Bits Blog: Online and Offline Stores Duke It Out This Week

Forza 5 Install, Offline Details Clarified

As IGN originally reported, Forza Motorsport 5 will not require a persistent online connection to play – unless of course you're in multiplayer modes such as Rivals or online racing, or doing cloud Drivatar training or downloading user-generated content such as paint schemes. However, Turn 10's Dan Greenawalt told us today that being required to connect to Xbox Live before you can play is "not the plan." You just need to connect online eventually in order to complete the career mode.

In the beginning of the game, the player will be racing against Drivatars that are contained on the disc and were trained by the team.

"In the beginning of the game, the player will be racing against Drivatars that are contained on the disc and were trained by the [Turn 10 development] team," Greenawalt said. "While playing, the player will be asked to connect to Live in order to download a completely fresh set of player-created Drivatar opponents – it’s not a lot of data, but the download contains enough Drivatars to cover all difficulty settings. Connecting will also download new content – but the vast majority of the launch content is contained on the disc.

"This download is simply additional cars and tracks. The gameplay is not blocked while downloading the additional content; it’s done in the background just like disc install."

None of these offline installation scenarios apply to digitally purchased versions of the game, obviously.

Here's where the eventually part comes in. "The player won't be blocked from playing the game" if they've never connected it to Xbox Live, Greenawalt said. "But deeper areas in the career mode were designed to utilize these additional cars and tracks."

He clarified even further.

"This is similar to what we did on Forza Motorsports in the last generation as well – shipping both free and premium content at launch. In some ways it’s similar to the Disc 2 content in FM4 as well. However, this time (unlike DLC tracks in previous Forza’s) deeper progression in the career mode was designed to fully integrate this launch downloadable content."

Should you lose your connection while you're playing, Greenawalt said, "You’ll be able to play Forza Motorsport 5 in Career mode, Free Play, and other offline modes. Like Xbox 360 cloud saves, the next time you connect, your save game progress will automatically synch with Xbox Live."

The vast majority of the launch content is contained on the disc.

Greenawalt also shed extra light on how the Drivatar system works with and without an Internet connection. He told IGN, "While the Drivatar feature is designed to take advantage of Xbox Live and the processing power of the cloud, its revolutionary approach to opponent has been designed to work offline as well. Racing against the Drivatars of others does not require a connection. Drivatar learning and training does require a connection to the cloud as it’s a real-time training system. Any time that you connect Forza Motorsport 5 to the Live servers, you will automatically download a refreshed set of Drivatar opponent data."

He added that downloading fresh Drivatar data is "not a lot of data."

What about your Xbox Live friends? Will you still see your friends' Drivatars when playing offline?

"Not necessarily. When you first connect Forza Motorsport 5 to the Live servers, you will download a set of Drivatar opponents (it’s not a lot of data, but it contains enough Drivatars to cover all difficulty settings) for use in offline mode. This set of Drivatars will not necessarily contain your friends. From race to race as you stay connected, your friend’s Drivatars, cars, and paint schemes will be pulled into your races – as will updated Drivatar strangers and rivals based on your difficulty settings."

Forza Motorsport 5 is due to launch on the same day the Xbox One console does this November.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Bits: Technology Turns to Tracking People Offline

Following people online, with cookies, tagged pixels and even voluntarily given information, has been a big business. Now much of the same technology is moving into the physical world.

A company called Euclid Analytics uses the Wi-Fi antennas inside stores to see how many people are coming into a store, how long they stay and even which aisles they walk. It does this by noting each smartphone that comes near the store, feeding on every signal ping the phone sends.

“Three years ago, I went to the Stanford mall in Palo Alto and could count about 30 percent of the people there” by listening for Wi-Fi signals, says Will Smith, the company’s chief executive. “Now in San Francisco, it’s about 60 percent. In Atlanta or Charlotte, it’s 40 percent.”

Karsten Moran for The New York Times Customers in Home Depot, one of the companies working with Euclid Analytics to use Wi-Fi to learn about customer behavior.

Using the information, retailers can tell whether someone walked by the store, whether a customer came in and how long the visit lasted. If it is a big store, with a couple of Wi-Fi antennas, the owner can start to see where in the store someone went.

Euclid is three years old and has about 100 customers, including Nordstrom and Home Depot. It has already tracked about 50 million devices in 4,000 locations.

The big initial use is the so-called bounce rate, or the percentage of people who come into the store who leave without making a purchase. But the technology also helps stores make sure that there is enough sales help or that enough registers are open. By seeing how people move in a store, retailers can also better determine where to place low-profit and high-profit items.

Mr. Smith says Euclid has more data than it gives to customers. It gives its customers only anonymous data in a collected form, so individuals won’t be targeted. Stores using the technology may also put stickers in their windows telling customers they are being monitored and allowing them to opt out

It’s likely, however, that over time Euclid and its partners could add an opt in feature, where people choose to be recognized, the way registered Amazon.com customers are greeted when they come to a site. Then people might be offered, say, free parking for staying 20 minutes in a store, or they could get a discount for visiting three times a month.

Computers are already recognizing people moving around, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Mr. Smith was talking about his company at a conference in Santa Monica, Calif., held by the Montgomery & Company investment firm. Down the hall, a company called Omnilink, which makes ankle devices for people under home arrest, talked about plans to expand into monitoring elders, children, workers on their own in the field and the infirm.

“Personal tracking is burgeoning,” said Kelly Gay, Omnilink’s chief executive. “It only takes one child to go missing or one person falling off a wall for us to see growth.” The company has just started moving away from judicial monitoring, but it is seeing quick results: It tracks about 15,000 people on the judicial side (a very profitable business, with revenue of $140 a month a user), and it has 35,000 people who are voluntarily tracked.

Both are likely to increase, Ms. Gay says. On one side, prison overcrowding and tight budgets make it likely that more felons will do time outside the walls. On the personal side, the aging baby boom population makes it likely that there will be an increase in dementia, so people will require more monitoring.

But who needs ankle monitors when you have a smartphone? Ms. Gay’s presentation was well received. Mr. Smith was mobbed with bankers willing to lend him money and entrepreneurs wanting to work with his monitoring business.