Microsoft just announced that its much-maligned DRM policies won’t look at all like they had originally been described. They’re going to more relaxed, sort of like the PS3’s. Good news, you say? No. Bad news. The Xbox One just got worse.
But what? Isn’t all DRM bad and anti-consumer? No. Often it is, sure. If applied in the ways that gaming culture has been anxious about for the past few weeks, it would be disastrous. But that’s not what was really at stake. This was:
These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.
That SUCKS.
The Vision
Here was the simple vision of the Xbox One, selling and reselling games:
- Every game you bought, physical or digital, would be tied to your account. This would eliminate current-gen problems like buying a disc, and then being unable to store it or download it from the cloud.
- Because every single game, physical or digital, would be tied to an account, publishers could create a hub to sell and resell the games digitally. Let’s refer to these as “licenses” from here, even though it’s a loaded term.
- Because reselling games would now work through a hub, publishers could make money on resold games.
- Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others’ rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.
- You also would have started getting a better return on your “used” games — because a licence does not have to be resold at a diminished rate.
- How do you know that this would have been the case? Because that’s exactly what happens on Steam. But wait!, you shout. Steam is CHEAP cheap, and it has crazy sales. We love Steam! Micro$oft is nothing like that. Well, no, it isn’t now, but Steam was once $team, too. It was not always popular, and its licensing model was once heavily maligned. Given time, though, it’s now the only way almost every PC gamer wants to play games.
- Sharing games would have worked either by activating your Live account on someone else’s Xbox One, or by including them in your 10-person share plan, which would not have been limited to “family.”. Details on that had been scarse, but even the strictest limitations (one other person playing any of the shared games from your account) would have been a HUGE improvement over the none that we have now. We don’t get that now.
- The 24-hour check-in would have been necessary for the X1’s store, which it is not for Steam, because the physical product (game discs) would still be available. This check-in, literally bytes of data exchanged, would confirm that the games installed were not gaming the system in a convoluted install-here-and-then-go-offline-and-I’ll-go-home-and-check-in-and-go-offline-too-and-we’ll-both-use-the-game methods.
You would also, as it happens, have been able to share and resell your digitally purchased games. That’s a REALLY BIG DEAL. We won’t be able to do that now, though. We still have to use the disc for games we buy physically. This is the loss of some of the most future-facing features of the system, things that changed and challenged the traditional limitations of console gaming. We are literally standing in stasis, refusing to move forward, at the behest of those who are loudest and not ready for the future.
The DRM Boogey Man Is So Last Decade
More than anything, the outcry over the Xbox One was a reaction to buzzwords that are easy to distance ourselves from. “Censorship”, “retcon”, “person who disagrees with Joss Whedon”. DRM is right there with any of those for Microsoft’s core gaming audience.
The real fear behind DRM on games is the idea that at some point in the future, you’ll be told that you are no longer allowed to use the content you’e paid for. It’s that you’re “allowed” to use anything at all, instead of outright “owning” it. And in the past, shitty DRM has absolutely worked like that. Walmart MP3s and the like have taken their servers offline, stranding file formats and leaving them to die, forgotten.
That is not how DRM, by and large, works today. There is very little risk of any particular format dying off. The dangers, as such, lie in a dropoff of support, or at worst, confiscation. That for whatever reason, Microsoft would tell us to screw ourselves and stop supporting Xbox One games, or kick you, specifically, out.
Fair enough. But compare that to the benefits of DRM. It helps build an ecosystem that is easy and convenient and, most of all, affordable enough to draw customers. That’s what Apple did with iTunes and music, and it’s what Amazon did with books. The content was just too easy to get and too cheap to bother with pirating it. We could have had that with the Xbox One and games.
Here’s a video game example of effective DRM in practice: World of Warcraft, more or less the most popular game of the past decade. WoW, a Massively Multiplayer RPG by Blizzard, is played entirely online — always online, even. Your account is not your property, Blizzard can ban it or remove items from it at its pleasure. Everything is within its right.
And yet, all Blizzard does is run customer support to users who have been hacked (oh, so many are hacked) or who accidentally deleted something or any number of other problems for their accounts. They were even years ahead of the two-factor authentication push, basically giving away authenticators at a loss, with in-game bonuses, just to keep customers from being hacked. Because Blizzard knows that its whole job is keeping its customers coming back for more. And it works. And no one complains.
Our Capacity
Today’s news proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the internet has a voice. You’re heard, and you can effect change in the things that you care about deeply. It’s oddly fitting that the news comes as fan-saved Futurama gets ready to go off the air again. But today also proves how widely that nerd-influence can swing an entire generation of hardware, based solely on the whims of internet jokes based on information that isn’t even accurate, and tinfoil fears about worst-case scenarios.
Cheaper games. Easier sharing. The end of discs. The Xbox One would have been just fine despite the chorus of haters, would have been a better system for ignoring them. Microsoft losing its nerve on this isn’t just disappointing for the features we lose. It’s unfortunate because it shows just how heavy an anchor we can be.
Republished from Gizmodo.
Comments
196 responses to “The Xbox One Just Got Way Worse, And It’s Our Fault”
I think it’s PRETTY OPTIMISTIC that Microsoft would be the ones giving us cheaper games in the next generation.
Optimistic is way too kind for that kind of naive/blind hope.
People say, “Maybe they could make their games (almost – let’s not kid ourselves) as cheap as Steam does!” I guess, not realizing that 1) PC is apparently the primary den of piracy, and 2) Steam’s DRM is a one-time-activation affair (with a handful of exceptions) installable on as many machines as you like, not a once-every-day DRM check.
Massive logic fail. Since when does giving someone a total monopoly on something encourage them to make it cheap? Like… in the history of anything ever? If anything, piracy on the PC is what encourages the lower prices so that price advantage pirates have doesn’t seem quite so big.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but your statement doesn’t make sense. Microsoft would not the central force dictating the price of games on the X1.
I believe the references to Valve’s Steam service are valid. Valve changed the PC retail market and increased revenue to many publishers. The easiest proof of this is looking at the creation of Games for Windows and Origin. The increased revenue occurred from people choosing to no longer pirate PC games because of the a combination of moral choice and the benefits Steam offered the consumer.
In short; It took 10 years, but Steam made games cheaper because it increased publisher revenue per unit sold. I agree, it may have been an assumption to say that this change would’ve happened with the X1 as well, but it was an educated assumption, based on historical fact, from a similar model, with a similar beginning…
Which is more than I can say for the rest of the assumptions in these comments. =/
Steam increases publisher revenue per unit sold BECAUSE of the sales. It’s not the other way around.
People procure products looking for a few key things. 1) Quality. 2) Convenience. 3) Price.
If a pirate is beating you on price, (which they always will, because 0 is unbeatable), you can reduce price to the point where it isn’t as important as factors 1 and 2.
Valve proved this to themselves when they noticed that Russia had amazing piracy levels, but when they did their research and found that localization was a huge issue, they localized – profits soared. People were choosing to pay more than zero for better quality and convenience.
If anything, piracy – the ‘competition’ – is what keeps Steam prices low. PC is the home of piracy, after all. If Steam had a monopoly and you had nowhere else to source your games, what incentive would they have to keep prices low? When has a monopoly resulted in consumer-friendly price-drops? Pretty much never.
If that isn’t enough for you, look at the most basic facts. Steam pricing is low. Steam is on PC. PC is the home of piracy. Piracy clearly does not result in higher prices. Take this equation, swap ‘piracy’ with ‘2nd hand sales’ to look at consoles.
Piracy can factor retail prices, but your process would mean Steam originally launched with cheaper prices to combat piracy. But they didn’t.
Valve launched Steam with pricing virtually identical (give or take $2-$3) to hard-copy sales. It wasn’t until they increased publisher sales units that the digital retail prices began to drop, which was also highly due to digital sales returning 40% more revenue than hard-copy sales. This is where the “wiggle room” appears for the digital retail price to be reduce, by the publishers (in an effort to sell more units).
Piracy was the reason for the model, but it is NOT the sole reason for the prices.
Well, if anything, the prices themselves are the reason for the prices. An experiment was performed and it performed exceedingly well. Valve are exceptionally eager to point out their sales data to potential publishers/developers when it comes to the benefits of joining in on the sales.
And the piracy thing isn’t as much a proof for cheap sales as much as it is proof against it being responsible for high prices.
As i mentioned below however there is one fine point of difference between Steam and MS.
PC is an *open* platform. PC has a multitude of ways to buy games digitally. Steam got the ball rolling by being cheap to get a massive market share. But thats because it was in direct competition to other avenues at the time. What *keeps* it low is the fact that the PC environment has other ways – GMG, GG, Desura, Origin, etc. to act as a form of market compition.
Console doesn’t have this alternative “markets” on a digital only platform. It’s a *closed* platform. You buy your games from MS and MS only. I severely doubt MS would ever allow 3rd party distributors like GOG, Desura and the like on their online shop. So the only “real” competition in that single online environment? Thats right its the *physical* shops which need to compete w/ each other but still needs to compensate for the overhead costs.
I want to debate this issue further, but you’ve hit targeted the exact reason I no longer like consoles, and that is that they are a closed platform. So for that reason, I cannot counter-act these points because my ego likes them so much.
I really dislike closed platforms. I swapped my first iPhone as soon as Samsung released the first Galaxy S, making the jump to Android way back when people were still going “whats Android?” and rolling their noses up at it haha
There is no real correlation between prices and revenue made by publishers. Otherwise we would be seeing CoD/Mario being sold for $10 each.
If Xbone users could share games with 10 people, then in the publishers eyes they would be getting 90% less sales.
What I am trying to say is that Microsoft are pretty damn greedy and especially after the Xbox One stunt, it’s particularly difficult to believe they would offer any sort of lower prices.
“Microsoft would not the central force dictating the price of games on the X1.”
Perhaps not, but they surely get the final say in things? After having people pay X price for so long to the point where it’s become the normal, what would stop them from pocketing any extra change instead of passing on the savings?
Except piracy is not a big problem in the current console generation.
It exists, sure – but not even at a fraction of the level of pre-steam PC piracy. Console mod-chips are not all the rage like they were in the PSone era.
You’re kind of right though – if you forget piracy as a motivator and look at used game revenue instead. If the publishers are making the additional profit on their used games, that could be the incentive they need to reduce prices over an XBone cloud service.
Agreed. I doubt Microsoft would cut prices when they are getting away with $110+ for AAA titles. Those who think it would go the way of steam prices are kidding themselves.
Would be great if they wana stop second hand but
sell digital cheaper eg $60 to 70 ( better than 90-110 in aus)
Microsofts past actions have haunted them and hurt them more than all the bad PR. Their conflicting ramblings confused me but anytime I sensed ambiguity I would ask “what would Microsoft want to add this for?” It may be cynical but fair-pricing-for-digital-content they are not, and anti-DRM they are not. As far as I am concerned they will take all they can.
If CD Projekt RED built and released a console with every feature the Xbox One was going to have I would buy it. Not because I am a fan of theirs (I haven’t played any of their games) but I feel I could trust them based on their current stance and past actions. If they said “always-online is needed for cool features” or “game sharing across accounts is way better now”, etc.. I would believe it.
Microsoft simply did not realise how little we trusted them and the policy reversal is them acknowledging it and changing to a model that requires us to trust them less.
I imagine you saying “CD Projekt Red” like this
Optimistic is a good word for it. But what the article is saying that this system is a good compromise between corporation and people. Because they profit off all of it and we get buy cheaper and cheaper games. That’s what’s implied by comparing it to Steam. Steam capilizes off every thing they sell. There’s no undercutting them, yet, consumers get great games at great prices still. In other words, they manage to make profit on street level tactics.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too! People are never happy with one thing and then when a change is made they complain more…
This.
To many narrow minded people with no vision for the future.
Or too many people with good memories.
It is one thing to hope for the best when change comes, but to turn a blind eye on the past actions of a company when considering its plans for the future is foolish.
Why does it keep being compared to iTunes, as well? You can still buy songs on CDs and share them around, that’s not killing the industry either!
This is exactly how I felt when I read this…. Fuck whinging gamers….
Oh yay a hardware update….
PC for me now.
Because it’s not like Windows update doesn’t ever interrupt gameplay and require 3 resets in a row.
You’re aware that you can set windows updates to manual, right ?
To do them when you’re not currently playing a game or doing some work, right ?
Right ?
Nope, whichever way you look at it the original XBox plan was a turd sandwich. Totally useless to travellers, ex-pats and the military; useless to those in regional areas with poor connectivity. Lose access to your games if the Microsoft Servers go down; lose access to your games if you refuse to download a faulty system update which is bricking systems (as Sony recently had); lose access to your games if Microsoft suspends you from their online service. And anyone who actually thought the result of all this was going to be cheaper games was simply not paying attention to anything the big publishers have done in the last five years.
What MS was offering was some kind of service, sure. But it wasn’t a product the existing console market wanted, and it wasn’t aiming to grow that market to new consumers who wanted these features, and it wasn’t remotely competitive with Steam, and so I don’t know in what possible world MS thought this was a product worth launching.
I think Microsoft could have sold the positives better (I was personally behind them and I’m disappointed that they’ve backtracked) but at the end of the day, people don’t really want change or innovation, they want comfortable and accessible.
The see things like “online authentication” or “DRM” and think “Diablo 3” or “Sim City” and think that their rights are being taken away instead of the service allowing them to access unprecedented flexibility.
No, the service is not suitable for everyone, such as people in areas with unreliable internet access – and it sucked a little bit that without online authentication even a single-player game with the disc in the tray would not work.
But we can either have the future or we can have a shiner version of now.
The masses have spoken.
Spot on, Kermitron.
I’d disagree with people /not wanting/ change or innovation, people definitely wouldn’t mind it if it didn’t shit all over your freedom to play your games (or lend them to others) as you choose. I don’t want bullshit FORCED on me, like the DRM that the author here moans so much about. I’m perfectly happy with a disc in the tray, so long as I don’t have to call home every 24 hours. If Microsoft truly wanted to offer what you call unprecedented flexibility, I should think Steam, rather than the Microsoft pitch, is the model you’re looking for. And that wouldn’t be considered innovation on Microsoft’s part, since Steam has already done it.
But DRM = punishing the customer, there’s no two ways about it. Even Steam, as fantastic a platform as it is, is still a form of DRM. But checking in every 24 hours? That’s EA level stupid, and Microsoft should have seen it coming.
Now I’d like to see them eat more humble pie and backtrack on that shitty Kinect deal as well, because as far as I’m concerned, Orwell is still spinning in his grave over that one.
As you conclude, you seem to be of the stance that change has to be now, and it has to be the way that most benefits the makers, not the consumers. Change the priorities there and we can truly talk about the future.
I don’t want to be a slave to my technology, rather I want it to work well for me.
They want both. They want innovation to be accessed from comfort, not forced to adapt to a new way that is discomforting for them at first. I can understand that.
Gamers like the idea of innovation until they are face to face with it, then it just becomes too much
That’s because it’s often delivered in a way that requires more faith than gamers are willing to give. The Xbox One is the perfect example of this; we can see the benefits, we’re not dumb, but you’re asking us to give up too much for something we’re not even sure enough about yet.
It’s a bit of a cliche, but Steam nails innovation perfectly, finding compromise between what the gamers are comfortable with, and what the company is willing to try.
It isn’t simply a choice between having rights and having innovation (etc). You can have rights AND have innovation- just look at indie games. They can be very innovative, and you still own them. See? And why exactly do you feel the need to lose your rights at all? Think about it- do you really really want to no longer own the things you buy? Why lose that? Why lose your privacy? If a thing is shiny enough, do you feel that you’re less of a person, or that you SHOULD be? This is all about respecting YOU- and you champion the people who attack you? Really? Meanwhile, I’m on my constantly-innovating PC, owning everything (yep I avoid the people who pioneered these sorts of attacks, and they did it on PC first), and having fun. And I still respect MYSELF just as much as I ever did. I haven’t lost anything, why should you?
I’ve already expended my quota of explaining to people why they don’t actually own the video games they have on their discs/hard drives for this decade, and really don’t have the time, energy or inclination to go into it again. The point is that the publishers that have licensed you to use the software can revoke that time whenever they like. Reselling used games is not a consumer right, it is a privilege extended by the fact that up until now, the tech to revoke the ability to trade/sell used games hasn’t existed. It does now.
What Microsoft proposed to remove was the ability to resell/lend out a disc. They gave us the ability to share the game with up to ten “family members”.
Which they now can’t do because it requires authentication, which people are opposed to. Also, people like paying less for used games, even though companies like EA and Ubisoft instate a one-time code system that lock away part of the content unless you’re a first-time buyer or pay an access fee, so you can use the content on the disc.
How much of your game do you own? Only what EA says you can own, apparently. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, I guess. Apparently Steam is going to start letting you lend out your games like the Xbox One was going to, except for some reason PC gamers think it’s a great idea! Want to place bets on whether you’ll lose your offline mode when that happens?
And people got tired of explaining it to you that they DO own the products on that disk.
Actually, you were the only person disagreeing with me, and we ultimately determined we weren’t arguing the same thing. Ownership of a CD/DVD is not the same as owning the content, you were arguing you had an implied right to transfer the license by selling the disc.
Quicktooth up there thinks he owns his Steam games. There is no disc to be transferred and Steam doesn’t currently allow the trading of licenses. So what does he own? Access to a game that vanishes when/if Steam says so, or if they ever cease operations.
When you have a compartmentalized game on a disk or cartridge, it is yours. Like a Blu Ray movie, it is recognized to be a legal copy, which has value. You could sell it for money. It is an asset. The video game or movie company cannot suddenly decide to recall all copies and suddenly obtain them all, as they would need your permission to break into your house and take your property. They own the IP, so you can’t go out and legally say that you invented the Avengers or made the film… but you can watch the movie as much as you want.
The same is true for a lot of Steam games. I just disconnected my router and loaded up “Evil Genius” which I bought for a few dollars on Steam. Now say I back up my hard drive… if I so choose, I can always play it. It doesn’t matter if the Steam servers vanish. I could even sell my computer or my Steam account to someone else because it has quantifiable value.
Again with the Avengers Blu Ray. I buy it. I decide to sell it to my friend for $15. Is that not my right? Is it illegal? If I did it in a police station, would they charge me? If I did it in front of any of the studio heads or Marvel Comics or anyone in the world, could they legally stop me? What then happens if I then decide to pull the same stunt in a police station, except lend a game to a dozen of my different friends… instead of Microsoft’s new proposed arbitrary number of “10”?
When you buy a movie ticket… you don’t “own” the movie at all. That contract is for just you, just then. When you get a subscription to a service like Pay TV, it is just for that period… but you could watch it alone or with a group of friends. And that’s exactly what it’s like. In the black and white world of console gaming where you either own a game or you don’t, Microsoft introduced a grey.
I see a lot of rubbish about people who oppose DRM are not ready for the future. By giving freedom while taking it away… it is just another shade of grey.
Thought experiment: I buy a game on Steam but haven’t downloaded it. The next day, Ste closes down forever. Where’s my game? What do I own? You can say “well I can play this game that’s on my hard drive” but technically if you were banned from Steam you would lose that right. Sure, there’s workarounds to make games work without steam but that’s like me saying I’m not banned from a nightclub if my friend sneaks me in through the fire exit.
What you are allowed to do and what you technically *can* do are two different things.
Well that’s like saying you buy a car but when you go to pick it up, the car yard has closed down. The transaction hasn’t been completed. You could probably legally recoup your money through your financial institution. In the nightclub scenario, the games would be like the drinks. In the Steam nightclub you may get banned, but you should still be able to walk out with your drinks even if you couldn’t buy anymore. For the same nightclub scenario in the Xbone’s case(prior to the 180 stance)… if you didn’t check with the bouncer periodically, you’d have to throw your drinks up in a bucket and gtfo empty handed. In both of these cases however, ownership becomes a grey area, but I think since you’ve paid for them, you are legally entitled to have them. It’s interesting but all online DRM is quite a grey area I think. With the case of disk/cart based gaming, it’s like putting the drinks in your bag or car… which the nightclub really can’t do anything about either physically or legally… since you’ve legitimately paid for them and taken it out of their area of control. The nightclub scenario is quite a good one… in that you could imagine Steam, the PS4, and the Xbone as 3 separate ones. Steam only does drinks on tap(digital), the PS4 does tap and bottled, the prior Xbone only does tap, but you need to check in regularly to make sure you’ve paid for those drinks and are not giving them to friends. People go to different clubs based on their personal tastes, some ppl don’t mind about checking in, some ppl do mind a lot. And even after the change of policy, it’s mainly from noticing that they weren’t selling drinks rather than listening to customers complain about their police state policies. Likewise, even after the policy is changed… some ppl have a bad experience so don’t want to go back, some ppl are interested in trying, and some have already gone to the PS4 one and have run out of money. Now it’s just a wait and see.
No one gets to keep their drinks when they’re thrown out of a nightclub. The bouncers grab you and throw you out. No bar/clu/lounge anywhere allows you to leave the licensed premises with an open alcohol container. If you’re not done “drinking” (i.e.: you haven’t downloaded your game), then that’s it. You’re not going to get refunded. You can stand outside wish you had your beer, but you can’t access it except by subverting the rules. If the bouncers don’t see you, you can sneak back in and finish your beer, but that doesn’t mean you’re following the rules.
The nightclub analogy is an unexpectedly good one because it seems to illustrate my point perfectly.
Many people prefer to buy closed containers (or discs) from liquor stores (retail stores) because it’s cheaper, they can shop competively, and enjoy their drinks at their leisure and under the conditions of their choosing. All digital content is on tap, the only “bottles” are physical discs you buy from a retail store. The difference is, it’s a bottomless bottle that never empties so you can sell it to your friend and he can enjoy it as well, as long as he doesn’t care that you’ve already had your mouth on it. The analogy breaks down a little bit since there’s generally no wear and tear or depreciation on digital content, like there is with physical items.
Since there’s no magic bottles that can infinitely refill in real life there’s no real equivalent to a game disc you can sell and enjoy over and over again.
Here’s another question: every last Xbox 360 in the world is dead and cannot be repaired. You have a Halo 3 disc. You have every right to play the game you own, but can’t. Does Bungie owe you a refund? Does Microsoft owe you compensation?
“Licences” are only just now in the last few years being tested in courts, and so far the only place holding the word license as a valid term is american courtrooms, in europe “permanent licences” ie Cd’s, DVD’s, Games are a form of sale and are classed as a transferal of ownership of the license, in turn allowing you to resell them at your leisure. This is not to be confused with copyright laws.
So you are saying that it’d be ok if a somewhat important group of people simply could not play with the console or was badly limited, as long as the rest of people would get an improved experience?
Yes, absolutely. Sucks for the people that miss out, but sometimes that’s just how it is. Just like all the people who can’t afford the console. They have to wait until the circumstances are right for them (I.e.: when it’s cheaper).
Whoa, while that was all sort of douchey (“I don’t care how many of you get screwed as long as /I/ get more privileges”) that wasn’t what I was aiming for.
My point is that Microsoft is a business. Catering to a few elite is poor business, unless each of them is willing to pay the share that the unwashed masses would pay in total, which is not going to happen. Maximising one’s market share and putting the product into as many consumers’ hands as possible is how this game is played, and that’s exactly what they are trying to recapture with these measures.
You’ve got it backwards. Microsoft was catering to a majority, while a niche market is left out in the cold. It sucks for them, but not everyone can be catered to when you’re trying to drive technology forward. Some people just get left behind.
If that were true and they knew it, there would have been no reversal. This reversal is not a PR move, it is a business move to make more money. Did you ever see that map with the world availability of the XBone vs the PS4 for launch day? You really cannot call that a majority. Even seasoned Microsoft fans were threatening of walking away, or worse, walking into Sony’s own offer because they felt disgruntled or alienated about those policies. MS made a bold move, that yes benefited some, but apparently, not as many as they thought.
When one does have unlimited, reliable, super-fast and cheap Internet 24/7, it is difficult to imagine that some else doesn’t, let alone thousands. That doesn’t stop it from making a reality.
you shouldn’t have to be online to play your own games, the sharing was cool, but the trade off was horrible. Nothing on the Kinect constantly spying on you?
Except you can deactivate it and stop it from doing so?
lol yeh after they heard of people cry about it then change their policy on the kinect
If you can do that, then why can’t you pull the plug on it? Face it. There is no guarantee the thing is 100% deactivated. It is just PR spin.
They want it present to compel you to use it, and have it be ready to use at a moment’s notice. It would be pretty terrible if it was left unplugged or even kept away where it was out of sight, out of mind.
I don’t use my Kinect and I unplugged it long ago because it was causing my Xbox to lag on startup. But if the new Xbox gives me reasons to actually use it, then I will.
Heres an idea – turn the damn thing around – let it spy on a wall…. SO HARD!
Apparently the kinect only listened for the words”Xbox On”, but I get where people are coming from to do with privacy.
The real loss is now we wont have shared game libraries with 10 of our friends. That was a selling point for me.
except privacy laws. Take your tin foil hat off. I can gaurantee you the only information they share will be something like gathered stats of numbers of people watching what, from where and at what times. no video or audio capture.
What do you honestly think they will do. Record you eating pizza, masturbating and playing Call of Duty at the same time and sell it to sites on the internet?
I think the concern was what OTHER people would do. People who don’t give a shit about laws, like hackers. We’ve already seen this happening with loopholes exploiting unsecured webcams.
webcams are ALOT easier to exploit than a kinect. this is tin foil hat shit, thinking youre going to get hacked. put a sock over it.
If you can’t disconnect it, you can’t guarantee it will remain de-activated… Ever seen Short Circuit?
If you can deactivate it, why can’t you just disconnect it? Sorry I’m sure this has probably popped up before, but it’s got me beat and I haven’t seen an answer yet. Unless you can unplug it altogether, I’m not convinced it’s fully deactivated.
They always said “We at Microsoft will not use it to spy on you” it needs to remain on for the NSA.
Microsoft aren’t really bothered at all.
Even when it’s on it doesn’t spy on you?? are you retarded? or do you just beleive everything Sony Fanboys crap out?
I find the Kinect complaint is pretty nit-picky. For one thing, you can turn it off. Also, laptops, phones, tablets, and many PC monitors have had cameras pointed at your face and almost always online for about a decade, and no-one is whinging about that.
MS tells us we can turn it off but if you ever say “Xbox on” the console turns on. This means they are not telling the truth at all. If the kinect was actually off then this functionality would never work.
You can turn that off.
I haven’t come across them saying that. Do you have a source?
http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/privacy
“When the system is off, it’s only listening for the single voice command — “Xbox On,” and you can even turn that feature off too.”
http://kotaku.com/xbox-ones-kinect-can-turn-off-microsoft-says-noting-510100564
Dude they’re just saying you can turn the console off with the powerbutton. This isn’t what people were wanting. They were wanting to power down the kinect device specifically. It doesn’t seem to mention that in the article itself.
http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/privacy
Says you can turn off the feature that listens for “Xbox On”. If it uses “no power”, the Kinect is off.
“When the system is off, it’s only listening for the single voice command — “Xbox On,” and you can even turn that feature off too.”
The kinect is still powered up, it has a current running through it. If the kinect was truly ‘off’ it would not be detected and would be able to be unplugged. Sorry but nup.
I’ve provided my source, where’s yours? Microsoft themselves have said that disabling the “Xbox One” command “would use no power” — in fact you quoted that a few comments ago.
How is it spying? Do you really think the bandwidth needed for it to send video feed etc back to MS would go unnoticed or that they specifically have staff watching kinect feeds for some nefarious purpose?
I don’t understand why this is an issue? (seriously… not trolling)
MS were one of the key participants in PRISM. Make no mistake, this thing will be used to spy on people when the NSA asks MS to so. Not really MS fault (the requests are legal), but I’d be hesitant to have any video capture devices in my living room right now.
take a bex and lie down bro
Yeah because it’s not like it happened or anything… pure fantas…. oh wait.
The fact that MS has a patent that allows viewing of content (such as movies) to be charged on a per-viewer basis is pretty damn disturbing.
All of that could happen without a 24 hr check-in. Online check when launching a new game to tie it to your account and everything else would follow.
To get everybody to stop complaining all MS had to do was come out and say that the RRP on new xbone games is $40. Saying ‘oh this stuff you don’t like could lead to cheaper games’ was never going to fly. There isn’t enough trust built up to take it at face value.
A majority of post I saw of people complaining never trade games, so a single use locked to one account at a much lower price would have been acceptable. But give an rrp not some broad, non accountable statement like this might make things cheaper.
Yep. If they had of been willing to actually talk about things on this list when they announced the system it may have been better received. They needed a frank and open presentation about how this all works right and why it’s good for us and they never delivered it. Instead they tried to downplay the whole thing and act like it was no big deal.
This is the biggest complaint I have about everyone who’s whingeing about how we just ‘lost access to the future’. We still could, but they don’t wanna, because we wouldn’t take their absurd DRM with it.
The 24hr check-in was bullshit and didn’t need to be a part of that future. You check in when you activate a new product, like Steam, and half of peoples’ problems are over.
Better yet, they could’ve kept the sharing scheme for people who are proving that they’re online by purchasing digitally-delivered (discless) copies, to try and ENTICE people to the shiny new future instead of holding a gun to everyone’s head and telling us ‘this is how it’s going to be’.
But noooo. If they can’t have their pointless, unnecessary, draconian DRM, you can’t have nice things either. It’s such passive-aggressive bullshit.
Yeah. Did you see some of the one-on-one interviews with the Xbox higher ups? Every time they got asked about the DRM features, they totally went quiet and basically just repeated the same line, and now they are back tracking because they have realised people won’t buy their console. Maybe they shouldn’t have been so quiet about it……….
That’s exactly it. If they had the vision and had of just come out and said yes it will check in every 24 hrs but this is so you can play without the disc and still have the ability to share games.
To try and sell the vision with details rather than a grandiose ‘it will be a brave new world’ spin. The fact they wouldn’t answer made most people think it was actual worse they what we being said
Well to be fair most of the pro-XBOX One stuff we’re hearing now is speculation backed by little trickles of info. Even if only half of this stuff was true it would have put the XBOX One in a dominant position, but the fact they didn’t play any of it up would indicate that there’s either barely any truth to it or there are unforeseen conditions that come with it.
The majority of the responses from Microsoft were vague mutterings about the Cloud, even though all this stuff indicates they had like fifty aces up their sleeves. If you had to justify the 24 hour check-in and you had pages of cool and useful features to list off, you wouldn’t just say ‘we want developers to be able to Cloud… and we’re all connected… maybe more power?’.
All the shininess could still be offered for digital games, and just treat disc games the same as they always did. If you’re buying a game on a disc, you probably want it to work the same way it always did. Otherwise you’re probably fine with the always-online DRM stuff.
Well said sir.
Like I said in the other article:
There was some good stuff that got lost but at the end of the day it’s worth it. Even if only to put the fear of god into them. Their belief when they pitched it was that we could be strongarmed into it, they intentionally jumped the gun to get ahead of the competition, now they know why that’s a bad idea. Now they know the particular points we’re not willing to concede and their next attempt will fit that better. They’re not going to give up on this because industry experts are always going to tell them the current/conservative model will be dead in two years, so think of this as a negotiation to ensure that when we do get these features we get them properly and far closer to our terms than theirs.
This offer had some cool stuff in it but it was 100% for their benefit. This was the offer you walk away from the table over. After this expect their next offer to over compensate towards our benefit to bring us back, and they’ll work towards theirs after the system has been established.
Self-entitled gamers do not see how the DRM meant only 21 countries could play the Xbone when it’s launched and limiting their market to the US and parts of EU and virtually alienate Asia. This article is rubbish and shitaku again shows how out of touch they are to the average gamer.
Kyle: Word of advice typing STUFF IN CAPS does NOT make it FACT. Sorry but this article is just ten different levels of whining and whinging all on its own. DRM is not ‘last years boogeyman’, tell me about, please, how DRM protects anyone except pirates?
Oh and Kyle, this really is just a little infantile rant of an article, its condescending, insulting and rather rude to anyone and everyone here on Kotaku. 🙂
You mean SonyTaku right???
Fail to see how its Sonytaku given the absolute adoration for the 360 here?
Yesterday you were going to be able to buy a game and share it with 10 friends who could all play it – as long as nobody else was playing that ‘copy’.
Today, you can only do that via giving them the physical disk.
Kylie fails at articulation, not point.
That being said, changing it to how they have is basically passive aggressive. They could made it 24 hours IF you want to share and no online if you don’t use that feature.
Now you can share that disk with 11 friends 😛
And the friend you just met at the Mana Bar but haven’t added to your friends list yet.
Well to be fair to Kyle he was writing for those gizmodo people, and we all know what they are like 😉
It’s also a US article so it doesnt take into account some of the “features” won’t really be working for us anyway =P
open-minded and more objective than us?
You forgot devilishly good looking to boot 😛
lol so much butthurt.
They can still do that stuff with digital games.
But they shouldn’t have messed with disc based games, and a required internet connection for single player games should be seen as ridiculous because it is.
Yep, agreed. My major issue with the XBone all along was that they were trying to force the limitations and restrictions of digital distribution onto physical. If they want to use their new DRM model for digital distribution and keep the traditional model for physical that’d be fine with me. And it would have provided an option for those people (both of them :P) who liked the new model.
But if they’re just going to stick with a single system, then they’ve made the right call by going back to the traditional one. If they’d kept going down the track they were on they’d have faced an absolute wipeout at the hands of the PS4.
I would have been interesting to see what would have happened sales-wise had they stuck to the original plan.
Interesting in the way that a car crash is interesting.
Or a Zombie apocalypse.
I dislike that anyone who had issues with microsoft’s policies are now somehow backwards Luddites who want to live in caves, according to this article and the comments above.
Yep, its insulting that the author is so stupid as to label us; the people with brains who don’t want to be saddled with needless unwarranted DRM and other restrictions “Just because”, as whingers simply because he lacks the mental capacity to fully understand what hes even driveling about.
I swear almost every single article on Kotaku i read ranges from lazy bare bones pathetic, making no sense, to crying about some imagined racism or sexist problem or flat out insulting the readers with an ounce of intelligence and then the comments are just as ignorant. I’m honestly flabbergasted.
My modem died last Tuesday. After organising a new modem to be delivered I recieved it yesterday only to find that its not the modem but something else. A technician is coming out next Tuesday to address the issue. So that’s 2 weeks so far with no internet at home besides my phone. I’ve taken into account that it is also quite possible that it won’t get fixed next Tuesday. But hey, that doesn’t bother me because I have Steam offline mode. Why would anyone like the idea of a 24hour check? I sure as hell don’t.
The checkin was kilobytes and the console has built in wireless – tether to your phone for 5 minutes and you are done – providing you have that capability 🙂
I understand the no internet issue – I have had issues for 3 months (with 300+ disconnections) but for the ease of having my entire library digital and able to be shared I would’ve been happy. It’s more a case that technology today is demanding that our internet infrastructure is brought up to speed.
I know I can still buy digitally but the benefit of being able to purchase games at the cheaper retail price (like Ozgameshop) and play them straight from the HDD like a digital purchase was a huge benefit I thought.
Why weren’t articles like this prevalent before they changed their mind. I was not a MS hater, but will fully admit that I did not understand a lot of their features as described above. And I have read a lot of articles on these consoles. MS clearly failed in getting this information to me.
You, sir, should have been in charge of MS public relations.
I don’t see why they can’t be extra features for having Xbox GOLD.
WoW was a bad example, Private Servers are a big thing and have been for a long time. Lots of people playing on them…for free…..because there is no DRM on WoW….
Yep we had a private server going for around 2 years. Only 1 legitimate account that would ‘harvest’ patches and information etc. Then apply it to the private server. WOrked amazingly well. All updates as they rolled out, all gameplay elements etc. We even had the ability to ride flying mounts across Azeroth before the official servers did lol (kinda broke the game but oh well, it was fun)
Private servers tend to be way more fun with all of the awesome custom content, plus it was really easy to make custom items/monsters/bosses when servers used to run on SQL databases, just use a creation tool on the net and run it as a batch file on a front end. Good times. xD
OT: As Ambrew said, comparing an MMO to a Single Player experience is stupid. You expect an MMO to be on, as it’s designed for you to connect to other people to enhance your experience, to complete content, whereas when playing single player, you’re not connecting to another player(or players), nor are worlds usually persistant, no need for it to be Single Player other than to stop games from being ‘pirated’.
Also the fact that WoW is a MMO and being compared to single player gaming. Just because its probabily the biggest game of the decade doesn’t mean every other single game created should work the same way. Its bad on the industry. Sure I love the support Blizzard gives its consumers but I truely doubt M$ could deliver a service anywhere near that standard.
Yeah. Just because WoW is always-online doesn’t mean Skyrim should’ve been. It’s very annoying that people can’t grasp this.
What exactly is stopping Microsoft enabling download trades? It seems like they’ve made an arbitrary decision to disable sharing of downloaded games simply as a slap in the face to the people who argued for a more inclusive next generation of Xbox.
Every user that wrote a comment on every website/blog/forum saying “This is BS, not getting an xbox now, only getting a PS4 now” or along those similar lines, better fucking buy an XBOX 1 now. Cause you’re the sole reason this shit is now in place.
Yet to read a comment yet that says, thank you Microsoft for listening to me, I’ll repay the favour by buying your console now.
Oh no Markymark! If we don’t are you gonna ‘fuckin beat us up’???????
I’m going to be honest here. I’ll buy one eventually, but I’m in no hurry. They tried to bring all this sneaky shit in, and they only changed their minds when the preorder data came back. Rumour has it that at game stop it was 17 PS4’s for every xbone. They didn’t change it because they were listening to me personally.
Indeed.
Honestly the change is a *good* thing. While I won’t be grabbing XBone off the bat at least its now on my radar. Before the anouncement I wouldn’t have touched it. And neither would my co-workers who don’t play per se but have their own kids who do play when they found out about the restrictions =/
I actually jut posted on my facebook page that I will get one now, eventually (I know that might not be any consolation for you, but just in case)
If it helps, I posted a, “You didn’t fix all my problems, and you took away the good with the bad when you could’ve left it, so now I might buy after PS4, if I have the cash handy.”
Not to mention that if you have two similar products and you want to choose between them, maybe you should choose the one that was friendly to you the entire time, and not automatically switch to (what is still the worse option) who was threatening to fuck you up, then reconsidered when they realized they wouldn’t get your money.
Nothing happens in a vacuum.
There are better ways that they could have implemented their vision, but yes, it is a shame they have caved to short-sighted gamers.
Now they don’t even have their vision to sell to gamers. Only inferior more expensive hardware and a camera which still hasn’t proved that it can add to gameplay.
“Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer.”
Bwa ha ha ha ha. Yeah right. Even MS kept the same RRP.
Yep. Those games were never going to get cheaper. The extra money they were going to reap from used game sales was going straight into the pockets of MS and the publishers, little if any was going to go to developers and absolutely none was going to come to consumers in the form of cheaper games.
That’s exactly right. A lot of people claim that you support developers by buying first hand games.
That is a load of rubbish as it is the publisher that gets the lion’s share and even if the game sells well the publisher can discard the developer on a whim because they the publisher can!
I *love* how *EVERYONE* who defends the online only/non sharing is always quick to jump to the assumption that games prices will drop and quote Steam straight away..
Forgetting the fact that Steam gets away w/ it because PC is an *OPEN* platform. There are *many* ways to purchase games digitally on Steam – GOG, GMG, GamersGate, Desura, Origin, etc. all available online on your PC. Competition is what lowers the costs.
Consoles are a *CLOSED* platform. Are you really going to think MS is going to let other vendors start up their own “virtual service/shop” on MS Live’? No you will buy all digital stuff via MS thats *it*. Your only “competition” is *surprise!* the physical shops which will *still* charge at a higher rate due to overhead costs!
Ok, let’s go through this bit by bit shall we?
I never saw buying a disc as a problem. As for downloading it from the cloud, that would still be possible if Microsoft worked a better idea into how it is implemented.
There was no mention of a “hub” ever being on the cards. Working on some magical future assumption.
Once again, where is this magical hub you speak of? No one ever had this idea, nor would they.
Microsoft and publishers could already be doing this on Xbox Live now with the 360, but the FACT remains that online titles are more expensive than their physical medium counterparts.
Ummm no. Everything deminishes in value, especially games.
The part about Steam I’ll give credit for, but again, Microsoft can do the “cheap games” thing already if they want, but they didn’t and won’t.
Due to scarce details on how this works (do they get full game? demo? timed version?) I won’t go into this much. But I was impressed with the idea, we just needed more details in order to be 100% sold on this. Microsoft’s PR failed big time on this.
Wait, what? You make no sense here at all. Xbox One games would still be available via physical mediums too, so why not work with that rather than work against it? Oh wait, you mention this as a means to combat account sharing and piracy right?
I just wish they had the option for people to still use the original plan if they choose. Everything in my house is always connected, i’m not a paranoid schizophrenic scared of the nsa, and would love the options of sharing titles with 10 friends. I don’t care about trading in games or buying second hand titles, I’ve got every 360 game i’ve bought and I usually buy them day 1. Whilst not everybody has a stable internet connection, the new plan is great for them, I do however and liked the forward thinking ideas M$ had and wish they could still cater to me.
Ok, let’s play the blame game. MS could not have explained these features any worse in my opinion. The people who stand up on stage and represent them couldn’t have come across as being bigger douche bags if they tried. They do not seem like genuine human beings, they seem like corporate a**holes who speak down to gamers like we’re (all) a pack of gun-toting, red blooded, sports watching macho men. If they had taken the time to break down the features in the simple way you have above with this article, maybe people wouldn’t have been so against them.
Next we have the mass of gamers who ‘made their voices heard’. FFS people, how many of you do not have internet connections? How many of you actually took five minutes to consider both sides of the argument, that these changes might in some ways move the industry forward and create new opportunities? There was no notable group of regular people who took up MS’s cause, perhaps because of what they would be up against, but seriously, when you read the article above, it is pretty clear that MS were onto something pretty interesting. Next is the media.
Would people really care so much if sites like this, IGN, Polygon, and even more tech oriented ones like Gizmodo or the Verge didn’t build up all the sensationalist rubbish? I swear there were seemingly endless articles on these sites that just served to get more clicks by stoking the fires beneath angry video gamers everywhere. Where were the articles like this one when it actually mattered? Why bother talking about it now when it’s too late? It comes across as a bunch of journos just wanting to squeeze the last bit of juice out of the ‘topical story’, and strangely enough, many are now turning gamers against the decision, when they were arguing against the alternative up until today. I haven’t read any articles that outright support MS for this new change, although there were countless ones against them. Where does the angry horde of gamers get their ideas from, if not sites like Kotaku or IGN? I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be for MS people to be reading articles like this one NOW, after the change has been made. What are they supposed to do?
Finally, the blame can be laid at the feet of Sony, who joyously paraded around their stage dissing the Xbone’s policies without showing off any really compelling games. Why do we buy game consoles again? You could see the delight on their faces, as they revelled in their competitor’s poorly explained direction. By not going ahead with a similar plan, Sony have singlehandedly kept gaming where it is today, where stores like EB Games make massive profits off used game sales that do not benefit the people who actually made them in the first place. I read articles about Steam apparently looking into lending digital games, which seemed like a direct response to the MS direction. This would improve the DRM existence we all know today, but why should they bother with such ideas now?
So now the hypetrain for MS has fully come off the tracks. They were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t, but at least they had a new vision for gaming that would take it forward. Of course there were warranted concerns with the new ideas, but as the article above points out, DRM for things like iTunes and Steam don’t concern people at all. So hurray, the angry horde can indeed be heard… but then why does this whole situation leave such a sour taste in the mouth?
No, they just made it better.
Okay so the disc needs to be in the tray…? Oh no…however will we move on.
Expect for the basic fact of commerce that the role of the publisher ends *at the point of first sale*.
If I sell my used games to my brother, I should be able to do so without the likes of EA playing (Evil) Big Brother.
Second hand sales have been around since the dawn of commerce. It was feared that second hand sales would first kill industries such as cars, books, music and even movies.
They were wrong on all counts so far and they are already wrong when it comes to games. The manufacturer/publisher has never been entitled to proceeds of post-first sale exchanges and they are not entitled now. Nor are they entitled to now.
The real problem with the gaming industry is publishers are so obsessed with the dollar they are now turning to archadic DRM measures and authentication servers disgused as cloud solutions they have lost sight that gaming is about the games!
Sing it brother, praise the lord
I point you to TotalBiscuit’s youtube vid discussing why the selling of used games and the secondhand market for other types of media (movies, books, mp3s) are not the same, and should not actually be held up as a model for comparison. He has valid points.
No, he has been jaded by the likes of Game and their practices. My comparison holds because at the end of the day all industries conduct a trade and the second hand trade has existed from the dawn of commerce.
My money is being traded for a good and/or service. Unless it is a online game, the role of the manufacture ends *at the point of first sale.* Just like how the Ford’s relationship ship ended when the person before me bought the 1985 KA Laser which I now own.
The warrenty is long over, it has been almost 30 years. Is Ford entitled to any proceeds of second hand sales or beyond?
No, they are not. So why should EA et. al. be treated any different?
The comparison stands thanks to the basics of trade. The real problem here is that publishers are so desperate for the dollar they create these hyper inflated expectations of profit and try to harvest the goal via any means. Even trying to pass through the first sale barrier where they belong.
uhhhh no peg
Wait, No one complains about WoW? Hahahaha, clearly you’ve never been on their forums.
Who gives a shit if publishers get a cut of resold games? They are the scum who put us in this problem in the first place. If it was the developers getting a cut maybe I could find my way to caring.
Also guess what? you can still have your discless future without ANY discs, instead of buying physical product than filling in more dumps with useless plastic discs you can just buy the game DIGITALLY on BOTH platforms.
The is a fatal flaw with digital distributions. Most publishers (even Valve have been caught out on this) do not realise they need to take their saving from the disk media and put it to servers.
When a game comes out, one is better off waiting around a week because by then the rush is gone and you can finally download, install (and activity if you are on the PC) within a reasonable time frame.
As for disks, besides the mad rush at the store or the post office if you order online, you pretty much go home, install (and activate if you are on PC), and play.
Also, no all distribution services will allow you access to your game downloads after a period of time. See case in point, EA’s Origin. While you can buy the disk and register the key so you can download at a later date if the disk is lost or broken, there is a time limit. If the limit expires and you lose the disk, you have to pay for the game again.
I understand the flaws, I am more pointing at the people who are upset about the buy disk install then no disc. It was a wasteful practice to begin with but completely unnecessary as if people wanted to go discless they can already with DD.
Your living in a dream world if you though the used game policy would make games cheaper…
Sorry Kyle Wagner however your example of WOW is stupid.
That game can actually be played offline if you really want. Blizzard allows you to DL the server kit. However this would be stupid since the whole point of the game is to play online with others.
People except that for an online game such as WOW you will probably will have to connect to some form of master server. They don’t accept that you have to connect when you just want to play assassins creed single player by yourself in your dark dungeon late at night.
This is a shame, Purely joined to say it sucks that people flip out without the facts and have effectively limited the next gen console progress.
The problem cannot be exclusively blamed on the whinging pussy footing gamers. No. The problem also lies with Microsoft. This system was explained here in less than a page. All the positives, and acknowledging the negatives. Microsoft never explained this properly, they were never able to get a word in after they got it wrong, too.
It took me a while, and sadly a lot of research, to understand what Microsoft was doing. When i realised I was at peace and I was enthusiastic as well. I wanted an “XBONE”, the whole time, I might add. The content of it (games) is amazing.
Now though, Microsoft have been forced to go back to the current generation. This will obviously benefit some people, and there were probably better thing MS could have done to solve their problems like the “the 24 hour internet check in OR playing your game with the DISC IN”. If they had done that, people may not have had a problem.
Come the new new Xbox… whatever it will be called, they will once again be able to try and introduce some of their new innovative features.
BUT REMEMBER TO EXPLAIN IT MS, COZ HALF YOUR FUCKING AUDIENCE SEEMS TO BE 12 OR LESS.
I still personally believe the best thing Microsoft could have done was find the middle ground between what they wanted to do & what they are now doing.
I put it to you that Microsoft could have kept the 24 hour checks, the installs, etc. Doing so would have kept good features like eliminating the need to swap discs when changing games and keep the 10 friends/family sharing. The only key difference they should have added is that, if you could not get online to do the check, then you had to have the disc in the tray to verify ownership, which is basically what they will be doing now anyway, you need the disc. That way we would have had the progress of the digital future as well as not restricting the consumer. The best of both worlds, thoughs?
That is a brilliant idea!! Always online OR keep the disc in the tray. Please send this idea to MS.
So much hate on this article. His points are valid, regardless of his prose.
Also, I remember when Steam was hated, especially because the digital games were the same price as RRP. It took 10 years, but now games on PC are generally cheaper than console and receive discounts sooner. This is heavily due to Valve supplying publishers with better revenue via their Steam service.
So many people here and Gizmodo US, saying it is foolish to presume game prices will fall because of the DRM model Microsoft was to incorporate. One only has to look at the last 15 years of the games industry to see the evidence.
Please indicate where in the last 15 years of game history that a DRM policy actually drove prices down.
sorry I used the incorrect term. I was referring to the purchasing model, which is incorporates the DRM model. Don’t get caught up in the DRM side of it. I’ve clarified my opinions in a reply comment on the first page and I won’t copy/paste it here because it will just get confusing =]
For what it’s worth, I never had problems with the purchasing model. I had massive problems with the DRM model. I wasn’t alone. I’m pretty sure that’s where the majority of the noise was coming from.
There’s no way in hell Xbone just got worse. They would never sell games cheaper, and we wouldn’t get more for trading games in, what do they have to get out of it?
Losing the family system is no loss at all, now I can hand still hand my copy of a game to someone, which should never be removed, and I don’t have to checkin more frequently then someone out of jail. How can that be a bad thing.
This is a win for consumers who don’t have to be abused. I can’t see a single point that makes this console worse, now I actually want one. I didn’t before today.
“Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others’ rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.”
This is not true, there is no evidence to support this at all. You are essentially claiming that sale price is going to go down with the rise in game sales (due to lack of resales). This flies in the face of economics. If there is high consumer demand, price always goes UP, not down. Nintendo games have insanely high sale numbers (mario kart wii sold about 30million) but they have rarely dropped their prices and are usually the most expensive publisher to buy from. Call of Duty franchise consistently make 10-20 million sales but are usually the most expensive to buy as well (most EBs have them for around $110).
Where is your proof for this claim? You keep referencing Steam but we don’t have a clue what their game sales numbers are, the highest selling game that was sold through Steam is Half Life 2 which was 12 million and I seriously doubt most of that was made via steam bargains.
This point irritates the hell out of me. You’re either an inane optimist or an xbox fanboy and I don’t think you should be paid to spout so much nonsense.
PC is the home of piracy, and Steam. Steam has the cheapest prices. This must really blow some peoples’ minds.
Combine that with the fact that Simcity was DRM-fest and was still full priced, lol.
If only Microsoft had explained it that way in the first place!
This is a digusting, douchey article filled with conjecture and hyperbole before taking a swipe at your reader base.
It sounds like a kid having a tantrum.
Ironically, shortly afterwards I read an amazing article that was making some of the same points by an extremely talented journalist instead of some hack. You should check it out, maybe learn how to write a real article: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/the-xbox-one-and-microsoft-we-won-but-what-have-we-lost/
I can’t believe the same company hires you both…
“I have a really awesome present for you, but you have to let me poke you in the eye with a stick first. What, you don’t want a poke in the eye? Then I guess you don’t get to have a nice present!”
Slick, Microsoft. Real classy.
I’ve got to be honest, nothing listed in “The Vision” really holds any appeal for me but the cheaper game thing, and we all know that was never going to apply to Australians so it’s a moot point. While I get it may be different for other people, the removal of the DRM far outweighs those “loses” in my book.
Oh PLEEEEEEAAAASSSEEEE, the reason microsoft changed it was $$$. No one was going to buy the stupid thing when it was nobbled. They changed because they were going to seriously hurt their market share. We complained because we didn’t like it and you can go cry in a $#% corner. The only whinger here is you and your stupid articles about nothing.
Funny that I can’t recall an article once on this site that painted the XBONE in a good light. Most articles were just trashing it and saying how it won’t perform against the PS4. Now they make some key changes and the articles are all “BOO! They shouldn’t of changed the XBONE!! It’s all you whinging gamers’ fault”
Strange…
I see no reason why they can’t still do the stuff they wanted to with the digital copies, I suspect the sharing and trading they wanted to implement was mainly to TRY to soften the blow of turning discs into glorified download vouchers,
ive lost discless gaming.
ive lost co-owning games with friends
ive lost the ability to sell downloaded games.
i was excited with all of these features.
i personally think Microsoft could have backtracked less.
keep the above features but require online for them.
then allow offline play in a similar manner to today.
i dont like that we have not moved forward at all this generation.
i would like to go to all downloaded games but i dont have the infrastructure yet.
Wow people always like to whine about anything don’t they?
I can’t believe people would be upset by this. So the game share function would have been cool, as would diskless gaming, but are those things worth suffering the DRM restrictions? Not even close.
I might even buy an Xbone now. Well maybe later, when the price goes down.
The loss of the disc free gaming, as well as family sharing, is not as bad as people make it out to be… why, because it could still easily be implemented without the need for a daily checkin… How you ask, by having it only compatible with games purchased via the digital download market, a system which already does not allow for trading, lending and re-selling.
Microsoft have committed to releasing all games on their digital market at the same time as the physical retail market, the same way publishers and Steam currently do it. You can walk into any retail store (That still sells PC games) and pick up the latest Call of Duty for PC or you can just buy it directly on Steam.
Now you might complain about the price, that the digital market is for no explainable reason higher than the retail market, but similiar to the PC retail and Steam distribution, (And I’m purely speculating with this following theory) but I believe digital download codes will be available at online retailers, much the same way if you were to look at the Amazon page for Call of Duty you would see four options (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and PC Download). Only moving forward you would see 6 options (Xbox One, Xbox One Download, PS4, PS4 Download, PC and PC Download). This would then create a very stable and competitive market. Why do I think this could happen… Because download codes for the Xbox 360 already exist… Do a search on Ozgameshop for Xbox 360 download code… Yes the selection isn’t very big, but Microsoft’s vision of sharing games and controlling the second hand market is right there in front of them… All they have to do is reach out and take it.
Really, Kotaku, THREE articles on exactly the same issue (FOUR, if you include LH). This is getting both bizarre and completely moronic. First Kotaku is riding massively on the “MS is incredibly inept with the XBox”-wave, now you flip around and hype up the very points, that MS was pushing and got burned for?! I am sorry, I have to ask: Are you on drugs?! Just to illustrate that point, let me quote this compelling piece of logic here:
You sound like a 5-year old having a fit about wanting to have a cake and eat it, too! This is attention-whoring of the worst kind and an absolute disgrace for even the slightest pretension of journalism on this site.
Different journalists may have different opinions, or may be objective enough to provide a view from different perspectives. You sound like the 5 year old having a tantrum.
Really? I lined up a clear argument based on the way attention-grabbing articles on this topic have come together on this site and I am the 5-year old? Funny. What has this got to do with different perspectives? They first thrash the console, then turn around and thrash the changes on precisely the things the complains focused!? That’s not different perspectives, that’s incoherent whinging. As inept as MS PR was over the past weeks, I would imagine, they still shake their head over quality journalism like this.
Yeah sorry, you didn’t line up any clear argument. Kotaku isn’t a political organisation with a “party line” they have to tow. What you have just experienced is reporting on differing views.
Is it just me that wonders what exactly you are meant to do with a cake, if not eat the thing? Food for thought…
pun intended.
First kotaku complains about xbox one and DRM and they put out this article. Congratulations on being the worst gaming info site.
Pretty sure he’s a Kotaku US writer, I’m hesitant to say ‘journalist’. If you also check his history of articles, he’s only done 8 articles so far, 6 of which are directly about the Xbox, 1 related to a Microsoft product and something about sports which is a hobby one no doubt. Either way, I’m guessing this clown is on Microsofts payroll as every articles either positive towards XB1 or telling people they’re wrong for going against the XB1.
tl:dr? Kyle Wagner is a shill for MS corporate.
Actually I find the the xbone implementation of DRM was horrible and a massive step backwards (as a good chunk of the industry is starting to lean away from these the DRM crazyness of 5-10 years ago).
As for the Features that will be dropped:
a) for the most part we didn’t want them – as evidenced by the outcry, and their backtracking.
b) There is NOTHING stopping MS from implementing ALL of those changes on downloaded games if they so wish – think of it as the middle ground. Disk games are treated as physical copies, and downloaded titles could be used as per MS’s original intention… from your point of view this would be a good plan as it would prepare the xbox community for a full shift in the next generation, whilst not alienating them in the current one. People would be given a chance to get used to the idea, and MS would have a chance to show why it is so great. (personally I am not a fan of overly resrictive DRM and would be a hard sell)
A lot of people are playing the price point card now but I seriously doubt that would have ever happened, not without a huge consumer backlash. It’s a stereotype I know, but at most, if the games did get cheaper, they probably wouldn’t have gotten cheaper by much. It’s like banks passing interest rate cuts to consumers, the big companies want to please stockholders too. Keeping profits is part of their business strategy. It’s easy to say that we’ll never know now but given the history of business practice in the past, I think it’s safe to say what the outcome would have been even if MS didn’t reverse their policy
I could not agree more. So disappointed we are forced to swallow today’s machine as a future console. If anything it represents a regression of consoles. Consoles should be moving forward, not backwards or in ‘stasis’. I am always online as it is, I’ve never set my location time zone or anything on my 360, that’s the internet’s job, my phone is always connected to the internet. As is my PC netbook and ipad. Why should a console be any different? I say booooo to the X1 haters who caused this and booooo to microsoft for not telling the hater to **** off. The haters were saying booooo to a future console connected to the internet constantly and boooo to sharing a games library with friends disc free. Now time to go watch some futurama.
“my phone is always connected to the internet. As is my PC netbook and ipad.”
Not a single one of those things shut down their core function if their internet connection is lost.
Is that really the future we want though? In 5 years time when we look back at this outcry we will shake our heads. This is conservatism without any vision or pragmatism. Microsoft was leading the way and would have become market leader, leaving ps4 a relic of sony, at least untill the Internet whined.
http://youtu.be/EL8e2ujXe8g
NONE of this is our fault. You act like complaining about Microsoft’s original policies concerning the XBOX One automatically causes them to default to the current policies. You are incorrect, Captain Hindsight.
Maybe I’m crazy but I came up with these ideas. I know they may seem complex to Microsoft execs and Microsoft apologists like the author of this article, but I’m sure you guys will be able to comprehend the genius behind it.
PHYSICAL GAMES SHOULD REMAIN EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY ARE TODAY. THE CHANGES SHOULD BE WITH THE DIGITAL GAMES ONLY.
DIGITAL GAMES: With a digital version you obviously install it to the HDD and it’s tied to your XBOX Live account. When you go to your friends house you should be able to sign into your XBL account, download any of your purchased games to their console, and play the games you OWN just like when you bring over the disc. Once you leave their house those games will still be on their console but they will have to BUY the game to re-activate it ONLINE and play it without you there. The benefit is they don’t have to download the game again and it’s already there. Obviously if you bought a digital version of a game you have a pretty good internet connection to download them so you should have access to the internet to do the initial activation too.
HOW THEY CAN ADD VALUE TO DIGITAL VERSIONS
#1: DIGITAL DISCOUNTS ON NEW GAMES FOR LOYAL DIGITAL CUSTOMERS – Developers could choose to offer a discount on a new digital game if you’ve purchased previous digital games from the same developer. (ex; If you purchased the digital version of Halo then Bungie could offer a 5% discount on the digital version of Halo 2). This adds value to a digital version of a game because you know it’ll give you a discount on the next title whereas the physical disc version WON’T.
#2: SELL & TRADE DIGITAL VERSIONS THROUGH XBOX LIVE – Doing this gives Microsoft the opportunity to make some money for themselves as well as publishers. When you are bored of a particular game in your digital library you can sell/trade to another XBOX Live user for a $5 transaction fee. Half of that fee goes to Microsoft and the other half goes to the publisher of the titles being sold/traded. You simply choose the games to trade and the digital licenses and rights to play the game are swapped between users. If you wanted to SELL the game you pay the same $5 fee and the other user can pay you in digital currency. (Which is now in DOLLARS since they are getting rid of Microsoft Points). You now have extra money in your wallet and Microsoft can use their half of the $5 fee to cover the costs of processing the money transfer between XBL user accounts.
THERE YOU GO!!! Physical media would still work the same way and take advantage of the new Bluray drive. Digital media would finally have some sort of value once you’re bored of the title in question. It solves the only issues with digital media and makes EVERYONE happy.
That is how Microsoft could have won E3. But instead they basically fixed one problem and created another. They won’t let us have our cake and eat it too.
$89.99 for basically every COD game flys in the face of ‘maybe cheaper games’
Kyle Wagner, respectfully, can you rethink? I’m sure you’re a fine journalist, but when you hand-wave away actual attacks on your audience (privacy, consumer rights, ownership), you just make me want to go to another publication. It’s so easy to do. I can do it right now, with a few clicks- and never come back. Do remember that in espousing Microsoft’s former (thanks Gods!) physical embodiment of attacks on consumers, you are ALSO saying YOU wish for them to be attacked? Have you simply forgotten WHY we are all so angry? Only see through rose-tinted glasses? I can sure understand that you want innovation- we all do. But not at the intergral price of being attacked. For God’s sake man, this thing was an Orwellian surveillance device; Microsoft WANTED it to be- and since they aren’t remorseful, they must still do. Like with Microsoft, I can just leave your company behind. I went to Sony. Think carefully about what you champion.
Whats this nonsense about people not complaining about Blizzard DRM?
Have you seen the hate campaign that is Diablo 3?
I have that liked on facebook just so I can see the torrents of hate that spews forth with every single update on the news feed.
The major losing point was the US military. Because of all the FPS games the US Marines would play xbox and the US Military actually put on a statement against it. Games bought in the US and sent to Countries that had Internet could not be activated.
When I read this article its like the kid that’s being molested by the priest is saying the priest wont give him candy anymore.
How about this pissy blog-poster tell us ACTUALLY what features we’ve lost? Cheaper games? They weren’t going to happen (never stated or even speculated upon by Microsoft). Cloud? Still have it. Online-only games? Still have them. Disc-less play? Download it day one, just like Steam. Creepy Kinect? Still there. TV, Sports, Movies… Got it.
What have we really lost besides LACK of ownership and rights?
P.S. People did complain over Blizzard… where have you been? (Diablo 3, WoW for years over incorrectly banned accounts)
I tend to agree with what is said in this article. I was greatly looking forward to the advantages of the DRM and was supporting MS all the way with it. But after a while it became obvious that the fan outcry was going to make them do something drastic, I just didn’t think it would be this soon or this big of a change. If anything, I thought they would have made it so the disc in the tray would bypass the 24 hour checks.
Oh well, still some good things to come out of today like the knowledge that all games are region free and day 1 digital; but we can only wonder how things would have gone if they stood their ground on this. hmmm…
Fingers crossed they reintroduce some of this stuff later after working out new logistics.
Something along the lines of, you can play off of a disc, ORRRRR you can install it and use it without a disc IF you authenticate it each time you play (with this method allowing you to share it online with your friends).
Cant see why they couldnt do this.
the end of discs??? pfft, how about downloading 30-40 GB files into your console to see nex-gen graphics? you can also forget about collectibles and artsy things…
In over twenty years of reading gaming industry journalism this article takes the cake for the single greatest example of a journalist drink on the Kool Aid of publishers.
The ability of justifying mandatory daily connections or else your console becomes a paperweight is mind blowing.
That’s not Microsoft’s vision, that’s YOUR idealised vision. Most of your plus points are not confirmed, not pitched or and some not even remotely addressed by MS.
Have you thought of the counter points?
– server issues = gaming problems, maybe even complete shut down after awhile
– Checking in is just bytes of data? But the cloud always keeps your game “real time” and up to date? How can you have both at the same time. Either the check in sends lots of updates or its just pure DRM. I call BS
-Better return on used games? I picture the opposite. Why would publishers even want to sell used games if they already have complete control and the option to do-away with used games altogether? As time goes by this monopoly will translate into full priced games with no option for second. Steam is different in that there are plenty other avenues to buy a given game. But with the xbox1 model, there is no competition.
Of course this is all what “might” have been. But since that’s what you were doing in your article, this future is just as likely as the one you painted.
The whole reaction to this backflip has been hilarious. Especially these “You all suck” articles. It’s not what Microsoft was doing, it was how they were doing it and for some reason they decided to spit their dummy and take away things that really just needed to be better designed and explained. There’s a reason that people keep comparing what Microsoft did with the XB1 to other existing services, the existing services have done it right and in a way that benefits the consumer. There were so many ways that Microsoft could have approached this and they seemed to take the most publisher centric one.
I can hardly believe my eyes on this text.
A consumer defending DRM? As a computer scientist i can say that every feature on this xbox could have been done without DRM policies, they just had to find a more creative way to manage that (it’s really easy to just keep adding restrictions).
And what about cheaper games? Do you really believe that? Did DLCs lower any game’s price (so that you could buy just the features you wanted for you game)? Did region locks lower any game’s price so far? A lot of this ‘New Stuff’ could sound poetic but it’s not.
Don’t be fooled, all kinds of DRM are bad for the consumer. Reading this text was like seeing someone running straight into a mousetrap, damn.
FU!! OMG FUUUUU!!!!!!! FU x3000!!!!!!
Why didn’t you publish this article 3 weeks ago?!??!??! WHY now?!?!??! NONE of this information is new! NONE! Not ONE WORD of this is “just released”! The ONLY THING Kotaku and IGN and Gamespot would talk about was “How EVIL and HORRIBLE and Horribly Evil Microsoft is!” and NOBODY was saying “But wait, this is what we DO get!” People like me were screaming this information from the rooftops but we were buried under a 43:1 ratio of haters and idiots (same thing, I know) screaming how “evil MS is”. You ass bags keep your headlines buried and don’t say a word about what we were gaining, and now that it’s gone you RUB THIS IN OUR FACES as if to say “oops, I guess we COULD have done our job… buuuut… it was more fun to get hits”. THIS IS the articles that should have been going up since two days before E3 when they announced all these features. THIS is what we SHOULD have been talking about- but the media made damn sure that only discussions of gloom and doom went up. FUCK YOU Kotaku for waiting so damn long to do your god damn jobs or reporting instead of Op Ed features day in and day out.
Microsoft was never planning to offer cheaper new games. And that article also mentions that companies *cough*EA*cough* would love to charge even more, so to say that we could have had cheaper new games is wishful thinking, not based in reality.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/xbox-one-games-to-be-priced-at-59-99/
Also, the sharing library was a nice idea, but even Microsoft says it will not be available at launch, which indicates that it may be available in the future.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/microsoft-drops-controversial-xbox-one-drm-preowned-game-and-connection-policies-following-outcry-from-gamers-8666289.html
As for publishers creating a secondary (used) market value for their own games and expecting those games to be cheaper is not very understanding of basic profit making. Having time, gamers, and quality determine the price of a used or old game is one of the positive things about the free market. Thinking that companies will offer the same or lower prices than we see now is foolish. You can’t get any lower for the price of used games than what the market allows. Letting companies decide the value of their game in the used market will never be cheaper.
What the actual heck? All I’ve read on here for the past few weeks (the articles, and comments alike) is hate hate hate, xbox is done, ps4 wins, blah blah. But Oh wait! now that MS have changed the problems you so hated, it’s doing the wrong thing?
ummm, why not an automated opt in system?
If you haven’t connected for more than 24 hours than all disc-free gaming (and other features) is suspended and you need the disc to play. Sounds kinda straight forward…
Can someone please define why Forcing a permanent connection, to allowing one which can connect and disconnect means stopping all these features?
Agreed, but we’re simply not yet ready for this model.
The whole developed world is simply not prepped for solely digital distribution from a technological standpoint. Internet connectivity is not yet ubiquitous, and remote servers that make up the cloud are still too unreliable for the online service to be as successful as you envisage . Give it 5-10 years and i’m sure we’ll see X1’s original distribution and DRM licensing policies come into play in a far more acceptable era of connectivity.
I live in New Zealand – a tier 1 developed country, just as the USA. Myself and my family/friends ignore digital distribution because we still suffer from expensive and data-capped ISP offerings – speed is fine, but cost is not. Our mobile service is finally at a good price point and stability level, but our broadband internet is way behind. I pay approx $80 per month for the fastest domestic internet our nation can offer – and that has with it a 60GB limit before i’m charged through the nose for additional data.
Assuming that the next gen blu-ray based games are going to be huge (like at least 20GB a pop?), I simply cannot justify having to download games of this size every time I buy a new title. That’s why I buy and share via disc – because i’m literally buying the *data* as well as the right to use and share it. My gaming internet quota is reserved for updates/DLC downloads and online play.
It will improve with time, but in looking toward the future, lets not forget the present ok?
Leb you raise an interesting point, I’m from australia and years ago when Microsoft was trying to increase xbox live use they partnered with an ISP (iinet for the record – got the extra 2 year xbox live membership as a new signup “bait”) but the great thing about it was unmetered xbox live use (including game play) I do feel if Microsoft and continued to work with other isp’s in other developed countries that there would be less of kick back in this area. In looking forward to the future one does have to consider the current climate, but in order to be innovative you look at the present and realised what it should be.
Imagine for one second if Tesla was content to accept that the present wasn’t ready for his inventions or any of the greats that have improved our way of life. (yes I know its “just a game console”) but so many aspects of the technology being used in the Xbox taken from exciting research and prototypes that could benefit (and are designed to) so many other areas.
i really, really, really hope that the writer of this article reads this post.
I am not going to speak of your article and arguments in a derogatory manner (in a certain way, i am actually holding back from it), but what i am going to do is explain concepts and notions quite simple, inherent to business and market conditions, and in a certain way, to the human condition itself.
First: your article is ‘”plagued” with assumptions, that i will comment in different parts of this post. The first one: the whole “DRM will bring lower prices” thing. I am completely sure that somebody that gets to be published by a respectable magazine like this one will understand the following comment: MS was asking for customers to hand them the complete control on distribution, eliminating the secondary market and hence creating a monopoly. It is a very naive misconception. You go ahead and hand somebody a monopoly, and let me know if from that moment on they are going to break their backs on earning their customers trust and providing them the best possible product / service (i’m pretty sure you can appreciate the sarcasm, and from an academic and actually empiric point of view, this aspect is nearly impossible to contradict).
Second: The transition had to be that; a transition. If you impose your customers your new idea without taking a “step by step” approach, even if you are trying to take them to Eden, some people are going to oppose you. Plus, MS was not trying to take us to their recently conceived “future” just for our mere benefit and nothing else.
The whole “digital” benefits definitely took a hit, but not because of a few crying nerds, as you seem to assume in your article (i’ll comment on that in a bit). The digital benefits took a hit because Microsoft did not lay out a transition path. I am one of the most hard headed “my disc is mine and I use/sell/loan my disc as i want” kind of customer, and even I would have been enticed by the idea of sharing my digital copies and willing to learn the rules of doing so… but: so far, in MS minds right now they have a complete impossibility of telling apart the relationship of the customer with the physical product compared to the downloaded, disc-less version. Yes… i will admit that the rights governing both relationships are the same, but in reality they are not, and haven’t been addressed as such by anybody in the industry, with disregard of the small print stated in the back cover of your disc (ergo, secondary market existence). This confusion led them to apply the same condition to physical and digital sharing systems. Curiously enough, treating them differently would have been the first step towards the future where disc based games belong in a museum. Instead, MS has placed themselves in a position where no side of the physical vs digital battle is fully pleased (digital enthusiast are furious, as your article concludes, and check Major Nelson Blog’s comments right now). So, the transition path would guarantee something vital to any market and any individual in this planet… As Neo once said in a conversation with the architect: “Choice… the problem is choice…” Treating digital and physical games would have allowed a permeation of physical games fans like me to the digital era, if addressed as different “animals”. I once downloaded a game from xbox live: the experience itself was very comfortable: paid for it with my credit card from my couch, and then just waited (a fairly long amount of time) for the game to be on my xbox 360 memory, and just started playing. turns out the game was a piece of crap, and i got stuck with it , feeling victim of a scam. What would have happened if they had this dual scenario in this case? i would have resold my game, and give it another try. what did i end up doing for the lack of options? i never bought another digital game again.
Third: Microsoft’s u-turn on internet “few whiners”: Nothing could be further away from the trust. That is the biggest and most erroneous assumption in your article. It was not that, not even by a long shot. I wont extend myself in this point too much. I want to address the core of this: it was the pre orders that made Microsoft do a face palm, and have a “just kidding guys” freak out . It was not the E3 media reactions, the memes, the likes on facebook or even the amazon poll. It was the strict, pre order numbers, comprised of short amount of pre orders plus posterior cancellations, plus playstation sky rocketing sales. The Xbox one is number one seller, but Playstation has 3 or 4 different SKU’s for the console by itself or bundled with a game. Also, gamestop has run out of xbox one pre orders whereas there are still Playstations available, but that has something to do with the amount of pre orders granted by each company. Remember that Microsoft has its own stores now and wanted to channel any excess of demand through themselves. Their strategy of vertical integration and control over the distribution channels was not only meant for games.
That is actually a rather summarized thoughts on it (i know it’s not exactly just a couple of lines, but this subject is complex enough to fill up pages and pages of it, and it will be very important chapters of marketing, business and PR books to come).
The rest of the aspects, at least for my lack of knowledge on them, would be mostly speculation, for example: the whole “power of the cloud” fantasy, that it is currently not really viable, at least in terms of changing drastically the gaming experience, due to latency and internet service conditions, and if ti was, the 24 hours check in definitely was not necessary to make it happen. Also, i believe Microsoft hasn’t solved some floating points short comings compared to the PS4, among other tech problems., but as i mention at the beginning of the article, coming from me those issues are mere speculations.
Thanks to however had the patience to read this and found it useful.
So obviously there were some interesting conceptual ideas behind Microsofts new policies, however as is typical with Microsoft products (looking back to early Windows) they rarely put the consumer first. Referencing Steam is a mute point without recognizing that this is only made possible because a company like Valve executed it, a company with a strong developer and consumer first attitude. Microsoft have clearly demonstrated a publisher first approach, therein lies the problem. More directly, if Microsofts policy was about to usher in a new price point for games, it would have been worth talking about, so it’s somewhat baseless to suggest that this would have been the state of affairs had they new policies been implemented.
Another poster already noted this, and actually you referred to it in your original article by way of Steam; Microsoft will come back to the table, but surely with something much more beneficial for the consumer. As Steam is an open platform, Steam was forced to get better as customers could simply pirate or purchase games elsewhere, thus Steam had to capture an audience and it did, but only by listening to its consumers. Microsoft clearly was put in a similar position, but much earlier this time around, however I think most people would agree that the 180 on the policy is less of a “we listed to your voice” and more “we missed your money at the pre-order table”. If anything this is pro-consumer as it’s unlikely Microsoft is doing anything but tabling the conversation for a later date. But next time I think it’s obvious we are going to be met with a more consumer (and hopefully developer) oriented approach, explained in a more clear and concise way.
I always find it odd that the conversation around piracy has always been from companies telling us that CDs have to cost more because of piracy, but then as a direct result of piracy we can buy music for less in more convenient ways. Honestly I applaud piracy from a consumer freedom standpoint, I think overall it will push other forms of entertainment (take Netflix for example) including games to a more consumer/content creator focused industry. We would all like to see money going to the developers, not publishers; “hey developer, I liked that game, here’s 20 bucks, please go off and make another”, Kickstarter is an excellent example of people willing to pay for something they more or less know they could get free. Because people want to support the content creator and we want more content. What is draconian is the idea that the only way I can get this content is through a publisher. The internet is a free and open place, but its only because of my ability to get it free, do I really “choose” to buy it and people do. I certainly wouldn’t loose sleep pirating a Call of Duty game, it’s doubtful Activision is missing my 80 bucks, however the guy who made Gunpoint would and I think it’s less likely piracy is hurting him at 10 bucks (or whatever) a copy than it is Activision.
So through Microsofts new policies, I think a lot of people can see where that may have been heading, but because of the system and because of the localized content, its tough to see Microsoft axing publishers from the equation. This particular implementation was almost the reverse of the ideal concept, where Microsoft was enabling publishers a greater piece of the pie and everyone went “fuck that”. I think until they present us with a model that demonstrates to consumers that the developers are getting the benefit, publishers are put in a more competitive position, people will care less about what Microsoft is doing to implement it (despite their execution on this case being fairly terrible). It seems as though the conversation should be more about Publishers and Microsoft, rather than just Microsoft. Next time, they are going to have to try a lot harder to get us on board, and has to be a good thing.
DRM the monster that killed the Walkman and made apple rich.
“renting hardware” and DRM unless you bought an iphone and clicked agree
“apple is licensing this device” yes the same device that you paid cash (or credit) for you don’t own.
DRM has and always been blah in the traditional way, companies like steam has done and MS was trying to do was develop this little “cancer” anti consumer into something that benefits both the developers of the games we love (encouraging them to hopefully reducing prices and support or even better create additional game content).
ironic right, we would rather get excited because nothing changed than embrace what could be,
Small minded people with no vision or creativity. I love the fact that Microsoft is trying to finally create something that one a few years ago was sci fi.
Sure it would have been nice to have an offline option (opt out disabled sharing and some features)but for someone who gave up trading games years ago as i was sick of getting $5 for a game that Eb games would sell with a markup.
It was exciting to see that microsoft was going to compete against their own product both with a long life plan (xbox 360 games still being made consoles still being sold).
I’m sure like win 8 it would have lost a few people at the start but sheep will always be sheep, I wanted to be on the trend breaking wagon.
At the end of the day small minded people and the same old Microsoft issue good product, no idea how to market it. On the plus side never say they didn’t listen to you crys to stay in the technological dark ages. Geez
But oh no lets believe the hype, Microsoft does suck at telling a story.
The author of this article is an idiot. Thinking that a corporation is doing any of these things to benefit the consumer is just plain ignorant and stupid. It’s about the money. Thats it. Not ease of access, not better games, not better connectivity. Money.