I always thought they should have applied all the new DRM features to digital downloads only. In that context, sharing and selling does look consumer friendly and if they make it convenient consumers will move away from physical media.
During this whole fiasco, I was trying to put myself into their shoes on what they were trying to achieve. On the outside, it looks like a great idea. The ability to share games with family. No longer you need to carry discs to your friends house. You can lend them games to strangers on the Internet without worry about losing it. You can have an organized catalog on the cloud, and never have to get up to pop the disc in. Sell the disc game to X over the internet and cut out the middle man (Gamestop). etc...
However the whole, connect 24 hours to verify the ownership of the game is a big turn off. I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. So if it were you, how would you go by achieving all the pros and none of the cons without enforcing DRM? Not supporting DRM but genuinely curious.
My guess is that it started with the simple idea of "we want to move to digital so we can phase out retail and get more out of each sale like steam does" (pressure from shareholders and increases in development costs).
Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible, like a group of friends sharing a single licence of skyrim and just leaving their consoles offline, and made rules around them.
It probably didn't really click with them and they thought this was a great idea up until the point they got absolutely grilled at E3.
The thing is with steam, they don't really care about people sharing steam accounts and being offline, it's only a violation of the TOS but they have no checks for it since it's not a rampant problem. I think if they sold games for a decent price and trusted their customers they wouldn't need any invasive DRM schemes.
Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the disk again before allowing disk-less play. Make sure the offline transition can be done through smartglass, and you handle the hurricane/somebody-cut-the-fiber scenario as well.
> I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console.
They don't seem to understand that the inconvenience of doing this will prevent the vast majority of people from doing it. If the option to disconnect from WiFi is behind even one layer of menus, most people will find it too annoying to switch on/off in order cheat the system.
If they simply ignored all those people who want to cheat them — let it happen — and make it super easy for people to play and share within their system, I think they would find that they earn more money.
(Though personally I am not bothered by a 24 hour check-in. Since all my devices are always connected, I doubt I would notice this in practice.)
I believe it would be pretty simple. Keep the family sharing plan and the 24 hour check but only for digital purchases. If you have a disk based game than you wouldn't be able to share it but you also wouldn't be required to have the console connected every 24 hours.
The lend game thing was limited to once per game, ever to friends of 30 days or more.
Its like saying "you know that potential infinite thing, we are now definitely saying you can only have one."
It reminds me of the difference between free refills and no free refills, the actual amount of extra drinks you get probably is not high, but some soda heads will be pissed if they dont get free refills.
No, they looked at a problem and found an utterly despicable way of "solving" it. There is absolutely no technical reason why the terms had to be so anti-consumer. As long as the system has to phone home every time a game is bought or traded, that it enough to keep piracy at the same level it is now. It wasn't design by committee, it was design by greed.
EDIT: Parent has deleted. Originally read:
"This is too bad. These engineers/marketers imagined a world where you don't have to deal with the crappy experience that lost, scratched discs provide, but bent over backwards because a few loudmouths can't imagine a digital future. Sometimes even the customers don't know what they want. These engineers identified a true problem and took a pretty good stab at solving it while juggling a huge number of stakeholders, but marketing's awful communication about this vision for the future puts so much of that work to waste. This is design by the biggest committee."
You hit the nail on the head. This is nothing more than innovation being held back by the masses. Allowing customers to share their ENTIRE game library with up to 10 people is extremely generous but all people could see was the 24 hour online check.
It's sad how even ignorance can spread so easily through a mob mentality.
BS. It's possible to deal with the issues you mentioned and not screw your customers over. Even if it's not, it's still perfectly valid to be vocal about it.
Digital futures are fine. But I don't think a company like MS fully understands what it takes to provide a digital future that is an adequate replacement for physical media based games.
Valve has most or all of it figured out. Digital delivery. Easy downloads. Lower prices. Embracing indie games. Discounts on bulk purchases. And so forth.
Steam games have a lot of the same limitations that the xbox one would have had but you don't see nearly as many people complaining about that. And that's because of all of the things listed above.
There are tons of console games that I and many of my friends have grown to love which started off as borrowed games. And that's, I think, how it should be, the same as books. I don't think Steam is the perfect answer for all of time but the fact that you can acquire games at effectively used prices or lower (sometimes $15 or even $5 for a AAA title or even as little as one or two dollars for an indie game) significantly blunt the problems of reduced lending opportunities.
P.S. For clarity I'm saying that being allowed to lend and borrow games is a huge benefit to game makers because it is a very potent way of increasing the fan base. How many people borrowed someone else's copy of Harry Potter and then went on to buy hardback copies of subsequent books as they came out and watched the movies and so forth? The same phenomenon works just as potently with games. There are several people I know who are fans of the Mass Effect series who might not have been if they couldn't have borrowed the game that first time.
With art the best salesman is the thing itself. That's how radio works. That's how museums work. And libraries. How do you convince someone they like Manet or Picasso or The Fiery Furnaces or Gershwin or Raymond Chandler or HP Lovecraft or Katamari Damacy or The Last of Us? There is no possible way to adequately describe such works in words alone. The only possible way to determine if one likes such things is to experience it first hand. And that is why "piracy", even in its most extreme forms, is never going to be as much of a threat to makers as some people believe. "Consuming" art makes fans, and fans with money will spend their money to acquire art by artists they enjoy, whether it's games, concerts, movies, albums, and so forth.
I'm actually annoyed with these changes; they have reverted back to the Xbox 360 way of doings things;
* Disk must be in the drive to play
* Share games by lending the disk.
The previous scheme, while it would not be befinical to some due to the 24 hour requirement, did allow for some exciting new ideas (which we've got used to with Steam);
* Access my games anywhere without needing a disk
* Share the game with my family who live away from me
Don't buy discs! MS said that digital purchases will have same priority as retail discs. Why do you want a disc anyways, except for resale or slow connection? Everything I get for the 360 is via download, and I don't have to worry about discs. Still have to worry about license transfers, which is gonna be the same under any system where the publisher controls the terms.
It's not clear to me what the change will be, or how it will be an actual win for consumers. The region locking being dropped would definitely be a win for the minority of potential customers outside of the privileged regions, but the fact is that the DRM scheme that they proposed, while never explained very well, was probably better than leaving how one-time-use-codes should work to manufacturers (EA Online Passes spring to mind)
How is it not clear? You can play games without checking-in every 24 hours, and if you want to share or sell a game, you transfer the physical media you purchased. Downloaded games cannot be shared.
I don't get the negative response to this. They made a mistake (admittedly being too greedy), and now they're correcting it. People didn't like the DRM, SO THEY TOOK IT OUT! Get over holding a grudge; the Xbox has a lot of very good exclusives and has always been a solid console. It just goes to show you that you can never make the internet happy.
If this is true, there isn't going to be the announced "Family Share plan" or the "Disc-less" operation. Also, the fact that a few consoles might not be connected to the Internet means, MS can't really do cloud processing as it claimed (since it would lead to variable experiences of the same game).
I see this as a step-backward than a step ahead. Sure there will always be a vocal minority, but rather than provide them an alternative, they've just gimped an online console.
Another sad day where the indignant vocal minority have spoiled it all for the rest of us.
I don't think there was anything in the early schema that would have impacted the way I use the system (apart for multi day internet or server outages) but plenty of benefits
Game sharing was a huge positive step, even though I felt that most publishers would ignore or disable (like game sharing on the DS).
Not having to swap physical disks would have made life much easier and increased my playing time. I'm fairly lazy when I've settled down for an evening in front of the TV. A usual XBox session involves playing what ever game is in the drive till i get bored (anything from 15 minutes up) switching to something downloaded so i don;t need to get up (normally trials). Getting bored again and flipping to TV or a movie.
The ability to choose from my whole library with leaving my seat would have been a revelation.
Also, my two year old has lost my Forza disk, which really sold this idea.
Now you can see why it is so tempting for companies to reach out to their competitors and say "so... we want to make this change, you want to make the same change and we both win?"
I honestly don't see why they can't do it both ways. For people who buy game discs, let them share and play offline, but for those who choose to buy the DRM-enabled digital download version of the game, let them install it to the hard drive and play without a disc across consoles. It's all down to user preference anyway, why does it have to be one way or the other?
Here's a statement from MS http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update (may need a refresh or two to load) looks like they are removing the feature of being able to play a game without the disc in the tray, which pretty much was the root of all these drm issues IMO
There's a tradeoff between discless play and used games; allowing both leads to massive piracy (in somebody's mind). It looks like MS has gone from one extreme to the other.
This isn't surprising at all, Microsoft is just giving gamers what they are asking for to head off the bad PR.
In the meantime they will start pushing game sales for the xbox in the direction of digital downloads.
Microsoft was releasing a new console, with unimpressive hardware, focused on TV and family over games, at a higher price point.
Announcing a crazy DRM plan was a fantastic PR move. If people liked it, they can just go ahead with it. If they didn't, they end up burning lots of press time talking about something on their terms, instead of focusing on what Sony wants you to think about the actual hardware
No PS4 or XB1 units have been shipped. Except now, Sony has less time to make the real arguments against the XB, and already people can just accuse others of "complaining about everything on the Internet". MS wins points by "making a major change in response to consumers". More than if they had taken this position from the beginning.
A bit risky, but it'll pay off fantastically for MS.
I had a feeling this would happen. It was either that or just let the competition walk away with a huge percentage of their customers without a fight. Seems like the obvious decision.
I was actually not expecting a complete reversal, just a loosening of restrictions (something like 2 week check-ins, like Steam does).
Both of the new machines (Xbox One, PS4) still allow third party publisher DRM (such as EA's 'Project Five Dollar') though, and if the console market moves towards digital distribution the way the PC market has, the used games point might be moot.
They should rename the Xbox One to the Xbox 180, it would be very apt.
On a more serious note, I don't like this rollback. It only goes to show how the witchhunt and echo chamber on Reddit worked. Even before the reveal, Microsoft was falsely accused of trying to game Reddit and everyone flew off the handle over someone pretty much lying to be a troll. Say the word "DRM" and you get bucketloads of Reddit karma and posts pointing out the facts(forget about posts taking the opposing view or opinion) were downvoted into oblivion by the angry mob.
And then there was the bad timing on the NSA leaks, which didn't help at all. Everyone has smartphones, laptops and tablets with cameras and mics which could be watching and listening and Apple/Google were part of the leak, but it was Microsoft that was singled out for proposing a device that could turn on itself, and had numerous safeguards to configure privacy if you wanted to.
All this doesn't excuse the fact that Microsoft utterly and totally failed in communicating their message in a proper manner in E3 and handed Sony an easy victory on a silver platter.
I guess it was easy to roll this back because it was not Microsoft but publishers and game developers that were going to reap the benefits of diskless gaming because Gamestop etc. skim off the value of older games and leave publishers with not much value. Once the public failed to see the advantages and blamed Microsoft for a power grab that was not going to really benefit them all that much, it was game over.
A friend posited the theory that all of this was a calculated move on Microsoft's part.
First, they throw up the idea of some draconian DRM, which they then later retract. The first move gets them tons of publicity and tongue-wagging, the second move starts to make that positive publicity. They're banking on gamers being so addicted, they won't really care that they've been played for idiot chumps.
If the market for the new XBox was 12-year old children, they wouldn't even have bothered. But, since they're really marketing to adults 20-35 or so, they have to look like good guys to the people they're talking out of their money.
This was calculated. Reddit and everyone else got played. Hard and dry.
Re. used game sales, it surprises me to see everyone repeating the idea that game stores "skim" value from publishers. The license has been paid for, the original owner will lose his ability to play the game; there is no value being created and no reason at all for the publisher to participate in that transaction. Do you think car makers should be entitled to a fee every time you sell your used car?
>On the downside, there will be no digital "family" sharing as was previously announced, and disc-based games will require the disc to be in the tray to be played.
Nooooooooooooooooo. Please still allow me to opt in for digital downloads so I can finally stick the console somewhere where I don't have to see it, hear it or suffer it's heat wrath.
I believe they are planning to have day-1 digital downloads. This backtrack does mean that, at least for day 1, the family sharing and used-digital-game features won't be available but you can still get all the games without discs.
I want this as well, but I'm not exactly sure how that will jive with the mandatory kinect. My 360, along with all of my other components are in the basement.
[+] [-] tjdetwiler|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] missing_cipher|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cyril-Boh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nivla|12 years ago|reply
However the whole, connect 24 hours to verify the ownership of the game is a big turn off. I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. So if it were you, how would you go by achieving all the pros and none of the cons without enforcing DRM? Not supporting DRM but genuinely curious.
[+] [-] mikelat|12 years ago|reply
Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible, like a group of friends sharing a single licence of skyrim and just leaving their consoles offline, and made rules around them.
It probably didn't really click with them and they thought this was a great idea up until the point they got absolutely grilled at E3.
The thing is with steam, they don't really care about people sharing steam accounts and being offline, it's only a violation of the TOS but they have no checks for it since it's not a rampant problem. I think if they sold games for a decent price and trusted their customers they wouldn't need any invasive DRM schemes.
[+] [-] magic_haze|12 years ago|reply
Any holes in this approach?
[+] [-] interpol_p|12 years ago|reply
They don't seem to understand that the inconvenience of doing this will prevent the vast majority of people from doing it. If the option to disconnect from WiFi is behind even one layer of menus, most people will find it too annoying to switch on/off in order cheat the system.
If they simply ignored all those people who want to cheat them — let it happen — and make it super easy for people to play and share within their system, I think they would find that they earn more money.
(Though personally I am not bothered by a 24 hour check-in. Since all my devices are always connected, I doubt I would notice this in practice.)
[+] [-] thisisdallas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hobs|12 years ago|reply
Its like saying "you know that potential infinite thing, we are now definitely saying you can only have one." It reminds me of the difference between free refills and no free refills, the actual amount of extra drinks you get probably is not high, but some soda heads will be pissed if they dont get free refills.
[+] [-] superuser2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bornhuetter|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: Parent has deleted. Originally read:
"This is too bad. These engineers/marketers imagined a world where you don't have to deal with the crappy experience that lost, scratched discs provide, but bent over backwards because a few loudmouths can't imagine a digital future. Sometimes even the customers don't know what they want. These engineers identified a true problem and took a pretty good stab at solving it while juggling a huge number of stakeholders, but marketing's awful communication about this vision for the future puts so much of that work to waste. This is design by the biggest committee."
[+] [-] thisisdallas|12 years ago|reply
It's sad how even ignorance can spread so easily through a mob mentality.
[+] [-] ameen|12 years ago|reply
As a steam gamer, this would've been the console of my choice. I don't think I'll be getting any of this generations consoles yet.
There really aren't much differences between current-gen consoles and so-called next-gen consoles besides a spec bump and revamped controllers.
[+] [-] infrec|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|12 years ago|reply
Valve has most or all of it figured out. Digital delivery. Easy downloads. Lower prices. Embracing indie games. Discounts on bulk purchases. And so forth.
Steam games have a lot of the same limitations that the xbox one would have had but you don't see nearly as many people complaining about that. And that's because of all of the things listed above.
There are tons of console games that I and many of my friends have grown to love which started off as borrowed games. And that's, I think, how it should be, the same as books. I don't think Steam is the perfect answer for all of time but the fact that you can acquire games at effectively used prices or lower (sometimes $15 or even $5 for a AAA title or even as little as one or two dollars for an indie game) significantly blunt the problems of reduced lending opportunities.
P.S. For clarity I'm saying that being allowed to lend and borrow games is a huge benefit to game makers because it is a very potent way of increasing the fan base. How many people borrowed someone else's copy of Harry Potter and then went on to buy hardback copies of subsequent books as they came out and watched the movies and so forth? The same phenomenon works just as potently with games. There are several people I know who are fans of the Mass Effect series who might not have been if they couldn't have borrowed the game that first time.
With art the best salesman is the thing itself. That's how radio works. That's how museums work. And libraries. How do you convince someone they like Manet or Picasso or The Fiery Furnaces or Gershwin or Raymond Chandler or HP Lovecraft or Katamari Damacy or The Last of Us? There is no possible way to adequately describe such works in words alone. The only possible way to determine if one likes such things is to experience it first hand. And that is why "piracy", even in its most extreme forms, is never going to be as much of a threat to makers as some people believe. "Consuming" art makes fans, and fans with money will spend their money to acquire art by artists they enjoy, whether it's games, concerts, movies, albums, and so forth.
[+] [-] mcescalante|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DomBlack|12 years ago|reply
* Disk must be in the drive to play
* Share games by lending the disk.
The previous scheme, while it would not be befinical to some due to the 24 hour requirement, did allow for some exciting new ideas (which we've got used to with Steam);
* Access my games anywhere without needing a disk
* Share the game with my family who live away from me
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisrhoden|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uptown|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SurfScore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ameen|12 years ago|reply
I see this as a step-backward than a step ahead. Sure there will always be a vocal minority, but rather than provide them an alternative, they've just gimped an online console.
[+] [-] jviddy|12 years ago|reply
I don't think there was anything in the early schema that would have impacted the way I use the system (apart for multi day internet or server outages) but plenty of benefits
Game sharing was a huge positive step, even though I felt that most publishers would ignore or disable (like game sharing on the DS).
Not having to swap physical disks would have made life much easier and increased my playing time. I'm fairly lazy when I've settled down for an evening in front of the TV. A usual XBox session involves playing what ever game is in the drive till i get bored (anything from 15 minutes up) switching to something downloaded so i don;t need to get up (normally trials). Getting bored again and flipping to TV or a movie.
The ability to choose from my whole library with leaving my seat would have been a revelation.
Also, my two year old has lost my Forza disk, which really sold this idea.
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jleehey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nthitz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knodi|12 years ago|reply
How cool would it have been if all my friends made a family group and with that we can all play each others games. But no people love gamestop.
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
Announcing a crazy DRM plan was a fantastic PR move. If people liked it, they can just go ahead with it. If they didn't, they end up burning lots of press time talking about something on their terms, instead of focusing on what Sony wants you to think about the actual hardware
No PS4 or XB1 units have been shipped. Except now, Sony has less time to make the real arguments against the XB, and already people can just accuse others of "complaining about everything on the Internet". MS wins points by "making a major change in response to consumers". More than if they had taken this position from the beginning.
A bit risky, but it'll pay off fantastically for MS.
[+] [-] theseanstewart|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinkelhake|12 years ago|reply
"you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release"
If you have a decent Internet connection and don't want to use discs, you have that choice.
[+] [-] bluehex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cobrausn|12 years ago|reply
Both of the new machines (Xbox One, PS4) still allow third party publisher DRM (such as EA's 'Project Five Dollar') though, and if the console market moves towards digital distribution the way the PC market has, the used games point might be moot.
[+] [-] resu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sivam|12 years ago|reply
On a more serious note, I don't like this rollback. It only goes to show how the witchhunt and echo chamber on Reddit worked. Even before the reveal, Microsoft was falsely accused of trying to game Reddit and everyone flew off the handle over someone pretty much lying to be a troll. Say the word "DRM" and you get bucketloads of Reddit karma and posts pointing out the facts(forget about posts taking the opposing view or opinion) were downvoted into oblivion by the angry mob.
And then there was the bad timing on the NSA leaks, which didn't help at all. Everyone has smartphones, laptops and tablets with cameras and mics which could be watching and listening and Apple/Google were part of the leak, but it was Microsoft that was singled out for proposing a device that could turn on itself, and had numerous safeguards to configure privacy if you wanted to.
All this doesn't excuse the fact that Microsoft utterly and totally failed in communicating their message in a proper manner in E3 and handed Sony an easy victory on a silver platter.
I guess it was easy to roll this back because it was not Microsoft but publishers and game developers that were going to reap the benefits of diskless gaming because Gamestop etc. skim off the value of older games and leave publishers with not much value. Once the public failed to see the advantages and blamed Microsoft for a power grab that was not going to really benefit them all that much, it was game over.
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|12 years ago|reply
First, they throw up the idea of some draconian DRM, which they then later retract. The first move gets them tons of publicity and tongue-wagging, the second move starts to make that positive publicity. They're banking on gamers being so addicted, they won't really care that they've been played for idiot chumps.
If the market for the new XBox was 12-year old children, they wouldn't even have bothered. But, since they're really marketing to adults 20-35 or so, they have to look like good guys to the people they're talking out of their money.
This was calculated. Reddit and everyone else got played. Hard and dry.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|12 years ago|reply
Nooooooooooooooooo. Please still allow me to opt in for digital downloads so I can finally stick the console somewhere where I don't have to see it, hear it or suffer it's heat wrath.
[+] [-] bskap|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizardking|12 years ago|reply