XBox One, PS4, DRM, and You

Except it's debateable if any real damage was done. Yeah they backtracked and things they announced are no longer happening but it wasn't like they did it a year into selling the device. The device is still a few months off.

 

I could accept the DRM but not seeing countries like Argentina, Poland or Portugal on the list -yes, they are "small" countries, population wise, Argentina is huge- was certainly a bad move because the console seemed to be so selective -for whatever reason- and as Boardbonobo said they ate humble pie.

This is Gamestop's shares reaction to the news. -it didn't take a long time-

Is there anyone who didn't expect this after all?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-20-xbox-one-news-good-for-gamestop

 

There are far too many specific attacks to deal with at the moment so I will simply address this one for the time being.

As one of the "whiners", and one who not only exclusively owned an Xbox and a 360, but also fully expected to purchase the next version to the exclusion of Sony's offering, when that day comes there had better be major benefits to offset the restrictions. No, being able to share my library with 10 others, though only a single person may be accessing my library at any one time and then not only is whatever game they are playing off limits to the 9 others but the entire library itself, is not enough to offset the restrictions vs. the old system of trade/loan/sell/rent. Not even close. Should the day come when direct download games are the only option with the traditional pricing structure maintained and restrictions akin to what MS tried to force down our throats in the past few weeks, then I will be searching elsewhere. I expect, given the reaction to MS announcement of the past few weeks, I will not be the lone luddite in the wilderness.

 

I think recent events should have made clear the difference between digital download and physical disk is not just the delivery cost and convenience. Certain rules of engagement in handling the commodity are also at issue.

It's not at all certain that delivery by physical disks will be gone in the next 10 years or so.

 

I'll be here in 6 years to argue about the 1TB bluray format. Or not.

Maybe Ultraviolet will have pickup so much that they'll become the universal distribution format for games on all platforms, I always dreamed of that And they'll give us a disc version of all our purchases on a backup 1TB bluray anyway. Because they guarantee us ownership.
(we can argue why I support ultraviolet, on another thread)

 

This is actually good news for me because now I will go out and preorder an Xbone for launch and hopefully be able to get it on day 1. MS's restrictive DRM scheme was the primary thing holding me back from purchasing the machine in its first year, now hat they decided to do a 180 I can also do a 180 and purchase the machine! This is a win for me, because I like having physical media to know I can play the game any time I want and now don't have to worry that the games will no longer be playable. I can simply pop a disc in and play the game I purchased and OWN, I am glad this happened, because they just made a customer out of me. Chances are I will buy games digitally because I'm a lazy ass, but just having this option means MS made the right choice.

And stop blaming media outlets for whining and crying about the DRM scheme MS proposed. It clearly didn't jive with a lot of people on this forum, including me, and the media outlet didn't influence my perception of that one bit. And friends I talked to weren't so keen on the idea either seeing as they like their discs just as much as me.

 

Sonic , you can have my preorder. I don't believe I will be buying one now. Will stick with the pc


Doesn't seem like the media is happy

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/19/4...new-xbox-one-policies-retreat-from-the-future

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905


The fanboys won and we are worse off for the fact.

 

Well it's dead on consoles but it's not necessarily dead. We can't look to consoles anymore for advances, clearly their users are still stuck in their quaint 70s style of play where you put your physical item into your device hooked to one tv and play. Compare this to 6 year olds that play digital content on their multiple digital devices both in and out of the house, housewives that play digital content on their pc's, laptops and tablets, casuals who have embraced digital downloads, etc. That's where we have to look to fro the future, not the "hardcore" console gamers that are clearly stuck in the past.

So forget consoles and look to other devices, there is still hope of tablets, pc's and other digital playgrounds to advance to shared digital libraries. So while console owners are stuck playing their physical discs in front of their Predicta Continental TV's, the rest of us will have moved on to the future. Who knows though, maybe in a decade or so from now the "hardcore console gamer" will have caught up to casuals, kids and housewives. In the meantime let them insert their discs and be chained to their one device. It's primitive but clearly that's how they want it.

 

agreed, good insight there

 

That's because the news WAS bad. They didn't do anything to sell their story, they didn't focus on the positives, so all that you could see initially were negative, anti-consumer, pro-publisher policies. The reaction was completely warranted, and imo chlking it up to the media is wrong. This was a groundswell reaction shared on a human level amongst most gamers, because it felt hostile.

This is textbook, 101 on how NOT to pitch a new product. Instead of focusing on what it brings to the table, they hand wave at some vague possibilites, then the next day, issue a stark press release with a myriad of restrictions.

 

No thanks jvd. I've already preordered and don't need yours. Besides, you'll still need it once you come around and realize it's not the end of the world to have to stick a disc in. Who knows, MS may decide to back track on that as well and allow game installations from disc or server and not make people switch their discs. I wouldn't mind a game installation from disc to disk!

 

I dunno man , I wasn't going to buy in this generation (and I posted about it quite a few times here) until I saw the game sharing and discless features were big draws. whats going on seems so backwards right now. All the innovative features are gone and people are actually happy.

 

It is a majority vs a vocal minority, it's not only the users but also the journalists. I just hope they add an option to have the old system -it's still built in, remember- for those who opt-in for it as an added value. How? It's not my job to figure it out... but the solid foundations are there.

The console was ahead of its time, and it mixed both the DD and the physical media.

I tried to defend the system -B3D is special no problem here...- 'cos at some point I truly believed in it, and now I feel kinda empty and my eyes are lachrymose, I gotta admit.

I only feared that physical stores could disappear and the fact that the console was a bit too much restrictive with not only regional locking but also they locked it depending on the country you lived.

It prevented me from reserving the console for now as I am moving in the future -around the launch date of the console or so (although both countries are in the "accepted" list-. It's all I care about at the moment tbh.

Now I can move and pre-order the console without fear.

 

-People don't want DRM but want premium gaming content and inexpensive consoles.

-People don't want DRM or any management period, but want games for the cheapest price and be able to sell that content at no benefit to the creator.

-People want innovation in gaming but don't want the option to have new modes of gameplay offered by new interaction methods.

-People want to able to share games one disk at a time to one person at a time, but don't mind sharing their whole spotify library of thousands of songs, to all 1000 of their Facebook friends.

-People want to sell their games after they are done with them, but still want their next console to be backwards compatible with games they sold off five years ago.

-People want expansive worlds and lightning fast multiplayer as long as it doesn't use the one technology that can actually deliver those worlds to them.

People don't know what they want. Or what they don't want. Its easier just to use words like more "powerful, cheaper, better" even when they are really just getting a more expensive version of what they already have.

 

This is just the beginning. Some people now want to speak out after what happened to the Xbox One and they realised how they can get results by speaking out. As a consequence, they are creating a new hashtag #freeonlinePs4 to protest and ask Sony to bring back free online.

I can understand the initial Xbox One outrage, it was something new and so on, but things are getting out of hand after what happened today, I think.

 

Good luck to them, this is wrong, just taking advantage of another cause exposure

 

As bad as I want a XB1 at that price I would say it's still worth $500 because of Kinect alone. They would have to remove Kinect to get that price & that would be worse than the backpedaling they've already done. Kinect, TV & the multitasking OS are the only differentiating features now. Plus, they were already going to sell all the consoles they had at $500 anyway. Sony could have too. I think the XB1 can recover some bad press now & will probably sell more now. That's a problem because there will be less reason for them to drop the price after they ramp up production next year. Damn, kinda of sucks, but it would have sucked a lot more had they not done this.

Tommy McClain

 

Maybe I should stop being a couch potato and create an Opt-in petition and campaign.

Just select the features of the prior policies I liked, discard the ones I don't think make sense and ask MS to make an Opt-in capability at sign up. I'm sure we could create a reasonable DRM that gives the best of both worlds.

 

What they should do is spread the development wealth and make the Xbox One vms playable online to any device with a windows 8 kernel. Make an MS Steam.

 

Ditto. Hopefully Marc Whitten is right & there is still hope for the digital sharing later on.

My gut reaction was to agree, but I think Microsoft deserve a larger portion of the blame for their poor messaging. Don't get me wrong, those stuck in the past are holding things up too, but if MS had done a better job of communicating the positives it might have not been as bad. I will say that I think MS got hit so hard & so fast during E3 that they didn't know how to regroup & hit back. By the time they did get the positive message out about digital sharing, it was already too late.

This whole thing is unfortunate. I'm hopeful that with the DRM thing behind us we can focus on some other things. I'm just exhausted. LOL

Tommy McClain