Way late to the party here, but you've got a very skewed perception of console offerings based entirely on the 360.

I recently installed a larger HDD in my PS3 to handle the 30 something and growing digital collection of games. Which I continuously receive discounted or for "free" thanks to PSN+.

i mean scripted server side

unless game will be calculated on company servers like wow, people will always find way around

XD! Minette! I so want her to be the third DLC character!

Someone will figure out a way to get around this.

Granted, you would probably need to have a PC/lappy to code around it, at which point, why bother buying games to pay licensing fees for developers to be able to write games for a system that disappears if you don't have someone hack out a fix.

Why would anyone buy a console designed to cease functioning in say 10 years (or whenever they turn off the servers)?

Are they even legally allowed to sell such crap?

Apparently, you can't take your videogame console with you on vacation trips anymore...

[url=#user_comment_274132]@Alex[/url] Don't forget if that power company went out of business, or decided to cut those specific electrons when they decide it isn't making enough money.

@Nando Rock: it's not just the connection to the Internet but to a specific company's servers - the reason I am fine buying a vacuum cleaner is that it doesn't require electrons from a single power plant in Redmond which keeps failing.

Guess the milking and controlling of the users is about to go into a new dimension. Suddenly the Wii U becomes a lot more attratcive to me...

10/10 microsoft

I spy Minette. Too bad she can't beat WULFMANIA! (but the chosen characters aren't up to me)

Can't I just play both? I mean, why is there so much hate of one or the other? Both are great and both suck in several different ways. Just let me game.

Unfortunately, in countries where broadband technology is faulty, the consumer will pay a high price for a console that does not match. I paid $ 35 for 10 mb and connection, and it is unstable.

[url=#user_comment_273856]@Vulpis[/url]: is that already was the time to play on a console was something quick and convenient, we pay the price of technological advancement.

@Mr SP: You misunderstood me, I think--the service I was refering to was the *ISP*, and what that charges you for the internet connection in the first place.

Bullshit, of course. You don't "need internet", you need to ask permission, allow to collect statistics and compromise your security one more time for being allowed to use what you paid for.
But then, you'd expect to hear anything else from ItsNotABugItsAFeature!-Soft? And on jailed toys at that?

Adam Orth seriously needs to be fired.

Like, right now. He goes beyond mental retardation in terms of just how fucking stupid all of his arguements were on those twitter posts.

I am seriously flabbergasted at the fact that he even knows how to fucking breathe on his own.

My UPS/No-break lasts 8 hours while powering my gaming pc.

It is different. Internet connection is less reliable than having electric energy. You lose internet, you can still play games, you lose power, you can't do anything at all.
Also, not everyone has good internet (or internet at all).

Jo!

Where are you! We need more comics!

We demand COMICS! We demand COMICS! We demand COMICS!

Jo when is the rest of the pay day ark going to coum out

Yeah I do love the power argument and how it always seems to come up. Just about every year I lose both weather, freak outage etc.

Just based on experience, I'm about 10x more likely to have the internet go down for a prolonged period than I am the power to drop for any more than an hour.

[url=#user_comment_273020]@Solarn[/url] Easy mate, remember that Wc3 was a 2003 game. There are kids running around now who hardly know what mods are.

Always online, though... you've got the customer's equipment, the lines, the local ISP, the chain of relays going to the company, and finally the company itself. Each of which is somewhere the connection can drop, and most of which the end consumer has little or no control over.

I'm preaching to the converted here, but the distinction is points of failure. Electricity has, effectively, one, and there are ways around that (batteries, have a generator, and so on) that are accessible to customers.

Surprised no one bring up the less noticed problem with Always Online.
Its another hurdle that new gamers (and their parents) will have to overcome.

Well, I'm happy to say that Minette has made it to the second round of voting for the first character vote.

They are already raising flags over how much network traffic there is because the ISPs have been more interested in using the income for short sighted profits than spending it upgrading infrastructure. So we'll hit the wall and people won't be able to keep expanding internet use

[url=#user_comment_273128]@Xeranar[/url] Yes, it may be an ISP issue, but it is a widely known ISP issue. And it seems that everyone that says it isn't that big of a deal is missing the big picture. What happens when too many people in a service area start using too much electricity? It goes out. cont

Microsoft will also require a subscription to just use the console, not even lying. Sign has the article. I hope it is the next comic.

I haven't had a virus in years.
Having a system that's victim to the whims of some assholes, be it microsoft or sony, would be shit. Way worse than anything I can imagine on PC.
The PC is open, free, uncontrolled, it belongs to no one and thus no one can change the rules.

[url=#user_comment_272821]@mindfaQ[/url]: Existing engine limits number of thing you can do because it imposes limitations and object model. For example, implementing procedural world on Unreal 3 will be quite difficult. 3rd party engine won't guarantee that you'll get no problems, by the way.

@fuck it.: Because they're trying to increase profits by improving graphics using same old principles (hire army of artists to do the job). As texture size/number of polygons increase, so does cost of art. Game like GTA4 costs $100mil to develop. Don't you think that's ridiculous? I do.

[url=#user_comment_273298]@2033[/url]: BWAHAHAHA That's why major releases frequently causes many urgent driver updates (some driver issues don't get fixed in years) and that's why the games today are unplayable for weeks after release. Anyone still remembers RAGE problems? How about Biohazard 6?

[url=#user_comment_272755]@sigterm[/url]: BWAHAHAHA that's why direct x and other interfaces are invented.

Do portable systems not exist, or...?

Ahahaha, what a faggot. I hate xbawks kiddies so much.

If you consider the cost of a basic PC for browsing and work plus the console versus the cost of just a basic gaming PC, the cost isn't really an issue too. Heck, the PC route's probably cheaper if you build yourself (Or if the silly console gamer blew thousands on a Mac).

Man, the 256 color compression on this comic really hurts its quality. The third panel resembles a checkerboard.

[url=#user_comment_273144]@Vulpis[/url]: On top of that, the process should be functionally identical to how XBL Silver and PSN currently work, just with "you need to be signed in to play this game" code. So, free. The issue is that it's frustrating, not expensive.

[url=#user_comment_273144]@Vulpis[/url]: I'd think always-on would have to be free. It's not a service, after all. Like always-on DRM, server costs need to be included in the purchase price.

Wait, you're complaining about loading times? Loading times aren't even bad on consoles. It takes much longer to connect to a server in an online game than it does to just wait for the game itself to load.

[url=#user_comment_273128]@Xeranar[/url]: Available and reliable are two different things. Always-on requires *both* to function properly. On top of that, this service very seldom is *free*, so you're basically requiring people to pay a monthly fee on *top* of XBL/PSN+/Whatever in order to play their *singleplayer* games.

[url=#user_comment_272982]@hypocrite[/url]: Because in a *multiplayer* game, having a constant connection makes sense. It's requiring always-on for singleplayer games and/or for the basic console functions that people that's stupid beyond words.

@Captain Anon: ' I don't think Microsoft are capable of such idiocy.'
....Have you paid attention to the OS division lately?

The problem people are having is in the US outside of about 2 states on the west and 3 states in on the east coast internet service gets spotty. Too bad the majority of people live in areas where internet service is almost ALWAYS available. It's an ISP issue not a console issue.

@io.exe:
I don't have a pitchfork, but I have an ax. Is that fine if we decide to get riled up into a fury over random stuff later?

Part 2: If the internet is down for DOTA2, you can play offline games on your PC. Like an RPG or a shooter or something, I guess. The proposed online-only console concept means that option *doesn't exist*. If the internet is down, no single player. At all.

[url=#user_comment_273020]@Solarn[/url]: [url=#user_comment_272982] @hypocrite[/url] : I think there's a major issue that you two have completely failed to understand. DOTA2 is an online game or online-only game. Whatver. That's fine. The issue is an online only-console. Where even single player games are online-only.

f2p or moba is not an excuse. soldat is f2p, multiplayer and allows both online, lan and solo gaming.

[url=#user_comment_272996]@Numlock[/url] Um... The illumination in the final panel IS from the laptop. It's quite clear.

Electricity is usually available and reliable. Not so true with internet connections.

Kotaku is terrible site.
They are basically the punchline in the joke that is modern game journalism.
NEVER GO THERE FOR NEWS. EVER.

[url=#user_comment_272982]@hypocrite[/url]: Are you fucking high? DotA 1 was a Warcraft 3 mod! The "offline" part of it was WARCRAFT FUCKING THREE. Not to mention that Dota 2 still supports offline play. How do you think LAN tournaments can exist?

[url=#user_comment_272982]@hypocrite[/url] You had to pay 60€ to restrict you to a single online server in SC2. It was a terrible offer. DotA2 not only is free to play, but also let's you play anywhere. Also, DotA2 will have official lan/offline/private servers eventually, and in fact it already has them non-officially.

[url=#user_comment_272982]@hypocrite[/url]: DotA 2 is MOBA. O is for Online. So try harder next time.

[url=#user_comment_272982]@hypocrite[/url]: Dota 2 still allows LAN and offline play.

@Mr SP:

Ah, I just noticed she opens her laptop in the final panel. I think the strip would have been more effective if there was a glow from the monitor, and perhaps if her expression was different. It's kind of hard to see the punchline as it is now.

As a person living in a place with shitty internet and frequent blackouts. This is rageworthy

Dota is a multiplayer game. Just like Blizzard did with Starcraft, they dropped LAN (offline) support in the second installment. Blizzard was heavily criticized because of this.

[url=#user_comment_272971]@hypocrite[/url]: Because its possible to play bot game offline in Dota 2.

If you steer away from always online, why do you play dota 2?

Checkmate

No, the X guy is the jackass who equates online-only with electricity. Engie is playing the counterargument: "Yes, and I can play games without either."

So in this comic, Engie-tan is playing the role of that jackass from Microsoft that they had to apologize for?

And Jo, I dislike games with long loading times on the PS3, as well, but when I played PC games, Baldur's Gate wasn't fast loading, either.

@Nando Rock - If you're saying all that, you might as well complain about all the time I spent installing Windows and assorted programs on my PC.

Turns out it was just two friends on Twitter trolling each other. No need to get the pitchforks.

[url=#user_comment_272755]@sigterm[/url]: If that's true, then why have games mostly gone down hill since consoles got center stage for developers? Everything's been downhill roughly since RtCW.

Then they just go right back to cheating. I saw a guy get booted out of 1 match in black ops 2 6 times for team killing. They'd just kill 2 guys, then make sure they could get at least 2 guys with an explosive for the kick kill.

One of my biggest problems with all the online stuff is people will still cheat, still pirate, etc, but the only difference now is that the game is more of a hassle to me. Look at most MMOs, people will pay thousands of dollars to get a leveled character after their old one was banned for cheating.

There is also such a thing as a power strip with a battery backup. What it does is that when there is no power, it automatically starts drawing power from your battery. And it recharges as time goes by.

[url=#user_comment_272775]@Eiji[/url] & @Well... :judging by the archives of this comic, I don't think Jo has had a Handheld console in a long time, if ever.

Is it bad that new consoles are going to make me want to buy older games and play them (and emulate them) rather than buy new ones?

Because Steam and older games are probably going to be all of my business, because at least Steam's always online usually makes sense.

It's not so much being online, as much as the fact that being online severely hinders the game. Reduced freedoms, for one thing. Besides, Origin is a piece of shit to deal with.

[url=#user_comment_272755]@sigterm[/url]: we are not gamedevs though and it is not like it is an unmanagable task to provide a stable game on current systems - it is not hard actually, if you don't write your own graphics engine but only modify the existing and working ones.

@Ze Pyro: Maggots, consoles are the way to go.

@Ze Spy: Maybe some people use their notebooks 4 work too?

put a cartridge on my console, switch it on and just play it

So trueeeee, I still love my 64 and SNes

So the Ps4 is gonna need a Vita,a separate console,to play some games and the Xbox720 is gonna have a "always online" feature.
...
Maybe the Wii U isn't that bad...

Are there really people playing on a laptop?
That's sad.

DS, PSP anyone?

PC is inferior platform for gamedev, because hardware is flexible. Consoles are superior, because hardware (even if it is less powerful) is fixed.

On PC you can't guarantee that the game will reliably work and'll have to troubleshoot every config. On console you can concentrate on gamedev.

Today whan i played some games on steam, there was a server error and steam reported me that the servers werre unavalible for being Unavailable or Too Busy. The only problem for me was that steam didn't sync my achivements. On a different platform this whould have ment no game for me.

cont. scanner which is installed in the console?
"Free" DLC for ad bearing gimmicks? (oh wait EA did that already)
The big players of gaming industry slowly turn to clowns in my eyes. Someone should probably rewrite "IT" by Stephen King...

Number of alienated retards in gaming industry seems to grow exponentially... WE had sub par servers at global game launches, Singleplayergames turned into failed Multiplayer Betas, now we get an always online Console. What is next? Adding bioscanners to verify accounts? Payment only with creditcard

@Captain Anon: no company is save against that level of retarded. Especially considering how their only marketing pitch for live is how it's helping to prevent piracy.


ppffffrt. yah.
http://youtu.be/TgnIjJexut4?t=2m35s

[url=#user_comment_272686]@pinky[/url] you realy think sony would actively chose to not pull a dick move? I mean they released a handheld with a known bug that caused certain buttons to randomly not work. Because fixing the bug would require either the screen to be smaller or the handheld to be bigger.

Whew, wow. I hadn't read those tweets yet.
So......Xbox Next: Dead on Arrival?

[url=#user_comment_272686]@Pinky[/url]: Assuming of course it can be removed and the Nextbox isn't built around being always-online. But only a complete idiot would design a gaming console to be about being always-online, and I don't think Microsoft are capable of such idiocy.

Anything is battery powered if you hook it up to an UPS.

[url=#user_comment_272686]@Pinky[/url]: People are stupid, they will buy it and get banned when returning... Oh, maybe not banned, that's not EA, true...

There are battery powered consoles too, the 3DS and PSVita.

Microsoft can't make their console always online unless Sony does it too ... if Sony doesn't do it then Microsoft will be forced to remove it after a couple months as they get murdered in sales.

One comment Orth made ws 'The electricity might go out. I will never buy a vaccuum cleaner.' Would someone kindly hit him over the head with a Dustbuster? (for the kiddies--the Dustbuster is a *battery powered* vaccuum, which doesn't need what my EU friends refer to as 'mains power' to run...

[url=#user_comment_272663]@Vulpis[/url] I actually didn't know that Steam had an offline mode until after I lost internet at my apartment. It was a lifesaver, and many praises were had.

[url=#user_comment_272591]@Dave[/url]: Yup--the very same reason they *stopped* doing demos, really. They realized that demos would allow you to see how crappy their games were *before* they had your money, and they couldn't tolerate that..

[url=#user_comment_272661]@Vulpis[/url]: Yeah, I'm still usually able to play my steam games in offline mode long as they were verified already. Steam has that over a lot of places in allowing that much.

[url=#user_comment_272580]@Torchman[/url]: Well, Nintendo is anyway--Sony is doing pretty much the same thing as Microsoft is. Plus, there's that whole thing about a system to write code to the install disc locking it to a particular machine...

As others have said, considering power and internet are different things and can go out independently...yeah. Internet requires power (unless you tether). Power doesn't require internet. I want to be able to game even if something goes down with my net, since not everything I have is online multi

[url=#user_comment_272553]@Sigurther[/url]: Steam didn't ask you if you wanted to restart in offline mode? Poor thing. At least they make the effort to *try* to provide a means to play when someone further down the line screwed up, unlike these other 'always-on' setups. *Good* fault-tolerance is a wonderful thing.

[url=#user_comment_272438]@T[/url]: They keep trying to, but they keep having total brain-failure about *why* it works so well. The keys are to be unobtrusive, failure-tolerant, and above all *not* treat your customers as automatically being criminals. Steam gets this--for some reason everyone else refuses to.

@Nando Rock: Yeah...my brother's been complaining about having to do that with his PS3. As I keep saying...if you have to jump through all the same hoops as a PC gamer..just use a PC. At least it can do *other* things, unlike these set-top 'consoles'.

[url=#user_comment_272608]@Eboreg[/url] Good to see that some devs at Bioware still have their heads on. I'm with Jo though, I'm annoyed by the current generation of consoles that are increasingly online only in features. :(

I was looking in the article when I found out that the guy who said to him that there was some very bad precedents for this and got blown off is Manveer Heir, the senior programmer at Bioware.

Yeah.

As it stands, he's just in danger of losing his job and his money, not his head.

Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake. (Disclaimer: she never said that)
Adam Orth: Everyone has high-speed internet.

See a pattern here? Mr. Orth should consider himself lucky that he's just part of a corporation and not a monarchical dictatorship. cont...

I see an upside: the number of apparently great games being funded through Kickstarter and self-published by the devs (with a little help of GOG, Steam, and similar services to help reach the potential customers), most of them promising flawless offline play and no DRM.

Now I'm actually glad I belong to "PC master race". If this news turn out to be true I will enjoy it when it comes down crashing on their heads. They can't possibly expect to keep this system up, also I'm 99% sure it won't prevent piracy. Also, how about game demos? They existed for a reason.

ahhhh, the good old times. I'm so glad I got to be born during the consoles generation. No mother insults, no lag, no trolls, just 4 friends and 4 controllers and one game. It's a DAYUM SHAME that the newer generation will never get to know that...nowadays it's just generic FPS and bad games.*sigh*

I know what're you saying, Jo. To just insert the game cartridge and play it.... those were the times, my friends.

Even if his comments didn't have a connection to the 720, the fact that he has such a high position greatly hurt the Xbox division's reputation. Even now, since Microsoft won't comment on what just happened, the 720 is taking a huge hit PR wise and Sony and Nintendo are just laughing it up....

[url=#user_comment_272569]@Barcode[/url]: Your point about sharing is good, yet it might not be possible for PS4 and who knows about next Xbox console.

I liked console games back when they were released complete.

(Part 2)
However if I buy Tomb Raider on PC, who will play it? Only me. On Consoles, my friends can borrow it, making consoles cheaper if you share the singleplayer games.

Also, games like Uncharted and GoW only load when you start the game, then there are no loading times.

(Part 1)
The biggest advantage I see for the PC is how cheap the games are. I got Tomb Raider for 20€ and Bioshock Infinite fpr 25€, but with part 1+2 and XCOM for free as a bonus.

On PS3, the best price is usually around 30-40€, which makes me sad.

As someone who grew up in an age where being online was a luxury and not a requirement, I've never been fond of that system. Most notably when I was playing Portals or HL2 and winter kept knocking my tv and internet out. "Oops, well, no tv. Time for games!" (Steam cannot connect!) "No games either."

LOL as if always-online DRM ever deterred anyone from pirating stuff. It's just a way of screwing legit customers.

[url=#user_comment_272539]@Somefag[/url] I think it's rice bowl or soup. Ottomo would've been a better servant. --- Then the next-gen consoles now have emergency battery life to weather through a short power outage.

Oooooh I get what's going on in the background
Minette is a clumsy waitress,so when the light went out she slipped and dropped the tea or whatever she was carrying

*wouldnt've bought them = wouldnt even bother looking at

(cont) And how often does my internet go out? 4 times every week at least, 10 minutes average, usually in my playing time.
I cannot think of a worse argument than "But you rely on this, and it MIGHT go out, so having to deal with something you know of that it often does not work is not bad."

Man, yes, power goes out too, except I cannot even remember one time in the last 5 years when it did!
The only time I remember it did at all was 8 years ago, with a week's warning, because the cables needed to be renewed.
(cont)

Without piracy AAA-crap would stink even more. In the end its all about megacorporations (same with music recording and other patent-whores and alike) getting moar money and those anti-piracy fags are just licking their butt because its them they care about, not users who play their consoles.
/rant

They do so much stupid and annoying shit to counter piracy when it actually helps to develop better games. This way people can try out indie games, without piracy they wouldnt've bought them, people can also try out AAA-crap and compare them to many other games.

Black ops 2 came out, it couldn't really find any games with low enough ping to let me in.

I find it funny because my internet goes out far more often that my power does(internet goes out almost daily and takes a few minutes to come back, power maybe once a month and it's usually back in seconds). And to top it off, my internet can hardly be called fast. Just 3 months after cont...

[url=#user_comment_272396]@Swagner[/url]: That's just the thing though, they get to make up lost sales to piracy. They just predict what the sales numbers should be and if they are low they just claim that that amount was lost to piracy.

Our dear friend Mr. Orth lives in a fairy dreamland where even the most rural areas of the country have high-speed cable or DSL access all the time. Unfortunately for him and his pals at Microsoft, this is not the case.

[url=#user_comment_272450]@Zamzoph[/url]: but great in an outage. My laptop can last roughtly an hour gaming before it dies. Which is good, because most outages are only half an hour, tops. And if electricity goes out for more than an hour, I wouldn't be bothered really about my games not working more than the kettle not working..

It's funny because Ive played on a laptop tethered to my phone for 4G even during an outage.

Anyway, I can show XBOX my always-offline methodology if they like.

I also miss the days when consoles were all plug and play. No updates required.

[url=#user_comment_272396]@Swagner[/url]: I don't know about videogames and consoles, but I do know that piracy was actually beneficial for sales of most other Microsoft products, like Windows and Office. @Kenpachi RAMASAMA: Because stupid people allowed him to.

Oh my God, I read that retard's tweet earlier today and I nearly punched my fucking monitor.

How can someone with that much authority and/or money be allowed to be that goddamn stupid?

Wut. That Adam Orth really is a dick.

Nothing in my house or on my person is "always on" except for the internet on my main Desktop PC and my 200-minutes-per-month non-smart cell phone.
Virtually all of my discretionary spending is on video games, so I am not a non-customer to these people. The console I played most this month: SNES.

Games tend to kill laptop batteries pretty damn quickly.

[url=#user_comment_272418]@KillerXzow[/url] Indeed. Steam works so fine, I have no idea why everybody just don't copy it... Feels like the people running the gamming industry never played a game themselves

Laptops are awesome, but they cant beat a Desktop when it is about high end hardware.
Anyway, is it so hard for those companies understand that DRM are possible, but they dont need to be so harsh.
Look at Steam, the perfect example. Your game doesnt stop because you had a quick internet failure.

It's petty to be selective about which always-online DRM you prefer.
It's bad, but it's not unusable because it's worked just fine for years. It's only bad when misused (no offline option) or the servers backing it are garbage.

[url=#user_comment_272397]@VioletZer0[/url]: Same. Except I have Xbox, Wii, and PS2 set up to just load up a list of games to play from HDD.

Where did that bowl of white liquid came from?

"I miss the time when I could put a cartridge in my console and just play it."

So do I, dude. So do I. One of the reasons why I still keep my SNES and stuff. I just pop it in and I'm like "Wow, why can't modern games be like this?"

No kidding. I occasionally wonder if companies lose more money on DRM and lost customers than they save by preventing piracy.

Today: install console, turn on, configure system, configure broad band, make a account, configure account, download apps, new patch for console annnnnd, finally... download game, install game, download patchs and dlc and after all that things... play a game.

Minette as a background character? Right after she was a main part of the last strip? Someone has a new waifu.

what was that? Our servers are not available? Let me check... Well... Yeah, It looks like one of our employees stumbled over some cable. The servers should be back on in a few hours... You can't play your game? Of course You can't play your game! It's single player!

All bow before our battery overlords!

First!