News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[blakjedi]

MS should have done a common sense implementation where if your system is off-line then none of your digital titles are shareable. As long as the heartbeat is available for your home system titles can be shared. Without it, all of your digital titles are greyed out until you log into another system.

Your local titles will always work.

MS is too smart to make this so hard.

Being part of the "silent majority", i thought this was the obvious implementation.

 

[-tkf-]

in return you get 10 friend sharing , ability to download the game anywhere or use the disc to play it, the ability to sell your dd and the ability to trade it in , something you can't currently do with other dd platforms.

DD is the way of all modern platforms and ms was offering a way for those with slow connections to take advantage of it.

The only thing they impose is a 24 hour check in , which we have all argued about already , some people might have a fancy backpack with a xbox one in it and a 42 inch tv and walk around playing games for more than 24 hours strait with no acess to internet be it tethering from a cell phone or stealing someones. The vast majority will sit the console under their tv , hook it to wifi and never touch it again.


IT is a case by case situation that is getting worse each year. All steam games need to be activated online to play, you do that either by purchasing dd or by entering a gamecode that came with your disc. With ms its done by a 24 hour check. Surprisingly I feel even if ms went with a more steam route people would still complain since now your locked down by a code and in order to sell it (something you can't do on steam) you'd have to jump through hoops to deactivate the code

A large portion of the pc gaming industry actually has mobile computers however. Tablets , laptops and the like aren't allways going to have an internet source since they are mobile and ment to be taken to other places or used while traveling.

An xbox one is a console and is mean for on the go gaming. But still you'd only have to activate once every 24 hours. Anyone with a smart phone would allways have acess to a way to check in while on the road.

Weird, i didn't see the post?

Either you choose to miss the point or you are really really missing the point.

Take away the option to use the disc as a local DD cache, which is essentially what they proposed. And nothing is stopping Microsoft from doing everything they said they would have done. They could even introduce a real DD Cache format to those "that have a slow connection" and still wants all the advantages of DD.

And we should hold them up to the promises from now on until they deliver.
And if they do, nothing is stopping the other DD providers from doing the same.

The resale of DD was never demonstrated or afaik backed up by any publishers?
Download on several systems is nothing groundbreaking, the lack of offline mode however is, every competing DD platform (afaik) supports it.

 

[bkilian]

Wow, I thought we'd already done this argument to death... Just proves nothing is ever really finished on the internet.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It was more than that. The PS4 in design and marketing philosophy is heavily influenced by the missteps that happened around the PS3.

Its why the PS4 design doesn't seem to stray that far from a general AMD APU/PC design. Its why Sony valued lower pricing of the standard sku versus the increasing sticker price because of the addition of a camera. Its why Sony strongly pushed for indie development on their new console. Its why Jack Tretton isn't as visible as last gen and has toned down all the colorful PR.

Sony took lessons learned last gen and applied them to this gen.

There is no "lets use our console to push some proprietary technology". There is no "lets skimp on development tools even though we have exotic tech because the devs will figure it out eventually". There is no "Hey, go get a second job because our console is worth it."

What you see as "nothing", I see as a 180 degree turn around in Sony's approach and usually going from arrogant to humble isn't an easy or effortless endeavor. Its why it usually takes someone else "stomping a mudhole into your a@# and walking it dry" to convince someone to make that transition.

MS's main problem is that they seem to have been oblivious to the issues Sony dealt with last gen. Or that they allowed their own arrogance to convince them, they could take some of the same steps Sony took last gen and execute better.

Kinect adds to the retail price of the console as well as the R&D costs based on potential that may or may not be recognized much like BluRay. Instead of SPEs in the PS3 we have a bunch of specialized fixed function accelerators in Durango. We hearing the same "supercomputing" language from MS this gen as we heard from Sony last gen. On top of all that, MS wanted to finish it off with "Always ON Online DRM". Probably the biggest misstep ever taken by a manufacturer of a commerically popular console platform.

MS seemed to watch Sony walk into minefield and trip more than a few mines and basically believe "its okay we have better metal detectors". Then commenced to walk itself into a bigger and more dangerous minefield with the potential of blowing up the whole division and realizing "better" and "capable" does not mean the same thing. And since E3, MS has dropped those metal detectors broke out some good old fashion sticks and have been retracing their steps to safety.

MS doesn't come into this gen with close to 250-300 million in console unit sales over a decade and all the good will that those consoles generated, which is why MS is even in a more precarious position than Sony ever was. Luckily MS saving grace is its willingness to address some concerns and remove infamous features before the launch of the console.

I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but your metaphors are awesome.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Why didn't MS just market their console to the silent majority and not change their stance on just about everything?

Because the hardcore buy first at the $499 and $399 price points before the majority even look at next generation consoles.

The most important criterion for people to buy is "what do my friends have". MS can't afford to not at least stay in the race in the early going. That's why they reversed policies.

 

[hesido]

I'd really have wished MS to keep their DRM strategy with a comparable price point for the console. It would make for a really invaluable sales experiment. I think Sony would win with a landslide but we'll never know. Also, the attach rates would be interesting to look at, on the Xbox side.

 

[-tkf-]

What you see as "nothing"

I meant in regards to Digital Distributed games and Disc based games, i am sure you understood that, but thanks for the wall of text. Which i agree with

Just a little thingy, Sony started to turn the boat some time ago, it wasn't just with the PS4. Maybe it seriously started with the PSN hack disaster, they had to find the humble side, the side that customers like to see when they invest money and time in products. Lets not hope that Microsoft needs a disaster that big to wake up :-/

 

[Rockster]

Why didn't MS just market their console to the silent majority and not change their stance on just about everything?

squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Come up with numbers or step away from the discussion, your generalization aren't helping, you are just being a "loud minority" yourself.

The only smart thing Sony did was ... nothing! It was Microsoft that made them look smart

not sure what element of my comments require numbers to support; or which minority you associate me with. sorry. and to the contrary, sony was very smart to capitalize on microsoft's PR missteps. especially considering how few differentiators there are between their platforms now.

but I'll gladly step away from any conversation which devolves as quickly as this. enjoy.

 

[eastmen]

Weird, i didn't see the post?

Either you choose to miss the point or you are really really missing the point.

Take away the option to use the disc as a local DD cache, which is essentially what they proposed. And nothing is stopping Microsoft from doing everything they said they would have done. They could even introduce a real DD Cache format to those "that have a slow connection" and still wants all the advantages of DD.

And what would that DD cache system be ? Steam already uses physical media to get games to those with slow connecitions. If its good for the goose its good for the gander

And we should hold them up to the promises from now on until they deliver.
And if they do, nothing is stopping the other DD providers from doing the same.

why people cried and complained and forced MS's hand . Why would they now give us the benefits . I hope they roll out game sharing and discs as DD but i'm not sure how they would do it without game codes or a drm check. Lets hear your ideas

The resale of DD was never demonstrated or afaik backed up by any publishers?
Download on several systems is nothing groundbreaking, the lack of offline mode however is, every competing DD platform (afaik) supports it.

MS sadly couldn't announce all their plans because of the back lash.

THe only other DD system with game sharing requires a conection to check and make sure two people aren't playing at the same time and that is steam.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'd really have wished MS to keep their DRM strategy with a comparable price point for the console. It would make for a really invaluable sales experiment. I think Sony would win with a landslide but we'll never know. Also, the attach rates would be interesting to look at, on the Xbox side.

Attach rates for software are going to be meaningless in the upcoming generation. Neither Sony nor Microsoft are likely to publicly release the number of titles sold through digital download. And as the generation goes on, more and more people will move to digital download just as they did with PC.

Most analysts think PC digital sales account for 70+ percent of game sales with that increasing at a faster rate every year. It wouldn't surprise me if, after 2 years, 50+ percent of console sales are digital downloads. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if after 2 years, 75+ percent of game sales on one console or the other was digital downloads, at least in the developed nations. That may not hold true for nations that are borderline "first world" or "third world".

Hence, consumers will naturally make used game sales diminish and eventually disappear without any effort from the publishers or console makers.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

heck if ms brings back dd game sharing with digital copies only it may move much quicker.

My original plan before canceling was to only buy one or two titles physical and then buy everything else digital unless there were good sales.

But now i'm out for the start of the generation going to buy a new ship for star citizen

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And what would that DD cache system be ? Steam already uses physical media to get games to those with slow connecitions. If its good for the goose its good for the gander

Steam uses nothing of the sort, Steam is a set of online services which includes content delivery (digital distribution) and DRM. How and if those services are uses is the decision of the publisher/developer. The two services are not intrinsically linked, i.e. you can distribute digitally without DRM - I have games bought from the online Steam Store with no DRM.

THe only other DD system with game sharing requires a conection to check and make sure two people aren't playing at the same time and that is steam.

Optional. Logging into Steam may be required for associated Steam-provided social networking services for a game but not for the game itself if it's DRM free. Again, look to the publisher/developer, not Steam as a service.

 

[-tkf-]

And what would that DD cache system be ? Steam already uses physical media to get games to those with slow connecitions. If its good for the goose its good for the gander

why people cried and complained and forced MS's hand . Why would they now give us the benefits . I hope they roll out game sharing and discs as DD but i'm not sure how they would do it without game codes or a drm check. Lets hear your ideas

MS sadly couldn't announce all their plans because of the back lash.

THe only other DD system with game sharing requires a conection to check and make sure two people aren't playing at the same time and that is steam.

Ehmm, it would allow people with shitty internet of limited data to get the game and "enjoy" all the benefits of a DD game. Microsoft FAILED to tell us why they wanted Discs to be bound to the same crazy rules as DD games are. The only logical conclusion was the killing of 2nd hand sales.

I don't care what they do with DD, that is not my battle to fight (i would be willing to say how much it sucks and how limited the options would be) since i, as i said many times before, understand the limits and they are part of my "where does my money go" thought process.

So do you understand the problem now? Binding Physical discs to the same rules as DD. There was no need except they maybe felt it was getting to easy being them?

You are still comparing a completely different product/service to what Microsoft proposed, why the need to do so? Even when what Microsoft was proposing was a lot worse? You can play your games OFFLINE with steam. Kapow.. how about that?

MS sadly couldn't announce all their plans because of the back lash.

Ehmm no? They had every chance to announce ALL of their plans, countless times. Hell if they really really meant it, they would have used every chance, every interview to hammer down how great this idea was. And what exactly was the groundbreaking ideas? The family sharing was without any doubt the coolest feature, but they never really made the limitations clear. I find it hard to believe that i could cherry pick 9 people to be my family. Hello cheap games.

Trade/reselling was weird and limited, the same with giving your disc to a friend? why should they have any saying in that? only one time, on my friends list for 30 days, all that for a disc based game?

I would say that the problem was that their message was a cluster, they had no clean idea of just what they wanted, and they had to many limitations on what they thought they wanted. It sucked.

 

[eastmen]

Steam uses nothing of the sort, Steam is a set of online services which includes content delivery (digital distribution) and DRM. How and if those services are uses is the decision of the publisher/developer. The two services are not intrinsically linked, i.e. you can distribute digitally without DRM - I have games bought from the online Steam Store with no DRM.

any how many physical disc games have you bought for steam that don't required activation online ?

Optional. Logging into Steam may be required for associated Steam-provided social networking services for a game but not for the game itself if it's DRM free. Again, look to the publisher/developer, not Steam as a service.

Unless you want to share with 10 people on your list. If i'm playing your copy of civ 5 at my house and you come on to play portal 2 , i'm given a few minutes to save or purchase the title before being kicked.

Steam sharing does not work without an always on connection. Which is exactly what I said and you choose to ignore

There is no way to make DD game sharing work without requiring online for it.

 

[eastmen]

Ehmm, it would allow people with shitty internet of limited data to get the game and "enjoy" all the benefits of a DD game. Microsoft FAILED to tell us why they wanted Discs to be bound to the same crazy rules as DD games are. The only logical conclusion was the killing of 2nd hand sales.

except MS already explained that you could still sell a game once and that there were companies that could take back trades of the games. They would just be deactivated from your account.

So there was no killing of 2nd hand games. MS didn't fail , ms wasn't given time to get everything done.

I don't care what they do with DD, that is not my battle to fight (i would be willing to say how much it sucks and how limited the options would be) since i, as i said many times before, understand the limits and they are part of my "where does my money go" thought process.

and I don't care about keeping a format from the 70s , I rather move on to at least 2003

So do you understand the problem now? Binding Physical discs to the same rules as DD. There was no need except they maybe felt it was getting to easy being them?

You are still comparing a completely different product/service to what Microsoft proposed, why the need to do so? Even when what Microsoft was proposing was a lot worse? You can play your games OFFLINE with steam. Kapow.. how about that?

Yes the problem is you didn't inform yourself of what was announced. Claiming no second hand sales is false.

Ehmm no? They had every chance to announce ALL of their plans, countless times. Hell if they really really meant it, they would have used every chance, every interview to hammer down how great this idea was. And what exactly was the groundbreaking ideas? The family sharing was without any doubt the coolest feature, but they never really made the limitations clear. I find it hard to believe that i could cherry pick 9 people to be my family. Hello cheap games.

They tried but no one cared to listen as you've shown above . If you bothered to listen you would know that you could still sell your games.

Trade/reselling was weird and limited, the same with giving your disc to a friend? why should they have any saying in that? only one time, on my friends list for 30 days, all that for a disc based game?

You'd also be able to share with 10 friends instantly and dynamic the limit for giving a disc to your friend was to prevent abuse with the share feature.

I would say that the problem was that their message was a cluster, they had no clean idea of just what they wanted, and they had to many limitations on what they thought they wanted. It sucked.

The only real problem is they weren't given any time. They had a series of reveals they wanted to do but it became a convenient rallying cry for forum users. Some sites would ban anyone that liked the set up instantly.

When an angry mob with pitch forks and torches come after you , you don't sit and have tea and discuss things , you run.

MS couldn't reveal all the systems and how they worked because they were still in negotiations and waiting until they were done would have just given the mob months to get bigger and make more problems.



The xbox one DD system would have been a great thing for gamers but we are now stuck for another 8 years with the current flawed set up

 

[Deleted member 11852]

any how many physical disc games have you bought for steam that don't required activation online ?

Half-Life 2 is the only game I have bought on disc that has Steam DRM.

Unless you want to share with 10 people on your list. If i'm playing your copy of civ 5 at my house and you come on to play portal 2 , i'm given a few minutes to save or purchase the title before being kicked.

If a game comes with no DRM you share it with as many people as you like. Because there are no ownership/usage restraints.

Steam sharing does not work without an always on connection. Which is exactly what I said and you choose to ignore

Maybe its' like that in Windows, there is an offline mode on OSX that works fine.

There is no way to make DD game sharing work without requiring online for it.

Yes there is, it's called no DRM at all. No DRM = no limits Which part of this is confusing you?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There is no way to make DD game sharing work without requiring online for it.

You can. PS3 does it. You can enable a game at the hardware level. What you cannot do is control how many play it at a given time across devices where the copy is installed, which results in gifting and lead to Sony reducing the number of active licenses to two. But it can be done. There are several choices the companies have between freedoms and control and revenues, where of course the most freedoms sees the most enthusiasm from consumers and the least enthusiasm from developers/publishers (and rightly so!), and vice versa.

Yes there is, it's called no DRM at all. No DRM = no limits Which part of this is confusing you?

No DRM == rampant piracy/game sharing. There has to be some DRM or the DD model will collapse and not be supported. Some might point to indie games without DRM as proof it can work, but those games don't cost $50 million upwards to make. Where the average Joe may be happy to donate a fiver for a free indie game they downloaded, most would shy away from donating $50 for a AAA title they downloaded when they are allowed to play that game for free.

I don't see anything wrong with MS's compromise of using internet servers to control game distribution via online registration and in turn afford a flexible and valuable game sharing service. It may not be to everyone's taste but it strikes me as fair, and those who don't like the idea could have always not bought an XB1. the major gripe I have, as I've said, is that MS really didn't present this clearly and in a positive fashion, leaving all sorts of confusion in the reveal's wake. And then of course there was the requirement to be online even for local gaming from a disc copy, that they could have made optional (register disk game online and connect to play to gain benefits). Perhaps with hindsight to the public response, MS would design the policy different should they try again.

 

[-tkf-]

except MS already explained that you could still sell a game once and that there were companies that could take back trades of the games. They would just be deactivated from your account.

Yes, i could sell a disc based game, once, nothing about if the new owner could sell it again, suddenly everything was in Microsofts and the Publishers hands. As little faith i have in Microsoft for understanding it's customers, i have zero trust in the EA's.

So there was no killing of 2nd hand games. MS didn't fail , ms wasn't given time to get everything done.

Of course they failed. If they didn't have a plan to begin with, then how come we knew about it before the pretended they did? uh?

and I don't care about keeping a format from the 70s , I rather move on to at least 2003

Blu-Ray got you covered

Yes the problem is you didn't inform yourself of what was announced. Claiming no second hand sales is false.

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license

"We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers"
Or as it could be read:
"We designed Xbox One so game publishers will have to specifically allow you to trade in your games, and if they do allow it, it will have to be somewhere that makes sure the publishers gets a piece of the pie. To sum it up, we are devaluating the value of your used games, if there is any value at all, it's not up to us. But we made sure there is no way around it since there is a Activation requirement and always on DRM."

They tried but no one cared to listen as you've shown above . If you bothered to listen you would know that you could still sell your games.

They didn't try very hard, the policy was known before E3 (afaik) and the E3 presentation did NOT adress the obvious backlash. They could have had Gamestop, EA, Activision etc on stage selling the brand new idea about selling DD as used games..

You'd also be able to share with 10 friends instantly and dynamic the limit for giving a disc to your friend was to prevent abuse with the share feature.

This is cool, but nothing that i found explained the limitations, which there was bound to be.

The only real problem is they weren't given any time. They had a series of reveals they wanted to do but it became a convenient rallying cry for forum users. Some sites would ban anyone that liked the set up instantly. When an angry mob with pitch forks and torches come after you , you don't sit and have tea and discuss things , you run. MS couldn't reveal all the systems and how they worked because they were still in negotiations and waiting until they were done would have just given the mob months to get bigger and make more problems. The xbox one DD system would have been a great thing for gamers but we are now stuck for another 8 years with the current flawed set up

They had all the time in the world, we are talking years here. And they have every chance to do it all with PURE DD content if they want to. And i will be the first friend request on your XBOX1 so i can save some money

 

[joker454]

MS couldn't reveal all the systems and how they worked because they were still in negotiations and waiting until they were done would have just given the mob months to get bigger and make more problems.

Yeah their system was quite the revolution, so it's possible they didn't have all the publishers on board with it just yet and we're still negotiating there. It's just like with digital music services, digital tv services, etc, there was likely tons of bartering going on behind the scenes some of which wasn't complete. For example we saw how little leaked of Apple's iRadio until near the very end because terms weren't settled until the very end. It seems likely that there may have been a holdout company or two that wasn't necessarily thrilled about having 10 people share their xb1 game(s), and perhaps Microsoft was trying to get them on board rather than exclude them from the service which would then let Microsoft say in a future pr event that *every* was shareable instead of it being on a per publisher or per game basis. In other words, come November they would have wanted to be able to say "all games are shareable" rather than "all games are shreable...except those made by EA, COD and GTA".

I think what people don't realize is you can't just do something like "we're sharing your game with 10 people" without possibly pissing off the people that made the game in the first place. You have to appease the game creators as well, something which can take a lot of time. There weren't given the time and as a result they dropped the feature. They had no choice but to drop it because they were possibly left in a position where months of negotiating remained meaning they would have also had to endure months of bad/false press before deals were struck, terms finalized and details could finally be revealed. Once wrong information and fud started spreading to more mainstream things like tv shows, Cnn, etc, they had to fold.

You can. PS3 does it. You can enable a game at the hardware level. What you cannot do is control how many play it at a given time across devices where the copy is installed, which results in gifting and lead to Sony reducing the number of active licenses to two. But it can be done.

The PS3's broken game sharing / abuse friendly sharing *is* the reason why we have the drm attempts we have today. Go ask your fellow publisher friends, see what they have to say about it.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

No DRM == rampant piracy/game sharing. There has to be some DRM or the DD model will collapse and not be supported. Some might point to indie games without DRM as proof it can work, but those games don't cost $50 million upwards to make. Where the average Joe may be happy to donate a fiver for a free indie game they downloaded, most would shy away from donating $50 for a AAA title they downloaded when they are allowed to play that game for free.

GOG, which has many commercial games, seems to work fine. Sure, it doesn't have the latest games, but everything is DRM-free.

I don't see anything wrong with MS's compromise of using internet servers to control game distribution via online registration and in turn afford a flexible and valuable game sharing service. It may not be to everyone's taste but it strikes me as fair, and those who don't like the idea could have always not bought an XB1.

This is what Microsoft was concerned about; people voting with their wallets. Fixing the message would have been a lot less work than changing fundamental system policies.