Xbox One Update - The Whole Internet Connection Thing

** Updated Info on the Xbox One and internet connections **

In my earlier post talking covering the big Xbox One reveal today, I got a little bit into the whole always on issue.  From those who had hands-on experience with the One, it seemed that it would be only games that utilized Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform that would require an internet connect to play.  Well I’m very sad to report that that’s not totally the case.  Let’s hop over to the Xbox press site, where they’ve posted a Q&A describing a lot of Xbox features.  On a question on always-on, this is what they’ve posted:

Q:    Does Xbox One require an “always on” Internet connection?
A:    No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet. We’re designing Xbox One to be your all-in-one entertainment system that is connected to the cloud and always ready. We are also designing it so you can play games and watch Blu-ray movies and live TV if you lose your connection.

OK…

That doesn’t make a lick of sense!

Unfortunately for me my day job keeps me on the east coast and without an invitation to Redmond to ask further questions on what’s going on.  Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo on the other hand does have that opportunity.  When Stephen pressed for an answer, what he received was the following:

“For single-player games that don’t require connectivity to Xbox Live, you should be able to play those without interruption should your Internet connection go down. Blu-ray movies and other downloaded entertainment should be accessible when your Internet connection may be interrupted. But the device is fundamentally designed to be expanded and extended by the Internet as many devices are today.”  After some more digging, here is what always means as far as Xbox is concerned:

The Xbox One checks in with the cloud once every 24 hours.

It’s a technicality that allows Team Xbox to say that they don’t require an always on connection to play.  But it ain’t exactly forever.  So fine, instead of being shackled to a network, we’re now all… on parole?  Are the 300,000 Xbox LIVE servers my parole officers?  Do I get time off for good behavior?

I have no idea what happens if you don’t check in every 24 hours, but I can’t imagine it’s good.  I have my Xbox 360 turned completely off unless I’m playing.  It’s not listening for my voice commands, it turns on when flip a physical switch.  As it stands at the moment of writing this I haven’t turned my Xbox on in roughly a week.  With these rules on the One, am I going to be restricted because I haven’t checked in for a week?

Anyway, no, I guess it’s not as bad as the three minute rule that was rumored before, but it’s still something that’s a pain in the ass.  Just letting you kids know.

OK Kids, Let's Talk Xbox One

Just a little while ago from their Redmond campus, Microsoft finally pulled the curtain and gave us all the big reveal on their successor to the Xbox 360 – The Xbox One, announcing that it will be available later in 2013.  Not to be confused with the old classic Xbox 1, the new unit is geared to be an all-in-one box as described by Xbox exec Don Mattrick.  Sitting next to the this all-in-one box was a new Kinect sensor, as well as the newly designed controller.  I watched the live stream (well as much as I could) and while it didn’t provide a ton of helpful information, there was some.

What was Covered:

What was showed off was voice control – with the unit being powered on by a user simply saying “Xbox on.”  Using voice, the controller, or gesture commands with the Kinect sensor, the user can easily switch between the Xbox Live UI and Live TV.  The UI itself is is very Windows 8 in the sense that there’s tiles for a lot of things on the interface.  This isn’t really that surprising considering that with Windows 8 Microsoft was pushing a lot of their services and devices into a connected ecosystem, shoving Xbox under that umbrella as well.  Part of that is pretty sweet connectivity, with special software designed to be able to connect between a Windows OS as well as the Xbox interface.  It also seems that Microsoft  has learned from their HD-DVD missteps with the 360, giving the One an optical drive that supports Blu-ray discs.  The unit handles games, internet and web apps, Skype functionality as well as live TV.  That seems pretty close to the “all-in-one” description that Mattrick was talking about, adding that it must be “simple, instant, and complete.”  I guess “complete” also means that the system can pick up and measure your heartbeat while you exercise.

There was also some description on the controller, designed with improved ergonomics and a new D-pad, designed with gamers helping to make it better for gamers.

As for the rest of the livestream itself, there was a big to-do about the partnership between Xbox and EA, showing off a bunch of games from EA Sports including FIFA, UFC, Madden and FIFA, all to be released over the next year.  The EA montage came with the unveiling of EA Ignite, an engine designed “specifically to help us blur the line between the real and the virtual,” according to Andrew Wilson.

The Xbox folks also announced that there would be 15 exclusive titles for the Xbox One over the year, showing one of them (presumably) as Quantum Break, which appeared to focus around a kid with superpowers.  Claiming that they’re investing more in a bunch of studios around the world to create original content, they say that these 15 exclusives will cover 8 different and brand new franchises.

Next came some celebrity guests from different areas of entertainment.  Steven Spielberg joined via teleconference to talk about a new Halo live action television show, broadcast as “premium television” through the Xbox One.  I for one don’t really care, but if that’s you’re thing, well there you go.  Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, also stopped by on screen talking about the partnership between Xbox and the NFL: “You’re going to change the football in a way that is so dramatic.”

They closed out the livestream with a preview of Call of Duty: Ghosts, focusing a great deal on the fact that the game has dogs in it, at which point my stream started flipping out, but it seemed like they revealed very little information on it as well as other games for that matter.  I guess they’re saving it all of e3.

Funny sidenote about the stream flipping out – I lost the stream 3-4 times through the whole proceedings, one of them being just as they were talking about how they have 300,000 servers to support Xbox Live.  Unfortunately none of them allowed xbox.com to get through 15 minutes of stream without crashing.

Oh right – machine specs:

• Processor: Custom AMD chip, 8-core GPU, DirectX 11.1, 32MB ESRAM (28nm chip for those interested in fabrication)
• Memory: 8GB RAM (DD3)
• Storage: 500GB internal hard drive
• Audio/Video: 1080p and 4K support, can do 7.1 surround
• Connectivity: HDMI 1.4 output/passthrough, USB 3.0, WiFi Drect

What Wasn’t:

While they kept saying that the Xbox One was connected, they didn’t explicitly address fans’ concerns about “always on.”  I had to get intel from other sources who had a more hands on experience with the One for that.  According to Wired, the One will not be always on as was heavily rumored.  Which begs the question, how did THIS WHOLE NONSENSE even occur in the first place?  I don’t know.  I guess folks can get a little nuts in the twitterverse.  But I found out some other things too:

While it may not be always on, game discs will all have to be downloaded to the console’s internal hard drive (which makes me really worry about only a 500GB hard drive).  But once the data is on said hard drive, the user can play it whenever he or she chooses, and it will be connected to their XBL gamertag.  But if that disc is used with a different account, the person holding that second account has the option of paying a fee to install it to his or her hard drive and play.  Without that download though, play with just the disc and not copying anything to the hard drive is restricted.  According to Wired, Microsoft didn’t have an answer as to if or even how this policy would potentially be altered for the used games market or players that rent games.

As far as the “always” on rumors?  Yes and no.  Game developers making games for the One have access to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services platform to bump some of the game tasks to the cloud.  In this case yes you would require an internet connection.  If a game in question does not actually utilize Azure, then no, you will not need a connection.  I have no basis to make a prediction on what percentage of Xbox One games will utilize Azure, but my guess is that Microsoft is really going to try and push it.

So there it is in a nutshell kids.  I’ll keep my eye out for further details to keep you in the know.

Microsoft Creative Director Doesn't Deny Always-On Rumors, Tells us to #dealwithit

Remember when I told you kids about the rumor that the next iteration of the Xbox console would require an always-on connection?  Even after those rumors have spread like wildfire, drawing a collective “WTF guys?” from the gaming community, Microsoft is still unwilling to confirm or deny an always-on requirement to operate their next-gen Xbox, codenamed “Durango.”  In my opinion it is that same refusal that is keeping the rumor alive and drawing gamers’ ire.  It’s really simple fix – all we want is a straight answer.  Yes or no, that’s all it would take.

But instead of real answers from Microsoft to their customer base (that pay hundreds per console and upwards of $50 per title) through a statement or press release, what we got instead was arrogance, ignorance, and insult from Microsoft Studios’ Creative Director Adam Orth (@adam_orth).  Over Twitter.  After going on about how he doesn’t see the big deal about always-on devices and software, he added one choice hashtag to the proceedings:

#dealwithit.

That was his answer.   Classy, man.

After BioWare’s Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) cited the always-on issues that arose with Diablo III and SimCity, Orth quipped that “Electricity goes out too” and sarcastically followed up with “I will not buy a vacuum cleaner” and other assy things of the like.   His twitter feed has since been protected (uh ohhhhh I think the boss may be angryyyy), but of course a number of screencaps were taken around the web to let everyone know how it went down.  For someone who really loves always-on that much, I figured he would have known that stuff you put out on the internet can last forever.  Thanks to HuffPost Tech UK by the way for this lovely capture.

As far as the validity of the always-on rumors, it was Kotaku who finally furnished an answer for us.  Their sources say that the answer is not only “yes,” but that it will only take 3 minutes of being offline to not be able to play anymore.   So why not just tell us that in the first place?

I’m surprised that Orth, someone who’s been in the industry for a while (he’s spent time with SCEA and LucasArts), could make such a shortsighted comment after the very public fiascoes concerning Diablo III last year and SimCity just last month.  The comment shows an alarming amount of industry ignorance for someone in such an important position, and says to me that Microsoft is catering only to users that have stable always-on broadband connections, telling those who don’t to deal with it.  There are a number of areas in the United States that either don’t or have spotty service.  You guys ever use Skype internationally or to someone in the remote USA?  play World of Warcraft or any other MMO?  Then I’m sure you noticed that some players would lose connection and drop wayyyy more frequently than others.  If that’s the case, then your wiped raid is evidence of this fact.  For those users, a 3 minute timer would render this console unplayable.  And that’s just in the United States.  What about American military personnel that game during deployments to remote areas?  In remote areas they’re running on connections reliant on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, where some areas can only be reached by certain satellites, possibly giving a skewed signal on a flatter-than-optimal angle.  So there are definitely potential issues with that setup.

And what about international users?  A lot of those users may find similar problems.

Working in IT I get that Microsoft’s plan forward on their enterprise side is pushing everyone cloud-ward with SkyDrive and their 2013 line of Office.  Given that they’ve been talking for a while about a Microsoft “ecosystem” that would combine Microsoft OS’es with Xbox, their moves including this one don’t seem so shocking.  But aside from that, they need to understand that this business model going forward is not only going to hurt their users, but their own brand.  Sony has made no such assertion that the PlayStation 4 would have an always-on component, so this helps them too, potentially giving them the opportunity to take some ground and have a chuckle at the same time.   But we still don’t have a straight answer.  So it looks like we’re going to have wait until E3 to see any sort of confirmation from Microsoft.  Meaning they have until June to get it together with a unified front and message to users, without rogue employees going berserk on social media.

Let me be clear on my stance on this sort of business practice in case you don’t know already.  I am against always-on.  In my opinion it’s a form of DRM that is sharply anti-consumer, especially now that we have laptops that have the graphics card juice to play modern games.  Always-on means I can’t play Diablo III on a flight, or SimCity on a long train ride.  And dictating when and where we can play our games just isn’t right. We’ve been burned with it more than once.  But the problem is partially us.  Always-on seems to be the way the industry is going, and we tacitly support it by still buying the games knowing the potential issues going in.  At that point, they already have our money, so why should they care?  They’ll move on, and quickly.  And we’ll be left wondering what to do when they finally shut down those connection servers.

Always-On Rumors True? Xbox May Follow Suit in Blocking Used Games

Now that Sony’s PlayStation team is a couple weeks out from what I think will be the PlayStation 4 reveal, It looks like it’s Microsoft’s turn to continue churning the rumor mill.  A while ago you’ll remember that we talked about rumors of the PlayStation 4 having a mechanism to block used games or games not registered to a user from running on the console.  And I’m pretty sure consensus across most people was that it would be a horrible idea.  And in my opinion, that consensus was right.

Now comes the fun part – We knew Sony wasn’t alone in having this technology, but now there’s evidence that it may actually be put into practice.  Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox 720, or Durango, or whatever the hell you want to call it, will be featuring similar technology for the purposes of blocking used games.  While a lot of what I’m seeing across the internet are really just referencing this as rumor, Edge Magazine claims to have a source at Microsoft saying that this will be done by requiring an internet connection to even function.  They went on to mention that games would still be available to be purchased on physical disk media, but those disks could include activation keys, providing nothing to anyone outside of the initial user that bought the media.

The report also says that the system will finally support Blu-ray discs instead after finally giving up on their horse named HD-DVD, but I’m not really sure you’re even reading that part.  The always-on rumor kind of trumps it.

I’ve always hated always-on connections as a method of DRM.  Always. I hated it when EA did it on the PS3.  I hated it when Blizzard did it with Diablo III.  And yes, I have even historically hated it with Steam.  Years ago when I refused to use Steam and people said I was nuts because “dude the games are cheaper and it’s soooo much easier,” my concerns were on a higher plane of nerd.  I’ve always considered business models that require always-on connections to have heavily detrimental aspects to the user experience – most prominently being the one that says No, you can’t play any time you want to.  And Steam did exactly that.  They did it with software instead of hardware so it might be slightly different to the minds of many but the principle remains the same.  And in my opinion, while sure it was cheaper and easier, it was setting a dangerous precedent in gaming.  Not only because it did in fact take something away from the user experience, but that gamers were ok with it, and allowed it to keep happening.  There shouldn’t be any rule on any console or system that says you can’t play the games you’ve paid for when the internet is down.  It adds another point of potential failure to your gaming console in your internet connection.

I might add, before you all go off on me, that I don’t include MMO’s in this little rant.  I mean the “O” stands for online.

In addition to all of this philosophical wrong,  if these reports from Edge are true then it’s a fantastic blow to the used game market, which as we discussed before with the PS4 would in fact help developers since they’d be the only shop in town. What this does do though, if true, is give Sony a tremendous opportunity to say “No, we’re not going to follow that model – come to team Sony, my peoples!”   They have the option to become the console of the people by abandoning this practice before their PS4 reveal.

Truth be told, I really hope Edge is wrong, or that someone lied to them in an extremely convincing manner.  Either way, I’ll keep you posted.  I am not going to call this 100% fact until I hear something official from the Xbox team.

If they’re not hiding from us.