With 21 May coming even closer, the excitement around the
new Xbox grows even higher.
First the discussions were mainly about the name with Xbox
720, Xbox Loop and Xbox Durango (which turned out to be the internal testing
name for the device). The hocus-pocus around the name soon died with most
people anticipating it to be called just “Xbox”. This make a lot of sense to me
as it conveys a powerful sense of commitment. It says that it isn’t the next
Xbox, or the latest Xbox, or anything like that — just simply the definitive
machine. This would be similar to Apple’s strategy of naming the most recent of
its tablet offering simply as “iPad”.
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| A now-former Microsoft employee was even caught defending the controversial feature |
The topic that stirred up quite a storm on the internet was
the “Always on, Always Connected.” rumor about the next Xbox. I’m not so sure
where it originated, it was about the requirement of active internet connection
to use any feature of the next Xbox. Right from the start I was against this,
and I always thought of it as a gigantic mistake by Microsoft. It would hand the
business to Sony with its PS4, and basically tell people with unreliable
internet that they shouldn’t buy the console.
It was quite a relief to see an internal letter pop up onArs Techina. “There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work
without an Internet connection, and those should ‘just work’ regardless of
their current connection status,” the email says, it also goes on to state
single player gaming to be one such scenario. The fact that it’s a mass email
suggests that this is a recent change, or at least a recent clarification, in
Microsoft’s official policy. A company however big it might be never sends an
e-mail to everyone to say, "Just FYI, the policy we've had this whole time
is still the policy. Keep doing what you've been doing."
How good the next Xbox will be? We still don’t know. Will it
be better than the PS4? No idea. But luckily the fears that the console will be
completely useless when your broadband goes down have been overblown.
Source: Ars Techina
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