In the xbox UI under settings/network/go offline. its doesnt check owner ship at all. unless the game is like destiny. I am amazed that a lot of people dont know this
No, but back in 2013 before the Xbox One launched, the always online function of the console was meant be part of the experience. After the public backlash on the press of this, the policy was then revised to be a 24-hour check in period, where you could play your game for up to 24 hours offline before you would have to log in to live to continue to play the game, verifying ownership through an internet access connection. This proved ineffective in calming peopleās outrage at what the Xbox One was shaping up to be.
Thanks to a very loud public response, and people showing with their wallets they wouldnāt stand for this, MS eventually went back on these outrageous always online, 24 hour check-in, DRM policies. The DRM in place on the 360 for digital titles worked fine, and there was no need to fix a system that wasnāt broke. The Xbox One was trying to be like a console version of steam, at the time just didnāt set well with people, and most speculated it was going to be very impractical. Given the current fiber network infrastructure of the US isnāt on par with some other countries in terms of internet connection, availability and speed, most people werenāt too accepting of the always on verification of ownership approach. It is was going to prove problematic for Armed Forces servicemen who had no access to internet connection overseas.
I am fully aware of the go offline feature though, but the Xbox One as it is, and what it was originally planned to be are two very different things. Most of what me and Andy were talking about is the pre-launch era of the Xbox One, now several years behind us. Iām glad I can play my Killer Instint online and off when I want, as well as my Minecraft, but several years ago, that might not have been the case.
dang man, ur on point with your responses. but ya I got ya. thanks
No problem man. Good conversation doesnāt move forward unless people speak their minds. I appreciate what you were trying to say too.
dude, I just said the same thing in a thread I started. Aim high and get more chances to hit your target lol
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I imagined Kermit saying all this. I was very happy.
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Iām not sure how you can say this. I have gone completely digital for this generation (so all of the horrible things MS tried to do with discs still apply to me - and it hasnāt hurt me in the slightest) and I very rarely pay $60 for a game. I have a lot of digital only titles that debut at a much lower price, and there are frequently sales and discounts. Plus, used games RARELY save you more than $5 on newer titles, and it is not unusual for me to be paying less on digital than I would for a used game at my GameStop. If you need further evidence that this would be true in a digital only world, I can invoke Steam again.
Iām not trying to pick a fight with you, because you have very reasonable things to say and we are probably wearing the thread a little thin. But your argument about Steam being different basically comes down to āSteam can get away with it because Steam users donāt mind.ā And you DO need an internet connection, right now, to get both X1 and PS4 to work because neither ships with complete firmware - and you really shouldnāt want to do otherwise since both see frequent upgrades and patches. The same is true of almost every disc based game. Right now, regardless of MSās policies, you need to connect to the internet and download a day 1 patch for almost every disc based game. They donāt ājust workā out of the box. This has less to do with an industry conspiracy and more to do with the complexity of the games and the economics demanding they get things to market as early as possible. People are free to hate it, but it isnāt going to change. The bit about sailors on a submarine was basically just hatchet job journalism and MS mismanaging their message. But there is nothing āunfairā about it. Listen, consoles are not public service devices that are distributed freely to the poor and the needy. If what MS is selling doesnāt fit your needs, donāt buy it.
Books are going the same direction, with Kindle and Nook and everything else. MS was just āahead of their timeā with X1. You will notice how all the cross buy games that will work for both PC and X1 are digital. You canāt drop an X1 disc in your PC and have it work. This is going to be the future. People are going to complain about it (like they complain about everything else) but we are slowly moving steadily in that direction and never backwards.
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Okay, as far as the $60 price tag, yes Iāll cave to that, perhaps a little too overblown on that point, MS typically at some point will inevitably have sales on their products and the price control on the titles diminishes the price tag with the passage of time and market demand dwindling. However, most AAA titles do debut at this price tag, and if you want them on day 1, thereās not much choice in the matter. Steam is also in a very good position to offer the biggest and most incredible sales on games, but they have a much larger and open selection of 3rd party support and games that arenāt built to a specific platform or specifications. Itās a different platform, and a different set of rules, and I donāt believe they easily apply over on to the console market, not without being forced into the jigsaw puzzle.
You bring up good points about the necessity of day 1 patches and upgrades, firmware updates, etc. to allow the X1 and PS4 to work āout of the box.ā I donāt believe this is in any way an industry conspiracy, but I do think that once these updates are downloaded and your experience is up to speed with the latest stable version of any software version, and you still canāt enjoy something like Minecraft or KI offline (except in the instance of something like Destiny or Titanfall, which are online only), a problem does indeed exist. Not every part of the world maintains a constant, uninterrupted, high-speed connection yet, but to require one for something as simple as the Sonic 3 port to play seems a tad overreaching to provide necessary proof of ownership (again, thatās not the case, just a hypothetical).
I find this rather upsetting actually, because at this point, if someone wants to have a Halo 5 party, they canāt even do so unless there is a connection to Xbox Live. I donāt know why that design choice was made to wall off the multiplayer component in the absence of internet connection, and itās most likely not for the same scenario, but it does represent an interesting āwhat ifā to the discussion. So basically several people want to play Halo 5 but canāt because of built in limitations, regardless of what the reasons for those limitations are. There is a clear want to play Halo 5, but a seemingly artificial limitation that hampers the enjoyment of the game. But you canāt turn to the PS4 for your Halo fix.
On that note, what ever happened to the simple convenience of system link? Thatās been a feature to Halo since Combat Evolved, and now I miss it a lot, but donāt understand why it was eliminated, though I have my suspicions as to why, but thatās irrelevant at this point. I was willing to bend on the loss of split screen, but this one irks me in a far worse way.
I disagree with this on multiple points. I believe that the motivation behind some of the earlier functions and features of the X1 were less innovation driven and more market dictated for some of the earlier stated reasons. I also donāt believe that a purely digital sales platform is the certain future, and hope it isnāt. While there is a lot of evidence contrary to my beliefs, and perhaps Iām merely holding to archaic principles at this point, I donāt believe the feeling of ownership over a product should and ever will be limited to a virtual tie in an online environment over a digital, non-physical product. Should the support of the online ties to that product ever be severed, via services being retired, servers shut down, loss of connections, you basically own a big pile of nothing.
I believe in forward progression, but I donāt think phasing out certain commodities of the console market, and forcing unpopular practices of marketing is how we will get there.
And I am exhaustedā¦I think Iām just gonna chill and watch the Tusk stream at this point.
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@IronFlame This is another thread like the one where the āwhat is math?ā question came up in which I canāt be bothered going into a huge amount of depth, but I disagree with probably a good 80% of what youāre saying.
I think the whole concept of game āownershipā via possession of physical media such as discs is a really bad model for media consumption. It takes up storage space, your ownership is easily revoked by theft and natural disasters such as fires and floods, and physical devices degrade over time: two decades from now your āownershipā of physical games purchased now is going to be in an impractical sense at best. (Thatās certainly the situation with my 20Ā±year-old games. Iām actually far better off picking up Unreal for $2 off Steam than trying to get my physical copy to run, and I canāt run my SNES copy of KI.) Physical ownership allows gamers to delude themselves into thinking theyāre playing a meaningful role in game preservation, to the detriment of actual preservation efforts. Itās highly expensive in the digital age for publishers to maintain a physical media market presence, and that physical market in turn artificially inflates the cost of digital goods.
Maybe the main thing, though, is that Iād rather consumers let go of this whole āownershipā thing so that we can have a better conversation about the business models around which developers produce and distribute their games. Iām not a huge fan of the current digital model, but itās clearly pretty malleable: publishers can tune and distort the pricing of their games to achieve their actual goal, which is to meet their costs and achieve a profit on their production outlay. Retail complicates that in a pretty big way.
ā¦ 
I wouldnāt count on seeing a proper Konami game ever again at this point.
Without a sense of ownership, what is the point of even investing in the product a company sells? If you are never going to own something, then by what sense should the customer even bother buying anything from the business? Personally, I donāt get why people think pure online DRM verification is a GOOD idea, and why itās the wave of the future. Basically at this point, from the picture your painting, I should blindly accept a game company is ālendingā me rights to play their product in a digital environment, to which they can always confirm purchase and can never be denied profit, and if they so choose, could revoke the rights to play this title should they feel so inclined (not without good reason usually, but there are notable abuses of power within Steam and general digital sales practices that suggest a little reason to be suspicious of the practice).
I will not blindly accept, nor go without questioning the underlying motive to why the all digital movement.
Now while youāre right in the regard that buying Unreal of steam is easier than finding some ancient disc to run it, thereās little choice and obvious convenience in the matter. However, the digital generation carries with it itās own risks. Physical ownership goes beyond game preservation, although from Konamiās effort to wipe PT and Kojimaās ties to some of its projects, digital game preservation isnāt exactly reliable either. I understand itās not feasible to create a physical copy of every small sized indie game that becomes available to the public, as the cost of creating physical copies for such small demand just isnāt cost effective.
Iāll give you itās an increasingly costly practice, but I donāt see the current digital sales frontier at a point where it can be a reliable method of going without any type of physical console release ever. With a major portion of the US lacking stable, readily available and affordable, high-speed internet connection to support the pure digital sales model of games, and increasing distrust and disconnect from publishers (not all, but EA certainly isnāt helping) in their core customer base, I just can not support this sales model at this time. Perhaps in years down the road where the circumstances are different and the business model of pure digital goods are more feasible, and there is some extension of trust from the industry to consumer where in the absence of physical media, it is replaced with something of equal value to replace not having an actual physical product, Iāll look differently upon the issue.
So at this point, I will just leave it at, letās agree to disagree. The practice of selling physical media is not perfect, but neither is the practice of selling digital goods, IMO. Iām glad you have faith in the practice, but unfortunately I do not. The way I see it, the physical disc represents that even though the internet my go out from time to time, my ability to play game X isnāt tied to it and is denied when that connection is out. Itās not really preservation, though I know people who do take pride in owning the old SNES cartridges of their favorite games like the red DOOM cart, but itās also insurance to when the internet is out, I can still play my game, as if I still own it.
However, an interesting prospect does come to mind. Killer Instinct has made a very successful run starting as an all digital game, and has sold all of its expansions through digital sales as well. So why then if the game was successful as a digital title, was there a physical release down the road? I donāt think it sold nearly as well as the digital version, but there was demand enough for a physical version. Iām not stating this in some sarcastic sense, itās actually something that has me a little puzzled. Iām guessing it was probably for the TJ Combo early access code, but then it could just be dinosaurs like me wanting a collectorās item of some kind. I guess another example of game preservation which further validates your point, but I canāt really deny it.
Yeah, that certainly seems plausible to me too, at least as far as AAA titles are concerned. Which is why it could make sense for MS to be the conduit for their IPs.
As a gamer, I donāt want to see Castlevania, Suikoden, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and for that matter Bloody Roar, Contra etc disappear forever.
Which is why Iād love to see MS go to them and say āweād like to continue or reboot some of your franchises.ā MS supplies the development team and assumes the cost side, Konami supplies the IPs and some light consulting, perhaps some slight quality assurance input, MS gets exclusivity while Konami gets a percentage of profits for a game they didnāt have to dump any money in to.
Imagine if MS could go to E3 and demo new versions of some of these titles and say āif you want Konami games, if you want Castievania and Metal Gear Solid, Xbox is the place to be.ā
Iām not saying itād turn the tables in MSā favor, but itād be a big, bold move to bring some fairly substantial franchises in to the MS camp, and thatās something.
I absolutely agree on that. I played Silent Hills, wellā¦ the PT Demo, and really enjoyed the concept they were developing. Iām not the biggest fan of Hideo Kojimaās but his and Guillermo Del Toroās work on the title and what it could have been would have been a really big step up for horror games, and it was undeniable they put a great deal of heart and soul into it. I also hope the petition from Del Toro and Norman Reedus gets enough steam and recognition to constitute some type of action.
If MS could approach them for the rights of their franchises, whether to buy them out or work to develop the franchises for them, I could support that. While I would rather just see MS buy out the rights to the IPs rather than working under contract and being allowed to develop them while Konami reaps a little profit of the hard work they didnāt put in, anything seems better than simply letting these creations slowly fade into darkness simply because the holder of these franchises has gone crazy.
One title you didnāt place in your list though that I really want to see return to the forefront: Zone of the Enders. I loved playing those games, even if the story on the first one was a train wreck of a narrative, and they were both short. The second game in the series was significantly better and is one of my favorites of the PS2 era.
Konamiās decision on PT was absolutely baffling, and the fact that Sony didnāt stop them from killing the project is bizarre too. Unless they were asking for an astronomical amount of money to develop the game, they should have just coughed it up and gotten out of the way. That demo generated as much or more hype for the PS4 than any of the actual games. I almost bought one to play it.
If MS were to pick up any sort of game by Kojima and del Torro, even if just a spiritual successor it would be a gaming āheroā move.