| Netyaroze said: People don't care about a console that can be always on. If they can use it offline aswell. Thats not the issue here at all, thats an expected feature:
But his analogies-> Vacuum does not work without electricity suggest Xbox does not work without being connected.
And what MS gains by that is obvious. Total control over every game you "own". You need MS to allow you playing the games you bought. That way MS ties you to them forever. Lets say they get stupid ideas and sell only 99 Dollar Xbox with 3 years Xbox Live Platinum for 99 a year. -> See the new office subscription which is 99 a year.
After 3 years your 99 Subscription runs out. You bought 30 Games for 1500 Dollar. Now if you don't refresh you won't be able to play the games you bought and if you want to keep your games forever you have to pay for the rest of your life 99 a year (at first).
This is definetly MS endgoal in the future and always online is the first step. You practically give up any control over your property its an insane concept. If I buy a game now I can keep it forever and play parts of it forever. In 50 years it will have insane value especially if nobody owns anything anymore.
MS will give you everything stop paying and you will have nothing. MS is smarter than the people who buy their stuff (maybe not if always on fails). They take slowly all the control at first it won't be expensive and seem like a good deal but once they lock up all your movies/games they can slowly raise prices and take your stuff hostage if you dont pay.
Thats what makes people upset and cautios. And MS WILL DO THAT they just have to REEDUCATE the Consumer slowly and tie enough games and videos to their servers so that people rather shut up and pay instead of losing their expensive libraries
Sony is no different they have the same idea brewing (Gaikai,PS+) but atleast they seem to give you options. If its always on it means MS forces you into dependance.
Even if Internet was as widespread and reliable as electricity, always on still is a bad thing. Customers should still have the option to decide if they want hand over the control of their games/books/movies to someone else. I rather pay a premium to own my stuff.
And maybe MS will take the risk with always on and lock down big parts of the US market at the cost of selling 25 million less worldwide Maybe the box will be for free at some point. But who will stop paying the subscription once they could lose 100 games ?
I am not saying nextbox will be always online. But it would not surprise me, that has MS tactics written all over it.
Edit:All ofhis was just one example how MS could profit from always on. Another -> ads maybe Kinect powered TV ads |
When talking about MS direction, please do not use Mr. Orth as a spokesperson for the company. MS is made of thousands of employees and each one has their own seperate opinion. Instead look at MS as the business entity and how the company stands to gain.
Your point on subscription is a good one because it would lower the risk for MS, gives MS a very agressive starting price and allow them to sell less consoles but still make money. This model have put millions of cell phones in people hands so its not like the model isnt' tested and proven to work. The key would be will this user in a different type of console where it can be upgraded each year or 2. Will MS only provide the console on subs or will they allow you to purchase out right (probably the later).
Your point on if the subscription runs out on games you purchase and you cannot play them anymore unless you renew will not happen because the market today does not support such a thing and consumers would not as well. If you changed that to the Playstation plus model where you can download and play games for free for a sub price but only play those games if you keep your sub is more reaslistic. MS already have a Zune service that has a sub model like that for music an music videos. If you purchase a song its yours no matter if you keep your zune sub or not.
The key is that MS cannot do something that would allow their competitors to do it better. This is why competition hones companies to supply consumer features to one up their competition so gain market advantage. PS Plus is a great example. Sony created PS Plus as competition against XBL. They created basically a game rental services for 50 bucks which is a clear advantage over MS current structure.
Here is what a lot of people are not thinking. Unless everybody does it, then there is no advantage for MS to do it. If Sony could advertise that their system does not inconvience the customer with online only then that would be a clear advantage to Sony and MS will not give something like that up unless they gain someting significant.
It cannot be something like MS gets to provide DRM on their console unless they can get publisher commitment to develop exclusive on their console. If Sony get the same games without this restriction then advantage to Sony. This is not rocket science stuff and its not like MS would not know the pros and cons of any mandatory feature on the console compared to what the competition might do.
Another key would be that MS does not exist in a vacuum. They have real threats like Apple, Samsung, Host of Android gaming machines and of course their big dogs, Sony and Nintendo. Every decision put into the nextbox you can believe was vexx on what the competition is doing and what they could do. Features that do not benefit the customer isn't something any company will take lighly.
