When the XBox One was revealed a few weeks ago, there was quite a bit of online outrage from the gaming community. The complaint, among other things, was that Microsoft seemed to have shoved the gaming capabilities of the console as a minor footnote. Instead, they spent most of almost two hours on how TV and online connectivity works together with the hardware to provide a great living room experience.
To say the more vocal of the gaming community was pissed is an understatement. Why isn't this XBox focused on gaming? The 360 was great because Microsoft had a commitment on making a great gaming experience, why didn't they do the same here? Where is my dedicated gaming console?
To this, I bring the argument that the gaming capabilities are right there. But gamers were not the target of the announcement.
Let's face it, gamers are not as prolific as we would like to think. Sure, a lot of people play games, but a good number of those use games just to pass the time. Not every gamer would be into the Call of Duty(s) or Skyrims or World of Warcrafts. Arguably, more would just play the Angry Birds or Bejeweleds or Sodukus during the commute to/from work or waiting for a friend to show up.
We should also not be surprised about this. Just looking at what XBox Live has been offering over the past few years gives us a hint at Microsoft's direction with the platform.
Microsoft has the unenviable position of having such a diverse portfolio that they are fighting aggressive competetion on multiple fronts. Apple, Google, Sony, and Nintendo (*snicker*) are just the big players that are fighting on different markets.
To this end, Microsoft has taken the huge risk of most of their proverbial eggs into one basket. The XBox One and XBox Live is their answer to Apple TV, iTunes, Google play, the PS4, the Wii U, and television DVRs. I can't really say they are competing with Smart TVs. I have tried a Smart TV, and I find my XBox 360 works a whole lot better. Heck, I'd rather use my PS3 than struggle with the Smart TV controls.
It is the fact that the XBox One has such diverse features that they needed their announcement to hit the right notes with as many people as possible. To be rather honest, I was really impressed by it. Sure, the gaming demos were pretty generic (ooooh...better wrinkles), but the capabilities are there. They have a chance to focus on gaming at E3 in a few days and I do hope they capitalize on that opportunity to win gamers over.
Am I being apologetic for Microsoft? Not really. They do not need my help in defending themselves nor will any of my words really matter. I am not in agreement with some of their policies (always online for example). But this does not mean I should be outraged. As a consumer of other services the XBox One offers, I find the device, as a whole, very interesting.
But will I actually buy one on release? As it is, not likely. My 360 is fairly new and, frankly, does everything I need at the moment. I also have a PS3 which is older and that won't be replaced either. The only thing i'd watch out for is if it will be worth buying a Kinect.
As for us gamers and gamers at heart, lets all just calm down and see what Microsoft has in store for us at E3. While I still expect a lot of TV and XBox Live talk, they should have ample opportunity to reel us in with what we want to hear.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
DRM - Does Remove Me from games
I miss the days when all you needed to do was insert a cartridge in a console or disk in a PC and just play a video game. At worst, I had to enter a code that was somewhere in the oversized box. Consoles never had that issue.
Just to be clear, piracy is indeed a problem, but how big of a problem is something to debate about. Thing is, as soon as money was paid for software, there were already pirates. The interesting thing is that, despite all this, game developers during the time were still able to grow and make a profit. There was enough profit in the gaming industry that they have become this large bloated mess we see today - and that was when there was rampant pirating.
The different DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies over the years have pretty much failed to curb piracy, but has succeeded in making gamer's lives more inconvenient. So ... hurray? The main problem with almost every DRM tech available is that, if it fails, it only affects gamers who buy the game, not the pirates. While we fiddle around entering codes of ungodly legnths, those with pirated games are enjoying the game as soon as they insert the disk.
The latest DRM trend is "always online". The game basically sends an occassional "all is well" signal to the developer that I am not a pirate. However, if the game is unable to send the signal, then I would be unable to play the game - even if it is a single person title.
Probably the most famous of examples is Diablo 3. Yes, there are some online aspects that requires an internet connection, but the core of the game is for single player. And yet, the game requires that you are logged in to the BattleNet servers to even get a chance to play.
What if I lose internet connection because of my ISP and no fault of my own? I can't play the game. Even as something to pass the time, there is no mode to allow me to destroy my pixelated enemies.
SIM City also had this problem, and, as it appears companies love the idea, the XBOX One will have this "feature" as well.
So if I buy a game on disk and, for some reason lose internet connection, I won't be able to play the game. Or any game for that matter.
Something there just ... does not sound right.
I can understand being unable to access online offerings, fine. But I should not be prevented from playing a single player game I had bought a disk for or have a legal copy on hard disk. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of buying the disk in the first place?
Yes, it is reasonable to think many people who play video games have a stable internet connection, but it is naive to think that MOST do. Even those with stable internet relies on their ISP to be 100% reliable, which they are not. From experience, multi-day outages can happen. Sure, there are other things to do, but if I paid $60 for a game, I better be damned able to play it when I want.
I was raised in a generation where buying a console meant I could play anytime and network connectivity is just an added plus. This kind of limitation to a hobby I enjoy just does not make sense. No, I will not go out of my way to get a workaround to play a pirated game. This will just make me stop buying games completely.
I am all for protecting the rights of developers and their right to make money. But going this far in an attempt to broaden profits just makes little sense. How about this? Make quality games at accessible prices and just let people enjoy it. Provide additional fun services for those able to go online and not make it a requirement. I'm pretty sure catering to the cost conscious will help raise those profit margins than spending exhorbitant amounts to fight piracy.
Let me play the games I paid good money for and don't punish me when things happen that I have no control over - like your online servers failing. *cough*diablo*cough*simcity*cough*
Just to be clear, piracy is indeed a problem, but how big of a problem is something to debate about. Thing is, as soon as money was paid for software, there were already pirates. The interesting thing is that, despite all this, game developers during the time were still able to grow and make a profit. There was enough profit in the gaming industry that they have become this large bloated mess we see today - and that was when there was rampant pirating.
The different DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies over the years have pretty much failed to curb piracy, but has succeeded in making gamer's lives more inconvenient. So ... hurray? The main problem with almost every DRM tech available is that, if it fails, it only affects gamers who buy the game, not the pirates. While we fiddle around entering codes of ungodly legnths, those with pirated games are enjoying the game as soon as they insert the disk.
The latest DRM trend is "always online". The game basically sends an occassional "all is well" signal to the developer that I am not a pirate. However, if the game is unable to send the signal, then I would be unable to play the game - even if it is a single person title.
Probably the most famous of examples is Diablo 3. Yes, there are some online aspects that requires an internet connection, but the core of the game is for single player. And yet, the game requires that you are logged in to the BattleNet servers to even get a chance to play.
What if I lose internet connection because of my ISP and no fault of my own? I can't play the game. Even as something to pass the time, there is no mode to allow me to destroy my pixelated enemies.
SIM City also had this problem, and, as it appears companies love the idea, the XBOX One will have this "feature" as well.
So if I buy a game on disk and, for some reason lose internet connection, I won't be able to play the game. Or any game for that matter.
Something there just ... does not sound right.
I can understand being unable to access online offerings, fine. But I should not be prevented from playing a single player game I had bought a disk for or have a legal copy on hard disk. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of buying the disk in the first place?
Yes, it is reasonable to think many people who play video games have a stable internet connection, but it is naive to think that MOST do. Even those with stable internet relies on their ISP to be 100% reliable, which they are not. From experience, multi-day outages can happen. Sure, there are other things to do, but if I paid $60 for a game, I better be damned able to play it when I want.
I was raised in a generation where buying a console meant I could play anytime and network connectivity is just an added plus. This kind of limitation to a hobby I enjoy just does not make sense. No, I will not go out of my way to get a workaround to play a pirated game. This will just make me stop buying games completely.
I am all for protecting the rights of developers and their right to make money. But going this far in an attempt to broaden profits just makes little sense. How about this? Make quality games at accessible prices and just let people enjoy it. Provide additional fun services for those able to go online and not make it a requirement. I'm pretty sure catering to the cost conscious will help raise those profit margins than spending exhorbitant amounts to fight piracy.
Let me play the games I paid good money for and don't punish me when things happen that I have no control over - like your online servers failing. *cough*diablo*cough*simcity*cough*
Friday, June 7, 2013
Bravo Trion, Bravo.
No, I am not being sarcastic with the header. I am truly, truly giving Trion a nice, standing ovation.
Just to be clear, I do not believe that Trion is the Luke Skywalker to Blizzard or EA's Darth Vader as fans make them out to be. Trion themselves try to enchance the impression that they are what everyone else wants bigger developers to be.
Truth of the matter is that, while. as a relatively small company that automatically garners empathy from their customers almost as if they are an independent (or "indie") developer, they are still a big company with big goals. Not EA or Activision levels naturally, but large nonetheless. They are not immune to bad press or bad decisions, but are small enough to be able to disappear through the cracks of larger news (i.e. next gen consoles, EA gaffes, etc.).
No, if nothing else shows that Trion is just your average corporation, there is always Defiance.
So why am I applauding Trion despite them being a cold, heartless company? It is because they seem to have such an uncanny sense of timing, marketing, and making things accessible.
Flash back to late 2010. World of Warcraft's playerbase was only getting larger but big companies were getting ready to attempt to take a piece of that consumer pie. In particular, Guild Wars and Star Wars: The Old Republic were getting their big guns ready to come out of the gate blazing. But they were at least one or two years away. There was just a huge gap of practically nothing noteworthy being released for the MMO genre.
Then a few months later comes lesser known Trion Worlds that suprised a lot of people with their MMO offering beta weekends. There is no shaking the fact that this was a huge marketing ploy for pre-ordering the game, but it was quite an excellent game. It was pretty much like World of Warcraft but with enough differences and improvements to be a fresh experience to experienced gamers.
Needless to say, Rift was a huge hit on release. Not only was it a great game in it's own right, it was lauched early 2011 when there were no other major competitors other than World of Warcraft. They even had monthly updates to the game, which, even now, is rather unprecidented.
It didn't take long for subscriber levels to shrink and larger competitors started showing up. Still, Trion was able to use this time to gear up and, just as they did during release, brought out their first expansion when there were no other major announcements from competitors.
Now that Rift is going free to play, they appear to be capitalizing on the one thing competitors like Neverwinter doesn't have - previous gamers. In advance of their free to play release, Rift has now become playable to anyone who has bought their game, even if you only played the free month that came with the original game 2 years ago.
Granted, the Storm Legion expansion has to be bought in order to play that content, Trion's partnership with media and the Raptr service (raptr.com) has provided a lot of free copies. In fact, Raptr still has some codes to give out should you meet their requirements. This is how I got my copy, but I certainly was willing to shell out the $40 to get the expansion when free to play started.
I know it is just circumstantial evidence, and my own experiences cannot be read as fact, but logging in to Rift duing prime gaming hours saw a bustle of activity from people coming back to the game and trying it out again. In many dungeon groups, 3 out of 5 would state that they have come back after months of hiatus. Sometimes, everyone in the group was trying to relearn the game, which proved very interesting.
In order for people to be willing to pay for virtual items in a game, they have to be able to play the game and Trion seems to understand this. Having free players access to all content is just a great decision which also been good for games like Guild Wars.
I have no doubt there will be a spike of players once the free to play update goes live. The question will be how much of that player base they can retain and, among those, how many would regularly buy from the store. Only time will tell, but for now I can say that it's good to be back to Telara.
Just to be clear, I do not believe that Trion is the Luke Skywalker to Blizzard or EA's Darth Vader as fans make them out to be. Trion themselves try to enchance the impression that they are what everyone else wants bigger developers to be.
Truth of the matter is that, while. as a relatively small company that automatically garners empathy from their customers almost as if they are an independent (or "indie") developer, they are still a big company with big goals. Not EA or Activision levels naturally, but large nonetheless. They are not immune to bad press or bad decisions, but are small enough to be able to disappear through the cracks of larger news (i.e. next gen consoles, EA gaffes, etc.).
No, if nothing else shows that Trion is just your average corporation, there is always Defiance.
So why am I applauding Trion despite them being a cold, heartless company? It is because they seem to have such an uncanny sense of timing, marketing, and making things accessible.
Flash back to late 2010. World of Warcraft's playerbase was only getting larger but big companies were getting ready to attempt to take a piece of that consumer pie. In particular, Guild Wars and Star Wars: The Old Republic were getting their big guns ready to come out of the gate blazing. But they were at least one or two years away. There was just a huge gap of practically nothing noteworthy being released for the MMO genre.
Then a few months later comes lesser known Trion Worlds that suprised a lot of people with their MMO offering beta weekends. There is no shaking the fact that this was a huge marketing ploy for pre-ordering the game, but it was quite an excellent game. It was pretty much like World of Warcraft but with enough differences and improvements to be a fresh experience to experienced gamers.
Needless to say, Rift was a huge hit on release. Not only was it a great game in it's own right, it was lauched early 2011 when there were no other major competitors other than World of Warcraft. They even had monthly updates to the game, which, even now, is rather unprecidented.
It didn't take long for subscriber levels to shrink and larger competitors started showing up. Still, Trion was able to use this time to gear up and, just as they did during release, brought out their first expansion when there were no other major announcements from competitors.
Now that Rift is going free to play, they appear to be capitalizing on the one thing competitors like Neverwinter doesn't have - previous gamers. In advance of their free to play release, Rift has now become playable to anyone who has bought their game, even if you only played the free month that came with the original game 2 years ago.
Granted, the Storm Legion expansion has to be bought in order to play that content, Trion's partnership with media and the Raptr service (raptr.com) has provided a lot of free copies. In fact, Raptr still has some codes to give out should you meet their requirements. This is how I got my copy, but I certainly was willing to shell out the $40 to get the expansion when free to play started.
I know it is just circumstantial evidence, and my own experiences cannot be read as fact, but logging in to Rift duing prime gaming hours saw a bustle of activity from people coming back to the game and trying it out again. In many dungeon groups, 3 out of 5 would state that they have come back after months of hiatus. Sometimes, everyone in the group was trying to relearn the game, which proved very interesting.
In order for people to be willing to pay for virtual items in a game, they have to be able to play the game and Trion seems to understand this. Having free players access to all content is just a great decision which also been good for games like Guild Wars.
I have no doubt there will be a spike of players once the free to play update goes live. The question will be how much of that player base they can retain and, among those, how many would regularly buy from the store. Only time will tell, but for now I can say that it's good to be back to Telara.
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