XBox One, PS4, DRM, and You

[Billy Idol]

Pastebin link - truckload of salt and all that
http://pastebin.com/TE1MWES2

The important part.

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.

IF true, that's even worse than we had all been speculating.

If this is real, I understand now there intention: sharing is basically distribution of game demos. This would explain what always bugged me...they will never allow to share the whole game and cut their sales. This makes sense now. A demo.

Edit: not sure if real, seems fishy

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

They're at parity with Sony now, and everybody loves what Sony did (nothing), yet when MS goes back to doing nothing, its a problem. Just because they exposed ideas on how a new DRM system *could* work, it doesn't mean the public is right for holding everyone to different standards.

Oh, it's even better. Because the immediate reactions from those people that "got their way" (in other words, those who were never going to buy the console anyway), was:

Great going, MS. Thanks for listening. Now remove the Kinect NSA Spycam and lower the price to $399 and maybe I'll consider it.

I must have read hundreds of messages saying that as a reaction to the news of MS changing their policies yesterday.

And it's the stupidest, most idiotic thing ever because we all know that a One without Kinect, without the digital sharing, the fast swapping, the multitasking and with a $399 price point is a friggin PS4.

It's completely unbelievable.

 

[Billy Idol]

Are we really so sure that it's real? It has quite a few spelling errors and other mistakes that I wouldn't expect an MS high up guy to make...

For example video game development as a loss leader? Huhh?

Yeah, seems fishy, especially the fanboyish rant at the end about Ps4...

 

[DrJay24]

Apparently it is stupid and idiotic to not want to pay $100 more for a camera many people don't want. But I think you are right, it is the PS4 and that is the great thing about competition, consumers have a choice and can vote with their wallet.

 

[MrFox]

And it's the stupidest, most idiotic thing ever because we all know that a One without Kinect, without the digital sharing, the fast swapping, the multitasking and with a $399 price point is a friggin PS4.

Obviously, for some people, the xbone DRM and lack of ownership was a deal breaker. For others it's the price, and other it's the power, and others it's the games, or all of the above, or none of the above.

There's much more differences than just the DD permission system. Still, fast swapping and multitasking are also on the PS4, it also has 50% more GPU power and GDDR5. But on the positive xbone has EDRAM and a probably a better Audio DSP (a fair guess).

More importantly, they also have completely different first party games and exclusives, which is an important factor in a game console, isn't it?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

If you're not pushing this as the actual explanation, then I can buy the rest. I was only taking issue with the assumption that they were choosing not to offer these features at at launch when they easily could if they wanted.

No, that's a possible perception of offering library sharing, then whisking it away and offering to carry on as usual. Let's put it this way, there are no technical barriers to offering dual policies for digital purchases and disc games. Polices enforced by software can be changed and there are four full months - July, August, September, October - plus the remainder of June and whatever period in November is between now and launch, in which to change software for a day one patch.

I'm just trying to find explanations that aren't crazy that fit the chain of events. It could be something else entirely. Unless somebody speaks out, we may never know.

 

[Aeoniss]

Apparently it is stupid and idiotic to not want to pay $100 more for a camera many people don't want. But I think you are right, it is the PS4 and that is the great thing about competition, consumers have a choice and can vote with their wallet.

I don't get people's assrage over consumers wanting MS to lower the price and remove the camera (that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about, me and all my friends included).

I'm sorry, but what if we want a console more like its predecessor the Xbox 360? That's basically what the PS4 is, just on steroids and at a reasonable price.

Why should we give a flying shit about Kinect 2.0, and be expected to find a $100 greater price point, so-called 'progressive' DRM schemes, weaker silicon, and mandatory Kinect 2.0 reasonable?

Sure, you can say that MS didn't portray their 'vision' well enough but from what I saw I absolutely hated it. I hated the price point, I hated how it was a weaker box than PS4, I hated the 24hr check in (I use consoles offline frequently), I hated that I had to always have Kinect 2.0 set up and placed somewhere..

For that matter, people getting all misty eyed and comparing it to STEAM- seriously? STEAM is far and away better (and really quite different) than Xbone's DRM plan. Naturally arguments are being formed like "Well in the future it could have been as awesome!"

Yea? So we're gonna take the stick and maybe, hopefully, get a carrot out of this?

Let me ask you guys, why do you place such amazing trust in Microsoft? This is MICROSOFT we are talking about here. Not Valve. Balmer, not Newell.

FFS.

 

[blakjedi]

I don't get people's assrage over consumers wanting MS to lower the price and remove the camera (that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about, me and all my friends included).

I'm sorry, but what if we want a console more like its predecessor the Xbox 360? That's basically what the PS4 is, just on steroids and at a reasonable price.

Why should we give a flying shit about Kinect 2.0, and be expected to find a $100 greater price point, so-called 'progressive' DRM schemes, weaker silicon, and mandatory Kinect 2.0 reasonable?

Sure, you can say that MS didn't portray their 'vision' well enough but from what I saw I absolutely hated it. I hated the price point, I hated how it was a weaker box than PS4, I hated the 24hr check in (I use consoles offline frequently), I hated that I had to always have Kinect 2.0 set up and placed somewhere..

For that matter, people getting all misty eyed and comparing it to STEAM- seriously? STEAM is far and away better (and really quite different) than Xbone's DRM plan. Naturally arguments are being formed like "Well in the future it could have been as awesome!"

Yea? So we're gonna take the stick and maybe, hopefully, get a carrot out of this?

Let me ask you guys, why do you place such amazing trust in Microsoft? This is MICROSOFT we are talking about here. Not Valve. Balmer, not Newell.

FFS.

All the things you say you hate you have never used in a way that the Xbox One attempts to bring together.

Thats like saying you hate color touchscreens, cameras, and music players on a phone. "None of my friend wants that shit"

All thats makes you is a blackberry.

A PS4 is essentially a supercharged Blackberry.

 

[dagamer]

Apparently it is stupid and idiotic to not want to pay $100 more for a camera many people don't want. But I think you are right, it is the PS4 and that is the great thing about competition, consumers have a choice and can vote with their wallet.

There is no point if we have two consoles that do the exact same thing. Besides, we all know the next argument those people are going to have is "Well the PS4 is more powerful anyway, so Microsoft's console should be EVEN CHEAPER!"

There's listening to feedback from potential customers, and then there is catering to their every whim. For example, I think looking back, the $299 Xbox 360 Core without a hard drive should have been axed so that every developer could have counted on having a hard drive when developing games. The impositions caused by not having a hard drive (limiting patch sizes and XBLA game sizes) I don't think were worth the trade-off.

 

[dagamer]

I don't get people's assrage over consumers wanting MS to lower the price and remove the camera (that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about, me and all my friends included).

I'm sorry, but what if we want a console more like its predecessor the Xbox 360? That's basically what the PS4 is, just on steroids and at a reasonable price.

Why should we give a flying shit about Kinect 2.0, and be expected to find a $100 greater price point, so-called 'progressive' DRM schemes, weaker silicon, and mandatory Kinect 2.0 reasonable?

Sure, you can say that MS didn't portray their 'vision' well enough but from what I saw I absolutely hated it. I hated the price point, I hated how it was a weaker box than PS4, I hated the 24hr check in (I use consoles offline frequently), I hated that I had to always have Kinect 2.0 set up and placed somewhere..

For that matter, people getting all misty eyed and comparing it to STEAM- seriously? STEAM is far and away better (and really quite different) than Xbone's DRM plan. Naturally arguments are being formed like "Well in the future it could have been as awesome!"

Yea? So we're gonna take the stick and maybe, hopefully, get a carrot out of this?

Let me ask you guys, why do you place such amazing trust in Microsoft? This is MICROSOFT we are talking about here. Not Valve. Balmer, not Newell.

FFS.

Seriously, people seem to have amnesia or weren't around for the Half-Life 2 launch. No one liked it then when Steam DRM was first tied to Half-Life 2. Those Steam sales did NOT come instantly.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Are we really so sure that it's real? It has quite a few spelling errors and other mistakes that I wouldn't expect an MS high up guy to make...

For example video game development as a loss leader? Huhh?

I'm always dubious about these things but somebody whose emotional because their work of the past X months/years has just been shit canned, recounting his woes at 4am in the morning, could be real.

By loss leader I wonder if this is a reference to console ecosystems only making profit over time or perhaps that apparently only 20-30% of games make a profit. I'm still of the view that if this is the case, it's likely over supply that's mostly to blame: too many games, too few consumers with cash.

But if the explanation about game library sharing is true, that is obviously nothing like what was being described and Microsoft would be wise to bury it, particularly given it sounded so good - almost too good to be true.

 

[dragonelite]

Dam if that pastebin is true.
Maybe the change in policies is for the better.
They had the one thing to beat steam.
But yeah we still have day one digital shame i can't lock physical disk to account and throw them away anymore.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Sony already have had game sharing for download titles since PSN. They've also invested plenty of research into disc-based DRM with a number of patents. Whatever decisions Sony go with in future won't be copying MS - the evidence is clear on this. But I honestly believe everyone's looking to just ride out another disc-based format for one more generation and then switch. No discs, no second-hand resale issues, no fuss from the consumers.

Oh I get that. It's just that this debacle has basically ruined MS's chances of pulling a fast one on Sony by doing something Sony do already, only better! But I guess that's because at the end of the day MS are good at the software and Sony are good at the hardware.

And I think that it's just too soon for a completely DD future. It would mean that gaming would be a no go for me and quite a lot of people like me given the current state of the telecoms infrastructure. And the old fall back to a mobile doesn't work here either, on a really good day I might get old 33.6Kb modem speeds out of my phone. Which was good enough for Quake but not a lot else!!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

There is no point if we have two consoles that do the exact same thing. Besides, we all know the next argument those people are going to have is "Well the PS4 is more powerful anyway, so Microsoft's console should be EVEN CHEAPER!"

Well for the most part, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 do the same thing, often playing the same games with the same basic controls. Ditto, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. First or third party exclusives can certainly define a system, they certainly did with the PS2 and for me, Sony's first party studios are why I bought Sony and not Microsoft this gen and why I probably will next gen - although there are still unanswered questions tho.

I don't think Microsoft really have the option of removing Kinect from the Xbox One. Technically they can, sure, but it's their big differentiator from Sony. If you take Kinect away, Xbox One offers Live TV, Twitter, Skype and Bing Search and snapping Left with the basic hardware, if the specs on paper are to be believed, the Xbox may be a fair bit less powerful and it compares, and offers, less.

They definitely shouldn't cave on bundling Kinect. And I don't think they will, I don't even think they are talking about it internally.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But yeah we still have day one digital shame i can't lock physical disk to account and throw them away anymore.

If you have day one digital purchases, why do you want to buy stuff on disc and lock it to the console? What's the point?

 

[Themrphenix]

I wish Microsoft wouldn't have back tracked!I know a lot of people didn't like their vision,but I think long term it would have been a very good system!I know they would be growing pains at first,but in 2 to 3 years I think it would have been fine!This is just my opinion but I think Microsoft was being very forward thinking !I hope the masses are happy!

 

[dragonelite]

If you have day one digital purchases, why do you want to buy stuff on disc and lock it to the console? What's the point?

I know some people that work in big electronic stores and 15% discount on physical disk is too good to pass if digital option is priced well.
I just hate cases and disk and im clumsy also a big reason why stuff break with me.

And not every game is worth getting day for 55 euro, getting them at sub 30 euro makes it easier to justify trying out different genres or IP.

 

[MrFox]

I wish Microsoft wouldn't have back tracked!I know a lot of people didn't like their vision,but I think long term it would have been a very good system!I know they would be growing pains at first,but in 2 to 3 years I think it would have been fine!This is just my opinion but I think Microsoft was being very forward thinking !I hope the masses are happy!

Microsoft said nothing changed in their vision, they only added more choices. (not my words) They are going to reeducate the public to convince them that nothing changed now.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I know some people that work in big electronic stores and 15% discount on physical disk is too good to pass if digital option is priced well.
I just hate cases and disk and im clumsy also a big reason why stuff break with me.

Good answer!

 

[Aeoniss]

Seriously, people seem to have amnesia or weren't around for the Half-Life 2 launch. No one liked it then when Steam DRM was first tied to Half-Life 2. Those Steam sales did NOT come instantly.

I don't have amnesia- I know its past. What I'm saying is with STEAM it's easier to put faith in Valve with their service. It was not an entire gaming machine that spread uniform DRM across every game developed specifically for it replete with restrictions placed on the user.

It's software. Free software that works for Linux, OSX and Windows and for near about any hardware configuration under the sun and it has massive sales all the time.

There was no great and wonderful incentive for consumers to buy into MS's bullshit DRM plan. The library sharing thing- is that really the saving grace of the system they were implementing?

I cannot see a single compelling reason to trust Microsoft with this endeavor. They're not Apple, they're not Valve.

Literally the only argument I'm hearing from people is "Well it could have been great!"

So.. What? We're just supposed to have faith in MS after they slapped people around with their abhorrid press releases and lackluster communication skills? There was only ever going to be one result from the past few months and we're looking at it right now. People can try and cry and craft paranoid delusions that somehow Sony "betrayed the publishers and MS" with PS4 (LOL OK), or how a "vocal minority of luddites" ruined "everything" with the Xbox One. But really all the blame lies solely on the shoulders of Microsoft. Period.

Trust is never given, it's fucking earned. Especially when it comes to consumer rights and products.

Advocating blind faith in a corporation is lunacy. People didn't like the stuff they were shoveling and they said it, Sony from the get go was interested in a different approach and MS coming out first and making their proclamation simply made it a PR victory.

No complex conspiracy there.