Yesterday, Microsoft Studio’s Creative Director, Adam Orth, was tweeting about an “On-All-The-Time” future, and how people aren’t with the times of the Internet. He got in an argument with a BioWare employee, Manheer Heir, and told him to just “deal-with” the online future. However, I don’t think Heir is alone here. I along with many other people find reasons why there should be an offline option for games. The following is a string of Tweets from Orth, about what he expects from electronics and electronics consumers, before his “deal with it” tweet.
Although the beginning might be exaggerated, the end tweets are surprising. Every system always-on? I don’t think so. In 2012, Microsoft announced that they had sold 76 million units, and that only 46 million subscribed to XBOX Live. A little more than half. That still leaves 30 million users who are not connected to the Internet, and therefore, by an always-on system, couldn’t even operate it. But don’t worry, they can just “deal with it”.
However, there are other problems that could arise from online systems. Internet connection problems are commonplace, and if any console wants to sell well as an online system, the WiFi infrastructure has to be greatly improved first. If I can’t rely on something to work at least 90% of the time, I’m not going to spend my time OR money on it.
Microsoft has not officially commented about their system being always-on, but since these tweets, an unspecified source said to Kotaku that “If the connection is interrupted then after a period of time — currently three minutes, if I remember correctly — the game/app is suspended and the network troubleshooter started,” referring to the next XBOX.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment with feedback or your thoughts in the comments below!
~Jacob Montgomery
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All pictures are from IGNÂ http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/05/microsoft-creative-director-on-always-online-deal-with-it
Neurotic Glader 