Games Industry

Microsoft's Phil Spencer says even phone tethering will be sufficient to meet requirement.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has shed some light on the severity of the Xbox One's online check-in, and it may not be as severe as many have feared.

Speaking to Game Informer, the corporate VP of Microsoft Studios said that the check-in requirements are low enough for mobile tethering to be a valid option for meeting them.

"It's kilobytes, not megabytes," he said. "You can also set your console to always have the latest bits in a standby state."

Spencer reiterated that those with absolutely no access to the internet were not the right audience for the Xbox One. However, the check-in will be forgiving enough for even those with unreliable online connections.

"We've all had 360s for quite a while. If you look at what the box was capable of doing when we launched it versus what it's doing it now, we listened. We're part of the community," Spencer said.

"We listen to the community and we will respond to where the business, the creators, and the gamers are going. But I don't want to people to take that wrong. Our policy is our policy, and we've stated it. We wanted to put it up [on Xbox Wire] in unambiguous terms. 'Here's what our policy is.'"

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-13-xbox-one-check-in-will-need-kilobytes-not-megabytes

that was always obvious since it will send only some numbers for verification.

And? This addresses what exactly?

Kilobytes? You barely need internet for that.

Microsoft are clearly not aiming at the same market consoles were before.

Consoles have always been toys that play some media.

Xbox #one is aiming completely different.

I for one welcome the always on. It benefits so many things as well.

Christ 50 million active gold users of Live on 360 have decent internet connections.

I like its non gaming functions just as much as the games. Im sure their will be many people looking at the Xbox One who never considered consoles ever. Thats where Microsoft are aiming.

And they still have proven to the core they business with amazing exclusives set across many genres.

In 2 years DRM will be forgotten and PS4 players will be dealing with the same thing from 3rd party publishers in their single player games. Sony already confirmed after their press conference that 3rd party publishers can do this if they choose.

It will be funny in 2015 looking back at this DRM fiasco.

That you don't even necessarily need an internet connection in your house, because you can use your phone for that.
Which also means that internet outages are irrelevant and you can access it everywhere, assuming there is electricity and you're in an Xbox One supported country (still not sure if you can just set up an US account and use a proxy or whatever when you're not in an supported country).

i've said this in another thread but i'll say it again here..

...the ability to tether my phone is a $20 a month service.

maybe they could have the kinect use barcode reading tech to verify things...

I already thought as much but it's good to have it confirmed.

I think people bring up internet outages just to complain more. Check ins every 24 hours wouldn't have been a concern if they weren't there to enforce DRM and stop rentals. Check-in is the least of xbone problems, there are other several issues that still need more clarifications, more than what's mentioned on xbox wire.

They're not there to stop rentals.  Disc-based rentals are not possible with retail discs because the first person to install the game would own it.

The disc is just a medium to transport the digital content. 

That said, what needs to be worked out is how you could allow rentals.  My thoughts is that rental services would need to purchase special discs that function differently than regular retail discs.  They would still use DRM, but the key would limit limit the functionality or disable the game after x number of days, with or without a check-in.