Monday, October 04, 2010
Bye, Xbox! Or why I'm back on the PC...
I have just unplugged my Xbox 360. It will either move to a friend's place or Ebay.
From now on I will only play on my PC again.
This is probably my longest entry on this blog, explaining the reasons why:
Hardware issues: Ring of Death (ROD) and scratched CDs
This one goes without saying. "Console" implies that it just works, does not destroy games or itself. After reading all ROD horror stories on the web a couple of years ago, I was sure my Xbox would be the next to go red each time I started it.
That being said, my 2005 Xbox still runs today, even though with a different DVD drive. The old one destroyed some game DVDs which was very disappointing.
Custom Xbox hardware
The Xbox uses USB ports to connect its controllers (or not, if you're running wireless controllers). Wouldn't it make sense to allow any PC gamepads, wheels and mice to be used with it? Microsoft does not think so.
The most popular PC steering wheels are produced by Logitech. You can use those wheels on the PC as well as on a Playstation 2 or PS3 and experience 900 degree rotation and great force feedback which all adds to immersion. And on your Xbox? Forget it!
But players wanted to play Project Gotham Racing, Forza Motorsport, etc. with a proper racing wheel instead of a dull Xbox controller. Therefore Microsoft developed its own Xbox 360 steering wheel, with a $150 price tag. It was the only one with force feedback for 3 years. If you wanted force feedback in Xbox racing games, you had to buy it.
They played out their monopoly cards well on this one. The same could be said regarding the Wifi USB stick, et al.
Being forced to use proprietary software is one thing (Hi Apple!) but hardware is a different story.
"Game update" mentality and weak quality control
I remember playing games on SNES, Dreamcast and Playstation (1) that were practically flawless.
Nowadays, some Xbox 360 games already have patches available on Xbox Live (they call them "game updates" which sorts of gives you a hint at the mentality) before their official release date. Much like... PC games.
Microsoft controls game quality pre-release, but that's not enough obviously. Everybody who knows the business also knows that publishers tend to rush releases at all costs and I'm pretty sure that bigger publishers have weaker guidelines applied than small indie studios.
Part of the problem:
Microsoft quality control can only check so-and-so much, thus "big games" (think: GTA) which tend to be sold by big publishers containing dozens of bugs can pass quality control. Even "Showstoppers" cannot be found because of the sheer size of the game and its possibilites.
On the other hand, finding bugs in a small game (think: Castle Crashers) seems more manageable.
Having an old Xbox 360 without WiFi in the livingroom, it has become a habit to connect the box to my LAN in another room and check for updates before starting to play new games. I'm not too thrilled about it but it's better than a corrupted savegame or buggy game physics.
"Offline Xbox owners" tend to have a very different gaming experience than Xbox Live users. Ironically not just because of multiplayer.
Game-changing Downloadable Content (DLC)
DLC is a different name for what PC users know as "Add-ons".
I'm all for adding new content to an existing game but some publishers take it way too far. Some DLC packages on the marketplace are literally game changers: If you don't own them, say goodbye to competitive online games.
Suddenly you are outplayed by people who just shelled out more for the game than you did. Not fun at all for casual gamers. I'm not much of a FPS player on consoles so I've only heard about "premium DLC" for FPS games that outshines the regular content .
Here is a better example from Forza Motosport:
After DLC release, the top ranks of the leaderboards were all filled by DLC cars. Suddenly that #1 lap time in time attack didn't mean that much anymore because there were much faster cars now easily beating your time, using the same leaderboards as the original Forza cars.
The whole story left a bad taste of "Want to be good at this game again? Pay for it!".
Questionable cheater policies
When Forza 2 came out, it was a mess. Containing more bugs and glitches than tracks, it was one of those racing games with a dubious Xbox Live experience: You never knew if you were losing to your opponents or to some lame glitch concerning game physics or controller behaviour. Often, it would be the latter.
A few weeks later, these bugs were patched. But that was only the tip of the iceberg since new "glitches" appeared everywhere and everybody used them online.
Leaderboards were filled by "glitched" laptimes and finally people found a way to manipulate their in-game credits through a bug which rendered the in-game car auctions useless.
There never way a way to get rich by racing in Forza. Now the only way to make some money was by using the exploit. The only way to beat inflation was to print some money yourself!
The money glitch was fixed by a patch but because of the ingenious game update system on Xbox 360, you could still "downgrade" your game, exploit the bug offline, update the game to the latest version and go online and spend some fake credits.
As far as I know, this procedure still works for every Xbox 360 game.
If you played Forza back then you had to deal with cheated laptimes, inflation caused by fake credits and patches that did not work. It had all become out of hands and the worst was yet to come.
The developer employed an "it's ok if it's not excessive" policy for cheaters. They were completely ok with you abusing their game mechanics as long as it did you gain you are #1 spot on the leaderboards or made you an in-game billionaire. Nobody had anything to fear by flying under the radar!
Cheating continued as if nothing happened, just less excessive.
The same policy is still used for all kinds of Xbox Live titles today (Halo: Reach et. al.).
The actual prevention of cheating remains a goal which is yet to be achieved on Xbox Live. On the other hand, accepting cheaters is very hard to understand for me.
Missing community support
Clans and teams exist as long as multiplayer gaming. They are a vital part of online competition on the PC.
Running a team of gamers includes the use of communication, schedules, leagues, member organization, trial memberships and such. Xbox Live supports none of that except for the LIVE messaging service.
You can change your gamertag to show the world your team affiliation and try to organize as much as possible using LIVE messaging. At some point you need to power off your Xbox and do the rest on the WWW. It's a split world: Organize on PC, play on Xbox.
Most big clans know the limitations of Xbox community support and have their own website.
If you're using your PC to keep in touch with team members anyway... wouldn't it make much more sense to just play on PC as well?
Old games are dead
There are lots of great games which are dead on Xbox LIVE simply because of their age and people have moved on.
On the PC, a strong community can keep a game active for a long time. Some games never die (Counterstrike of course, but also small games like SubSpace/Continuum or Need For Speed: Porsche).
On Xbox 360, good luck trying to find a lobby for PGR4.
No customization
I keep smiling when reading comments like "is this for Xbox 360?" beneath YouTube videos of the latest PES Bundesliga patch.
If you want mods, inofficial patches, edited databases, fan add-ons and all the little customizations that make PC games great, play it on PC.
Of course, this was something I knew beforehand.
Not being the typical Xbox player
When you start your Xbox first the first time, it asks you to create a "gamer profile". By playing games on it, you can unlock "Gamerscore points". A single game usually has 1,000 of those to offer.
Xbox gamers seem to play a LOT of different games (I've seen profiles with more than 300,000 points). They hunt for in-game "achievements" to drive up their score and quit games when they are finished (1,000 of 1,0000). Then, they move on to the next game. True "achievement whores".
After 5 years, I have less than 5,000 points. I can count the number of full-price games I bought on one hand. I think I can safely say that I am not the typical Xbox gamer.
Also see:
1 Million Gamerscore
Xbox 360 Gamerscore Leaderboard
But... not everything was bad.
I really liked the "insert and play" feeling on my Xbox 360.
There was no need to manually download any patches/drivers, no lengthy configuration dialogs, no multi-DVD installations (installing Forza3 on my Xbox HD that took an hour is a different story), no stupid "phone home" DRM like UbiSoft uses on the PC lately, no bullshit.
I absolutely loved Xbox Live Arcade which contained some great games you would not necessarily expect on a console.
Also, the Xbox exclusives were pretty cool (mainly Forza, but also Halo for some quick multiplayer fun).
Bye, Xbox!
From now on I will only play on my PC again.
This is probably my longest entry on this blog, explaining the reasons why:
Hardware issues: Ring of Death (ROD) and scratched CDs
This one goes without saying. "Console" implies that it just works, does not destroy games or itself. After reading all ROD horror stories on the web a couple of years ago, I was sure my Xbox would be the next to go red each time I started it.
That being said, my 2005 Xbox still runs today, even though with a different DVD drive. The old one destroyed some game DVDs which was very disappointing.
Custom Xbox hardware
The Xbox uses USB ports to connect its controllers (or not, if you're running wireless controllers). Wouldn't it make sense to allow any PC gamepads, wheels and mice to be used with it? Microsoft does not think so.
The most popular PC steering wheels are produced by Logitech. You can use those wheels on the PC as well as on a Playstation 2 or PS3 and experience 900 degree rotation and great force feedback which all adds to immersion. And on your Xbox? Forget it!
But players wanted to play Project Gotham Racing, Forza Motorsport, etc. with a proper racing wheel instead of a dull Xbox controller. Therefore Microsoft developed its own Xbox 360 steering wheel, with a $150 price tag. It was the only one with force feedback for 3 years. If you wanted force feedback in Xbox racing games, you had to buy it.
They played out their monopoly cards well on this one. The same could be said regarding the Wifi USB stick, et al.
Being forced to use proprietary software is one thing (Hi Apple!) but hardware is a different story.
"Game update" mentality and weak quality control
I remember playing games on SNES, Dreamcast and Playstation (1) that were practically flawless.
Nowadays, some Xbox 360 games already have patches available on Xbox Live (they call them "game updates" which sorts of gives you a hint at the mentality) before their official release date. Much like... PC games.
Microsoft controls game quality pre-release, but that's not enough obviously. Everybody who knows the business also knows that publishers tend to rush releases at all costs and I'm pretty sure that bigger publishers have weaker guidelines applied than small indie studios.
Part of the problem:
Microsoft quality control can only check so-and-so much, thus "big games" (think: GTA) which tend to be sold by big publishers containing dozens of bugs can pass quality control. Even "Showstoppers" cannot be found because of the sheer size of the game and its possibilites.
On the other hand, finding bugs in a small game (think: Castle Crashers) seems more manageable.
Having an old Xbox 360 without WiFi in the livingroom, it has become a habit to connect the box to my LAN in another room and check for updates before starting to play new games. I'm not too thrilled about it but it's better than a corrupted savegame or buggy game physics.
"Offline Xbox owners" tend to have a very different gaming experience than Xbox Live users. Ironically not just because of multiplayer.
Game-changing Downloadable Content (DLC)
DLC is a different name for what PC users know as "Add-ons".
I'm all for adding new content to an existing game but some publishers take it way too far. Some DLC packages on the marketplace are literally game changers: If you don't own them, say goodbye to competitive online games.
Suddenly you are outplayed by people who just shelled out more for the game than you did. Not fun at all for casual gamers. I'm not much of a FPS player on consoles so I've only heard about "premium DLC" for FPS games that outshines the regular content .
Here is a better example from Forza Motosport:
After DLC release, the top ranks of the leaderboards were all filled by DLC cars. Suddenly that #1 lap time in time attack didn't mean that much anymore because there were much faster cars now easily beating your time, using the same leaderboards as the original Forza cars.
The whole story left a bad taste of "Want to be good at this game again? Pay for it!".
Questionable cheater policies
When Forza 2 came out, it was a mess. Containing more bugs and glitches than tracks, it was one of those racing games with a dubious Xbox Live experience: You never knew if you were losing to your opponents or to some lame glitch concerning game physics or controller behaviour. Often, it would be the latter.
A few weeks later, these bugs were patched. But that was only the tip of the iceberg since new "glitches" appeared everywhere and everybody used them online.
Leaderboards were filled by "glitched" laptimes and finally people found a way to manipulate their in-game credits through a bug which rendered the in-game car auctions useless.
There never way a way to get rich by racing in Forza. Now the only way to make some money was by using the exploit. The only way to beat inflation was to print some money yourself!
The money glitch was fixed by a patch but because of the ingenious game update system on Xbox 360, you could still "downgrade" your game, exploit the bug offline, update the game to the latest version and go online and spend some fake credits.
As far as I know, this procedure still works for every Xbox 360 game.
If you played Forza back then you had to deal with cheated laptimes, inflation caused by fake credits and patches that did not work. It had all become out of hands and the worst was yet to come.
The developer employed an "it's ok if it's not excessive" policy for cheaters. They were completely ok with you abusing their game mechanics as long as it did you gain you are #1 spot on the leaderboards or made you an in-game billionaire. Nobody had anything to fear by flying under the radar!
Cheating continued as if nothing happened, just less excessive.
The same policy is still used for all kinds of Xbox Live titles today (Halo: Reach et. al.).
The actual prevention of cheating remains a goal which is yet to be achieved on Xbox Live. On the other hand, accepting cheaters is very hard to understand for me.
Missing community support
Clans and teams exist as long as multiplayer gaming. They are a vital part of online competition on the PC.
Running a team of gamers includes the use of communication, schedules, leagues, member organization, trial memberships and such. Xbox Live supports none of that except for the LIVE messaging service.
You can change your gamertag to show the world your team affiliation and try to organize as much as possible using LIVE messaging. At some point you need to power off your Xbox and do the rest on the WWW. It's a split world: Organize on PC, play on Xbox.
Most big clans know the limitations of Xbox community support and have their own website.
If you're using your PC to keep in touch with team members anyway... wouldn't it make much more sense to just play on PC as well?
Old games are dead
There are lots of great games which are dead on Xbox LIVE simply because of their age and people have moved on.
On the PC, a strong community can keep a game active for a long time. Some games never die (Counterstrike of course, but also small games like SubSpace/Continuum or Need For Speed: Porsche).
On Xbox 360, good luck trying to find a lobby for PGR4.
No customization
I keep smiling when reading comments like "is this for Xbox 360?" beneath YouTube videos of the latest PES Bundesliga patch.
If you want mods, inofficial patches, edited databases, fan add-ons and all the little customizations that make PC games great, play it on PC.
Of course, this was something I knew beforehand.
Not being the typical Xbox player
When you start your Xbox first the first time, it asks you to create a "gamer profile". By playing games on it, you can unlock "Gamerscore points". A single game usually has 1,000 of those to offer.
Xbox gamers seem to play a LOT of different games (I've seen profiles with more than 300,000 points). They hunt for in-game "achievements" to drive up their score and quit games when they are finished (1,000 of 1,0000). Then, they move on to the next game. True "achievement whores".
After 5 years, I have less than 5,000 points. I can count the number of full-price games I bought on one hand. I think I can safely say that I am not the typical Xbox gamer.
Also see:
1 Million Gamerscore
Xbox 360 Gamerscore Leaderboard
But... not everything was bad.
I really liked the "insert and play" feeling on my Xbox 360.
There was no need to manually download any patches/drivers, no lengthy configuration dialogs, no multi-DVD installations (installing Forza3 on my Xbox HD that took an hour is a different story), no stupid "phone home" DRM like UbiSoft uses on the PC lately, no bullshit.
I absolutely loved Xbox Live Arcade which contained some great games you would not necessarily expect on a console.
Also, the Xbox exclusives were pretty cool (mainly Forza, but also Halo for some quick multiplayer fun).
Bye, Xbox!
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