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XBox One, PS4, DRM, and You
- Thread starter mrcorbo
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I beggars belief that anyone could see such a decision as a bad thing.
Far worse is 'hey guys we've made this console with all these online features but you are going to have to pay us an additional £50 a year to use them'
Free online is great there isn't anyway to spin it in a negative context. People who want the bells and whistles can pay for it people who just want to use the sharing features and occasional multiplayer game can do so without incurring a stealth tax.
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'Idiotic' is extreme. PC offers free online, so PS4 is in competition with a free platform. And getting people online is important to sell them content. Look at the proliferation of F2P games coming. Applying your logic, "WOW makes billions with subs. Anyone offering F2P is an idiot." Yet not everyone can emulate WOW's success and having free access and in-game billing can prove more lucrative for a title than adding a subscription fee.
The lack of yearly earnings from a subscription fee is negative business practice, but if it brings more gamers and content purchases to your platform, it could well be a net profit. So a legitimate choice, and not 'idiotic' in either direction in business terms (unless you can present hard evidence that the gains in marketshare and ongoing sales and contents revenues can never exceed subscription fee income).
Then you can sell the disc.
They need a 2 tier system, DD where you can buy and sell games, but the price will have to be lower than, Discs, priced higher than DD's but open to trade.
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Sorry for not quoting the original post, thought it was better to post a translation.
Give me one good reason what benefit do I get as a consumer to pay for online? Idiotic because Sony lost an awesome opportunity to increase their profits by ripping us off?
This is not a one sided thing. See the whole picture. Profits arent the only thing that matter. Our conveniences as consumers should matter just as much if not more when designing a product and service
From a business POV, the only reason to care about conveniences for your consumers is because that leads to higher profits than not, such as keeping them loyal and buying more stuff from you.
I am pretty aware of how business POV work from first hand experience and with which I disagree hence my response, because it is a very common practice to maximize profits through decisions that come at a direct conflict with the consumer's interest. When a company sees such an opportunity they will do it. Its a myth that profit maximization is only linked to offering the optimal value and utility in this economic system because it nurtures the idea where consumer and company are two sides in constant negotiation and the one with the best negotiating power wins. Since profit is the utter purpose of a company they will profit at the expense of society when they can. The system is not moving towards pareto efficiency but drifting away
If by "system" you mean the way the world is, then that's not a discussion for here. That's a socio-economic discussion. Within the context of discussing the console businesses, the console companies are in it only for the money and that's they're objective. Any hope for altruism on their part is going to fall on deaf ears. Regardless of how Sony can provide a better experience for its customers, the driving force for all their decisions is how to maximise profits.
Whether business and society should be run that way is a whole other discussion. In the context of this discussion, though CRANKY's sentiment seems misplaced to me, the financial interest of the companies is certainly the basis for the decision making and I don't see an appeal to giving customers a better experience as relevant to any of these companies.
Whether business and society should be run that way is a whole other discussion. In the context of this discussion, though CRANKY's sentiment seems misplaced to me, the financial interest of the companies is certainly the basis for the decision making and I don't see an appeal to giving customers a better experience as relevant to any of these companies.
For me personally, I wish they just would have not included a damn Blu-ray drive at all. It would render all this always online - DRM lunacy moot. I have no use for it from a movie watching perspective and just a waste of $30 in my mind, on top of making everyone nuts about what they "own".
Lets just say that I did not like the way CRANKY tried to make his point on the matter and that I tried to make my position clear as a response to your post. If he expressed his point differently I might not have replied.
the thread title suggests that our position on this and how we are affected is part of this thread's discussion, I will go as far as to say that my above response is perfectly on topic because yes, I am affected in one way or another for whatever obvious reasons they want to impose DRM and pay wall limitations. We are participators in this market as well with extremely high significance
I cant be silent about it just because we state the obvious:
that these companies dont care about the consumer experience. That was also my point anyways. The difference is that I consider this significant enough to be mentioned in this thread
This is involves the whole gaming market and hence it involves the consumer who is a significant part of this market. Narrowing it down to the corporate/business POV is narrow minded and ignoring a huge portion of what makes this market what it is, why/how it evolved and why we are part of it.
I'm used to Steam now, and Xbox1 seems like an improvement. The 24h offline limit is the only concern, though it shouldn't be a actual problem for anyone with a broadband connection.
If I can share SP games with family in another city without visiting or posting discs, that is great. If games ultimately cost less because of this, sign me up.
If I can share SP games with family in another city without visiting or posting discs, that is great. If games ultimately cost less because of this, sign me up.
They should launch a free SKU, - free as in free beer (ie. not free at all). A two year contract running at $20/month with nothing down (assuming a $399 launch price).
People would rage page after page on NeoGaf and here about the 15 cents/day MS tax, but the rest of the world wouldn't care.
Cheers
Wow. Only one platform charges for playing games online. Those are the idiots.
Just because your competitor has found a way to get easy money doesn't mean you will succeed on the same terms, especially not if you are new to the game and will have a hard time offering the same value for money. Sony going pay wall to emulate Microsoft would be like Microsoft bringing out tablets with ridiculous margins to emulate Apple ...
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