Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Xbox One: Where Nostalgia Goes to Die

Do you remember finding your old Nintendo in the attic after years in storage. Hooking it up and playing all your favorite games?

Or maybe after spring break you brought your Nintendo 64 back to college and played with your buddies for hours.

Or you might have popped Final Fantasy VII into your PS1 to play through your favorite RPG.

None of these nostalagic moments in gaming will be possible with the Xbox One.

Microsoft announced the Xbox One yesterday afternoon and it has been confirmed that you will need to pay a fee to play used games and will need to verify internet connection every 24 hours.

Both of those services require Microsoft's servers to actively allow you to play the games. If the servers are not doing that you cannot play. In 10-15 years when Microsoft inevitability stops support for Xbox One, you will no longer be able to play games.

When you find the Xbox One in your attic after 25 years you will think "I remember this. Halo 6 was awesome. I should buy it and play it again." But the system won't let you play a used game because you can't pay the used game fee required for activation.

In 10 years when you bring the system to college after spring break you won't be able to play multiplayer Gears of War 5 because the servers aren't active to verify you own the game.

The Xbox One will be the first video game console - and the first consumer electronic product I can think of - with a definite death. At some point Microsoft will disable the servers and it will be useless.

15 comments :

mndrix said...

That's a crappy user experience. In the last year, my home Internet has been down for 24 hours on three separate occasions. I sure hope this behavior scares a bunch of people away from Xbox One and makes an example out of this silliness.

Anonymous said...

I don't have internet at home, I can access it at work, on my phone, and at the library down the street. There is no way I'm paying $30 a month or more to get high speed connected at my house to pay $60 a year for Xbox Live, to buy a $400 One system, get a second controller for my friend for $50, and buy a $60 game with no resale value becuase people know they will have to pay a fee. I love my 360 but Microsoft is sniffing glue on this one. A large population in the country can't afford the things that will make this sytem work to it's fullest.

Sounds like this will be the end of me buying games for a current gen system.

Anonymous said...

People aren't really getting what this means. You can still play a used game on the console without paying a fee. YOU ONLY have to pay a fee if you want to download the game to your hard drive and then get rid of the disc. You can still play used games as much as you want offline.

You only have to check in every 24 hours for the handshake authentication if you are using games that are downloaded onto your hard drive or in the cloud. This is the authentication that the game is yours. Because of the x86 architecture, more authentication needs to be put in place to ensure there is no pirating going on.

JJ Hendricks said...

@anonymous - You are incorrect. The Wired article with all the reveal info directly from Microsoft says:

"On the new Xbox, all game discs are installed to the HDD to play"

You do not have the option to play just on the disc.

Anonymous said...

That is awesome news I have always disliked x box I would love to see it fail.

Terry Morgan said...

Goodbye Microsoft!

Jason Peters said...

They finally get to get paid the royalties they have been whining about for years. Want to sell or give away your game, sure they can't prevent that. But the person that ends up with the game has to pay full retail value to activate it according the all the recent interviews. Greed.

Click my name to watch a funny video I made regarding this.

Anonymous said...

PS4 this round I guess.

ccc said...

Nostalgia is for ppl that miss having something. You can't miss something you never had. Ms will not want u owning any part of this. I will just play what I can own - old school = best school

Anonymous said...

How bad will this die in overseas sales of developing nations that done have phone/internet?

Adam484 said...

The Xbox already collects dust on the racks overseas. I don't have wireless internet and I hate the direction the game industry is going. Pretty soon I will be 100% retro if it continues.

Austin said...

I love Microsoft...but this....no, just no...

Anonymous said...

Sony's PS4 will be the same way though. Both companies are doing the same thing, but that will be made clear soon enough. Perhaps we will see a videogame crash in 2014.

Anonymous said...

what's next for microsoft? you are not able to buy used XboxOne console?

Anonymous said...

Check this out. M$ says they will do used and no always on single player. Too little too late. Ps4 this round, retro forever

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