XBox One AND PS4 Discussion

[Leebo33]

the Xbox One was going to allow you to buy discs, tie them to your account so you wouldn't have to use the disc, and then still allow you to sell them when you were done. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

How was Microsoft going to know when I sold the game so I couldn't play it anymore and how would the buyer tie it to their account after they bought it from me on ebay or if I sold it to a friend?

[Danimal]

There are other ways to move forward. In a time where competition from other avenues (tablets, phones, etc) is whittling away your market,

You mean those places where you download apps and install them on your phone. You can't share them (legally) or trade them or resell them. An God forbid you can't keep up with the Apple train you're "system" is then obsolete. How old is the original iPad? How many new games, sorry apps, don't work with the original iPad?

Seems like the market is working in that case. Do people not care because apps cost less that they don't have the same ownership rights?

[GameSeven]

In the end, we saw a gamer population, en masse, rally around a foe that was nebulous, at best. Shouting from blogs and rooftops, mockery and outright ridicule, and elevating their competitor to a 'champion' of gamers were the methods of the masses who declared "give me more of what I'm used to."

See, but that infers a false dichotomy, that the only two places to go were nowhere, or to a era of market and ownership restriction to 'get to the future'. Is it really that folks are just bitter gamers clinging to gamestop receipts and anti-drm positions because they are scared of the future, or did some look at the trade off and deem MS's way of getting there as simply a bad deal?

There are other ways to move forward. In a time where competition from other avenues (tablets, phones, etc) is whittling away your market, you don't 'thank' the loyal customers who are staying with you by saddling them with additional restrictions, and blame them for the failure of your model and for taking food from the mouths of developers' children because they sell off a game when they have gotten all they want from what it offers.

I don't think *anyone* had a clear enough picture to make an informed decision but concluded strongly, regardless. For this much, Microsoft is its own enemy for a lack of a coherent articulation on *why* they thought it could be better for gamers. In the absence of such a message, Sony filled one in... "MS doesn't care about you, but we do," and gamers swooned.

I actually don't agree that there is a dichotomy. I think there are infinite ways to reach a goal. MS's changing course is one such example. But the same circles that mocked their initial plan, now mock them for giving in. There's a certain cynicism to it that is frustrating.

I believe it's been said that MS wants to be the central hub of your living room first, and cater to gamers second, implying that Sony cares about gamers first. Is that not a false dichotomy? Can't MS want to be the central hub *and* be a top destination for gamers? Consider last-gen... Sony *won* the Disc war with Bluray, yet it's machine was relegated to a Bluray player first and a platform for exclusives second. MS, IMHO, innovated more with Xbox and aims to continue.

To answer your question about whether it is all gamers clinging to receipts, conversely, is it all about huge monolithic MS who wants to crush what gamers desire?

To your latter points, the saddling of restrictions needs to be offset by positives. MS did a poor job of promising what those positives would be. Perhaps it was too much relying on trust, of which gamers seem to have none of for MS. As far as the taking food from children... I think *millions upon millions* are lost to the resellers and pirates. It is these pies that MS wants to give a piece of to the publishers. The market for the end-user is what it is, people won't just plunk down full price for titles because the market is closed. Adaptations for price and resale must be made to satisfy the consumer. It is just *where* that money goes that everyone is up in arms about.

[LAking]

There are other ways to move forward. In a time where competition from other avenues (tablets, phones, etc) is whittling away your market,

You mean those places where you download apps and install them on your phone. You can't share them (legally) or trade them or resell them. An God forbid you can't keep up with the Apple train you're "system" is then obsolete. How old is the original iPad? How many new games, sorry apps, don't work with the original iPad?

Seems like the market is working in that case. Do people not care because apps cost less that they don't have the same ownership rights?

I was thinking about making the exact same comparison to Apple earlier but decided against it. Now that you've given me a nice in I'll go ahead .

Apple knows how to introduce features and products that people didn't even know they wanted. It was often said that Steve Jobs thought that they shouldn't even be listening to the consumer. He KNEW what the consumer wanted before they did. The difference is that Apple was so much better at marketing these new ideas than MS.

[wco81]

There are other ways to move forward. In a time where competition from other avenues (tablets, phones, etc) is whittling away your market,

You mean those places where you download apps and install them on your phone. You can't share them (legally) or trade them or resell them. An God forbid you can't keep up with the Apple train you're "system" is then obsolete. How old is the original iPad? How many new games, sorry apps, don't work with the original iPad?

Seems like the market is working in that case. Do people not care because apps cost less that they don't have the same ownership rights?

People aren't as worried about re-selling a game that cost 99 cents or was free, versus re-selling a $60 game.

Also, when you buy a mobile game, you can install it on multiple devices and play them simultaneously.

You're right about backwards compatibility, there isn't the uproar there should be. Apparently developers of these mobile games target only newer devices and people who have older devices aren't complaining. Maybe they're content enough with all the older content or games which support older devices.

[webdanzer]

Do people not care because apps cost less that they don't have the same ownership rights?

It's not that they don't care, but they appraise it as more of a fair trade. I've said this before in this thread...the game that imposes ownership restrictions has inherently less value than one that does not, so a significant reduction in price from the get-go (not promises that oh, there may be sales later) is pretty much necessary in my opinion as a balancing factor.

But most ios and such games don't have the phone home and reliance on external servers to play your games that was the original Xbone policy...so they are not as restrictive, AND they are far cheaper. If I wanted to I could play Neuroshima Hex on airplane mode indefinitely!

[Leebo33]

There are other ways to move forward. In a time where competition from other avenues (tablets, phones, etc) is whittling away your market,

You mean those places where you download apps and install them on your phone. You can't share them (legally) or trade them or resell them. An God forbid you can't keep up with the Apple train you're "system" is then obsolete. How old is the original iPad? How many new games, sorry apps, don't work with the original iPad?

Seems like the market is working in that case. Do people not care because apps cost less that they don't have the same ownership rights?

I don't care because apps cost a lot less, are on sale frequently, and I can put them on 5 devices. Plus, sales of iTunes gift cards are plentiful and you can save an additional 10-20% on top of the prices in the app store. For instance, I paid about a quarter of the price for Carcassone on iOs than I did on XBL and put the iOS version on my wife/kids devices, which I can't do with the XBL version.

[Spooky]

The people up in arms about this stuff are the same people that almost die when Facebook makes a major update.

Sigh. No need to continue here since most of you pro-drm guys know all about who I am, what I want, and why I made my decision.

Maybe I'll re-engage when you come to a consensus on whether you are the silent majority getting shafted by the .5% of loonies standing on street corners in their sandwich boards proclaiming the end is nigh, or whether you are the progressive digital elite who know better than the moronic majority how to lead us into a bright, shining, DRM controlled and ownership-less future.

Edit:

/Just signed up for the latest facebook update!

No need to take my comment personally Web. I am obviously generalizing to make a point. The point being that sometimes a loud majority that freak out when a new and different concept is proposed do so with a knee-jerk reaction and a bandwagon approach. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and I do think that most here at DSP form them with more educating than the majority. But I believe that the "en masse" here are acting with a mob mentality around a false sense of "freedom restriction".

[Danimal]

Most 99 cent games are worth 99 cents. The newer releases are $10, $15 and $20. I think you're going to see more and more mobile games get more expensive. The fact is contrary to believe no one makes a million dollars on a 99 cent game, no one. I bought Baldurs Gate I think it was $10, I played it once it sucked. I'm stuck with it.

So in essence you all answered my question it is the price that makes the same practices ok on mobile devices. An the example of Neuroshima Hex on airplane isn't really what my question was about. Your first post was about ownership not calling to check in. I agree 100% the call to check in things was a bad idea. There was a middle ground here and MS didn't take it.

Make the check in once a week and also make it that once you registered a product and you had the disc in the drive there was no need to check in. Problem solved IMO and everyone gets what they want. The only thing being effected is used game sales which frankly I could give a rats ass about.

As for multiple devices, yes I can have the same itune account on my phone, iPad and also my kids ipod touches. I don't think that last one is legal btw but I don't know. I'm also surprised that my wife and I can play scrabble on 2 iPads with the same account. So yeah you're right I can do all that now but isn't that what the sharing was suppose to do?

[LAking]

the Xbox One was going to allow you to buy discs, tie them to your account so you wouldn't have to use the disc, and then still allow you to sell them when you were done. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

How was Microsoft going to know when I sold the game so I couldn't play it anymore and how would the buyer tie it to their account after they bought it from me on ebay or if I sold it to a friend?

Sorry Leebo but I'm going to have to make of an example of this post to make a point. Nothing personal, but it's a perfect opportunity.

This kind of post is exactly the reason why us "pro DRM" people are annoyed that MS buckled to the internet rage. So much of that rage came form misinformation or complete lack of awareness.

It's been stated numerous times in a ton of articles and by MS themselves that you would have been able to sell disc based games even after you had tied them to you live account. This is how it would work:

You could go to your local game store and pick up the Madden 2016. You go home, pop the disc in your system and use a unique serial # that is included with the game that will tie it to your Live account. Once the installation is complete you won't need the disc anymore. You can store it away somewhere safe. You can then play the game on your system or ANY system using your Live account, downloading it from Microsofts servers if you need to reinstall it.

Once you are bored with the game you can then take the disc, with it's unique serial #, back to Gamestop and sell it for credit. Gamestop would enter the serial # into Microsoft's system and the license would be removed from your Live account, allowing it to now be sold again as a used game. This system would allow MS to make sure at least some of the profit from that new sale would go to themselves and the publishers, along with Gamestop's cut.

That's where the 24 hour check-in came in. In order to prevent you from playing the game you just sold back to Gamestop MS had to be able to check into your system periodically to mark that game as "sold" and no longer belonging to you. Otherwise you could leave your system in an offline mode indefinitely and continue to play it even though you just made $20 off the trade in.

Steam has a somewhat similar serial # option for games that are part of Steam Works. These are games that no matter where they are sold require a steam activation to work. Civ V is like that. I bought that game on CD from Amazon when it was on sale. I entered in a serial # to tie it to my Steam account. Now the CD is basically pointless as I don't need it to play the game and can download it from Steam when I want to reinstall. Microsoft's system is better in some respects because they still allow you to resell it once you don't want it anymore.

Alas, this is all moot now. The Internet has spoken and these features are gone. Now do people realize why some of us are more than a little disappointed in this outcome?

[Leebo33]

the Xbox One was going to allow you to buy discs, tie them to your account so you wouldn't have to use the disc, and then still allow you to sell them when you were done. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

How was Microsoft going to know when I sold the game so I couldn't play it anymore and how would the buyer tie it to their account after they bought it from me on ebay or if I sold it to a friend?

Sorry Leebo but I'm going to have to make of an example of this post to make a point. Nothing personal, but it's a perfect opportunity.

This kind of post is exactly the reason why us "pro DRM" people are annoyed that MS buckled to the internet rage. So much of that rage came form misinformation or complete lack of awareness.

It's been stated numerous times in a ton of articles and by MS themselves that you would have been able to sell disc based games even after you had tied them to you live account. This is how it would work:

You could go to your local game store and pick up the Madden 2016. You go home, pop the disc in your system and use a unique serial # that is included with the game that will tie it to your Live account. Once the installation is complete you won't need the disc anymore. You can store it away somewhere safe. You can then play the game on your system or ANY system using your Live account, downloading it from Microsofts servers if you need to reinstall it.

Once you are bored with the game you can then take the disc, with it's unique serial #, back to Gamestop and sell it for credit. Gamestop would enter the serial # into Microsoft's system and the license would be removed from your Live account, allowing it to now be sold again as a used game. This system would allow MS to make sure at least some of the profit from that new sale would go to themselves and the publishers, along with Gamestop's cut.

That's where the 24 hour check-in came in. In order to prevent you from playing the game you just sold back to Gamestop MS had to be able to check into your system periodically to mark that game as "sold" and no longer belonging to you. Otherwise you could leave your system in an offline mode indefinitely and continue to play it even though you just made $20 off the trade in.

Steam has a somewhat similar serial # option for games that are part of Steam Works. These are games that no matter where they are sold require a steam activation to work. Civ V is like that. I bought that game on CD from Amazon when it was on sale. I entered in a serial # to tie it to my Steam account. Now the CD is basically pointless as I don't need it to play the game and can download it from Steam when I want to reinstall. Microsoft's system is better in some respects because they still allow you to resell it once you don't want it anymore.

Alas, this is all moot now. The Internet has spoken and these features are gone. Now do people realize why some of us are more than a little disappointed in this outcome?

What if I want to sell my game to a guy at work?

[GameSeven]

Make the check in once a week and also make it that once you registered a product and you had the disc in the drive there was no need to check in. Problem solved IMO and everyone gets what they want. The only thing being effected is used game sales which frankly I could give a rats ass about.

I agree, one week max would have been far more palatable. But the problem with allowing *any* level of disc authentication becoming an exception from checkin is that it guarantees each game can be split with one other person. If I install on machine A and play online, while person B plays 'offline' with my disc, we've effectively split that copy of the game in perpetuity. That is why MS went with an all-or-nothing approach.

[wco81]

You can have the same iTunes account on different devices to install Scrabble on all those devices.

But to play, you have to create an Origin account or use a Facebook account.

So you could have different Origin accounts on the different devices or even use guest accounts.

What's odd is that Scrabble supports GameCenter so it recognizes your GC login but really doesn't use it. You get no achievements and the Origin and FB ratings are independent of GC.

Maybe if games support GC more widely, you just use the GC login (which is the same as your iTunes login) and that way you're limited.

We'll see if the support for controllers in iOS 7 changes the types of games released for iOS as well as change the pricing. EA for instance may release more of their games with the controller support. Maybe they charge more for FIFA with the controller support than the $6.99 they charged originally.

[webdanzer]

the Xbox One was going to allow you to buy discs, tie them to your account so you wouldn't have to use the disc, and then still allow you to sell them when you were done. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

How was Microsoft going to know when I sold the game so I couldn't play it anymore and how would the buyer tie it to their account after they bought it from me on ebay or if I sold it to a friend?

Sorry Leebo but I'm going to have to make of an example of this post to make a point. Nothing personal, but it's a perfect opportunity.

This kind of post is exactly the reason why us "pro DRM" people are annoyed that MS buckled to the internet rage. So much of that rage came form misinformation or complete lack of awareness.

I believe you missed Leebo's point. Note the 'on Ebay or to a friend' section. I think he was calling attention to the fact that in your initial response you didn't mention any resale restrictions.

[LAking]

What if I want to sell my game to a guy at work?

Again. They were going to allow you to gift a game to friends who were on your friends list for at least 30 days. Any single game could only be gifted once, that was the limitation. Once a person received it as a gift they couldn't gift it again.

Still supports my point that a ton of people who were complaining didn't even get the facts straight first. This is partly Microsoft's fault for sure, but it would be nice if people made a little more effort to find out the facts.

[Danimal]

What if I want to sell my game to a guy at work?

I could be wrong but isn't this where the give it to a friend options come in. You could give the game to a friend who was on your list for 30 days, it gets registered in his account and he pays you.

Doesn't solve the eBay issue but with friends it does. I might be way off, none of this mattered much to me as I don't resell video games.

[Leebo33]

What if I want to sell my game to a guy at work?

Again. They were going to allow you to gift a game to friends who were on your friends list for at least 30 days. Any single game could only be gifted once, that was the limitation. Once a person received it as a gift they couldn't gift it again.

Still supports my point that a ton of people who were complaining didn't even get the facts straight first. This is partly Microsoft's fault for sure, but it would be nice if people made a little more effort to find out the facts.

So basically I could sell my game to you guys and my brother-in-law because I really don't play online anymore...instead of millions of people on ebay.

I do know the facts....just picked an odd way to prove my point I guess.

[LAking]

The first draft of Don Mattricks Xbox One update announcement.

http://www.dorkly.com/article/52521/don ... nouncement

[vader29]

Heartbroken Xbox One employee lets rip.

First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn’t have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it.

http://www.heyuguysgaming.com/news/1250 ... -must-read

[Danimal]

So basically I could sell my game to you guys and my brother-in-law because I really don't play online anymore...instead of millions of people on ebay.

I do know the facts....just picked an odd way to prove my point I guess.

How many games have you sold on eBay. Post your seller id so we can see your feedback.

[webdanzer]

Heartbroken Xbox One employee lets rip.

First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn’t have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it.

http://www.heyuguysgaming.com/news/1250 ... -must-read

Ah. so there are the missing details! Sharing was allowing members of your family to access 15-60 minute demos of your games, with a possible access limit. Makes sense. Many gamers believed what was being speculated -"Unlimited sharing for free between 10 people"- was too good to be true, and ran counter to what they were trying to do with DRM and resale restrictions.

EDIT: Apparently the legitimacy of this is being challenged.

[Leebo33]

So basically I could sell my game to you guys and my brother-in-law because I really don't play online anymore...instead of millions of people on ebay.

I do know the facts....just picked an odd way to prove my point I guess.

How many games have you sold on eBay. Post your seller id so we can see your feedback.

I'll send you a PM with it.

As a long time poster here and SR for over a decade I'm not exactly sure what I've done for you to question my integrity and I resent it. Might be my last straw here....but I'll send it to you.

For the record, I am bummed that MS didn't get to try this...just wasn't going to be an early adopter.

[webdanzer]

I do know the facts....just picked an odd way to prove my point I guess.

No, your decision must be based in a lack of knowledge!

[Teal]

ROFLMAO...
http://www.dorkly.com/article/52521/don ... nouncement

Love it.

[Rodster]

Gamespot says that Amazon XONE preorders are now leading over the PS4 since the announcement.