The Always On Xbox Is Such A Bad Idea

I recently came across the story about someone at Microsoft quitting or being asked to quit or being asked to simply leave (jury’s still out on which is which) over comments made on Twitter. This, of course, caught my eye.  Delving deeper, the guy in question said some stuff on Twitter about the ‘always on‘ concept that’s been rumored to be a part of the next generation XBOX currently under development.

A quote:

“More pressing than any hardware spec, confirmed launch title or release date is the rumor that Microsoft will bake in so called “always-online functionality” to its new Xbox. Always-online functionality would require players to maintain an active Internet connection at all times just to use the new console.”

Blergh.

What a steaming pile of shit this idea is.

Seriously.

I am not a fan of the console games moving to online content model so many companies/developers are going with.  I kept my XBOX offline until Batman: Arkham City and have since regretted taking it online (I did so to get the Robin/Catwoman extras for the game).  Now it wants to go online every single time I turn it on, and for the longest time, demanded that I log in every freaking time I turned it on too (I finally figured out how to set it to auto login).

I just want to play the game.  I don’t want to have to login.  I don’t want to have to sit in a queue for a server.  I don’t want to socialize – I had World of Warcraft for that.  All I want to do is play my freaking game and I’m paying $60 for it, so I should be able to do that without also paying for Internet.

The recent Sim City Debacle (resulting in EA’s CEO resigning) should have been a wake-up call.  People don’t want to sit in a queue for 30+ minutes to play a single player game.  Add to this the issue of not everyone having high speed Internet connections (which is what got the guy mentioned at the beginning of this fired), and the problem becomes more complicated.

In the new job, I sell people 2 services; television and Internet.  In rural areas, the only Internet available comes with latency (lag) and data caps.  Can’t use it for gaming or streaming video because those 2 things will eat up your datacaps.  And that is an issue.  Until wires go everywhere – and right now, they don’t – I can’t see this being a viable platform.

Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.

But I do know this – I won’t buy it/use it.

I just want to play my games…

~P