I think Ill just wait to see what it looks like on release. If you are putting stock in faith about a game you just learned might be coming out, you might need to chill
I’m sorry, but gaming isn’t a religion. To me at least. I don’t out “faith” into developers or games.
I wait for reviews and check some videos and hey, if it looks neat I’ll buy it. If it then turns out to be crap I’ll refund it. And if the same studio or franchise has turned out disappointed or bad stuff before, I need to be more impressed by reviews before considering a purchase.
The only thing I’d buy on faith is a wedding ring for a church wedding, tbh… (And I’m not in any church , so chances are low 😛)
The program has been reducing the amount of points you could earn for a while now. It very well may be just moving the points you can earn in the rewards app to an Xbox app but I can see those points disappearing at some point.
Baldur’s gate 3 for me while I waited for the mac release. Valheim before that. I only use it for probably three or four months a year, but I got the founders rate at five dollars a month so it’s more than worth it to keep paying for it.
Do they realize this may be the only way some people can legally play the games? I can imagine lots of disabilities that only let people play with a niche controller
Microsoft makes some very good quality adaptive controller accessories. IMO that still doesn’t make this move OK, but at least disabled people still have a supported option.
100% it’s a total moneygrab.
At the detriment of those who struggle the most already - those who need special equipment, and those who can’t afford official ctrls.
I bet they also won’t approve controllers designed to work on other consoles/devices as well. Necessitating getting one accessibility controller for your xbox and one for everything else.
Surely it will help them reclaim their spot as the de facto fighting game console in a scene where many people use unlicenced controllers with Brook boards.
Not really, just let the game devs chose when to request that the console enforces stricter verification of accessories and otherwise just allow whatever
But if someone wants to do an arcade controller, this changes almost nothing. Just solder the wires on the contact pads on an official Xbox controller. Impossible to detect via software
Even the turbo button can be done, with an intermediate IC that transforms the signal from the button to be intermittent
Likely this will target modded controller jigs like “Chronus”.
This is definitely due to them now owning Call of Duty where these fucking users are rampant and since it’s not software hacks, it could be done on consoles…at least until now
Or just allow them always. It’s about the money, not about cheating. Also many games these days have cross play with PC anyways, where you can literally use a modified toaster as a controller if you want to lol.
the problem is that there are some really good devices on the market that essentially let players cheat in shooters, getting mouse-like input while retaining the game’s built-in aim assist features.
really the best compromise would be to let game developers decide whether unlicensed input devices can be used in their games (just like how they can choose whether to support m+kb). then shooters could impose reasonable restrictions without fucking over the fighting game community.
I’ve never been one to play competitive online games since I have the hand/ eye coordination of a house plant, so I can’t weigh in on the advantages of blocking controllers that are “unfair”; but as someone who hated button mashing “A” in Animal Crossing, I can say that custom controllers can definitely have a place with a console.
In my opinion, this feels like Microsoft simply wanted more licensing money and is doing it under the guise of fair online play. It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.
Hopefully this does not negatively affect too many people.
The unfair advantage argument definitely holds water, mouse and keyboard can be like a sports car racing against a bicycle. But if someone had the budget to tackle this issue through software, it would be Microsoft. So I’m inclined to agree that it’s mostly just MS squeezing money out of third party manufacturers.
If they’d care only about the “unfair”, they’d put a fair, almost free, price on the official license that covers the cost of testing or whatever. Truth presumably here is also a bit more complicated, maybe third party controllers could be easier to hack resulting in an ineffective licensing system, idk. But yeah smells like money for Microsoft and a loss for consumers.
Wouldn’t the unfair advantage only hold water if they blocked unauthorized accessories only with online multi-player games and leave single-player experiences alone?
All HID input devices have identifiers that they communicate to the host to determine their functions. I guess you could potentially make a device that appears to be a controller and translates keyboard/mouse with a couple USB inputs. You could probably get a Pi to do that. But no one cares about winning on console that badly, they just go play on PC 🙄
Okay, then I’m going to default back to the fact that someone’s going to break the DRM and still make those devices, and this is only going to hurt people using accessible controllers.
You are probably right. Devices like these in the old days used to require you hook up an official controller to it to get past the drm. Likely will evolve back to that.
I guess you could potentially make a device that appears to be a controller and translates keyboard/mouse with a couple USB inputs
They control the console, the OS, the controller hardware, and can require the console to connect to them. They already have the ability to push out controller firmware updates. They can have the controller cryptographically authenticate to the console and push blacklists to the console of keys that get leaked (like if someone somehow extracts a key from a legit controller and uses it to make a knockoff).
One thing that kinda sprang to mind was accessible controllers. Ik Microsoft makes one and I’m sure there’s some approved but my thoughts are what if it doesn’t serve your needs
I wonder if QuadStick has approval. Specifically designed for people with minimal to no hand function, which their controller isn’t going to fucking work for.
I hope this isn’t Microsoft becoming more Apple-like. That said, if this leads to a restriction on the use of cheat-capable controller accessories such as the Chronos Zen then it could be a significant positive for FPS console gamers.
It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.
Are you sure of that? It was certainly rumoured before the release of the iPhone 15 Pro that Apple would require MFi cables for high speed data transfer but I don’t think that turned out to be true. As far as I can tell any high speed USB-C cable will allow full speed transfer from an IPhone 15 Pro. It might need to be a Thunderbolt 3 cable, especially for recording to external SSD, not sure, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it needs to be an MFi cable.
You’re correct about the specs of the device. However, after announcement/release there was controversy that the cable included in the box is only capable of USB 2.0 transfer speeds. But Marques Brownlee pointed out that the same is usually true with the included cable for Android devices too. I got a portable SSD to use with my iPad Pro and it just comes with a short high-speed cable anyway…
Edit: The included cable with the iPad is also only 2.0 speeds, even though it has a USB4 40Gbps port.
Microsoft sure loves blocking things from its game console nobody actually wants to use in the first place. Who exactly is going to want to buy a license to make video game controllers for the system that's last place in the console wars? Specialty controllers like the Neo-Geo click stick by 8BitDo are almost sure to be released for major formats, but NOT Xbox, if 8BitDo has to pay an extortionate fee for a license.
The 8BitDo stuff is what I had in mind as well. Everything I have from them has Xinput mode, and works great for PC Game Pass and Xcloud games. I was hoping that anything that supports Xinput would be available on the actual consoles, but walled garden.
Seems like any customer rights now only exist in direct defiance of corporations and whatever unreasonable unilateral rules they set without consulting anyone else.
Enshittification advances. Consoles already are the prime example of devices that act as if they are still owned by the company rather than the customer, but they somehow find even more ways to make it worse...
windowscentral.com
Aktywne