XBox One, PS4, DRM, and You

[Nesh]

You are correct, but I don't understand the point you are trying to make by posting it.

A PC is very much like what the 360 and the PS3 is. You can either buy a disk or a digital copy from Steam.
Comparing Steam with XBone to conclude whether consumers should have adopted MS's DRM policies, is the equivalent of comparing a digital store with a platform. It makes more sense to compare Steam with XBOX Live or PSN, or PC with XBone or PS4 to understand why people didnt like XBone

 

[Kb-Smoker]

The console itself needs an online registration to work.
What's the point now?

I think just to get you into live so they can log you in. Since you gametag is needed to work any game.

Once you get your gamertag set up you are GTG.

 

[3dilettante]

Maybe they don't have time to remove that element of the system's behaviour? Or maybe they want to keep it (hardware registration an account linking etc) so they can add some kind of online based DRM (sharing, giving etc) when they think they've worked out what in hell's name it is that they should have been doing all along?

Maybe a security payload or initialization of the low-level system firmware?
It would help prevent any exploits that require getting boxed consoles that were sitting in a warehouse while security fixes are being distributed.

 

[MrFox]

Maybe they don't have time to remove that element of the system's behaviour? Or maybe they want to keep it (hardware registration an account linking etc) so they can add some kind of online based DRM (sharing, giving etc) when they think they've worked out what in hell's name it is that they should have been doing all along?

Logically it should be "you can't use any online features until you register" just like the PS3, it doesn't change the feature set, and there's no reason to prevent offline disc play. I have a Kobo reader (which I hate) that forces you to register before you use the device. There's an easy hack to fake the registration. I only have non-DRM books so I wonder what's the goal to force the users to register.

For xbone, it could be that there's no way to create a local account, maybe it's only a cached account, so the infrastructure to create it is necessarily online. If there's a GUID to be generated for this account, it would only be generated by the servers.

 

[dobwal]

I've been saying that MS could make this a customer choice since before MS's epic backpedal, but this has been continually dismissed (or rather flatly ignored) by the MS cheerleaders even on a reasonably reasonable board like B3D.

The MS cheerleaders have been every bit as guilty of creating the impression of a false dichotomy as the people who hated MS's proposed system, and the people who could have fixed this situation - MS themselves - stuck to their deeply unpopular and seemingly arbitrary selection of enforced restrictions in such a moronically inflexible manner that they dug a grave for themselves.

Even now you have people - mostly the cheerleaders - trying their damnest to maintain this false idea that if you want to allow offline play from a disk (or from a DD) then digital sharing cannot happen. That is not true. That was never true.

I don't know why people who like owning games and lending games and giving games are now taking shit for "spoiling things" in this thread, like MS are some spoilt or bratty kid who have the capability to give both parties what they want but refuse to out of spite or cowardice, and that it's somehow someone else's fault that they are that way.

You are very right it was always technically possible. But its technically possible to allow almost infinite copying from a BluRay disc. Pubs might have accepted sharing where a console offered little chance of piracy and limited used titles sales. But they might consider it untenable to allow such a model under the current structure.

Tell me how MS could of sold the sharing feature without retooling its DRM policies. "Hey I know you are concerned about piracy and irritated by used sales. But enough of that, lets talk about how we can get even more people playing your titles without paying you a dime."

 

[Rangers]

Tell me how MS could of sold the sharing feature without retooling its DRM policies. "Hey I know you are concerned about piracy and irritated by used sales. But enough of that, lets talk about how we can get even more people playing your titles without paying you a dime."

That's why 10 games sharing always seemed weird/impossible to me. Like I must be missing something.

PS3 had 5 sharing and shut it down due to abuse.

 

[ERP]

That's why 10 games sharing always seemed weird/impossible to me. Like I must be missing something.

PS3 had 5 sharing and shut it down due to abuse.

I suspect the difference is the inability to play simultaneously.
It means a friend can try a game, but if you want to play together he has to buy it, which gives you a good chance of an up sell.
I think people will be surprised how few purely single player experiences there will be on either platform this generation.

 

[BRiT]

R.I.P. library sharing.

For this I blame those unwilling to allow the advancement of digital goods from a digital marketplace in a digital world.

 

[dobwal]

That's why 10 games sharing always seemed weird/impossible to me. Like I must be missing something.

PS3 had 5 sharing and shut it down due to abuse.

I am not sure how PS3 allowed sharing. But MS seemed to want create a circumstance where the shared library acted like one physical library with the caveat that the game purchasers always had access to their title.

Basically sharing 2 copies amongst a group a 10 versus distributing 5 digital copies to a group of 5 (if thats how the PS3 version worked).

MS sharing feature doesn't cater to a reality where more than two in the group of 10 wants a newly released title. Sales are front loaded for a reason and if everyone had the capacity to wait for a shared game to become regularly available then everyone would have the will power to wait for sales and practically no game would sell for $60.

 

[MrFox]

R.I.P. library sharing.

For this I blame those unwilling to allow the advancement of digital goods from a digital marketplace in a digital world.

Thank you for your kind words.

We never argued against library sharing, nor anything MS wanted to offer. Their DD offer could have remained exactly the same way, while they could have offered Disc versions the way collectors wanted it (disc as key). Microsoft just had a stupid knee jerk reaction and removed everything. They are the ones you should be angry against. We simply voiced our opinion.

 

[mrcorbo]

A PC is very much like what the 360 and the PS3 is. You can either buy a disk or a digital copy from Steam.
Comparing Steam with XBone to conclude whether consumers should have adopted MS's DRM policies, is the equivalent of comparing a digital store with a platform. It makes more sense to compare Steam with XBOX Live or PSN, or PC with XBone or PS4 to understand why people didnt like XBone

I didn't do that and have no idea how what I posted makes you think I did. Rangers believes that people are holding Steam and Sony to different standards than Microsoft. I was responding with the reasons why Steam and XBOne aren't comparable.

 

[eastmen]

Thank you for your kind words.

We never argued against library sharing, nor anything MS wanted to offer. Their DD offer could have remained exactly the same way, while they could have offered Disc versions the way collectors wanted it (disc as key). Microsoft just had a stupid knee jerk reaction and removed everything.

Na I say it to those who couldnt see the big picture and are stuck in the past

 

[Kb-Smoker]

R.I.P. library sharing.

For this I blame those unwilling to allow the advancement of digital goods from a digital marketplace in a digital world.

With digital goods there is no reason why it couldnt work....

nice edit.....

 

[Nesh]

We're not talking about the consumer here!

You cant take the consumer out of the equation. If the company acts against the consumer to profit it shouldnt exist. If the company can benefit and profit farther by benefiting the consumer it does something right which is what the scenarios cover

if scenario 2 didn't happen. Scenario 2 doesn't reward the publisher or developer directly in any way (which is I suppose, merely neutral) but also contributes to the used market (which is toxic- somebody had to say it).

Publishers are not going to cede security on both sides, that's my take.

It does reward the publisher as the consumer has more money to dispose on games.
But if you want the real verdict you should better come up with pretty good statistics that measure a lot of things that no one put the effort to analyze like the below:
Many buy titles from the used game market that otherwise wouldnt have bought anyways. They just gave it a go because they happened to find them cheap
Others buy only new games and sell their old but the ability to sell old games helps them buy even more new games. How many are they?
Others are a combination of the above
In addition many used games are bought when the titles have passed their prime and very few cares about them anymore or they are no longer sold. Some people want to get rid of them so they just dumb em into a used game market where someone can find a copy they cant find anymore or just bought it because it was dirt cheap and wouldnt have bought it
Companies have the wrong measure to calculate their lost revenue too. For example QD measured how many profiles got trophies and compared to the units sold. But many households use multiple accounts but only one copy. And that not counting the above cases.

Since you dont have such data available you cant conclude.

If game rental and used game market was such a big issue in gaming, piracy would have destroyed the music and movie industry decades ago. But it didnt

PS. If digital was selling at $40 vs physical $60 (made up price numbers) to recoup this supposed "lost revenue" of used games, there could be a point; but that would piss Gamestop to no end I guess... so we're back at square one. :smile:

Yeah but we didnt talk about that scenario did we?
Not that we dont find better offers in digital stores quite often currently

 

[bkilian]

I hope the full story about this DRM saga comes out one day, do you really think MS thought it was going alone when it conceived its DRM policies?

No they were pretty sure they weren't going to be going it alone.

I still do not understand why this cant apply for games that you download digitally if MS decides to.

It's a question of development cost. Building this system is a large cost on the team, building it for only some of your games is not cost-effective. They still might roll it out later, but for launch it's now an eminently cuttable feature.

In other words, the benefits that differentiated our console from our competitors that allowed us features that tied completely into the basic design of the console and explained the value proposition behind the $100 price premium are now gone.

The inclusion of a Kinect in every box completely explains the extra $100 value proposition.

The console itself needs an online registration to work.
What's the point now?

Dev cost again, that system is more than likely already built, and a ton of the rest of the console's features most likely rely on the connection at OOBE.

One thing that is a side effect of this change is no longer being able to rely on the console always having the latest OS version. This means that discs will now have to ship with the console OS on board if they rely on non-shipped-at-launch features. It also increases the test cost on the developer. This was a huge pillar of the system design, and there are a ton of people scrambling now changing TCRs and redesigning the disc format.

And one awesome thing that appears to have gone unnoticed: No more region locking.

 

[oramay]

I am not sure how PS3 allowed sharing. But MS seemed to want create a circumstance where the shared library acted like one physical library with the caveat that the game purchasers always had access to their title.

Basically sharing 2 copies amongst a group a 10 versus distributing 5 digital copies to a group of 5 (if thats how the PS3 version worked).

The digital game sharing on PS3 was between any 5 consoles on a game by game basis. So a PS3 could be in different groups sharing different selections of games with different people. They changed the limit to 2 a year or so ago for new purchases from then on. I'm still sharing digital games like that with a friend, just the deal isn't as good as before.

 

[BRiT]

With digital goods there is no reason why it couldnt work....

nice edit.....

I hope they will eventually come around to offering the benefits of game sharing. It would have/ could have been such a nice feature. Alas.

As to the edit...

 

[Cyan]

They allowed the narrative to stupidly focus on the negatives, and didn't build a story that focused on the benefits and the overall direction effectively.

Still, I don't see why this can't be re-reversed at some point by allowing users the original policies they outlined by virtue of an opt-in scheme.

Easy. The Library Sharing can work in the future applying their previous DRM policies.

You can share games with up to 10 people, BUT you have to opt in to a policy that for that particular game -those games you don't share are unaffected-.

In order for the game to work for others and for you, you must connect once every 24 hours, and those who can play the game must go online after 1 hour of offline play.

Everybody is copying this feature, and people can see why. :smile:

 

[bkilian]

Many buy titles from the used game market that otherwise wouldnt have bought anyways. They just gave it a go because they happened to find them cheap
Others buy only new games and sell their old but the ability to sell old games helps them buy even more new games. How many are they?

Sorry, but buying a game for $60 as opposed to $54 because it is used is not a significant barrier to entry. Also, getting $6-$10 back for your game is also not a good driver of buying new games.

The used market, by itself, is not necessarily toxic. Gamestop's implementation of it definitely is.

Having no used market also does not require keeping the prices high. You can follow a much healthier curve by reducing the price as demand drops, you can spur new users by having one day sales. Steam is a master at this, and they have absolutely no used market. And at launch, Steam games are not significantly cheaper than their PC DVD counterparts.

 

[Bagel seed]

B3D is simply ahead of the curve in willingness to adapt to new and exciting technology. The masses will come around in a few more years.