Microsoft Kills Xbox One Phone-Home DRM 547
One of the biggest criticisms of Microsoft's recently-announced Xbox One console was that it would require an internet connection once every 24 hours in order to keep playing games. Enough people complained about the DRM, and Microsoft listened. Today, they announced that they're removing the phone-home requirement. "After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360." They've also scrapped the game trading and resale system they'd built, which allowed publishers to set their own rules with regard to used game sales. "There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360." Unfortunately, that also means users won't be able to take advantage of the good parts of the original system, such as trading and gifting games without needing the disc, or sharing games with remote family members. "While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds." Also noteworthy: they've dropped region-locks as well.
Whoosh (Score:5, Funny)
Xbox 180 Confirmed (Score:5, Funny)
It would've made a neat Jack Bauer "24" game (Score:5, Funny)
While you are playing your games, the clock ticks down it the upper right hand corner, reminding you that need to play that other game in the background. Your quest is to find an internet connection before the "24" clock runs out.
And you get tortured and hounded by government creeps in the process. Feels real.
Re:I just had this conversation with a coworker: (Score:5, Funny)
If you've followed the Xbox One conversation at all (there, I used the real word, now I can call it Xbone), you know that there's only one thing Microsoft could possibly do as damage control at this point, and they just did it. Everyone has expected them to tone down the phoning home and used games policies. The "halfway" is, as many commenters below have pointed out, that they've yet to remove the built-in Kinect.
So they've only shot themselves in one foot so far and are reloading for the other one ... still a chance to save that sock a holey demise.
Re:How comforting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I just had this conversation with a coworker: (Score:5, Funny)
to 'fix' the mic problem, do the following:
1) find an old wall-wart power supply
2) open it and remove the filter capacitors (yank them out or unsolder them)
3) feed the low voltage output to the mic wires
what you've done is created a NICE 60hz hum that will be so strong, nothing the mic will pick up will ever come thru.
(you're welcome)
Re:I just had this conversation with a coworker: (Score:5, Funny)
For convenience, I've added the missing part of that conversation.
I just had this conversation with a coworker:
"Microsoft has me sexually arroused"
"Yeah, I saw."
"Well...they didn't have a choice. They're halfway there."
Re:Xbox 180 Confirmed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Whoosh (Score:5, Funny)
Unexpected. Maybe next we'll hear that the government is listening to us too. Oh wait...
Re:In the Navy *humming to herself* (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, after what's his face said they had a product for people who couldn't regularly access the internet...the XBox 360, I can only imagine the somewhere in Redmond, WA, a bespeckled Gates looked away from the monitor with some disdain, and then facepalmed harder than he had ever done before in his life.
If I were an investment manager, watching that particular commentary live, the first words out of my mouth, immediately after I managed to pick it up from the limo's floor, would be to 'sell that stock, sell it all, and short it until the kingdom comes!' I'd borrow from my friends to short that stock, and when they ran out of stock to short, I'd go door to door looking for more.
There are simply some things that cannot be said when representing a multi-billion dollar software company unveiling its latest product, and he said a few of them. Frankly I'm amazed he's still alive, as I'd have had the guys in black shirts throw him into the back of a black minivan and driven across town as soon as the cameras turned the first time. I'd cop an excuse about him having recently taken some powerful blood pressure medications, and that the words spilling out of his mouth were in no way reflective of what MS thought or planned. I'd pay a group of security minded people to sit on him at a high-rise apartment, somewhere on the outskirts of town, until damage control could give me an estimate of just how much boot-licking and open bribery it would take to prevent the board from hanging me, let alone keeping everyone else on staff.
"We already have a product for them, the Xbox 360" -> No, no, no. When they ask you a hardball question like that, and you know that you don't have the answer, shut the f*ck up. Tell them the honest truth -> "I do not know, but I will look into it, and attempt to get back to you on that as soon as I can." Instead he goes for the smart ass answer "the XBox 360," which was as good as saying "the Navy will take whatever we damn well feel like giving them; yesterday's meet is good enough for the likes of them." Dumb, dumb, dumb, a thousand times dumb.
Re:I just had this conversation with a coworker: (Score:4, Funny)
I just don't worry about someone turning on my webcam. If they turn it on, and manage to get an image, they will be easy to find. They will be the person curler up in the foetal position, yelling "My eyes, my eyes."
All part of the plan... (Score:4, Funny)
Make a ridiculous threat that you *know* will invite revolt, then relent and follow through with the slightly less ridiculous (but still ridiculous) plan you had interned all along.
Next time, scheduled phoning home won't seem so ridiculous. Well, maybe not next time, but the time after that, or maybe the time after that ... but it's coming.
Also known as the Anchoring Effect
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/27/anchoring-effect/ [youarenotsosmart.com]
Just look at the shit we put up with MS Office and new Windows installations these days. No, you can't just have a disc, you need to spend a half hour entering all your personal info (mostly re-entering those fucking captchas because their shitty forms don't validate interactively) in an MS account so we can keep tabs on you and send you spam. Even then, you're not getting an installation package file, we'll only give you some brain dead all-in-one downloader that only works on *your* computer, provides absolutely no configuration options and doesn't tell you where the installer files are located (though they probably aren't even usable if you do find them). Sure, you *can* get installation discs if you cough up another $15 and wait a week.
Fuck that, I'll head over to TPB and have a an ISO in 15 minutes.
Do you think we'd have willing to choke down this shit sandwich even a few years ago?
Re:I just had this conversation with a coworker: (Score:4, Funny)
Yet, it's called Autotune.