A love letter about the Xboxone and the future of gaming

[SignOfZeta]

A car is a significantly more complex thing than a games machine. It goes, stops, turns, and crashes. It plays music and videos, gets you places with voice activated GPS navigation, has to meet extremely tight emissions and fuel economy standards and will usually go 100,000 miles before it needs any real repairs. And this is a Civic I'm describing. An S class does way more. A XBone may *seem* complicated, but really almost everything it does comes out of its HDMI port. That's not a lot of genuine work.

Both the car itself and the work it does are HUGELY more complex than any console ever made. If you don't agree, you haven't spent much time thinking about it.

My main point is that no matter what they do, all you need to start a car is the key. Sure, there is WiFi to set up, Bluetooth shit, etc, but you don't actually HAVE to do that just to play a game. We're basically at the point where if you want to play a game the day you bought it you have to take the day off work or sacrifice sleep, because it ain't gonna f*cking run when you first put it in. A car doesn't check for the newest software and then refuse to function unless you update.

[elmer]

IMHO ... blame Microsoft and Xbox Live for the state of things.

5th gen systems were the first that included the console manufacturer's SDK libraries as part of each game.

With the 6th gen, it all started to go to heck.

Sony's PS2 shipped each game with the latest PS2 Operating System on each game disk.

This was OK, because everything was still transient ... turn off the console, and you're back to boot ROM.

But the XBOX 1 had a hard drive so that Microsoft could put a permanent Operating System on it, and each game shipped with the latest Operating System Update code built in.

So then you get a delay if the game needed to update the OS on the XBOX hard drive. Not too bad, but it was the-start-of-the-end.

Then Microsoft saw that gamers were loving online gameplay with GameSpy and other services ... and they weren't making any money from it.

So XBOX Live was born ... and the XBOX 1 already had a hard drive, so it could be permanently installed/updated/connected.

And Microsoft wanted online gaming to be a money-maker (it was generally free-for-the-user before that), so they had to make it "compelling".

Therefore game publishers were told that they had to add XBOX Live features into their games, even if they were single-player games.

At first this was just "achievements", but later on it was expanded into full-time connectivity for "high score tables" and "what-are-your-friends-playing".

So every game becomes always "connected", and can't run without XBOX Live libraries.

Then Microsoft has to figure out how to keep people wanting to pay money for XBOX Live ... and so it has to continually update itself with new content, and in order to fix bugs and exploits, you're only allowed to connect to XBOX Live's servers if you have the latest Operating System.

But every game is required to be able to connect ... so no game can really run unless the XBOX Operating System is updated.

But once Microsoft required that kind of connection ... then Publishers knew that they could count on it, and so figured out that they, too, could make money from it.

Thus the constant stream of paid-content. And once again, that now means that the game itself must go through constant updates.

And so to today.

So ... IMHO, the current situation is Microsoft's fault for wanting to make gamers pay subscription money for XBOX Live! 

[Gredler]

car metaphor comparison

Quite a reach for that metaphor comparison but maybe you got it, we'll have to go to the booth for a ruling on the field.

I agree, largely, though. When a game takes longer to boot and get into than it takes to beat many other games, it's silly to consider it an option. 9/10 times that I load up a modern console I end up playing an older one while waiting for updates and groups and connectivity, and then feel satisfied with my game session before the modern console even boots. True spit.

[EmperorIng]

Industrial machines are cooler than videogames.

All I ever saw were the FMV commercials for games.  To be fair, I never even saw TurboDuo commercials back then

I know people hear love mouthing off on that "Feka" thing, but from what I've seen Johnny Turbo cared a whole lot more about Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective than uh, good games like Ys.

[SignOfZeta]

car metaphor

Quite a reach for that metaphor but maybe you got it, we'll have to go to the booth for a ruling on the field.

I agree, largely, though. When a game takes longer to boot and get into than it takes to beat many other games, it's silly to consider it an option. 9/10 times that I load up a modern console I end up playing an older one while waiting for updates and groups and connectivity, and then feel satisfied with my game session before the modern console even boots. True spit.

What metaphor?

[lukester]

car metaphor

Quite a reach for that metaphor but maybe you got it, we'll have to go to the booth for a ruling on the field.

I agree, largely, though. When a game takes longer to boot and get into than it takes to beat many other games, it's silly to consider it an option. 9/10 times that I load up a modern console I end up playing an older one while waiting for updates and groups and connectivity, and then feel satisfied with my game session before the modern console even boots. True spit.

If only you supported the Retro VGS, it is very possible we could have this industry standard in 2015.

[Gentlegamer]

For me, it's not so much the system updates and online profiles (but that does suck), but the parade of utterly broken games that are shipped like Battlefield Hardline, Assassin's Creed Unity, and Batman Arkham Knight.

On top of that, it seems like both MS and Sony cheaped out on the build quality of their respective consoles and controllers.

Not enticing for me to enter the current gen.

[Gredler]

What metaphor?

I was referring to this,

You know, you can buy a Mercedes S class with radar guided cruise, night vision camera, a DI turbo V8, 9 speed automatic transmission, four wheel drive, and 16 air bags. It maybe the best car in the world and it is a machine that is orders of magnitude more complex than a stupid f*cking X Box and all you have to do to drive it is turn the f*cking key. "Set-up" from new takes literally seconds.

Metaphor is the wrong word, probably. Comparison? I will edit my post


Fixed. I still think the comparison is a bit of a stretch, but agree with you that modern systems extra's are bogging down the experience to the point where they're more and more difficult to find time for in comparison to more simplistic games.

[SignOfZeta]

What precisely is "a stretch"?

[Gredler]

What precisely is "a stretch"?

It seems hyperbolic to suggest that it is easier to start and drive a car than start and play XBox One / PS4, so that comparison sounds a bit excessive, and that excessive comparison is what I mean by a stretch although the basis is true and I agree. I apologize if I offend you with my suggestion that your comparison formally known as a metaphor was out of place or inaccurate.

[KingDrool]

Actually, I think this generation is better than last. I f*cking hate turning on my Xbox 360 for my kids because literally every single time there is a system update required. My PS4? I keep it in sleep mode and all my updates download in the background. Boom. Done. Same with the WiiU.

[Necromancer]

Of course the internal workings of a car are complex, but what relevance does that have?  It's a comparison that makes little sense, but if you insist on bullshit analogies, then regular maintenance (gas fill ups, oil changes, tires, etc.) is correlative to console software updates.  Both are required on a regular basis, neither is required every single time you use the machine, and the only substantive difference is that the dealership will have done all the initial delivery prep work for you.

In typical Zeta-hates-MS fashion, he's blowing things out of proportion.  Barring out of the box hardware failures or not having the IQ required to follow simple instructions, initial setup takes well under an hour, and much of that time will be while it downloads the update, time you can use to take a shit, make a sandwich, or go jerk off to your amiibos.

[Lost Monkey]

I just hate that when I do go to use the PS4 (and to a lesser extent the PS3 and Wii U) it seems to always need an update every time I turn it on.  Since I dont use it but every few weeks or so i seem to always need an update.  So while I may power it on for a quick whatever before work I end up letting it update and turn off without even a single moment of game play.

Yup.  I seem to only use the PS3 for watching BD's now.  I would be willing to wager that mine has spent almost as much time with an update progress bar on the screen as it has with a game display. 

I am not sure if the Wii-U is updating on it's own time, but it is always ready to play when it gets turned on.  Like me.

[BlueBMW]

Wii U seems much better about it than the others.  I havent used an xbox360 much so I cant comment on that one.

PC isn't exactly guilt free in this matter either.  Every time I go to play something on steam, steam has to download and install some update / phone home / f*ckery.  While its typically a short delay, its still annoying.

[Gentlegamer]

Wii U seems much better about it than the others.  I havent used an xbox360 much so I cant comment on that one.

PC isn't exactly guilt free in this matter either.  Every time I go to play something on steam, steam has to download and install some update / phone home / f*ckery.  While its typically a short delay, its still annoying.

That's the flip side; Steam has made updating PC games really easy compared to the old days of hunting around on Fileplanet and being put in a queue for that Daikatana patch you just had to have.