Internal Microsoft email: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t | Hacker News Reader

Internal Microsoft email: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t

arstechnica.com

67 pointscooldeal43 comments

Assuming this is even a real email which is already a substantial assumption, and assuming the text of it is accurate, I don't think this is as much of a denial of the general idea as the article suggests.

As quoted in the article, the email says: "Durango [the codename for the next Xbox] is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game."

There's more than enough weasel-room in there (and even some supporting evidence via usage of the phrases "tolerant" and "current connection status") for a system that doesn't require always-on but does require periodically-on, which is something that has been seen on some PC games. So you don't need to be online 100% of the time, if your connection drops for an hour, fine, but if you haven't talked to the mothership in 3 days or whatever now you're locked out.

Anyway, at this point anything said is just speculation and rumor and there's not much to discuss until they make official announcements.

The promoted comment at the bottom makes a good point. It seems like this could be a recent change in direction. While it's possible that this was the intention all along (but Microsoft was intentionally or unintentionally vague with employees at various levels, and sent out this email to get rid of rumors), this seems an unlikely scenario.

I was under the impression that MSFT did it for, or was pressured by the game developers - EA would love if MSFT could make it so that their games are always online to prevent reselling products and reduce piracy.

That being said, I can imagine that it is still a possibility for game developers to use this tactic on the Xbox, just not a requirement. Doesn't seem like MSFT would gain much for wanting to force an always online connection.

I highly doubt they'd change anything this late in the game though.

For all intents and purposes the console will mostly be used while online so this whole saga sounds to me like "anonymous sources" got their wires crossed to begin with.

Alternately, they're sick of employees running their mouths off about things like this and fueling the rumors further, like that guy who got canned for talking about it on Twitter. Keep in mind that MS has tons of employees, and the majority of those people are not privy to the details of products that haven't even been confirmed publicly yet.

I find it entirely credible that they wanted to make sure that nobody would cause another "incident" before the public announcement, and were willing to tell a little more than would be normal to do so.

  | the majority of those people are not privy to
  | the details

From the article:

  | internal Microsoft e-mail sent to all full-time
  | employees working on the next Xbox

I'll concede that not all MS employees working on the next Xbox might need to know everything, but it's not like this was a broadcast to all MS employees to avoid employees from unrelated business units from running their mouths.

  | like that guy who got canned for talking about it on
  | Twitter

Adam Orth was an exec in Microsoft's gaming division. He wasn't some random uninformed Microsoft intern shooting off his mouth on Twitter.

> Adam Orth was an exec in Microsoft's gaming division.

This is not accurate. He was a (not the) Creative Director, which is several levels down the hierarchy from anyone that would be considered an executive. Think of it as one step above Senior Designer.

I stand corrected. I've seen him referred to as a Microsoft exec in stories/comments, related to his whole Twitter debacle.

I stand corrected about the audience, but that really doesn't help your point either - when you make a change, you announce the change, you don't send out an internal email asserting the "new" policy like the old one never existed. This sounds much more like a reminder or clarification than an about-face.

You'd think people working on a project would know better than to believe inaccurate press rumors about the project they are working on, but unfortunately that's not always the case in my experience. While I was working in the Office division there were certain rumors about the next version of Office which had gotten play in the press and had become incredibly widely believed among people working on the next version of Office, despite everyone having access to the real plans (and despite the rumors not making any goddamn sense, but I digress).

It's not a matter of being "privy" to the details. Just having the ability to get accurate information doesn't mean you'll bother to take advantage of that ability.

I work at a large company. Emails reminding people of existing polices are quite normal. Sometimes it is in response to someone violating one of the policies.

I can confirm this. Big international company here.

Maybe they were tired of all the speculations and simply sent a mail clearly stating what the reality is so that the employees won't feed the rumor machine.

A couple weeks before release? Unlikely.

The Xbox 720 is a couple of weeks before release? That's news to me. I've heard Christmas 2013, or even delayed into 2014.

I assume the intended word was "unveiling" as Microsoft said it would unveil the product May 21st, if memory serves me right.

oh right.

Why is it an unlikely scenario? Perhaps they just wanted a "reliable" leak after all the empty rumormongering.

Any way, this sort of email is very common in companies that involve hardware and software roadmaps, NDAs, etc. I don't think it's an insightful comment, and it's annoying when Ars Gawker-like promotes these comments for the sake of controversy.

If true, its nice to see that Microsoft actually cares about what gamers want. They could easily force players into some crazy DRM, and while it would piss off a lot of people and the interwebs would explode, they would probably make more money (at least in the short term).

Conversely, companies like EA seem to honestly not care about anything but the bottom line. They might pay lip-service to caring about their customers, but their actions reflect that they just want revenue by any means necessary. Eventually I think this will bite these companies in the ass, revenue is always a lagging indicator of success.

> If true, its nice to see that Microsoft actually cares about what gamers want. They could easily force players into some crazy DRM, and while it would piss off a lot of people and the interwebs would explode, they would probably make more money

No, they would just hand the next generation to Sony in much the same way that Sony let the last generation slip after being in such a dominant position with the PlayStation 2. Remember, Sega went from being neck-and-neck with Nintendo to leaving the hardware business in just two generations — this is not a field where you can get away with alienating buyers for too long before it catches up to you.

I agree.

My last two "primary" consoles were the Xbox and the Xbox 360 (I also owned Nintendo's consoles primarily for Nintendo's first party games), and I am heavily leaning away from the next Xbox regardless of the "always online" situation. Sony just seems to be focusing more on things I care about (indie games, etc) while Microsoft continues to increase my prices to play online while simultaneously increasing the number of ads thrown at me on the service I am paying for).

If I do switch, I'll miss the Xbox-style controllers, which I much prefer to the Sony "* Shock" design, but I think I'll adjust eventually.

There are adapters and such to use the XBox controller with the PS3 as well as look-alikes.

I find it hard to believe that anybody actually thought that Microsoft was going to build a console with a built-in PR disaster. There never was a statement from Microsoft about this, only 'consistent rumors'. I have a feeling that this is just news because news sites need controversy to drive page views.

You make it sound as if everyone thinking always-on DRM being a PR disaster and a net negative for the company is a given. Blizzard didn't think so, neither did EA, and I could really see Microsoft thinking the same way (hello Windows Genuine Advantage!).

If anything, any company wouldn't be as crazy to do that after all the outrage/negative feedback they receive about it before launch. Releasing it after all of that - now that would be insane.

Always online DRM has pretty much destroyed the SimCity name for EA.

The idea that a platform would pitch "We have the same Call of Duty everyone else has, but you can't play ours when the internet is out." is pretty unlikely.

Activision might pitch that design for the game on all platforms, but MS/Sony/et al are certainly not going to pitch their own platform as handicapped vs its competitors.

I thought that DRM on consoles was generally pretty effective without being always-online.

The console flat out won't run a game without doing a copy-protection check and the whole thing is locked down right to the hardware level.

Jailbreaking a console to run pirate or homebrew content is often a major warranty voiding surgery operation, unlike a PC where one can simply replace the .exe file.

The point isn't to stop piracy. The point is to kill the used game market, which is rather large for consoles.

"I find it hard to believe that anybody actually thought that Microsoft was going to build a console with a built-in PR disaster"

Gaming sites have been in a feedback loop of rumor and fanboi/gurlism ever since the new consoles were announced.

Granted, after the EA DRM debacles I can have some sympathy for the fears, but people have been taking rumor VERY seriously and it's made for poor entertainment and shoddy journalism.

This is just a rumor and should be flagged and have it's title changed to add the [RUMOR] decorator. At this point Microsoft has not officially said anything regarding this.

Exactly. That it will require always on connection was a speculation and this one is too. Why not wait a few weeks to find out for real? I think May 21st is when they reveal it.

Because you can get hits with rumors?

(Hits with the rumor today, and more tomorrow, when the inevitable follow-up lands. And the day before the event, when you reiterate the state of the rumor mill, and the day after the event when you score the rumor mill...)

While the internal email does indicate that players will be able to play offline, it does not indicate if the games themselves will be tied to a account like Steam games.

We will have to see if Microsoft will allow the used games market to continue, or if it will be killed like many publishers want.

They also fail to mention streaming from a PC to Xbox - that has always required an internet connection for some reason. I used to always stream videos from my PC, and if I ever was disconnected from the internet, I'd get a popup saying "failed to download codec" or something like that. As if for every single movie, even if I've already watched it before, has to download a codec. More likely, they were tracking what you were watching.

I wonder what the motivation was to communicate this to employees now (knowing it would "leak"), versus just waiting until their event on 5/21. The rumor has been widespread for a while now, and I don't think two more weeks would have done much damage.

Perhaps to try to avoid every headline after the 5/21 event being "XBox will work offline!" instead of whatever Microsoft wants them to focus on.

It's a sad world when a consumer purchased goods continuing to operate when not connected to the provider's network is somehow newsworthy.

I wonder if we'll have a day when cars are like that: "Sorry, your Ford Go! subscription has expired and your car will remain offline until you remit payment"

I think you just described ZipCar :)

It's utter idiocy if they don't do this.

'nuff said.

The article leaves out another rumor that the new Xbox will have 3 settings and developers can chose which to use. 1) Always Online 2) Activate Online 3) No restrictions

Isn't this already possible with any game on the Xbox 360 or any other modern gaming console? This even happens on the PC. So whether or not that rumor is true has no bearing on anything. It's not news; it already exists and has for years.

Of course it is, which is why the "rumor" is utterly stupid.

EA and whatever other publishers have forced certain games through their servers for online-only already. The rumor is fact for existing generations of console systems. Don't buy those games if this displeases you.

If you want to avoid console gaming because this exists, stay away from Steam because the same games are purchasable from Valve's service with the same always-on DRM. The Steambox or whichever isn't going to refuse the publishers their sweet, sweet DRM.

YAY!

Free single-player games for everyone!

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