Xbox 720 Always Online Rumour Lives On
Shane Blume / 12 years ago
Rumors are spreading quickly on what features and functions the next generation of Microsofts Xbox will bring us. One of the things that I found, is that Xbox is likely to require the user to provide a constant internet connection to the device. Though we really will not know for sure until Microsoft lets us know on May 21st. If you do not have an internet connection you will likely either not have some of the features that are available, in a worst case scenario, you wouldn’t be able to use your Xbox at all.
Now I know that not everyone has a fast internet connection, and having a device such as an Xbox hooked up could easily hog all of your bandwidth. Though in most places you’re able to get awesome internet speeds, some folks in more rural areas are still stuck with slow internet speeds, at times as low as 768 Kbps.
If you’re a gamer, you likely have not forgotten about Diablo 3 or much more recently EAs SimCity. Both companies decided to force Always-Online and this has prevented thousands of users from being able to play a game that they have purchased. Though the servers are having minimal issues now, if every game was Always-Online we could potentially have this issue every week when new games are released.
Two years ago Lulzsec took out Playstation, forcing Sony to take down all of their servers and preventing access to the Playstation network. Users were not able to use their Playstations for any Online games for over 3 weeks. If something were to happen to Xboxs servers this same issue could happen to their user base, preventing hundreds of thousands of users worldwide from being able to play their games online, perhaps from even using their console at all.
Of course there will probably be some way to jailbreak your system, but risking terminating your warranty, really probably not worth it. Unless you are a die hard Xbox fan, you might want to go with a PS4, a company who knows better than to make users provide a constant internet connection to their gaming device.
Are you planning on purchasing a Xbox? Do you think that Xbox should force users to be Always-Online?
