technology@lemmy.world

  • aluminium@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No bro, Xbox isn’t evil anymore. Phil Spencer is a good guy and Gamepass is the “best deal in gaming”./s

    On serious note there is some legit reason to do something like this. Things like the Cronos Max or Rapid fire controllers are a legit problem in multiplayer games because they are hardware cheats essentially.

    But they could have created an API that allows games to check if a unoffical device is detected if that is the reason.

    • AProfessional@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      From the article

      The problem seems to revolve around brands that haven’t acquired this licensing

      It seems to just be rent seeking? Since it’s retroactive there probably isn’t a security change and malicious hardware can spoof being licensed, though this is unclear. So it probably only hurts legitimate small brands.

      • aluminium@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah its probably rent seeking, I was just pointing out there are legit reasons to ban certain hardware.

        • Deestan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I get your argument, but I’d say it makes room for a legit reason to control and identify hardware, not ban it.

          • aluminium@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            absolutely, hence why I put forward the idea of an API that would allow games to stop people from joining multiplayer matches or flag their highscores if sketchy hardware is involved! For Single Player games, who cares!

            But deep down we all know that this first and formost is a money grabbing scheme from micro$oft

    • pory@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So use a tool like this for call of duty multiplayer lobbies, not globally. Who cares if people “cheat” in single player games?

    • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      As an avid modder I can tell you that’ll make it harder but not impossible, I was halfway to hotwiring an xbox controller so I could run my xbox over parsec

      • echo64@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Play it on PC, has less cheaters.

        fun fact, whenever a game has crossplay - and has a big enough player base that i can do this, i will turn it off 100% of the time purely because I have experienced sooo many cheaters from the pc side of the crossplay.

        a very common complaint about crossplay over on the consoles side of thing is “let us do just-console crossplay”

        it is what it is, but it’s also funny to see someone say what you said there. One of the great things about pc gaming is the freedom you have to do what you want, which unfortunately makes it 1000000x easier to cheat.

        • Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t think cross play for competitive is worthwhile because either PC players have an advantage in the form of mouse aim, or console players have a wagon-dick-sized advantage in the form of aim assist. Competitive cross play only makes sense if you have input based match making.

          • TotesIllegit@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            What’s frustrating for me is when the PC side cripples mixed-input entirely even though I just want mouse-look, gyro aim, and analog movement from my controller without any aim assist. (Looking at you, Destiny 2 and Halo.)

        • aluminium@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m on PC but yeah as far as I know Xbox One and Series still have their security fully in tact so there is no way to run cheats on your console.

          This is one of the few points you gotta give to consoles even as a PC player!

  • Aielman15@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Let’s add this to the list of shitty anti-consumer choices that big tech corporations have implemented this year.

    IIRC Microsoft still hasn’t reverted on their asinine choice of locking their console players into their overpriced branded SSDs.

      • Omega@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can, but you can’t play Series games on it. Only previous generation games. Same as on PS5.

        • echo64@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          on PS5 you can buy any brand SSD drive and it will work. only microsoft locks the system to use authorized hardware

          • Omega@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Sorry, I took “regular” to mean external drives, not non-proprietary internal drives. Last gen you could use an external HDD to expand your storage without any issues. This gen you can still do it, but its use is limited.

    • Omega@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Their SSD prices dropped significantly this past year when they allowed another company to start making them. But it’s still nowhere near as cheap as PS5’s SSD expansion which isn’t proprietary at all.

    • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I threw a 1TB aftermarket SSD in my XBox One S and there was absolutely no attempt to stop me.

      The loading speed in Fortnite tripled.

    • Why9@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think it’s as black and white as that. Not to say that Microsoft isn’t dubious at times, but it seems they’re trying to weed out dodgy devices here.

      Give companies free reign to create third party devices and they’ll create things that can be considered borderline cheat-y, or create things that are so bad that they affect people’s experience of Xbox consoles.

      All this error code seems to be doing is requiring third party hardware to go through proper checks to verify hardware.

      • Aielman15@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        All this error code seems to be doing is requiring third party hardware to go through proper checks to verify hardware.

        Translated: They want third parties to pay for the “Xbox seal of approval”.

        • Why9@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean I get it, it sucks for third party developers to pay a fee to develop for Xbox

          But if you look at the quality of third party hardware available on PlayStation, Apple etc, it’s usually at a much higher quality and that gives people a perception that the hardware is better overall, even though Xbox series X and the PS5 are direct competitors.

          If Xbox controllers cost $70 and crappy Chinese knockoffs are retailing for $20 and have no quality control, have cheat-y turbo buttons and break easily, they’re losing money that would have done to official controllers and also losing their brand image.

          They’re not outright saying that third party devices are no longer allowed, but it does seem they want to manage the quality a little more

          • echo64@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re looking at this from a “what is good for microsoft” position. You won’t find much purchase for that thought process here. People care more about what is good for consumers and real people over companies.

            • Why9@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Absolutely! Who wouldn’t want to look at it purely from a consumer’s point of view?

              It’s easy to just look at it from the consumer’s POV but the best plan is to check Microsoft when it’s actually being scummy, and not when it’s trying to just keep in line with every other company.

              Sony issued takedowns of companies trying to sell PS5 faceplates, because they wanted to sell theirs at a premium. Apple is insanely notorious for proprietary hardware, to the point where the latest iPhone 15 even has its back glass fitted with a ribbon wire, so your iPhone won’t even start unless you’re using an iPhone certified back glass and it’s fitted by an iPhone tech that can enable the flag that lets your back glass work.

              In a world like that, it makes no sense for Microsoft to put up with cheap knockoffs of its products especially if those products suck and are ruining its brand image.

              Capitalism sucks but it is what it is. What we should do as consumers is vote with our money and not buy any accessories like this until these companies allow more third party developers to sell their parts. It just doesn’t work that way though. People keep buying this stuff no matter how high the prices go

              • echo64@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                You’ve now taken the stance that these other companies did scummy things so it’s okay for Microsoft to do scummy anti consumer things. This will also not find purchase.

                • Why9@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Dude, my personal stance is irrelevant here.

                  I’m not saying that that’s my stance. I’m saying Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world. You’re not going to change their mind by saying “I don’t like it”.

                  All I’m saying is “this is how businesses work”. If we don’t like it, we need to protest, vote with our wallets.

                  If you must know, my personal stance is the same as everyone else’s: it sucks that they’re forcing us to pay for first party/verified third party hardware which usually comes with a price rise.

                  But I thought I’d inform people what Microsoft’s position is in all this. They’re not going to stop taking massive losses just because some people on Lemmy said “that’s not nice”. Reality is that every company wants to make a profit and retain a positive brand image, especially now that Microsoft spent 69 billion dollars on Activision -Blizzard.

  • dhtseany@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    All of the selfish things I’m learning from the comments in this thread about what Microsoft has been doing with their console such as banning aftermarket tech like controllers or generic SSDs is why I finally quit buying consoles entirely years ago and why I stopped paying for Xbox live. Enshitification is a real thing, my dudes.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In ten years, the only place you’ll be able to truly own what you buy and play how you want is on Linux from Itch.io. These fools are salting the earth they grow their crops in.

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
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      1 year ago

      And here I thought there wasn’t a way to shoehorn Linux into this thread.

      itch.io deserves the shout-out though

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not much of a shoehorn when we’re speaking of the spawn of the eldritch god Microsoft. The article is even about unthinking destruction.

  • mammut@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This seems counter to Microsoft’s gaming accessibility push though, doesn’t it? Now if some niche manufacturer wants to make a controller designed for use by people with some rare mobility condition, the manufacturer will have to go through extra hoops to get this license bullshit out of the way.

    Nice job, Microsoft. We all know the ticket to accessibility is more hurdles.

    • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      To play devil’s advocate, I suspect that the majority of unauthorized 3rd party devices were designed for cheating versus mobility needs. Microsoft has fantastic accessibility accessories first-party that hopefully will meet the majority of needs.

      • beyondthegrave@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A lot of devices are just adapters to allow you to play fighting, racing sim, flight sim, rhythm games with controllers from other platforms because these niche genres are even smaller on Xbox and go completely ignored by large accessories companies.

        That’s not going to change once these devices are blocked. It’s a very heavy handed (and potentially lucrative) approach to stopping FPS cheaters.

        They were making strides with the FGC getting SF6 and adding Guilty Gear Strive to Gamepass and then do this. Makes no sense.

  • lorez@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I had the double tap issue with the official Xbox series X controller on PC. On Steam, on Game Pass, everywhere. And I was playing Persona 5 Royal at the time so it skipped dialogue. I returned it to Amazon and got a Dualsense. No issue whatsoever. Can’t even make a damn controller…

    • Romkslrqusz@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “I got one lemon from one brand once and swore off the entire brand”

      • lorez@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s a known issue. Not a one unit problem. Just search A button double press.

  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nobody going to mention that this is likely to stop people from using devices like xim to spoof a controller while using keyboard and mouse? I know that this will likely be worked around but I’m sure that workaround gives Microsoft legal standing to go after the manufacturer. Still doesn’t make this any less shitty for someone using a third party controller and not cheating with it though.

    • beyondthegrave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Great! So I can’t use a hitbox on street fighter or my choice of racing/flight sim rig in games that aren’t first person shooters because of a problem that affects a genre I’m not even playing.

      What a great solution that’s not far-reaching, extremely heavy handed, and has a great potential for Microsoft to milk customers and small businesses alike! /s