Seems like Microsoft is getting ready to shoot themselves in the foot again, this time with the forthcoming XBox 720. There has been rumors that it would need an always on Internet Connection so it can ‘phone home’ every 3-minutes. Seems this may have been confirmed earlier this week on Twitter:
Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth: “Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an ‘always on’ console,” he tweeted, presumably talking about rumors of an Internet requirement for Xbox Infinity. “Every device now is ‘always on’. That’s the world we live in. #dealwithit.” “
Well, I sure like to know what ISP Adam Orth has or how much he is paying, that he doesn’t have to worry about not being connected. Sorry, a lot of people don’t have a reliable Internet connection. At least with a PC or even the Xbox 360 (and may be even the upcoming PS4) you can still play single player games off-line without the device going into “network troubleshooting mode” after 3-minutes of the console failing the phone home. Guess Microsoft didn’t learn anything from the fallout with EA’s Sim City 5 disaster of a release earlier this year. For those who missed it, Sim City 5 requires you to be online to play, even in single player mode. When EA released the game, they somehow managed to badly under-estimated the demand and did not have anywhere close to an adequate number of servers to accommodate the demand.
Then there is also the matter of tying XBox 720 games to your XBox Live Account. While it is suppose to prevent piracy, it could also prevent users from lending the game to their friends and family or selling the game. Much like the way iTunes use to work before they went DRM Free, iTunes would have to ‘phone home’ and have you sign into your iTunes account before you could play your downloaded media locally (or on another device).
