Xbox President Says World Has Changed From Offline to Online

[Adam Locking]

Jesus Christ this guy is starting to make me livid; is there anybody living in Redmond I can pay to throw a brick through Microsoft's office window?

"Being connected to the cloud is going to allow creators to make worlds that are alive."

Really, every game is going to change and adapt over time? None of them are just going to stay static? Because unless you can promise this for EVERY title, you are just speaking complete bollocks.

 

[AkatsukiLeader13]

Why is everyone saying this guy has a punchable face? The still photos and videos, to me at least, make him look more nervous and kinda defeated. I think he knows the Xbone is shit, and that Microsoft is selling a shitty "service", and worst of all it falls on HIS shoulders to try and spin shit into gold while his boss(es) and shareholders glare silently from their boardrooms at him.

It's like Mark Twain once wrote: "But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

Not entirely a 1:1 comparison what with the religious nature of the quote, but Sympathy for the Devil is what I'm trying to get at here. This guy has to go home to his family every night, and if they're intelligent at all then he knows that they know he is being paid to spew utter horseshit in a vain attempt to dupe rubes into signing over their consumer rights. It just strikes me as a sad situation for Mattrick.

Yeah it's just beating on the messenger for the message.

I'm still not touching one of those things with a 39 and a half foot pole, granted, I just don't want to punch a man in the face when he's down.

Would you be willing to touch it with a forty foot pole? Cause I'm sure Microsoft will add it for another two hundred dollars.

 

[KaZuYa]

I've finally realised that..."drum roll"

Microsoft = Umbrella Corporation

An vastly wealthy multinational with no consideration to any kind of consumer base who come up with insane plans to dominate the world with absolutely no chance of turning a profit.

 

[Syzygy23]

Why is everyone saying this guy has a punchable face? The still photos and videos, to me at least, make him look more nervous and kinda defeated. I think he knows the Xbone is shit, and that Microsoft is selling a shitty "service", and worst of all it falls on HIS shoulders to try and spin shit into gold while his boss(es) and shareholders glare silently from their boardrooms at him.

It's like Mark Twain once wrote: "But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

Not entirely a 1:1 comparison what with the religious nature of the quote, but Sympathy for the Devil is what I'm trying to get at here. This guy has to go home to his family every night, and if they're intelligent at all then he knows that they know he is being paid to spew utter horseshit in a vain attempt to dupe rubes into signing over their consumer rights. It just strikes me as a sad situation for Mattrick.

Yeah it's just beating on the messenger for the message.

I'm still not touching one of those things with a 39 and a half foot pole, granted, I just don't want to punch a man in the face when he's down.

Would you be willing to touch it with a forty foot pole? Cause I'm sure Microsoft will add it for another two hundred dollars.

WHOA there, partner! There are some things in life you simply do not do, such as going more than two dungeons deep,looking up dictionary in the dictionary, and using anything longer than thirty nine and a half feet to prod whatever vile abomination of science happens to be gibbering in the corner.

 

[AkatsukiLeader13]

I've finally realised that..."drum roll"

Microsoft = Umbrella Corporation

An vastly wealthy multinational with no consideration to any kind of consumer base who come up with insane plans to dominate the world with absolutely no chance of turning a profit.

Now that is insulting. I mean Umbrella does take their customers in consideration when designing their BOWs to be killing machines. And they're really after world domination. It's just that they have terrible, terrible safety standards and procedures.

No if Microsoft has become more like anything it's Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Both in how their acting and how everyone reacts to them. Though on the plus side it's fun to see both of them get...

About the only thing Microsoft hasn't done is kill a beloved character.

Yet...

 

[AkatsukiLeader13]

WHOA there, partner! There are some things in life you simply do not do, such as going more than two dungeons deep,looking up dictionary in the dictionary, and using anything longer than thirty nine and a half feet to prod whatever vile abomination of science happens to be gibbering in the corner.

That wouldn't stop Microsoft from selling a forty foot pole. Just look at this whole horrible Xbox One nightmare.

 

[Product Placement]

[/QUOTE]

...my god, am I starting to hate that face. Don Mattrick is on a fast track on becoming the new John Riccitiello(former EA CEO).

...that's an achievement in its own right.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

.... Am I the only one getting a Thick of it vib from Microsoft?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P1rRszEYKdM

Something tells me right now some high ups in Microsoft wish they had someone as terrifying as Malcolm Tucker to send over to Don Mattick's office to get him to pull his head in. Or at least they should furnish him with this:

 

[cikame]

The games i intend to play later on today will all be offline, the communicating i will do involves logging on to my Teamspeak server but i'll probably end up muting myself.
The world may have moved to iphones, social sites and always online, but i didn't move with it.

 

[Sansha]

Could anyone have predicted this? That the Internet would be used to hinder us rather than help?

I learned it years and years ago. Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, I was walking through the electronics section of my local K-mart and I spied a new sight. On a shelf reserved for the half-dozen computer games the store stocked was a new game called "Half-Life 2". I picked it up and almost squee'd, I remembered Half-Life and it was a great game with many expansion packs. So I begged and pleaded with my mum till she bought it for me. That was the end of the enjoyment I got out of the game for many weeks.

You see, Half-Life 2 was packaged with a vicious and insidious program called Steam, which required that you connect to the internet with your computer to play the game. I was taken aback - why on earth would I have to connect to the internet to play a solely off-line game? Just about the only thing I'd ever used the internet for prior to this was to search for GameFAQs, play Diablo 2 at my brother's house, and do internet research in school.

Days passed while I pieced together what I had to do to play my new game - a game that I was already paying for with doubled chores. I dragged my massive computer down three flights of stairs from my room, hooked up my dad's external modem, and signed on to the internet - since I just had to enter a code to get to play the game. Steam then slapped me across the face again while kicking my dog.

"No, you can't play your new game" it said. "You must download a patch!" Now, prior to this I had downloaded patches before - it was the way of things for gaming for quite some time. But instead of going to my dad's work with a Zip drive disc to download the patch and bring it home, it told me I had to do it RIGHT NOW, on MY MACHINE - before I could even play the thing. Ten hours, it told me, ten cock-punching hours I had to tie up the phone line.

Several days passed till I was able to convince my folks to let me tie it up that long, and I finally played it the next day, almost two weeks after I had bought it. I didn't have any fun. I was seething with rage at the thing. And I never bought another game for my computer - I stole my brother's PS2 ("borrowed" it, but he never asked for it back), and have been a Console gamer specifically because they were ALWAYS off-line for neigh-on a decade now.

That's my story, and its why I can do nothing but shake my head at Microsoft now.

Your story quotes dial-up and not having your own money/resources to run Steam or even the internet very efficiently. I think that's a bit unfair given today's majority of broadband and how much more efficiently Steam runs.

But maybe I'm saying that because I adore Steam, because that said, your case remains a perfect example of why Microsoft is fucking right up with this - the fact is that not everyone is online yet. Millions of people have unreliable connections, are still on dial-up, or have no internet access at all, and it's complete horseshit to exclude them because 'online is the way of the future'.

Microsoft, you really want to help pave the way to the future? Pony up the dollars to get everyone in America (to start) connected to high-speed internet and start laying fiber-optic cables your damn self.

 

[endplanets]

Sorry to all our friends in Brazil, Iran and even my fellow Americans in the rural farmlands and military folk with little/spotty/no internet. I guess you freaks just are not part of the world.

 

[endplanets]

The world is more then just THOSE 21 countries you know.

The world he is thinking of doesn't even exist entirely in ONE of those 21 countries, let alone the rest of the world beyond that.

I remember when my friend first got Half Life 2 I asked him how he liked the ending since he was a huge HL fan. Turns out he hadn't beaten it yet even though he had had it for months. I literally could not comprehend how a SP game could need internet connection and I thought he was lying to me.

 

[tahrey]

Difference being, the programs on my PC and even the apps and other hardware on my smartphone still continue to work if the network cable gets pulled or I stray too far from a cell tower.

My phone basically became a backup camera, music player and Worms/Angry Birds console for two weeks last year when I went to Turkey and found the "europe-plus" roaming package I'd hurridly bought quietly neglected to include that country amongst the 50-odd others on the list... If I walked a little way down the hill from the hotel, I was able to get enough of a signal to make voice calls and send/receive normal text messages when it ended up being necessary thanks to bank nonsense, but I didn't pass a single "mobile network" byte in or out from the time I stepped on the plane at BHX to when I stepped back off at the end of the fortnight. And still it resolutely refused to break.

And my home internet's been out for about three straight days before - and wasn't connected for at least a week after I moved in, two years ago ... but it hasn't affected my PC one jot. Nor does it affect my workplace PC -too- much when our internet or even whole network crumbles...

What an cretinous tool. Just because he can't live without a continuous satellite uplink plugged into a port in the top of his skull, that's a reason to force that onto everyone else as a requirement?

Captcha: "Pipe down". If that isn't evidence of the singularity having already quietly happened without announcing itself to the world's press, I don't know what is.

 

[hooksashands]

Everything about this dullard suggests he's never even played a video game his entire adult life. Why are the people who have no experience with the medium always the ones in charge?

 

[Xanex]

World has changed from offline to online. The it changed back to offine. It's a miracle! Who would have thought? Not anyone at Mircosoft 5 days ago.

 

[Forobryt]

Funnily the first thing i did with my new smartphone was turn off internet connectivity because i just wanted a decent phone.

The only time it can access the internet is when its near my wifi, which isnt needed because i can just use my pc for a better internet experience on a larger screen.

I cant say when i leave the house to go out that i start shaking with withdrawal because im "not connected" to this Always online world.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"The world has changed from offline devices to online devices," he continued. "If you think about how your smartphone works, how your tablet works, how your computer works, having an internet connection allows it to stay current, allows it to stay vibrant and plugged in to that community."

It isn't the benefits of Online-Only I'm concerned with; it's the drawbacks.
Just because you refuse to acknowledge problems doesn't mean they will magically go away, Mr Mattrick.

Now, if a company were actually trying to offer a better product or service, they would attempt to address the drawbacks and account for them instead of just ignoring them, and for the vast majority of games (basically non-MMOs) the best option is just that:
Giving the player options. Let the player choose.

For example: Diablo 2 gave me all options I would want or need for a game like it. I can play online on official servers, online with via peer-2-peer, offline, or via LAN. The only games that require an Always-Online system are MMOs (and even in that case there's still some grey area).

So unless you're only interested in putting MMOs on the Xbone (good luck with that), it is idiocy to argue that the removal of offline redundancies is any sort of "progress" for gaming; it's just too circumstantial.

In the simplest terms, removing features that let the user enjoy what they paid for when the attached service fails is NOT PROGRESS Mr Mattrick, but the opposite: that's REGRESSION.

Yet when presented with this you and many other companies just ignore it and continue squawking the same tired bullshit.
"But Online is SO MUCH BETTAR! It offers [sub]<Vibrant/Enriched/Experience/MEANINGLESS MARKETING BUZZWORD>[/sub]!

Such a constantly dismissive attitude leads me to conclude one of two things:

1) You and companies like you think like complete idiots and cannot see such regression.
2) You/Companies et al know about the regression, but think your customers are complete idiots who will believe anything you say.

 

[masticina]

YES and NO!

There is a dual point here, yes allot of people have internet. Yes people quite some people are getting their media over their internet. Yes that is true.

But not everybody now it is true we shouldn't wait for everybody. But there areas in america for instance where internet is kinda terrible. And that is america a first world country. Where I life in holland we have pretty decent internet.. but even here it can fail.

And in Australia.. internet is said to be pretty bad.

So no the world isn't yet able to move over to fully digital. And it probably never will..

Hell we are finally getting netflix in holland. I don't even want to know the work they had to pull to get distribution rights here. We have a few jerkcompanies that "run that business". They are pure grade assholes!

So no no.. the world isn't ready yet for a fully internet only.

Remember the PSP GO, yeah that was a success wasn't it. Another case of forcing things before it is time.

And lets be fair this is just a chance to add in DRM. And it will fail, like Simcity and Diablo III. And windows 8!

 

[deadish]

Just when you think they have reach rock bottom PR-wise - they might even have made a (forced by market) attempt at redemption.

Then they open their big mouth ... and started to dig.