Rumor: 'Xbox Next' will be based on ARM and Windows 9

I wonder why people starting rumors when W8 not even out yet. Also, the next console isn't going to be cheaper haha ... next gen consoles will always cost the same or cost more but never cheaper unless they release the one with 4gb hard drive just like the 199.99 360 console.

Originally posted by xaznboitx:

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I wonder why people starting rumors when W8 not even out yet. Also, the next console isn't going to be cheaper haha ... next gen consoles will always cost the same or cost more but never cheaper unless they release the one with 4gb hard drive just like the 199.99 360 console.

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You have hit it on the head...there will probably be no hard drive in the next generation consoles. Hell, there might not even be discs...

So they are making a WII?

No need for any kind of optical drive by 2013 and if they can pull off multi Screen then I'm all in for the next console. Graphics can only take you so far into immersion without something like head tracking or multi screen. PC Gaming is taking off while console gaming is staying the same. Only alternative to trip screen is the HMZ-T1 with head tracking.

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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So they are making a WII?

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wii uses discs still

If they get rid of physical media, I probably won't be a gamer anymore. There's no way I'm paying $60+ dollars for something I don't get an actual hard copy of. I'm not gonna rely on a hard drive or anything else to store my 100+ games. Can you imagine if your system died, hard drive crashed, etc... Yeah, you may be able to re-download, but what a pain. Not to mention, I just don't think they're gonna get rid of physical media any time soon. There's plenty of people who don't have internet or don't have good internet. They'd be losing a lot of money by not selling actual games, in store.

Originally posted by xaznboitx:

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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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So they are making a WII?

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wii uses discs still

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I doubt they will dump discs.

I think it will be discs and media downloads like how they have few games like that now. Example, Black Ops you can just download it and also can get it in hardcopy

Originally posted by Joe_1981:

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If they get rid of physical media, I probably won't be a gamer anymore. There's no way I'm paying $60+ dollars for something I don't get an actual hard copy of. I'm not gonna rely on a hard drive or anything else to store my 100+ games. Can you imagine if your system died, hard drive crashed, etc... Yeah, you may be able to re-download, but what a pain. Not to mention, I just don't think they're gonna get rid of physical media any time soon. There's plenty of people who don't have internet or don't have good internet. They'd be losing a lot of money by not selling actual games, in store.

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I subscribe to Onlive. While I must say they have a lot of work to do and your bandwidth has to be spot on, the concept is the future. I can see the xbox going all 3 routes. Online for older titles, HDD for titles that take a long time to load and Optical media for the unfortunate jackholes that move on with the times. While optical media will probably be around for a long time I can't foresee consoles needing them for more than possible backup and repair purposes. As far as security is concerned, these options are good for keeping jokers from ripping them off. As long as they want to connect to live they will have to stay legit. Also it will cut down on production and shipping cost which means that they SHOULD pass on the savings to us.
I work for a company that is 95% virtual. With the proper setup and a serious IT dept video gaming can be taken to a whole new level. Telecommunications will have to step their game up.

Originally posted by Joe_1981:

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If they get rid of physical media, I probably won't be a gamer anymore. There's no way I'm paying $60+ dollars for something I don't get an actual hard copy of. I'm not gonna rely on a hard drive or anything else to store my 100+ games. Can you imagine if your system died, hard drive crashed, etc... Yeah, you may be able to re-download, but what a pain. Not to mention, I just don't think they're gonna get rid of physical media any time soon. There's plenty of people who don't have internet or don't have good internet. They'd be losing a lot of money by not selling actual games, in store.

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Or one other scenario without getting physical media... Say you buy a game and it's in your "digital locker", and all the game you purchase are in there... At some point your account expires and you don't renew it. Possibly busy with work or as some other in a bad economy like this need to pay for other things first. After some time you now want to re-activate you account, some might remember there password, but some will forget and lose not only there old account but all the software titles they purchased. Only solution i would see people would be forced to maintain active XB0X L1ve accounts...?

Yep no physical media is a pretty bad idea.

Its jut to soon to take a large platform to online only, MS's new system will do a bit of everything relying on discs for the backbone of their sales.

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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Its jut to soon to take a large platform to online only, MS's new system will do a bit of everything relying on discs for the backbone of their sales.

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Too soon if they haven't started working on it already. But even if they start today it would be a matter of time for full conversion if they designed the machine correctly. And with the direction that supercomputing is going, it would be nothing for it to be handled in the next few years. Use GPUs to do all the calculations instead of cpus and this project can take a serious turn within 2 years. They have the money to invest.

Funny how media and software publishers and developers are moving in a positive direction and ISP's are moving in the exact opposite direction, both at the worst possible time. ISP's like comcast and AT&T are charging by the GB (after a certain amount) and pubs/devs are making the consumer dependent on them.

There's no way MS could be clueless enough to make a "digital-only" console.

With broadband providers getting more aggressive about bandwidth caps and a majority of potential users still using subpar isp's, MS would be limiting their potential sales.

The point is they aren't clueless, and they would want it. Frist it will be much harder to pirate stuff as you won't have everything. Second companies could change the internal encryption key on the fly to sure you are a valid customer... Next, nearly no extra cost for shipping or cost for media. There are more reason why companies would want it such as if you for some reason hit some hardship and you account is deactivated and you forget you password and/or change credit cards you'll need to purchase another copy...? Sure the percentage of this happening to people is small but it is there. I honestly don't see any drawback for a company to go totally digital, every issue i've seen raised it would favor them and be desirable...

Don't get me wrong, i'm really on your side i believe, i'm one that would be hard pressed to purchase anything if i don't get a hard copy of the media like most others i feel here are as well. I simply don't see any compelling reason for companies not to go the way of digital only :(

Originally posted by SomeBozo:

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The point is they aren't clueless, and they would want it. Frist it will be much harder to pirate stuff as you won't have everything. Second companies could change the internal encryption key on the fly to sure you are a valid customer... Next, nearly no extra cost for shipping or cost for media. There are more reason why companies would want it such as if you for some reason hit some hardship and you account is deactivated and you forget you password and/or change credit cards you'll need to purchase another copy...? Sure the percentage of this happening to people is small but it is there. I honestly don't see any drawback for a company to go totally digital, every issue i've seen raised it would favor them and be desirable...

Don't get me wrong, i'm really on your side i believe, i'm one that would be hard pressed to purchase anything if i don't get a hard copy of the media like most others i feel here are as well. I simply don't see any compelling reason for companies not to go the way of digital only :(

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Well yes, naturally MS would want to go all digital, but what MS "wants" and what is more practical, in a profitability point of view, is completely different.

Harder to pirate; not at all. Just look at all the console Arcade games and dlc. It's all digital yet it floods the torrents and newsgroups. Same with PC gaming; pirated digital-only content is abundant.

Eliminating hard copies means no extra costs for manufacturing or shipping; sure, but now you have the added costs of running even more servers, staff to monitor them, and bandwidth costs. So there's no saving money by eliminating hard copies.

You saying you can't see any drawbacks to a company going all digital; I've already listed two very good reasons in my previous post. There are still way too many consumers who have limited bandwidth speeds and/or bandwidth caps.

Originally posted by bhetrick:

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Originally posted by SomeBozo:

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The point is they aren't clueless, and they would want it. Frist it will be much harder to pirate stuff as you won't have everything. Second companies could change the internal encryption key on the fly to sure you are a valid customer... Next, nearly no extra cost for shipping or cost for media. There are more reason why companies would want it such as if you for some reason hit some hardship and you account is deactivated and you forget you password and/or change credit cards you'll need to purchase another copy...? Sure the percentage of this happening to people is small but it is there. I honestly don't see any drawback for a company to go totally digital, every issue i've seen raised it would favor them and be desirable...

Don't get me wrong, i'm really on your side i believe, i'm one that would be hard pressed to purchase anything if i don't get a hard copy of the media like most others i feel here are as well. I simply don't see any compelling reason for companies not to go the way of digital only :(

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Well yes, naturally MS would want to go all digital, but what MS "wants" and what is more practical, in a profitability point of view, is completely different.

Harder to pirate; not at all. Just look at all the console Arcade games and dlc. It's all digital yet it floods the torrents and newsgroups. Same with PC gaming; pirated digital-only content is abundant.

Eliminating hard copies means no extra costs for manufacturing or shipping; sure, but now you have the added costs of running even more servers, staff to monitor them, and bandwidth costs. So there's no saving money by eliminating hard copies.

You saying you can't see any drawbacks to a company going all digital; I've already listed two very good reasons in my previous post. There are still way too many consumers who have limited bandwidth speeds and/or bandwidth caps.

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Just curious if you never have the program locally, and run it remotely in the cloud... Then add a DRM scheme in which it uses your computer's signature, memory, cpu, mac address, a guid to generate a unique key for only you... How will you defeat this and get a pirated program? You might but it will be very very hard. The computer signature stuff was build into XP, you could change a few things without invalidating your "signature" but change to much too often or some of the key items, you would need to re-activate your copy of Windows. You might be able to pirate something but your copy will soon be invalidated. You might try to pirate something like this, but it would be pretty darn hard.

Originally posted by SomeBozo:

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Originally posted by bhetrick:

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Originally posted by SomeBozo:

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The point is they aren't clueless, and they would want it. Frist it will be much harder to pirate stuff as you won't have everything. Second companies could change the internal encryption key on the fly to sure you are a valid customer... Next, nearly no extra cost for shipping or cost for media. There are more reason why companies would want it such as if you for some reason hit some hardship and you account is deactivated and you forget you password and/or change credit cards you'll need to purchase another copy...? Sure the percentage of this happening to people is small but it is there. I honestly don't see any drawback for a company to go totally digital, every issue i've seen raised it would favor them and be desirable...

Don't get me wrong, i'm really on your side i believe, i'm one that would be hard pressed to purchase anything if i don't get a hard copy of the media like most others i feel here are as well. I simply don't see any compelling reason for companies not to go the way of digital only :(

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Well yes, naturally MS would want to go all digital, but what MS "wants" and what is more practical, in a profitability point of view, is completely different.

Harder to pirate; not at all. Just look at all the console Arcade games and dlc. It's all digital yet it floods the torrents and newsgroups. Same with PC gaming; pirated digital-only content is abundant.

Eliminating hard copies means no extra costs for manufacturing or shipping; sure, but now you have the added costs of running even more servers, staff to monitor them, and bandwidth costs. So there's no saving money by eliminating hard copies.

You saying you can't see any drawbacks to a company going all digital; I've already listed two very good reasons in my previous post. There are still way too many consumers who have limited bandwidth speeds and/or bandwidth caps.

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Just curious if you never have the program locally, and run it remotely in the cloud... Then add a DRM scheme in which it uses your computer's signature, memory, cpu, mac address, a guid to generate a unique key for only you... How will you defeat this and get a pirated program? You might but it will be very very hard. The computer signature stuff was build into XP, you could change a few things without invalidating your "signature" but change to much too often or some of the key items, you would need to re-activate your copy of Windows. You might be able to pirate something but your copy will soon be invalidated. You might try to pirate something like this, but it would be pretty darn hard.

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Pirates live in obscurity, Always hiding, looking over there back, fighting for territory and trying to justify stealing a product for personal use just cuz they don't believe in the way the giants do business. I know cuz I am one. I love free stuff but I also love protecting whats mine and sometimes I have to sit back and look at my double standard.
Digital only consoles are here. Maybe M$ or $ony won't go that route right away or even with these next consoles but I would be surprised if they don't do more digital content. Maintaining web based gaming as well as designing the consoles to do so would be way cheaper than traditional forms of gaming. The hardware requirements for the end user would be minimal. They could give the consoles away. The only downside would be the lag but as the infrastructure grows, sooner or later that won't be an issue.
As far as support staff, the trouble that would be experienced would most likely be regional and would be fixed by 5 people at best. There are very few companies doing 100% virtual desktops and the it costs have put those companies at the top just because of the low costs. Even if M$ lost half of their customers they would still benefit from the decreased cost of doing business.