10 ms·

Xbox One forces gamers to pay for games borrowed from friends

103 points by mserdarsanli 13y ago

checker 13y ago
This post has an overwhelming negative skew. I'm sure there's a less opinionated article which would allow us to discuss the matter at hand. Perhaps this one? (I'm at work, so I can't actually read many gaming-related links) http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-used-game-stance-6408698 http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-us...
oms1005 13y ago
To me, this is a much bigger issue than the possibility of always online. I can sign into my friends Xbox and we can play together, but I couldn't just let him borrow the game. And the fee can be up to full MSRP, meaning that you can't ever really sell your game because it will, by definition, cost someone else MORE than a new copy. I understand that PCs do something similar, but I don't buy PC games with the idea of sharing them with my friends, but I do with my console games. GameStop, gamefly, and others are in a real interesting position as to what they will do with the new Xbox One.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- danielweber 13y ago
  The PC gaming industry is a market for lemons[1]. There are legit customers out there who won't steal your stuff but far too many of them will just pirate it instead of paying for it. And so everyone has to deal with draconian DRM methods. Because there are so few modded consoles, though, the console game market works much better. You can buy a game, lend it around, borrow it from Blockbuster or Gamefly, or sell it. If you don't have the disk, you generally can't play. (Yes, there are people who have defeated this. They are an incredible minority that aren't worth paying attention to.) They are taking away that option. I fully understand why publishers of PC games try to lock stuff down, despite the very best peer-reviewed research being published on torrentfreak saying they shouldn't. [2] But for consoles I must object. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons [2] This was sarcasm.
  - sigkill 13y ago
    If the console market is better then why do they want to implement stronger DRM measures? Feels a bit unfair. PC: Oh, the piracy is too much we need stronger DRM. Console: We control the entire chain, we need stronger DRM to maintain that control.
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Yes, that is the basis of my objection.
BadCRC 13y ago
isn't this how Steam (the platform gamers love) already works?
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Yes. Except I'm not even sure you can activate a Steamworks game's disc multiple times - I think it's one key per disc and you might have to buy a second copy off Steam/at retail and download it yourself.
  - pmh 13y ago
    Yes, that's how it works. In exceptional circumstances, you may be able to get Steam support to revoke a key and apply it to your account, e.g. if you purchased a brand new game, the key had already been activated, and the retailer won't take it back.
- LanceH 13y ago
  More or less. One key difference is that Steam is relatively open compared to the console market. Except for a few major titles, most stuff gets discounted eventually, sometimes even substantially. This leads to decisions of buying it now for a lot or half off later. Console games take forever to get discounted by comparison. Combine with a locked up marketplace and it's bad aspects of both worlds: Full price downloads with no disk sharing.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Just about no one expects electronic copies to be sellable or lendable. This concern is about physical media games.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    I do expect it. It should be codified into law (and there were some european court decisions). The licences should be anonymous and transferable - same as goods. It basic customer protection and it is good if you have healthy secondary market. There should be some basics customer rights that should not be able to be waivered and the licence seller should not be allowed to offer less.
roc 13y ago
This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature. As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo. Used/borrowed copies wouldn't get the play-without-the-disc feature (for free). But that doesn't even rate as a 'bummer'. That's just a logical, necessary architectural decision. Otherwise a group of friends would just buy 1 copy of a game, pass it around installing it and then everyone would be able to play without the disc needing to be present. They could even sell the physical disc to Gamestop when they were done and still all be able to play the game. Obviously, no publisher would sign up for that. So you get account-binding on install. Again, as long as having the disc exempts you from the fee, we're not talking about an experience any different from today. And it would still be more consumer-friendly than purely digital services like Google Play, Steam, iTunes, Origin, etc.
- prg318 13y ago
  > As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo. In order for someone play a disc that they have purchased on someone else's console, the owner will need to sign into their Xbox LIVE account in order to play the game. Even if the owner leaves the disk with his or her buddy, they will not be able to play it without either a) signing in with the owner's XBL account or b) paying full retail price for the title.
  - simias 13y ago
    How would that work? Aren't all the pressed discs identical, how would the console/network know it's a used disk? That's what CD keys are for, so unless they bring that to consoles the person who owns the disk owns the game.
    - jjkmk 13y ago
      Thats a good question, I'm assuming an activation key of some sort will be provided at purchase.
PLenz 13y ago
After years of being a loyal Xboxer I'll (probably) be on Steam Box next.
- ryandvm 13y ago
  As mentioned above, Steam already does this. So...
  - PLenz 13y ago
    But at least they won't charge me a monthly fee for the privilege to.
    - andylei 13y ago
      xbox doesn't charge you a monthly fee to play offline games
      - PLenz 13y ago
        Granted - but (at least in my case, and I would surmise in the case of many - if not most - users) the majority of the use of a console is in online playing.
      - chc 13y ago
        You're really reaching here. "Well, there's this one very specific kind of title where the Xbox is almost as good as Steam, so clearly the Xbox and Steam are roughly on the same level."
tarzan3419 13y ago
evil!
kmfrk 13y ago
The most interesting about this to me is Microsoft's case-study-awful handling of this; people are still befuddled as to whether this is the case or not, and the PR responses read like Jabberwocky. It's like a politician deliberately following the mantra of "if you can't convince them, confuse them".
- asdf3 13y ago
  What's more important is that Microsoft can, like Darth Vader, alter the deal. They haven't been clear, but even if they were clear, the "facts" of how it works will remain uncertain, simply because it's remote controlled DRM and that's what DRM does.
  - kmfrk 13y ago
    And when do you think it's feasible to alter the deal? This shitstorm surrounded the PS4 event. There are zero reasons this should catch Microsoft by surprise, so I can only assume this confusion is by design, since anything else would imply re-imagining our understanding of incompetence.
- sp332 13y ago
  I kindof assumed they would be leaving the decision of how much to charge up to the individual game developers, who set the price of the games to begin with.
frou_dh 13y ago
It strikes me that a shrewd single-player gamer can simply lag behind a couple of years deliberately. e.g. If at this point in time, you're playing the best Nintendo DS and PS3 games released from 2006-2011, every single one will cost peanuts on eBay or Amazon marketplace.
- dmcy22 13y ago
  True. But for many games, especially FPS, players spend most of their time playing multi-player. By now, the 2006-2010 probably won't have many players online.
  - bentcorner 13y ago
    > a shrewd single-player gamer ;) Still though, for popular multi-player games there are still many active servers/players. Also, relevant XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/606/ http://www.xkcd.com/606/
- larrik 13y ago
  This works for games that sold well. For niche stuff, those games can become hard to find just months after release.
- msg 13y ago
  This is what I did for a long time, just enforced by owning an older PC/laptop. I don't get to play things that tax my computer, but only rarely do I want to. That makes my gaming experiences very different from someone playing 2560xwhatever with all settings on Ultra. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing. But I tend to emphasize gameplay over shinies. Along those lines, Monaco is fabulous.
- GFischer 13y ago
  Or GoodOldGames (GoG), or Steam or whatever :) .
drcube 13y ago
A further blow in the war on sharing. Of course, this is business as usual for MS. My mom taught me to share before I was old enough to walk. No government or corporation in the world is going to change my opinion of it.
- Chronic24 13y ago
  You can share all you want. But me, Microsoft, and other companies will charge you for it. No need to change your opinion.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Well, you might send a bunch of government agents to knock down my door to take my house and all my possessions. But no big.
squozzer 13y ago
I think it would be nice to give people a choice -- either play off disk to keep the game transferable or install to disk and lose transferability. But of course the nice option is rarely taken by anyone. That said, this wrinkle isn't my biggest gripe with the new or even current xbox -- peer hosting is.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Not sure how this would work without making the system online dependent to install games. If I install a game on my console and then lend the disk to my friend and he installs it on his, how will the game know it has already been installed on another console? If you go with an always online model then you will be able to implement a formal game lending system into the console itself.
  - stordoff 13y ago
    It's claimed that you need to go online once per day with the Xbox One[1], so could revoke access during that connection. [1] http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-must-go-online-once-a-day-will-charge-to-play-used-games/ http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-m...
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      In that case there's not much point bothering with the disk, just tell xbox live to grant your license to your friend for the next 24 hours.
drharris 13y ago
Am I the only one that doesn't care about this? We geeks love to wax romantically about how the legacy distribution models are insane, but aren't willing to compromise with any less than free (as in piracy) digital distribution. It seems to me a paradox to claim that A) Distribution should be all digital, and B) We should allow sharing, sharing for everybody, all the things! In the end, people need to get paid, and until somebody comes up with a breakthrough on rights management, we're left with this model. Simple as that. So, either stop complaining about physical distribution, or else stop complaining about being able to share freely, or get off your couch and figure out a way to get both and sell it to these companies.
- chc 13y ago
  It's a long jump from "This has all the hassles of traditional physical distribution and then some new hassles you just invented" to "You should just let us pirate this." When people talk about wanting to revolutionize distribution, they mean take advantage of all the efficiency and convenience technology enables. Some would just like to pirate everything, but not everyone. No one means they want to find ways to tweak traditional distribution models to make them even worse.
  - drharris 13y ago
    Open lending == piracy. Closed lending? Well, I've yet to see a secure and easy way to accomplish this, so I'll reserve judgment. But given how Amazon has treated the eBook distribution model, I would expect all digital goods to go down a similar route (no transfer of rights, lending is more of a trial period than anything, and no two copies running at once). All existing models are confusing for both end customers and rights stakeholders, and there is no way to do it in an open manner. Let's say MS figures out how to let us share games, but it requires a central licensing authority (MS) to negotiate the transactions. Would you not agree the same geeks arguing the lack of sharing now will be the same ones to pick at that system too? It's a moving target, and doesn't do a bit of good for the stakeholders. I'd expect to not see this sort of system to play out.
    - 13y ago
everyone 13y ago
This is all a load on nonsense for me.. I'm a PC gamer and I like gog. I'm very happy to buy aything on gog becasue they trust me. They do not waste time with DRM and I do not support DRM, its unnecessary and impractical.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  Gotta upvote for the reference to good ol games. GoG is a great site. But Consoles have historically been well removed from the DRM wars. It is extremely frightening to me to see DRM enter a mainstream console. If the PS4 follows suite, I'm probably gonna have to boycott both systems and stick with the WiiU.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Gog is great! There's a reason they trust you: 1. You are after older games, so you are probably older, and less likely to be a thief. (And even less likely to write screeds about how you aren't really stealing it.) 2. The games have already gone through the peak of their popularity cycle, so they have already captured the bulk of their revenue. Anything now is just a bonus. 3. The price is so low that they don't lose much to piracy even if someone steals it. I haven't even made it all the way through the last bunch of things I got from GoG, but when I do I'm headed right back there to get some more stuff.
  - everyone 13y ago
    You know gog sell new games now too? For instance 18% (roughly) of the witcher 2s sales were on gog. Also they've become a distributor of new indie games like fez or legend of grimrock
typicalbender 13y ago
Does anyone else feel that requiring that my console be online and connected to the internet is complete crap? Guess its time to break out my SNES
- PagingCraig 13y ago
  Not really considering how my laptop/computers are connected to the internet 24/7...it's not a large leap to have my console be as well.
  - typicalbender 13y ago
    It may not happen often where you are but there are plent of places where a 24/7 internet connection isn't guaranteed and personally I'd still like to play my XBox when Comcast decided drop the ball for the 5th time this week :)
- csense 13y ago
  I dislike this for the same reason I dislike Steam -- it's a centralized account which has potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of value. If the service provider drops support, goes out of business, or decides to ban you, you lose an enormous investment. I've known for at least three years that I would completely drop out of the console market after the PS3/360/Wii generation. Things are just getting too crappy. Maybe I'll go support Ouya instead.
deleted 13y ago
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- drdaeman 13y ago
  Even with a relatively decent broadband connection it takes about an hour or so to download a reasonably large new movie^W game from Steam. My bottle of beer will be already empty by the time the game's ready to launch. And it was meant for cutscenes and various single-hand-playable parts, not for the download progress bar.
acomjean 13y ago
My question is how? If its write once media, how are they going to implement this. Will you have to type in a DRM KEY and get it verified via a MS server (or hold the box up to the kinect camera to read it? (I should patent that....)) seems odd.
maeon3 13y ago
Sometimes I bring my disk from my XBox to a friends house, and play the game on their XBox. With this new "XBox One" console, I will be completely unable to do this. I'll have to tote my xbox around. Of course they will be calling it "buying a game" even though users don't own it in any sense of the word. This progression will eventually lead to "Press 'A' to spend 0.01 cents to leap over this special exclusive objective for an exclusive serotonin release." I will be going out of my way to make sure I do not buy anything produced by Microsoft ever again, operating systems, consoles, software, etc. We are losing control of our computers. These computers will become a part of us one day, we must preserve our ownership of the metal on up through the software to the right to own and use the software itself. This is important. I fear the day when we are all just extensions of the mothership, when the system decides you are out of line, the human slaves are simply a "thin client", they just press a button, and your entire life folds up and disappears, and resources are administered to another area. Buyers are losing their RIGHTS here. It's boiling a frog slowly. Soon we won't be able to own anything.
- jff 13y ago
  Or you could presumably log in to your Live account on their XBox, play the game while you're visiting, and then log out? Has the added advantage of continuing to save achievements to your account, giving access to savegames if you want them, etc.
- angersock 13y ago
  Your last paragraph is especially funny. Are you on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, by any chance?
aquarion 13y ago
If you follow this link, and then follow their source (Which is http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/, though they also confirm with the Verge, which lists its source as the Wired article), you'll only need to do this if you want to install it locally. It goes on to say: cite: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ But what if a second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our traditional concept of a “used game”? This is a question for which Microsoft did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.) So taking games around to other people's houses? Or used games? Undefined. Not evil, not announced. They might be doing something bad, but this is shit-stirring, and nothing more.
- mullingitover 13y ago
  I take the lack of news to be bad news. If they had a customer-friendly plan for this, they would've announced that plan proudly. Being opaque about the details strongly implies that those details are not going to make good press for them.
  - aquarion 13y ago
    You are, of course, entitled to your cynicism, but they've announced the existence of the console, the next version of Kinect, and what it looks like, and generated thirty stories on Hacker News alone, and taken over every console gaming site for the last day. Neither they nor Sony announce everything at once.

103 points by mserdarsanli 13y ago

This post has an overwhelming negative skew. I'm sure there's a less opinionated article which would allow us to discuss the matter at hand. Perhaps this one? (I'm at work, so I can't actually read many gaming-related links) http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-used-game-stance-6408698 http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-us...

oms1005 13y ago

To me, this is a much bigger issue than the possibility of always online. I can sign into my friends Xbox and we can play together, but I couldn't just let him borrow the game. And the fee can be up to full MSRP, meaning that you can't ever really sell your game because it will, by definition, cost someone else MORE than a new copy. I understand that PCs do something similar, but I don't buy PC games with the idea of sharing them with my friends, but I do with my console games. GameStop, gamefly, and others are in a real interesting position as to what they will do with the new Xbox One.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
danielweber 13y ago
The PC gaming industry is a market for lemons[1]. There are legit customers out there who won't steal your stuff but far too many of them will just pirate it instead of paying for it. And so everyone has to deal with draconian DRM methods. Because there are so few modded consoles, though, the console game market works much better. You can buy a game, lend it around, borrow it from Blockbuster or Gamefly, or sell it. If you don't have the disk, you generally can't play. (Yes, there are people who have defeated this. They are an incredible minority that aren't worth paying attention to.) They are taking away that option. I fully understand why publishers of PC games try to lock stuff down, despite the very best peer-reviewed research being published on torrentfreak saying they shouldn't. [2] But for consoles I must object. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons [2] This was sarcasm.
- sigkill 13y ago
  If the console market is better then why do they want to implement stronger DRM measures? Feels a bit unfair. PC: Oh, the piracy is too much we need stronger DRM. Console: We control the entire chain, we need stronger DRM to maintain that control.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    Yes, that is the basis of my objection.

BadCRC 13y ago

isn't this how Steam (the platform gamers love) already works?

kevingadd 13y ago
Yes. Except I'm not even sure you can activate a Steamworks game's disc multiple times - I think it's one key per disc and you might have to buy a second copy off Steam/at retail and download it yourself.
- pmh 13y ago
  Yes, that's how it works. In exceptional circumstances, you may be able to get Steam support to revoke a key and apply it to your account, e.g. if you purchased a brand new game, the key had already been activated, and the retailer won't take it back.
LanceH 13y ago
More or less. One key difference is that Steam is relatively open compared to the console market. Except for a few major titles, most stuff gets discounted eventually, sometimes even substantially. This leads to decisions of buying it now for a lot or half off later. Console games take forever to get discounted by comparison. Combine with a locked up marketplace and it's bad aspects of both worlds: Full price downloads with no disk sharing.
danielweber 13y ago
Just about no one expects electronic copies to be sellable or lendable. This concern is about physical media games.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  I do expect it. It should be codified into law (and there were some european court decisions). The licences should be anonymous and transferable - same as goods. It basic customer protection and it is good if you have healthy secondary market. There should be some basics customer rights that should not be able to be waivered and the licence seller should not be allowed to offer less.

roc 13y ago

This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature. As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo. Used/borrowed copies wouldn't get the play-without-the-disc feature (for free). But that doesn't even rate as a 'bummer'. That's just a logical, necessary architectural decision. Otherwise a group of friends would just buy 1 copy of a game, pass it around installing it and then everyone would be able to play without the disc needing to be present. They could even sell the physical disc to Gamestop when they were done and still all be able to play the game. Obviously, no publisher would sign up for that. So you get account-binding on install. Again, as long as having the disc exempts you from the fee, we're not talking about an experience any different from today. And it would still be more consumer-friendly than purely digital services like Google Play, Steam, iTunes, Origin, etc.

prg318 13y ago
> As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo. In order for someone play a disc that they have purchased on someone else's console, the owner will need to sign into their Xbox LIVE account in order to play the game. Even if the owner leaves the disk with his or her buddy, they will not be able to play it without either a) signing in with the owner's XBL account or b) paying full retail price for the title.
- simias 13y ago
  How would that work? Aren't all the pressed discs identical, how would the console/network know it's a used disk? That's what CD keys are for, so unless they bring that to consoles the person who owns the disk owns the game.
  - jjkmk 13y ago
    Thats a good question, I'm assuming an activation key of some sort will be provided at purchase.

PLenz 13y ago

After years of being a loyal Xboxer I'll (probably) be on Steam Box next.

ryandvm 13y ago
As mentioned above, Steam already does this. So...
- PLenz 13y ago
  But at least they won't charge me a monthly fee for the privilege to.
  - andylei 13y ago
    xbox doesn't charge you a monthly fee to play offline games
    - PLenz 13y ago
      Granted - but (at least in my case, and I would surmise in the case of many - if not most - users) the majority of the use of a console is in online playing.
    - chc 13y ago
      You're really reaching here. "Well, there's this one very specific kind of title where the Xbox is almost as good as Steam, so clearly the Xbox and Steam are roughly on the same level."

tarzan3419 13y ago

evil!

kmfrk 13y ago

The most interesting about this to me is Microsoft's case-study-awful handling of this; people are still befuddled as to whether this is the case or not, and the PR responses read like Jabberwocky. It's like a politician deliberately following the mantra of "if you can't convince them, confuse them".

asdf3 13y ago
What's more important is that Microsoft can, like Darth Vader, alter the deal. They haven't been clear, but even if they were clear, the "facts" of how it works will remain uncertain, simply because it's remote controlled DRM and that's what DRM does.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  And when do you think it's feasible to alter the deal? This shitstorm surrounded the PS4 event. There are zero reasons this should catch Microsoft by surprise, so I can only assume this confusion is by design, since anything else would imply re-imagining our understanding of incompetence.
sp332 13y ago
I kindof assumed they would be leaving the decision of how much to charge up to the individual game developers, who set the price of the games to begin with.

frou_dh 13y ago

It strikes me that a shrewd single-player gamer can simply lag behind a couple of years deliberately. e.g. If at this point in time, you're playing the best Nintendo DS and PS3 games released from 2006-2011, every single one will cost peanuts on eBay or Amazon marketplace.

dmcy22 13y ago
True. But for many games, especially FPS, players spend most of their time playing multi-player. By now, the 2006-2010 probably won't have many players online.
- bentcorner 13y ago
  > a shrewd single-player gamer ;) Still though, for popular multi-player games there are still many active servers/players. Also, relevant XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/606/ http://www.xkcd.com/606/
larrik 13y ago
This works for games that sold well. For niche stuff, those games can become hard to find just months after release.
msg 13y ago
This is what I did for a long time, just enforced by owning an older PC/laptop. I don't get to play things that tax my computer, but only rarely do I want to. That makes my gaming experiences very different from someone playing 2560xwhatever with all settings on Ultra. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing. But I tend to emphasize gameplay over shinies. Along those lines, Monaco is fabulous.
GFischer 13y ago
Or GoodOldGames (GoG), or Steam or whatever :) .

drcube 13y ago

A further blow in the war on sharing. Of course, this is business as usual for MS. My mom taught me to share before I was old enough to walk. No government or corporation in the world is going to change my opinion of it.

Chronic24 13y ago
You can share all you want. But me, Microsoft, and other companies will charge you for it. No need to change your opinion.
- scarmig 13y ago
  Well, you might send a bunch of government agents to knock down my door to take my house and all my possessions. But no big.

squozzer 13y ago

I think it would be nice to give people a choice -- either play off disk to keep the game transferable or install to disk and lose transferability. But of course the nice option is rarely taken by anyone. That said, this wrinkle isn't my biggest gripe with the new or even current xbox -- peer hosting is.

jiggy2011 13y ago
Not sure how this would work without making the system online dependent to install games. If I install a game on my console and then lend the disk to my friend and he installs it on his, how will the game know it has already been installed on another console? If you go with an always online model then you will be able to implement a formal game lending system into the console itself.
- stordoff 13y ago
  It's claimed that you need to go online once per day with the Xbox One[1], so could revoke access during that connection. [1] http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-must-go-online-once-a-day-will-charge-to-play-used-games/ http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-m...
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    In that case there's not much point bothering with the disk, just tell xbox live to grant your license to your friend for the next 24 hours.

drharris 13y ago

Am I the only one that doesn't care about this? We geeks love to wax romantically about how the legacy distribution models are insane, but aren't willing to compromise with any less than free (as in piracy) digital distribution. It seems to me a paradox to claim that A) Distribution should be all digital, and B) We should allow sharing, sharing for everybody, all the things! In the end, people need to get paid, and until somebody comes up with a breakthrough on rights management, we're left with this model. Simple as that. So, either stop complaining about physical distribution, or else stop complaining about being able to share freely, or get off your couch and figure out a way to get both and sell it to these companies.

chc 13y ago
It's a long jump from "This has all the hassles of traditional physical distribution and then some new hassles you just invented" to "You should just let us pirate this." When people talk about wanting to revolutionize distribution, they mean take advantage of all the efficiency and convenience technology enables. Some would just like to pirate everything, but not everyone. No one means they want to find ways to tweak traditional distribution models to make them even worse.
- drharris 13y ago
  Open lending == piracy. Closed lending? Well, I've yet to see a secure and easy way to accomplish this, so I'll reserve judgment. But given how Amazon has treated the eBook distribution model, I would expect all digital goods to go down a similar route (no transfer of rights, lending is more of a trial period than anything, and no two copies running at once). All existing models are confusing for both end customers and rights stakeholders, and there is no way to do it in an open manner. Let's say MS figures out how to let us share games, but it requires a central licensing authority (MS) to negotiate the transactions. Would you not agree the same geeks arguing the lack of sharing now will be the same ones to pick at that system too? It's a moving target, and doesn't do a bit of good for the stakeholders. I'd expect to not see this sort of system to play out.
  - 13y ago

everyone 13y ago

This is all a load on nonsense for me.. I'm a PC gamer and I like gog. I'm very happy to buy aything on gog becasue they trust me. They do not waste time with DRM and I do not support DRM, its unnecessary and impractical.

dragontamer 13y ago
Gotta upvote for the reference to good ol games. GoG is a great site. But Consoles have historically been well removed from the DRM wars. It is extremely frightening to me to see DRM enter a mainstream console. If the PS4 follows suite, I'm probably gonna have to boycott both systems and stick with the WiiU.
danielweber 13y ago
Gog is great! There's a reason they trust you: 1. You are after older games, so you are probably older, and less likely to be a thief. (And even less likely to write screeds about how you aren't really stealing it.) 2. The games have already gone through the peak of their popularity cycle, so they have already captured the bulk of their revenue. Anything now is just a bonus. 3. The price is so low that they don't lose much to piracy even if someone steals it. I haven't even made it all the way through the last bunch of things I got from GoG, but when I do I'm headed right back there to get some more stuff.
- everyone 13y ago
  You know gog sell new games now too? For instance 18% (roughly) of the witcher 2s sales were on gog. Also they've become a distributor of new indie games like fez or legend of grimrock

typicalbender 13y ago

Does anyone else feel that requiring that my console be online and connected to the internet is complete crap? Guess its time to break out my SNES

PagingCraig 13y ago
Not really considering how my laptop/computers are connected to the internet 24/7...it's not a large leap to have my console be as well.
- typicalbender 13y ago
  It may not happen often where you are but there are plent of places where a 24/7 internet connection isn't guaranteed and personally I'd still like to play my XBox when Comcast decided drop the ball for the 5th time this week :)
csense 13y ago
I dislike this for the same reason I dislike Steam -- it's a centralized account which has potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of value. If the service provider drops support, goes out of business, or decides to ban you, you lose an enormous investment. I've known for at least three years that I would completely drop out of the console market after the PS3/360/Wii generation. Things are just getting too crappy. Maybe I'll go support Ouya instead.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

drdaeman 13y ago
Even with a relatively decent broadband connection it takes about an hour or so to download a reasonably large new movie^W game from Steam. My bottle of beer will be already empty by the time the game's ready to launch. And it was meant for cutscenes and various single-hand-playable parts, not for the download progress bar.

acomjean 13y ago

My question is how? If its write once media, how are they going to implement this. Will you have to type in a DRM KEY and get it verified via a MS server (or hold the box up to the kinect camera to read it? (I should patent that....)) seems odd.

maeon3 13y ago

Sometimes I bring my disk from my XBox to a friends house, and play the game on their XBox. With this new "XBox One" console, I will be completely unable to do this. I'll have to tote my xbox around. Of course they will be calling it "buying a game" even though users don't own it in any sense of the word. This progression will eventually lead to "Press 'A' to spend 0.01 cents to leap over this special exclusive objective for an exclusive serotonin release." I will be going out of my way to make sure I do not buy anything produced by Microsoft ever again, operating systems, consoles, software, etc. We are losing control of our computers. These computers will become a part of us one day, we must preserve our ownership of the metal on up through the software to the right to own and use the software itself. This is important. I fear the day when we are all just extensions of the mothership, when the system decides you are out of line, the human slaves are simply a "thin client", they just press a button, and your entire life folds up and disappears, and resources are administered to another area. Buyers are losing their RIGHTS here. It's boiling a frog slowly. Soon we won't be able to own anything.

jff 13y ago
Or you could presumably log in to your Live account on their XBox, play the game while you're visiting, and then log out? Has the added advantage of continuing to save achievements to your account, giving access to savegames if you want them, etc.
angersock 13y ago
Your last paragraph is especially funny. Are you on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, by any chance?

aquarion 13y ago

If you follow this link, and then follow their source (Which is http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/, though they also confirm with the Verge, which lists its source as the Wired article), you'll only need to do this if you want to install it locally. It goes on to say: cite: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ But what if a second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our traditional concept of a “used game”? This is a question for which Microsoft did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.) So taking games around to other people's houses? Or used games? Undefined. Not evil, not announced. They might be doing something bad, but this is shit-stirring, and nothing more.

mullingitover 13y ago
I take the lack of news to be bad news. If they had a customer-friendly plan for this, they would've announced that plan proudly. Being opaque about the details strongly implies that those details are not going to make good press for them.
- aquarion 13y ago
  You are, of course, entitled to your cynicism, but they've announced the existence of the console, the next version of Kinect, and what it looks like, and generated thirty stories on Hacker News alone, and taken over every console gaming site for the last day. Neither they nor Sony announce everything at once.