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[TheLegendary]

Proves Sony has it right on this one.

The fact that he doesn't like that they're moving to how Sony does it means that Sony had it right?

 

[Doodis]

Hating that they thinking of moving away from MSP. Terrible decision.

Huh? I thought Microsoft points were universally hated. I'd rather they just stuck with normal currency like the rest of the world.

 

[The Living Tribunal]

Sorry for double post but he's talking about the 720 now. He said no one from the media ever contacted him to know more.

EDIT:
He said he doesn't really know what always online means, doesn't know if it's for DRM specifically.

MS insider sent him a lot of info recently who gave him info and said this source gave him info that some of it confirms what he knows, some of it directly contradicts what he knows, and some of it he doesn't know anything about. He said he held back on divulging this info because of how questionable his source was but the guy went to other blogs and they published it anyways (the stuff that happened yesterday).

- Heard about new Forza
- Ryse
- Family oriented Kinect-only game
- Gold Family memberships will only cost the same as a single Gold membership
- MS moving to currency for payments instead of MS points.
- No date for launch for launch (Thurrott heard before first week of November)
- Not cutting price of 360 (Thurott heard about cheaper model; likely refers to Mini)

Wow, color me cautiously optimistic.

 

[enzo_gt]

No wonder they scrapped the current Family membership plan. I'm OK if I could split the $60 cost with 3 other friends. Still having to pay for online but at $15 a year I won't complain.

Thinking about it more, I think it's like having a gold membership for your entire console so that everyone in the family can consume digital content like TV, etc. and be open to those revenue streams. Quite smart, if you ask me. Lower, but still keep the paywall there, and then reap benefits from more users being able to go beyond the paywall to make additional purchases.

 

[Bauer Action Hour]

Huh? I thought Microsoft points were universally hated. I'd rather they just stuck with normal currency like the rest of the world.

Points get put on sale. 1600 pts cards for $15 and such. Real money equivalents won't.

 

[XtremeXpider]

He said he doesn't really know what always online means, doesn't know if it's for DRM specifically

I found this (about Windows 8):

Connected Standby is a system-wide power state. During Connected Standby, many devices are powered down, including network adapter(s). In fact, from the perspective of the NDIS miniport driver, Connected Standby looks similar to a system sleep (S3) in Windows 7: NDIS sets a few wake patterns, then sends an OID_PNP_SET_POWER (e.g., D2 device state). That's it.

Where Connected Standby is wildly different from prior OS releases is in usermode sockets. In Windows 7, the OS would never put a network adapter into a D2 power state unless nobody is using it. (Mainly if the system itself goes to sleep, or if an Ethernet NIC is disconnected). But when in Connected Standby, the system will put the NIC into a low power state even if the NIC is being used. The system will pretend that the NIC is still connected, and the system periodically wakes up to renew its IP address. Critically, the system also plumbs a special wake pattern onto the network adapter. If there is an incoming notification for that system (e.g., an incoming chat message), then the Microsoft notification service (a remote server) will send a matching packet to the system, waking it. You might think of it as cloud-scale wake-on-lan.

To answer your questions:

Connected Standby will only be enabled on systems that are designed for it. For traditional desktops / laptops, it's business as usual (sleep, hibernate, etc.). The OEM has to put a special marker into the firmware to indicate that the system is designed for Connected Standby. Because of this, any existing system today will not enter Connected Standby; only new systems released with and designed for the next version of Windows will use this feature.

Always-On/Always-Connected (AOAC) is the name of this feature. Connected Standby is the system state that an AOAC-compliant system can enter.
See #1.

Not all drivers are required to implement AOAC. However, if you want to sell your chip to an OEM that is manufacturing AOAC systems, then obviously you will need to meet the requirements for Connected Standby. Also, if you intend to get a logo, note that there are big logo requirement changes for WLAN/WWAN even besides Connected Standby, e.g., Selective Suspend.

I'm not familiar with Intel AOAC. I speculate that if Intel had been using "AOAC" prior to Microsoft's public discussion of AOAC at //BUILD, then it could just be an acronym coincidence.

Always On/Always Connected is a feature in Windows 8. I don't know if it is related to the "Always On, always connected" from Durango rumors.

 

[Barakov]

Points get put on sale. 1600 pts cards for $15 and such. Real money equivalents won't.

Also, with points you don't have to worry about sales tax.

 

[surly]

Points get put on sale. 1600 pts cards for $15 and such. Real money equivalents won't.

In the UK, real money PSN cards are discounted by retailers, but the discounts aren't usually as good. The discount rate is probably not related to the cards using real money currency though.

My objection to losing MSP is simply that Live is currently cheaper than PSN and Steam (outside of sales) the majority of the time in the UK because devs are forced to choose 400, 800 and 1,200 MSP tiers and MS haven't ever raised the price of the points. If MSP are dumped, devs aren't going to continue putting games on PSN at £7.99 and £11.99 when they're £6.80 and £10.20 on Live. They'll be £7.99 and £11.99 on both.

 

[Alx]

Gold Family memberships will only cost the same as a single Gold membership

Is that the equivalent of saying that a gold membership can let you create several accounts ?
I don't remember how curent (/former) family memberships work, do they share the bought games and content ? Can several accounts of the same family be connected at the same time ?

 

[WrenchNinja]

Also, with points you don't have to worry about sales tax.

Weird, I must have imagined paying sales tax for points at Future Shop and Shoppers Drugmart.

 

[LittleJohnny]

Here's a little more perspective.

$300 plus 180 x 2yrs = $660
$500 plus 60 x 2yrs = $620

A mere $40 buck difference without having to shell out $500 bucks at the store. A little more than $40 if you're frugal about Xbox Live payments but still, not that big of a deal.

Bonus perspective:

You walk in with $500, you leave with the new Xbox and no games.

You walk in with $500, you leave with the new Xbox, 3 games and money to spare. I'll take that for a nickel a day

Your calculation is flawed: I can get a 12 month XBL subscription for $48 dollars without even investing any effort searching.

And you'd rather pay more money overall and, at the same time, be inflexible should you lose interest in Gold, would rather save money or just don't need it for some time?

Not flawed, I accounted for that, see bold text. Also MS is planning to do away with MS points and instead use real currency, in other words, no more discounted cards from Amazon or Buy.com. $60 bucks = $60 bucks, so yea, the difference is not significant and most would prefer to pay less up front, especially if they're already planning on using Xbox Live anyway, except this version includes live family so an even better deal for those that pay $99 a year.

 

[coldfoot]

Also MS is planning to do away with MS points and instead use real currency, in other words, no more discounted cards from Amazon or Buy.com. $60 bucks = $60 bucks

Yeah, because dollar valued gift cards never go on sale.

except this version includes live family so an even better deal for those that pay $99 a year.

There will be no live family/live separation with the 720 according to the comments. A live membership will be just like a game bought over XBL. Tied to one account and one console.

 

[ascii42]

Not flawed, I accounted for that, see bold text. Also MS is planning to do away with MS points and instead use real currency, in other words, no more discounted cards from Amazon or Buy.com. $60 bucks = $60 bucks, so yea, the difference is not significant and most would prefer to pay less up front, especially if they're already planning on using Xbox Live anyway, except this version includes live family so an even better deal for those that pay $99 a year.

I'm curious how it'd work for people who already have XBOX Live subscriptions. Maybe whatever time they have left will just get added onto the end after the 2 years or whatever. That would make the most sense.

 

[HyperionX]

Looking back its amazing how close this guy came to the truth. Pretty much nailed everything about the Xbone except for the $300 subsidized model.

 

[Alx]

They should have kept the sub model (provided it was real to begin with).

 

[Yoshi]

Maybe the subscription model will just be announced at a later date?

 

[wildfire]

The rumored sub model is too expensive at its initial price point just like the full price at $500 is too much. Microsoft should be selling this at $240 sub and $400 full.