who signed a declaration saying that the Fable Kinect game wouldn't be on rails, and then it totally was. He's probably the last person who can claim to have been 'unfairly' judged.

 

[thanatos388]

Why do developers assume we are all online. how can they be so out of touch with reality. We realized that there are many people, majority in fact, that do not spend most of their time online playing videogames and being forced to do so was very inconvenient and takes away consumer rights to products they paid for. And the execs were acting like arrogant douche bags and should have expected such a reaction given all the negative hype surrounding all of the Xbox Ones ideas.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Do not make excuses for Microsoft Peter, I know where you live! (About 20mins from me)

Please egg his house or something. Do it for us

 

[Callate]

His comments sound rather like "I know you thought they were planning to screw you over, that the steps they were putting in place would have put you in an excellent position for them to have done so, but I know these people, they have altruism in their hearts and love in their souls, and you should be ashamed of yourself for being so paranoid and suspicious."

God love you, Peter. Maybe the people you know at Microsoft are like that. Hell, the people I know from Microsoft aren't so bad, either. But at best- at best- one has to recognize that sometimes, if Microsoft is allowed unfettered recourse to shape "the future" to their designs, we all end up listening to the Zune.

There may have been people who were just echoing the "talking points" in their heated feelings about the XBox One; in any big brouhaha, there always are at least some people who fit that description, on both sides. My own feelings were not reflexive and under-thought; quite contrary, I saw what Microsoft getting their way could mean to the industry as a whole, and it was a nightmare. I excoriated them harshly, and I still think it was completely deserved.

And, one more time:

Stop saying the all-broadband digital distribution future is inevitable. It isn't. And even if it does eventually come about, no one has a solid grasp on what the market in encompasses will look like. For all I know, it could be what we now view as the "casual" market downloading indie games on Linux-based tablets.

 

[Charli]

Do not make excuses for Microsoft Peter, I know where you live! (About 20mins from me)

Please egg his house or something. Do it for us

*sips coffee* He has a long driveway behind the gate, probably couldn't throw em' that hard. Also don't get wrong he's a terribly jolly, nice guy. Despite my differing views I wouldn't wish ill on the big idiot. He single-handedly, probably keeps the creative side of the gaming industry alive in South East England. The rest are absorbed by the EA doom tower down in Guildford. I make sure to pull faces at their receptionist if I happen to be walking past them, they deserve it more.

 

[RJ 17]

Ohhhhh Pete, you're still pissed off that Fable III fucking sucked, aren't you? And that people are still judging you on that basis. I get that.

But no one - not you, MS, or any fanboy out there - will EVER convince gamers that DRM is a good thing. It's just not going to happen. Look no further than Diablo III and SimCity and the absolute disasters surrounding their DRM to see why gamers are perfectly justified in hating the concept of having to always be online. It's not an argument you're going to win. I don't care what futuristic society you're talking about, until the day comes where the vast majority of gamers actually CAN be always-online (rather than an apparently large majority of gamers having shoddy-to-no connection at all) then the concept of having a console based on always-online is going to be seen as nothing but an insult. The XBone wasn't judged unfairly, it was judged exactly the way it should have been judged: with justifiable anger.

A console that won't let you play the games you've paid for if you're not online for a check? Yeah, I'd say that's a perfectly fair reason to be upset. A console that's sold with a device that spies on your conversations so it can load itself with advertisements targeting things matched to keywords in your conversations? Yeah, I'd say that's a perfectly fair reason to be upset. A console that costs $100 than it's competitor despite having specs that are nearly exactly the same purely BECAUSE of that little spy cam? Yeah, I'd say that's a perfectly fair reason to be upset. Having your employees come and outright insult and laugh at anyone who doesn't have a stable internet connection and going on to say that "We do have an offline console, it's called the 360" which equates to "We really don't give a damn if you don't have a connection, we don't NEED your business."? Again, I'd say that's a perfectly fair reason to be upset.

In short: Fuck you, Pete, you're just another person in the long line of people in "the biz" that like to tell the consumer what they should be happy with, failing to accept that the consumers can think for themselves.

 

[irok]

... because they didn't explain to gamers the benefits of interacting with other people. I would really like there to be something derogatory in that because that would make this so much easier to argue with but why attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to stupidity. The problem was online is a choice and they tried to remove that choice without adding any benefits to the consumers while pretending it wasn't DRM, none of the features they wanted needed always online so much as online occasionally and they didn't need a always on Kinect either, spying on consumers be damned it doesn't matter if they will or wont in the slightest it matters that it was something done which for no reason hampers the consumer without giving any sort of recompense for that at all.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Do not make excuses for Microsoft Peter, I know where you live! (About 20mins from me)

Please egg his house or something. Do it for us

*sips coffee* He has a long driveway behind the gate, probably couldn't throw em' that hard. Also don't get wrong he's a terribly jolly, nice guy. Despite my differing views I wouldn't wish ill on the big idiot. He single-handedly, probably keeps the creative side of the gaming industry alive in South East England. The rest are absorbed by the EA doom tower down in Guildford. I make sure to pull faces at their receptionist if I happen to be walking past them, they deserve it more.

Well he does seem to actually care about gaming at least so I'll give him a pass

Besides, if you tried to get past his gate I'm sure one of his guards would grab you and rip a huge fart into your face. I wouldn't be able to live with that on my conscious

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It's also unfair to force people to be online. It's also unfair to force the Kinect (and it's price addition) upon people.

Not everyone can be online everyday. No one can guarantee that they will have a stable internet connection at least once a day for the next 10 years, thus any time their internet is unavailable for more than 24 hours their Xbone becomes a shitty ornament.

And as for the Kinect, I personally don't have space to use one in my bedroom (the only place I can play games), so what is the point of even owning one, at that point it becomes a glorified wireless headset. News flash: We already have wireless headsets, and they don't have to cost over £100, and they aren't mandatory to run the console.

He's clearly biased because I'll bet his internet is good enough to never go down, and I bet his living room is large enough for the Kinect to function.

And then there's the targeted advertising crap. You would have thought a premium account would be exempt from ads, but no.

 

[SageRuffin]

Like someone on TechRadar said, it wasn't so much being always-online as it was that your games had to be always-online.

Think about it: Microsoft was telling us that the console had to "phone home" every 24 hours or else you couldn't play your games... but you could do everything else. Playing games on a game console is the exact reason most people bought the shit! And if it couldn't connect during that 24-hour period, the X1 essentially keeps me from doing the one thing I bought the machine for in the first place?

As far as game ownership and all that... others can explain and have explained it far better than I can, so no comment there.

 

[Elamdri]

Molyneaux is right that always online is an inevitability. The problem is that NOW is not the right time. The infrastructure is not there. And sadly, infrastructure has to lead the way, because it makes no sense to develop for infrastructure that doesn't exist nor does it make sense for a consumer to buy a product designed to make use of infrastructure that doesn't exist.

When the day comes where everyone has Google Fiber speeds at a a reasonable cost, then yeah, bring on the always online. But it is not this day.

 

[RicoADF]

How's it unfair when we don't want that always online world? All he's doing is showing that all he cares about is punishing the consumer just to feel like he's getting more money. Microsoft got what they deserve and anyone who supports what they tried to achieve should be shunned for it.

Molyneaux is right that always online is an inevitability. The problem is that NOW is not the right time. The infrastructure is not there. And sadly, infrastructure has to lead the way, because it makes no sense to develop for infrastructure that doesn't exist nor does it make sense for a consumer to buy a product designed to make use of infrastructure that doesn't exist.

When the day comes where everyone has Google Fiber speeds at a a reasonable cost, then yeah, bring on the always online. But it is not this day.

I see no reason why it's an inevitability to require to be online always. It benefits the corporations and gives the customer a middle finger (because we're all criminals that need to report into the parole officer every day) weather the infrastructure supports it or not. The reason M$ got such a backlash was based on principle as much as practicality.

No other industry treats customers so badly, with such disgust or as criminals like the video game industry does. If anyone else tried to pull this the consumers would rightly so tell them where to go, they can't say it's unfair when we finally get a backbone and do the same. Blaming the consumer for telling them what we want is just an example of the disrespect they have for their customers.

 

[Spacemonkey430]

Oh look another thread about this topic. Is that three in like one week?

Its not unfair to call them on their corporatism mentality, Microsoft attempted to sell its ability to take ownership away from gamers who buy a product and own it, and then claim its the way of the future.... Yeah right people saw right through their bullshit, and they they cry foul? I guess they forgot consumers make them who they are not the other way around, but i guess we needed to remind them of that and they did not like it.

Because this ^ is the underlying problem with what microsoft did, and will continue to be. True, their PR sucked and sucked hard along with how they presented the console. Along with snarky comments about sticking with the 360 if you don't like it. I fail to understand why putting a too uppity, money grubbing, corporation in their place is such a sin as people have been trying to make it out to be. Everybody who doesn't just rollover and accept being taken advantage of knows they weren't only driven by "visions of futuristic technology" they were driven by "visions of profit and rich executives."