Xbox’s new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error ‘0x82d60002’::Got error 0x82d60002 on your Xbox accessory? There’s no fix, Xbox is going to block the use of detected unauthorized accessories with its consoles from November 12, 2023.
“Made for Xbox” branding for proprietary accessories approved by Microsoft incoming. Anything else won’t work.
How hypocritical of MS to pull this on their consumers after making it such a big deal that competitors like Apple do this same thing. Pot meet Kettle.
Anyone surprised? MS is one of the shadiest companies out there. Google gathering user data? “Don’t get scroogled!” Microsoft account required for windows 11? That’s completely different. Gamers in particular just fell for their self-imposed image as the good guys because of Game pass and constantly bashing their competitors.
If I remember correctly, it was them first charging for online services under Xbox Live Gold for functionality that was usually free on PC.
And free on PlayStation at the time, but sony thought it was so good they’d copy it
Wait, wait… people claimed they were the good guys? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that.
after making it such a big deal that competitors like Apple do this
Did they?
Going way back to the beginnings of both companies, yes. Apple had the ‘walled garden’, where the idea was that you were safer with all things ‘Apple Approved’.
Microsoft and most of the industry went the other way at the time and MS grew exponentially.
The optimist in me says “maybe this is just to prevent cheaters from using XIM and Cronus and it’ll be cheap and easy for other manufacturers to get authorized”
The pessimist in me says “so Microsoft is going to charge a shitton for authorization… great”
The realist in me says “I play on PC”
Can’t wait for Windows 12 rolling out error code 0x35EF00DA - Unauthorized mouse detected
I’m relatively confident that Microsoft understands its only leg up on Apple is that its ecosystem isn’t a walled garden.
Also, thanks to Valve, gaming on Linux is getting so much easier
Dualbooting Linux on Macbooks: the answer to gaming on Apple silicon everyone has been wanting.
it’s = a contraction for “it is” its = possessive
It’s the opposite of what you’d think.
I don’t mean to grammar nazi you. This is one I had wrong for 3/4 of my life so I’m just trying to help ya out.
My bad. I’ve been really tired the last few days lol. Thanks
Just use a razer mouse, it doesn’t need any help from windows to stop working
Linux bb
If a game can be cheated by using a 3rd party controller then the only skill involved in the game is how fast you can press the buttons, so who cares?
I disagree with your premise there. Using a controller that requires absolute input (a mouse) while your opponents use a controller that requires relative input (a joystick) gives you a leg up but it doesn’t remove skill altogether. Using a mouse still requires skill, but it’s easier to learn to use well.
“First time?”
I abandoned Xbox back when they announced Xbox One and said it required a Kinect and would be always online for DRM purposes. The backlash was severe enough that I remember their stock price taking a hit and that Major Tom dude having to come out and backtrack.
I knew then and there that they’d always try to bring this DRM/hyper controlling nonsense back. Just didn’t think it’d take them so long.
I’ve never owned any Xbox because even Windows is too hyper-controlling for me.
(I game on Linux, of course.)
Linux user doesn’t mention they use Linux challenge (impossible).
I bet it’s arch (btw).
Arch is for newbies, real Linuxers use Gentoo (it’s very comfy and let’s me use anything and everything)
Would you say Gentoo is better than Arch for semi-newbies wanting to experiment with multimedia, coding and AI, with only few obstacles?
(I am one myself, looking to switch to a Linux distro on an old MacBook Pro soon!)
No.
Gentoo is mostly for people who like to have maximum control over their OS and custom compile software they use.
Even if you have a beefy hardware, updates will take some time, and unless you want to study the compile flags, you will end up with the same binary builds you would on any other distro.
Thank you for this useful answer. In this case, I guess e.g. Zorin OS, Pop!_OS or simply Mint would be better recommendations?
That’s when I stopped. I think the only things I missed were Halo 5 and 6, and I understand I missed very little.
I’m using game pass on PC now, and when they start fucking around with that, I’ll turn them back off.
I jumped over to Playstation and I can’t say I’m having a bad time. Some great exclusives have come out. Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man 1 (I’m too poor for Spider-Man 2 so have no opinions), Bloodborne, God of War… Been a nice time and same here on Halo being the only thing I missed.
Well that and the controller.
I was going to get Xbox (whatever the random name for this next gen is) for Christmas and have been with Microsoft since the 360, but now I’m moving back to the PlayStation 5. Granted, I’m barely a gamer and use it more as a media center than a game console, but even I’m getting tired of Microsoft. I’ve been off of their operating system since college so gaming is the last Microsoft product I had.
Yes… YES! Join us brother/sister/sibling! Join us on Playstation!
Edit: lol I’m being sarcastic
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“it’s all just for your protection!” I’m amazed that people actually believe this shit. That’s the same argument as with various countries fighting against CSAM, seeing that as an excuse for total privacy invasion. Like come on…
No one believes it, but in the world of PR you just go with the thing people are least likely to argue against or most likely believe “for the children” or “because safety”. PR doesn’t really even matter when you’re so enormous.
I never gamed on console because I like more control over my environment…and that started 25 years ago. Super glad they were just approved to buy Activision/Blizzard, “more choice” was what their grinning exec said in a consolidation purchase.
If they can get rid of Cronus devices, I’m fine with it honestly
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Simple: because they’re cheaper.
Like, say you build a gaming PC that’s comparable to a PS5. I think it would be extremely hard to come up with a combination of PSU, ram, mobo, GPU, CPU, wifi, storage, case, keyboard, mouse, and game controller that costs less than a PS5 and has comparable performance. Even if you picked entry-level components. And you still have to pay the Windows tax probably. And all of that was much more difficult than just buying a PS5 – not everybody has the time.
Then again, rebuying all your games and paying way too much for them is something to take into account. But admittedly, the PS5’s thing where you can play some PS4 games is pretty neat.
As a consumer, having certified static hardware configuration means you know exactly how it’s going to run off reviews on the same hardware. You know that you are going to get support the manufacturer and aren’t going to have to worry about the manufacturer of the motherboard pointing fingers at the manufacturer of the GPU or RAM or CPU if you have a problem. Updates and driver support is all handled by the OS.
But probably the biggest reason is that consoles already have the best name recognition, higher user adoption, and hardware is sold at a discount compared to comparable PCs.
Theres actually a single one on the PS5, it essentially has a chip to hardware accelerate storage to ram loading speeds that PC speeds cant fully tap into yet.
Playstation devs are just badly leveraging the sole advantage it has.
The Xbox is virtualy a pc.
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Isn’t direct storage the windows equivalent?
it has some of the speed, but it’s not quite the same. direct storage is something the Xbox would have access to, but xbox is not directly hardware accelerated in the same way the PS5 is. Think similar to FSR VS DLSS. one utilizes special hardware in order to achieve its result.
Console developers sell at a loss specifically to tie you to their ecosystem and get as much money from you as possible. Which is why it’s so complicated to get a PC equivalent in specs to, say, a PS5 at the price of an actual PS5 - unless you go to the used parts route and learn how to assemble parts by yourself.
Because it is cheaper to develop for, so you tend to get games that take better advantage of the hardware and increase performance.
You also have consumer inertia too.
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But are they worse than a $500 off the shelf computer?
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Your graphics card might be cheaper than a whole console, but you still spent more money on a computer initially, so you would have to compare the cost of two consoles to one new computer and an upgrade.
And it likely is better performance now on PC versus console now for only a bit more money, but PC’s haven’t caught up on price for equivalent performance and likely never will.
And I say this as someone whose last console that was bought for its performance was a PS3.
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Consoles are initially sold at a loss or no profit to incentivise people to buy games on their platform, where the real profit is made. However, at this point in time, yes, you can buy pre-built gaming PCs for around $500 that will run circles around an XBOX Series X or PlayStation 5. You can even buy a $300 office computer then pop an A580 or something in it and make it a fully-equipped gaming PC. Even more so if you use your own hardware and build it yourself.
If you’re just looking for something that works out of the box when you buy it, there are tonnes of people on Facebook Marketplace selling custom-built gaming PCs for around that price range that will still outperform lastest-generation consoles.
Don’t forget, when comparing performance, consoles generally use a mixture of medium/high settings to guarantee a steady 60 FPS whereas PC testing is traditionally done on Ultra/High presets.
I will say that PCs do require a bit more technical knowledge and maybe some tinkering to get the best performance though. If all you do is game and you know nothing about how to do anything else on the computer, I would recommend the console ten out of ten times.
I can also buy and sell console games 2nd hand though which isn’t possible on PC anymore.
That said, PC piracy probably wins overall if you’re looking the absolute cheapest option. But that’s kind of a different set of arguments.
That’s true, I miss secondhand PC games too.
PCs have other benefits too, such as free online access that would require a subscription on consoles. Unrelated to gaming, a PC can be used for other things too. The only non-gaming use for a console is as a home media player. A PC can do that and much more. A gaming PC also makes an excellent productivity machine, whereas you can’t exactly edit spreadsheets and presentations on most consoles (except the Steam Deck).
I gamed on PC for many years and basically only moved to a console when I had kids a few a years back.
Both have benefits. For me, I like the not being distracted by other stuff on the console. Like if I sit down to game, on PC I’d often just end up on YouTube, twitch, check reddit, emails, whatever. I like that my console I just use for gaming.
I still play on my PC from time to time and there’s obviously games that are only on PC, but my preference is console for the current phase of life and that’s fine for me.
Back in the day, Nintendo got big on quality control. That’s less of a selling point now that almost every big publisher is pushing for yearly releases and devs need to rush out unfinished games to meet corporate expectations. A console was also just miles ahead in user friendliness that a computer up until around the PS4/Xbone.
The way forward for consoles these days is to have more interesting hardware, but Microsoft is resistant to just having gyro in the xbox controller so don’t hold your breath for the next xbox being anything worth looking at.
If you use windows, this is the way it will be on PC in a few years as well.
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Didn’t we lose one of the two main gpu producers recently?
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EVGA, that’s who I was thinking of. So we still lose them really from the forefront. Also like Intel and AMD isn’t pushing for further control. Exactly what I meant.
Evga is an AIB(and a single one in a goant pool), not a GPU designer like Nvidia/Intel/AMD are. The equivalent in console terms would be like madcatz dropping out of the accesory creation game. The only difference is that the accessory makers also have a hand in the hardwares design, but not the actual compute core itself.
I appreciate you clarifying that, they were one of the largest would you not agree? Anyway point still stands, not enough competition in the gpu designer market would you agree?
I assume he meant EVGA. They’re a hardware company that used to manufacture graphics cards designed by Nvidia but exited the GPU market because of unfavorable contract conditions eating into their profit margins.
Plenty of other third-party manufacturers exist like Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, Zotac, ASRock, Inno3D, Colorful, MSI and ASUS.
As for the main companies that design (and also manufacture) GPU’s: AMD, Nvidia and more recently Intel.
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If you count integrated GPUs (which still absolutely dominate the non-specialist PC and laptop market), Intel are hardly a newcomer. Their foray into discrete GPUs is new, but the distinction is fairly arbitrary from a technical perspective.
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The Intel HD Graphics block inside a Core i5 is very architecturally different from an Intel Arc GPU.
Both Intel Arc and the integrated SOC GPUs use Intel’s Xe architecture. There are obviously big differences between integrated and discrete GPUs, but they’re largely implementation rather than base architecture. Implementing something on-die is a different task than implementing something on its own wafer, but that’s not where the serious design legwork goes.
No? Nvidia and AMD have been the main competitors for a while in the high end space, and Intel recently entered that market after dominating the integrated GPU space.
I think the moment that happens, it’ll truly become the year of the Linux desktop.
Over the course of fifteen years, we went from WINE being able to run nothing but World of Warcraft in a playable state, to thousands of games now being playable through Proton with equivalent or even sometimes better performance than Windows.
Valve were wise to put their eggs in the Linux basket, because they’ve evolved Linux as a gaming platform by leaps and bounds. Steam Machines may have flopped but the Steam Deck has sold millions and given developers legitimate reason to support Linux (or at least SteamOS.)
There’s been talk about Microsoft plastering ads all over Windows 11 or making Windows 12 a subscription-only OS. Linux is free, open source and ad-free.
While there some advantages to that static more gate kept setup that we all could argue about for years on end, the answer to your question boils down to money and control like pretty much everything else.
because having a stable, unchanging platform is a lot easier to code on and extract performance from than the 100,000,000,000 billion possible combinations of PC hardware.
edit
You can get angry over it all you want, it doesnt change the fact that its the truth.
In fact, the state of games in general is shit because a lot of you fucking goblins with more money than sense keep running out and pre-ordering/day1ing games and fawning over them no matter how much of a broken piece of shit they are, and white knight against any and all criticism. Maybe if YOU stopped creating a market for shitty, broken, badly performing games, They’d stop fucking releasing shitty, broken, badly performing games.
But no, you don’t want to be responsible for your actions, So you want to take it out on everyone else… because god forbid it ever be mommies special little angel thats at fault.
So remember that next time you want to scree about consoles or whatever else. Cause they are not the problem. People like you are.
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I don’t have a lot of time for gaming, and my desktop computer I built 12 years ago still works for what I need it for (and the occasional Rocket League rounds), so the PS5 is just easier. Plug and play when I want to.
Been playing games I got through the PS+ Extra for two years, and haven’t purcy for a single game since, as I’m a patient gamer, and the selection of games is right up my alley!
Oh, and if I’d have the money (and time), I’d get aPC instead. Maybe when the PS6 is released.
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But its 2023, pc gamers get free games every week on epic without having to pay for an online subscription, and thats solely just epic.
Its not my fault, so why don’t you go take a breath.
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Ah yes, shooting the messenger cause you don’t like the message.
What a fine argument.
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To be clear, they’re not requiring us to buy Xbox brand official controllers. They’re requiring “authorized” controllers, which includes a lot of third-party brands. That’s still kinda shitty, but I don’t think it counts as tying.
It still counts as infringement upon Xbox owners’ property rights and therefore ought to be outlawed.
Whether or not that “counts as infringement” is debatable, as stuff like this is pretty commonplace in the tech industry. See: Apple. If you want to spend the cash to lawyer up and take this issue to the Supreme Court, I support you.
What property right is violated? Genuine question.
The owner of the Xbox can buy and use whatever accessories they want. You just can’t expect them to let you access their network, not being able to be offline is a different matter of shitty practice but nothing about this is illegal, at least in the US.
lol as if politicians care about regulating monopolies any more… MS already got in trouble in the past for ONLY bundling their browser with the OS. They do so much worse these days and the paid-for government cheers it on…
Ah yes the infamous and completely utterly useless 0x8 hex Microsoft errors.
If I had a nickel for every time I encountered one, I’d have paid Microsoft to properly document what they actually mean, instead of spending 2 years finding some ye olde ass archived help request where some ancient wizard sys admin gives the answer after the default and also equally useless MSFT Associate reply of “Did you try DISM or try to reinstall windows?”
sfc /scannow
oh it doesn’t work? You definitely need to run
chkdsk c: /fWait this doesn’t work either? Then download our utterly useless software that will only run chkdsk while showing you ads and has a paywall after you click “apply” because it’s a fake “free” app that does nothing targeted to your grandma and step uncle
By the way the poor ms employee probably doesn’t know what any of them mean they were just generated by ms devs in the other MS building 63 floors below ground where they use infrared light to grow new developers in the bill gates sacred soil
May I present to you, a tool called Err
There is also a GUI version, errlookup, it’s included as apart of Visual Studio (
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Tools\errlookup.exe) – I’m sure there are other was of getting it too.
A lot of the answerers who do that are paid per-answer (with a bonus for accepting) iirc, so they’re incentivised to essentially auto-reply.
I mean to be fair, those errors arent really meant for you (the end user) in the first place.
So goodbye custom-built accessibility controllers? Little Timmy, who was born with no arms and loves video games but has to play with his feet on a custom controller, is going to be told “Git good stumpy”?
Microsoft does make a special controller for people with disabilities. Still sucks for people with custom setups. The cheating in fps games is out of control though
On PC you can do whatever the hell you want with your hardware and people aren’t asking to ban it to prevent cheating. This is such a dumb excuse. Build some good anti-cheat or stop complaining. This isn’t the solution.
I get it, but whatever is being done in the PC ecosystem isn’t really solving the problem either. The last bastion of cheating in the console space is 3rd party controllers. Banning them is going to be way more effective than any anti cheat software.
If I was using an unapproved controller I’d probably be pissed, but how big is that market outside of people cheating? Aren’t most 3rd party controllers approved devices anyways?
On PC you can do whatever the hell you want with your hardware
And if you install Linux, you can even to whatever the hell you want with your software
The array of different disabilities is so vast - a controller which works for one player may not work for another.
The adaptive controller is designed to be custom-modded for different disabilities.
It’s actually a really cool system they designed in partnership with AbleGamers. They even have a mod for quadriplegic gamers. And it’s super affordable versus previous accessible interfaces.
Accessibility is one of the few places where Microsoft has been wholly good in recent years. Play any first-party Xbox game from the last few years, and you’ll see that the first menu that opens up first time you play is accessibility settings.
The Xbox Adaptive Controller is a device that lets you build your own custom controller that fits your specific needs. It’s actually really neat
interesting but I don’t see that working for some people, example 1 armed gamers
Configurable lol.
Yes it is
great point, example there are two way to make a controller for 1 armed people, for the left hand and right hand.
Does cheating in games justify downright deactivating custom accessories?
In my opinion absolutely not but the gaming community tends to give a lot of leeway towards companies rolling out so called “anti-cheat” solutions, even if they are downright scary i.e. asking users to install always on rootkits, or in this case, anti-consumer by forcing people to buy first or second party controllers.
I’ve even heard people in other situations suggest that anti-cheat systems should have surveillance systems like the ones done on remote exams, which would be downright dystopian and would be a privacy and security nightmare, all for a fucking video game WTF?
Given that Xbox is a closed console, couldn’t they just have rootkit anticheat by default?
Maybe I’m stuck in the past but it still seems as if consoles still don’t employ anticheats.
They could and probably do (might even be the same anti-hacking system which bans from xbox live from the Xbox 360 days) they aren’t doing this to combat cheating though, they’re doing it because it’ll make them more money. They might claim it’s anti-cheat because the gaming community will drink up that response and respect their decision without questioning it.
Many people who do stand up against descisions like these are usually laughed at or accused of being cheaters, I bet people might even do it to me because I posted this.
I will say that this will likely be all but a setback for cheat devices who can spoof or pass-through an official controller, they will adapt, this change will only truly be successful at killing third party controller support.
You’re not wrong. And unless the controllers have some sort of TPM module in them then yeah they’ll be easily bypassed.
Legacy official controllers don’t have a TPM so even if new ones do, current ones don’t and same goes for ones that spoof current official controllers.
At least assuming they’re going to keep compatibility with current official Xbox controllers.
sounds like it
Another attack on ownership. The user is the only one who can authorize an accessory being used with their hardware.
Where was this outrage when Xbox blocked the ability to use third party headsets? This just seems like a continuation of their long-held policy and is likely only happening now that they have their accessibility controller on the market.
So we’re back to the DRM machine dream of Xbox One.
Just hook up a gaming pc to tv and play there with any controller.
They’ve already nuked driver support for certain “unauthorized” 3rd party Xbox accessories out of windows 10 and higher, so this isn’t necessarily a solution for the average user either
I’m gonna say the L word
I had to really try my best not to
Same vendor, doing ugly things like always. I say Draugr OS or Chimera OS. Even Space Engineers runs now and with better FPS too.
This doesnt work anymore? https://github.com/InputMapper
It may, but it would still require the driver for the device to be allowed to install on windows.
First example that comes to mind is a bit older but the unauthorized replicas of the Xbox 360 wireless adapters can no longer be used with Windows 10+ without the following steps
- unpacking the driver
- modifying the signature and device version it reports
- disabling driver signing
- Installing the newly modified driver
- Re-enabling driver signing
Just wanted to mention that Linux has great support for almost any hardware. You don’t even have to install drivers, thanks to its monolithic kernel.
This is true, but my comment was for the average user. I run Linux on a couple systems (not including my servers), but if I put my partner infront of it, I’d be providing support every day for a year. It’s far better than it used to be but outside of steamos, I don’t think it’s “average user” ready yet
if I put my partner infront of it, I’d be providing support every day for a year
That sounds like a good deal, one year of tech support to get your partner to use Linux, I would immediately do it
There’s still no official word or reports yet on whether XIM or Cronus controller-spoofing mouse and keyboard adapters will be banned as a result of these policy changes, but manufacturers like Brook Gaming who build unlicensed, but fair adapters for fighting game sticks seem to be caught in the dragnet. We’ll be sure to update you on further changes.
I think XIM and Cronus are the reason they’re doing this, especially since the main games on Xbox are shooters.
Cronus allows you to run scripts which give you an unfair competitive advantage, from using exploits and humanly impossible controller inputs to fire weapons ultra fast, to removing weapon recoil, to going auto-prone when you fire your weapon, to quickscoping, to other things.
XIM on the other hand lets you plug in a mouse and keyboard. While this allows you to play games on console that otherwise don’t support M&K controls, it also gives you serious unfair competitive advantages by making the console think you’re a gamepad player whilst giving you superior M&K controls and aim assist at the same time. With a XIM device you can go seal clubbing in console-only lobbies.
My other hypothesis is that they want to safeguard their console from firmware exploits that could bust the security of their console wide-open and allow for software piracy.
I don’t have an Xbox but I love that mouse and keyboard are considered cheating devices.
Reminds me of FFXI, where the devs considered Alt-Tabbing on PC cheating thus made it deliberately crash to desktop.
I remember having to install a hack for that it was so ridiculous.
especially since games in gamepass for pc let you play with console players
The enshittification is getting worse
i feel like the EU will fight this, but it still might not matter for NA users
