Eurogamers take on the MS 'clarifications... Not pretty reading but not a knee jerk reaction either. Though I can't say the same thing for the comments!
XBox One, PS4, DRM, and You
- Thread starter mrcorbo
- Start date
- Status
The scary part to me is that Sony did not come clear on that front either, they may let Editors/publishers do whatever they want to.
If I get things right as a publisher MSFT is going to let you resell a game without asking for a fee but they let EA (for example) the choice: they can forbid second hand games, ask for a fee, and/or introduce a delay between release of the game and the moment you can sell it and also delay the moment the game is available for rental.
That has an unintended consequence, if MSFT let publishers do whatever they want Sony has to match MSFT policies, either negociating exclusives games, lot of them, even time exclusive is going to be a walk in the park for MSFT (that is if they manage to sell enough consoles but thing s is people are people... give them a cheap device, or cheaper than cheap+ a subscription....).
The whole thing looks uglier and uglier, MSFT is taking the hit now as far as PR is concerned (how it will translate in sale perception at launch when it hit the real mass market not forum is another issue) but whereas Sony is now mostly silent they will have to do something, quite possibly something people are not going to like either.
To quote Cliff Bleszinski:
Because the person playing it may not have paid. 'The industry' doesn't want one game being bought once and shared around 20 people. They want each person (or family) who plays the game to have paid the creators something for the experience. Whether this is right or not is a political discussion in another thread, but that's why they are doing this with the DRM. The disc alone isn't proof that you've paid to enjoy the experience.
I would be pretty happy for publishers to decide on their drm to be honest as I can then vote with my money by not buying it. Im sure ea would soon get the picture if the sales of their games took a massive nosedive.
I know people say casuals wont care but that is surely forgetting the spore issue. People will care casual and forum warriors alike
I know people say casuals wont care but that is surely forgetting the spore issue. People will care casual and forum warriors alike
Billy Idol
Legend
I think MS is not to blame for this. As people already said, SONY keeps quite...we all know what this means.
It is demanded by the industry, by the publisher, by the game devs.
I guess future will tell if this is the right direction or not.
It is demanded by the industry, by the publisher, by the game devs.
I guess future will tell if this is the right direction or not.
The more time passes the more I feel we are losing rights and conveniences for the sake of corporate interests and mass control
Someone may say "but hey look we gained other conveniences" but thats because that someone is not aware that the conveniences we are losing are bigger and related to our rights and freedoms as citizens and consumers. Those other conveniences we gain are just carrot on a stick
The non-monetary cost for us is much bigger than the monetary gains these corporations get. They still profit with or without the existence of the used game market. But they take up from us just to save opportunity cost. OPPORTUNITY COST!
Down the line we forgot the real purpose of our society and now its all about the interests of institutions at the cost of the masses. And its getting disgusting because we find excuses as to why things are going that direction. As if its how things are supposed to be.
The God damn purpose why our society allowed for the existence of companies was to improve our well being and quality of life but they are getting more power than they should at our expense when they can
This DRM thing really pisses me off and I hope Sony doesnt do the same crap. I hope they continue to promote our freedom to do what we want with our purchases as we we see fit as consumers
Someone may say "but hey look we gained other conveniences" but thats because that someone is not aware that the conveniences we are losing are bigger and related to our rights and freedoms as citizens and consumers. Those other conveniences we gain are just carrot on a stick
The non-monetary cost for us is much bigger than the monetary gains these corporations get. They still profit with or without the existence of the used game market. But they take up from us just to save opportunity cost. OPPORTUNITY COST!
Down the line we forgot the real purpose of our society and now its all about the interests of institutions at the cost of the masses. And its getting disgusting because we find excuses as to why things are going that direction. As if its how things are supposed to be.
The God damn purpose why our society allowed for the existence of companies was to improve our well being and quality of life but they are getting more power than they should at our expense when they can
This DRM thing really pisses me off and I hope Sony doesnt do the same crap. I hope they continue to promote our freedom to do what we want with our purchases as we we see fit as consumers
Allowing the disc for offline play doesn't preclude online activation ... at best you could sell on the game, let whoever bought it install and activate it on his console, then take back the disc and keep your console offline and keep playing it (next time you go online the game is automatically deactivated on your console). Not a very realistic scenario and not one which would allow 20 people to play.
Billy Idol
Legend
Oh, again..not so easy to swallow. But it is a good translation and summary of the PR bla bla bla stuff we got on the official web page.
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
Already debunked by a mod.As for today basic online gaming still free.Uh oh, Thuway just busted out some big ones on GAF. Pre e3 monster leaks beginning?
Bet thuway just turned from "worlds most reliable source (rumors of Durango underclock) to heinous charlatan (rumors of PS4 pay online)
$429 is actually not bad at all if that includes a decent size HDD. Not bad at ALL considering a decent PC gfx card alone costs that.
$529 is scarily close to 599 though for PR purposes.
No idea if these are true but I do KNOW Gddr5 aint cheap, at all.
I cant imagine Gakai costing $100 a year. And if online is 30/year they can say "we're less than MS" (but at that point it's a matter of degree, and MS does have a better network)
Edit: Apparently Kotaku had reported similar things before? Had not heard that.
They had to include it because people stupidly believed the console would totally brick itself without an Internet connection for 5 minutes.
I'll be surprised if Sony doesn't have restrictions as well.
If Valve comes out with a Steam console, I hope these same people get their pitchforks out. Same for Sony.
I don't like anything that restricts my ability to sell the things I buy. So on these platforms, the value of games, for me, will be lowered. It just means I wait for sales or buy less games. That's all there is to it. No outrage.
If Valve comes out with a Steam console, I hope these same people get their pitchforks out. Same for Sony.
I don't like anything that restricts my ability to sell the things I buy. So on these platforms, the value of games, for me, will be lowered. It just means I wait for sales or buy less games. That's all there is to it. No outrage.
Steam customers are rather sanguine about first sale doctrine to begin with, so why would they complain about that when it concerns a console? Semi-always online would be an issue yes ... but Steam doesn't have the same problem as Microsoft has (idiots as customers who want to trade in their physical media and not be confronted with "you didn't deactivate the game on your console yet") so it doesn't need that.
Sony in it's turn might be willing to offend the idiots among their customers more (and if they put a microcontroller in every disc they might not even need online authentication to combat reselling). Although that remains to be seen.
Sony in it's turn might be willing to offend the idiots among their customers more (and if they put a microcontroller in every disc they might not even need online authentication to combat reselling). Although that remains to be seen.
Which is exactly my point.
It's the sheer fact that they seemingly felt compelled to be overly clear about such (purportedly) obvious things as that Xbox One will actually NOT roast your cable box in case you should lose internet connection (for more than a day) which is absolutely hilarious. That's basically like openly admitting that everything they said before calls the most basic assumptions of common sense into question.
Maybe it's just my weird sense of humour, though
Billy Idol
Legend
But isn't this crazy? They say that they need this because of the all the piracy, i.e. they lose money. They say they need this because of all the used used game sales, i.e. they lose money.
And now your first reaction is: easy, no problem...I just don't buy that much games anymore. And I guess a lot of people will react that way. But as a consequence...they'll sell way less games. i.e. lose money.
It's not crazy if (a) SONY applies similar restrictions and/or (b) Microsoft is very confident of having enough high-quality exclusive games to make people buy their system (and games) irrespective of their DRM policy.
Only if both (a) and (b) turn out to be false, Microsoft is in trouble.
Option (c) is that they simply don't (have to) care too much about selling as many games as possible as they deliberately shifted their focus to a broader business approach (in which games make only a small part of their expected revenue).
... and all above-mentioned options will turn out completely invalid in case Valve announces to release Half-Life 3 exclusively on their "Steam Box"
I suppose I'm one of the pitchfork guys
I wouldn't use Steam myself, and I wouldn't even call that a console, it'd be a PC that can run Steam. There's nothing to argue about, Steam's DRM scheme is a necessity against piracy, because you can't expect them to offer a copy protected media like a real console does. It's games-as-a-service basically. The cost of games on Steam is also low enough that most consider it very fair. Just like the $10 games on PS or Xbox Store.Now that Microsoft made their move, if Sony isn't any better, I'll be very mad, but I'll give up completely. The vote-with-your-money principle can only work when a better alternative exists. Either different games on the same console that are giving me the value/convenience I'm satisfied with, or a different console having a better policy. It only works if there's enough choice and the industry doesn't collude to prevent the choice from existing. Laws could help, but these digital schemes are precisely made to circumvent the laws which were written to protect consumers.
- Status
