15 ms·

"Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

• bluedino 13y ago
  The headline made me think this was about the security 'features' on the original Xbox.
  • sliverstorm 13y ago
    The colloquial naming will probably settle something like this: 2001 console: Xbox, Original Xbox 2005 console: Xbox 360, 360 2013 console: Xbox1, X-bone You will probably hear "Xbox" referring to the 2013 console in casual speech, but hopefully semi-formal and formal speech, e.g. articles, will distinguish.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      > X-bone That is fantastic. Pronounced like the word "bone" I assume?
      • dragontamer 13y ago
        Its been all over the net for a few weeks now. XBone is the height of Microsoft Stupidity.
      • MostAwesomeDude 13y ago
        Yes. This is already how many communities are referring to it.
  • scott_karana 13y ago
    Agreed. I was hoping for a technical reverse engineering article... This is very much the opposite.
• tzaman 13y ago
  Yeah, Microsoft really sucks at storytelling. All they had to say was something in the lines of... "If you want to buy a disc, pay $59 for a game due to all non-digital crap the disc has to go through. And then do what you want with it. HOWEVER, if you download the game, it's like $29 (50% OFF!!!11), but then it's just yours, and yours alone, you can't sell or lend it - and we'd have to check every once in a while it's really you who's playing." I wouldn't mind that at all since they'd be giving me a choice, and I'd gladly pay less, despite the 'lockdown'. Dear Microsoft, all you have to do is ask your target audience what they think - you might be suprised.
  • drivebyacct2 13y ago
    >Dear Microsoft, all you have to do is ask your target audience what they think - you might be suprised. I mean yes, don't introduce the Kin, but at the same time, if Apple'd asked what consumers want, we'd be thinking the RAZR is cool instead of the DROID RAZR.
    • pfraze 13y ago
      Yeah, but they still understood the consumers- better, perhaps, than the consumers did. MS is arguably misunderstanding them, in this case.
      • drivebyacct2 13y ago
        I don't get that conclusion. Steam does it and they're applauded, even by many who "hate" DRM. Microsoft does it (and maybe doesn't detail the entire vision/value well) and gets shit on. Much like a lot of things that MS does.
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          Fair or not, reputation and corporate history allows different companies to get away with different things. Valve doesn't exactly have a reputation for turning off DRM servers, killing multiplayer servers for old games, and abandoning entire product lines and/or brands. Conversely, nobody whines about Microsoft not releasing new versions of Halo, (or games in general with the number "3" in their title).
        • nightski 13y ago
          Steam is applauded for the incredible sales and cheap access to games. Also the convenience. I have a steam library worth several grand, but I only paid a few hundred for it. Is anyone really convinced you will see Steam style sales on Xbox 1?
        • shuzchen 13y ago
          While I don't love that Steam has DRM, I don't hate their version of it either. What MS says they'll do (and what they'll probably end up doing) is nowhere close to what Valve has done. Valve has a history of listening to its customers about legitimate pain points with their DRM. Case in point: military personnel stationed abroad don't have the internet connection available to phone home every time they want to play a game, so Valve introduces an offline mode - authorize once before you deploy and freely play on that machine without an internet connection. Combine that with the fact that their DRM servers are pretty rock solid (I'm sure people have had problems with it but I've never encountered them in the years I've used steam) and the Gabe promise to unlock DRM if anything happens to Steam, and you get a lot of people comfortable trusting their game library to Steam.
• drivebyacct2 13y ago
  I suspected as much as well. The family share feature of the new Xbox is pretty damn impressive and permissive. And they have to have you turn your damn xbox on and connect to the internet because they have to manage your access to those games. Otherwise I can just loan out the game to 10 people and they can play them forever offline without paying for them.
• asveikau 13y ago
  This guy is an awful writer. Even if I ignore that they don't know "its" from "it's", "then" from "than", this thing is hard to follow. Just an incoherent rant really, looks like it was written by a kid.
  • jacobquick 13y ago
    It was cut and paste from an ama on 4chan. Really you should understand this already.
    • asveikau 13y ago
      So that's an excuse for bad writing?
  • codezero 13y ago
    I thought the actual substance of what was said was pretty good, but I recognized the incorrect use of then/than and its it's as a possible signal for identifying the author, then again, it's possible they did this on purpose to make it harder to identify them. They were 100% consistent in never using than and never using its, which is interesting. They did misuse too/to once, but were not 100% consistent.
• rome 13y ago
  I like the option of selling my games and buying used games. If Microsoft makes my games less valuable to me by limiting my options then they should be cheaper. I've heard nothing alluding to this officially.
• socialist_coder 13y ago
  AAA games are still full price on Steam. There is no discount because you can't sell your used copy. What makes him think that games would somehow be cheaper on Xbox1 after you eliminate the used market? They won't be. The savings are not getting passed on to the consumers.
  • moskie 13y ago
    But I get the impression that AAA titles get reduced prices quicker on Steam than their physical versions do. Is that not the case?
    • pfraze 13y ago
      Isn't that more a matter of retailer choice? Valve may just be faster to react to their current demand.
  • wmf 13y ago
    AAA games go from $60 to $30 to $7.50 over time on Steam; that hasn't happened as much for disc-based games. Maybe it will on Xbox One but I'm skeptical.
    • maemilius 13y ago
      >that hasn't happened as much for disc-based games This is EXACTLY what the used game market does for disk-based games. The only difference between the steam model and the disc-based model is that the producer doesn't get a cut of the game sales.
      • tedsanders 13y ago
        "Exactly?" Not at all. I don't mean to nitpick, but I think you're exaggerating. Steam sales are a way of increasing profits by price discriminating to capture the long tail of the demand curve. Used games have nothing to do with earning the developers more money. Maybe they're similar from a consumer perspective, but that doesn't mean they're similar.
• jiggy2011 13y ago
  He seems to be suggesting that Xbox One games will be cheaper because of the lack of used sales. I don't see what their economic incentive would be to lower the prices (at least to below prices for a similar PS4 game), usually if there is less competition in a market and demand stays constant the price goes up. In the case of Steam , they have to be cheap because their competition is TPB which is the cheapest game store out there.
  • shock-value 13y ago
    A copy of a game is "inherently" less valuable if it cannot be resold by a consumer (many gamers buy games at $60 only because they know they can resell them once they are done with them). Therefore demand at a given price level would go down under a system where games are locked to a user.
    • jiggy2011 13y ago
      Perhaps, this may be more the case for games with small amounts of content or mediocre reviews. I don't see significantly less people being willing to buy COD or whatever for $60 if they can't resell. Unless they move to PS4 at least.
      • shock-value 13y ago
        You're right, but that could just mean that COD is priced too low even under the current system (where games are always $60 max not including DLC etc).
        • akiselev 13y ago
          Or the effort spent to resell is valued more than the resale value of the game (whether it is true or not) or it's because COD has a higher resale value. Although I'd guess that people's gaming budget isn't as simple as X number of games @ $Y max each and so-called blockbuster titles could easily start charging more without losing too much of their fan bases.
• MichaelGG 13y ago
  Microsoft really did a terrible job at messaging on this. I'm even annoyed, and I don't play much, and everything I buy is digital download, not physical media, so the whole disc selling thing doesn't even affect me. Even so, it feels nasty. MS has basically said fuck you to gamers, without any justifiable reason. Taking down Gamestop doesn't require anything but a better Gamestop replacement. This dev complains about how people dislike their new move, yet complain about Gamestop? Uh, this new move limits private sale by third parties. That's what's annoying. The fact Xbox tosses ads in your face on every single home screen except settings is also extremely distasteful, and MS burned a lot of goodwill on that. Comparing to Steam is nice, but MS's execution is yet to be seen. People I know with thousands of bucks into Steam don't love Steam. They are annoyed with the restrictions - but, it's just so easy (easier than pirating) that they tend not to care. Browsing and purchasing on the Xbox360 is such a PITA, so if the XB1 doesn't fix it, they have no hope of doing what Steam did. The 24 hour thing is also retarded. It feels intrusive, and isn't necessary to prevent piracy. My guess is they'll probably "acquiesce" and move it to 3 days or a week - it was probably planned to spark outrage long before sales, so they can give in and ride the "see, MS isn't so bad" wave closer to launch.
  • MiguelHudnandez 13y ago
    > The fact Xbox tosses ads in your face on every single home screen except settings is also extremely distasteful, and MS burned a lot of goodwill on that. This is the single biggest thing that puts a bad taste in my mouth from my Xbox. Am I a customer or a product? Companies should pick only one. If I pay money, I don't want to be sold.
    • onedognight 13y ago
      > Am I a customer or a product? Do you have Cable TV? 70% of America does, knowing that they are both customer and product.
      • marssaxman 13y ago
        ...which is funny, since I remember a lot of commentary about how the point of paying for cable TV when you can get broadcast TV for free is that by paying for the content you don't have to watch ads. I wonder why that never happened...
• zinkem 13y ago
  This comparison to steam is a bit of a false equivocation. I can run Steam on a variety of hardware configurations, which I can buy from a variety of vendors. Steam is better not because the DRM system is different, but because it's hardware agnostic. Once the XB1 lifecycle is over, I have no guarantee I will be able to play the games I bought. As far as I'm aware XB1 is not backwards compatible at all. Once my 360 dies, if I can't find another one in working condition, or XBL stops offering services for the 360, my 360 XBLA games are gone forever.
  • mtowle 13y ago
    All non-mathematical/non-logical/etc. equivocations are false if you're enough of a dick about it. The dude is trying to make a legitimate point about disc-based vs. cloud-based storage, and there's exactly one player in that area. Give him a freakin' break.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    > Once the XB1 lifecycle is over, I have no guarantee I will be able to play the games I bought. Sooner than that though, right? Weren't they shutting off Halo servers when new Halo games came out during the same console lifecycle? Of course that is a problem you'll have with multiplayer on all the consoles I guess. Maybe gamers are okay with that. I would be bummed as hell if I couldn't play the occasional quake match anymore though.
    • jiggy2011 13y ago
      I think he means if they turn off all the servers , so there is nowhere for the console to "call home" to. So you will be unable to play at all. Hopefully they will just patch the console to enable offline play before this happens, but I guess you don't know for sure.
      • pyrocat 13y ago
        Why bother spending money to pay a developer to patch it for offline play? They already have your money.
• mtkd 13y ago
  Microsoft thought they had a dominant market position and tried to stretch a little. They miscalculated. Sony were concerned they were heading towards irrelevance - they upped their game to win share back. I'd say it was a perfectly efficient market - and then I remember we're talking about kids being able to swap games like I did in the 80s as if it's a revolution ... the boomers heading these companies right now should be ashamed of what they've created.
  • r00fus 13y ago
    The problem isn't that it's boomers heading these companies. It's that they're 1%'s who have either lost or never had the pressures that their customers are feeling. Maybe Microsoft thought Sony would just follow their lead since there wasn't a DRM scheme that Sony didn't like or try (before).
    • tracker1 13y ago
      True enough.. I haven't bought a Sony product since the CD rootkit fiasco... I may just get a PS4... though, kind of perterbed at the removal of "other os" option from PS3.
      • r00fus 13y ago
        Why support either DRM lover? Why not go PC and/or Wii U or abstain?
  • untog 13y ago
    Did you read the link? Your post sounds like every other one discussing MS's strategy without taking into account anything the linked page said. I'm not saying it's true or that it'll succeed, but it doesn't describe MS trying to "stretch" at all.
    • mtkd 13y ago
      "The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping ... bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins" Makes me sad that execs actually sat round a table listed those as objectives.
• andrewingram 13y ago
  To be honest, the only thing that annoys me is the 24 hour check-in thing, and here's why... On average I've moved house once a year for every year since I moved to London in 2007. There was one place I stayed in for 18 months, but everything else was 12 months. In all these moves except one I've had to wait 3-4 weeks (sometimes more) to get my broadband connected, so essentially for 1/13th of a year the only internet I have is through my mobile phone. These 4 weeks a year are also the times when I get most of my single-player gaming done (I'm not saying I play hours of games every night, but for a couple of nights a week for a few weeks a year I'll settle down with a good RPG or similar). The 24 hour check-in will make this impossible, thereby probably making me play less games overall (or I could just buy a PS4...).
  • Jugglernaut 13y ago
    Just use internet sharing on your phone =)
  • untog 13y ago
    At least if its just a low bandwidth "check in" you could use your phone as a WiFi hotspot. I know, you shouldn't have to. But it's an option.
    • andrewingram 13y ago
      I've occasionally tried that with my X-Box 360, but without much luck. But if the check-in is very low bandwidth it might be worth a shot.
  • seanalltogether 13y ago
    And yet the 24 hour checkin doesn't make sense in the case of digital downloads, the other app stores dont require it. If a digitally signed receipt for the game is on your system, who cares if the next time you validate against MS servers is in 24 hours or 24 years.
    • snuxoll 13y ago
      It makes sense when you take into account the ability to sell your digital copies, which current solutions do not allow. Otherwise, nothing is preventing you from selling your copy of Halo 5, unplugging your XBO and playing it offline for 1-2 weeks before the next mandatory check-in. It's annoying, but the 24-hour checkin is a requirement to have used game sales for the system. You can remove it if you want to get rid of any chance of reselling your games, but that'd cause even more outrage.
• UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realistically just ignore it as trolling. PS - I am not a Microsoft Engineer, I was making a point.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • asperous 13y ago
    >"It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want."
    • bobsoap 13y ago
      Clearly, only a true Microsoft employee would know such a well-kept secret. This proves everything. Oh wait. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-of-Asia/159562134203051 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-of-Asia/1595621342030...
      • asperous 13y ago
        That actually is kinda suspicious he picked the one piece of information that was on the Facebook page. I changed my stance and now more agree with wutbrodo that it doesn't really matter if he's an engineer or not. Just pretend he didn't say that if you don't believe him.
    • agrona 13y ago
      As someone who works in Redmond, the details of Microsoft's gigantic food court thing aren't exactly private.
• clubhi 13y ago
  This feels a lot like the government telling me PRISM has stopped terrorists plots. Sure, I don't like money going to Gamestop. Although, I'd rather it go to Gamestop than fuck myself over.
• bitcrusher 13y ago
  The comparison to Steam is false to begin with. PC gaming has NEVER been a trade with your friends (legally) culture. Console gaming has ALWAYS been a trade with your friends culture (legally). When was the last time you saw a used PC game store? Second, there is no evidence that companies who's job is to maximize profit will have any incentive to lower their prices for disc-less games. For this, we CAN look at Steam (and other services). AAA titles are full retail when they are released. The price degrades over time, but the same thing happens with disc releases. This is a one-sided win for Microsoft (and game publishers for XB1) and is yet another reason to avoid the XBox 1 like the plague. That is the market feedback that Microsoft should receive.
  • jiggy2011 13y ago
    There used to be a lot of stores selling used PC games in the late 90s / early 2000s. What killed it (I think) was that people would sell a used boxed PC game and then download the pirate version but re-use the legitimate CD key for multiplayer. So you would buy a used game and try to play it online but get "Your CD key is already in use" messages half the time. I got burned by this a few times. This is also one of the reasons that stores stopped accepting returns of PC games. People would buy a game , copy down the CD key and then return it for refund claiming that it didn't work.
    • ben1040 13y ago
      My usual supermarket used to have a video rental section, and during the mid-90s they also rented PC games on CD-ROM. They stopped doing before the days of CD keys being required for multiplayer, but right around the time that hard disks got big and cheap enough that you could just copy the contents of the CD to your HD and then bring back the CD.
• inthewind 13y ago
  So now I'm told (by someone) that a retail price always factors in it's resale price! What a crock of shit.
• seldo 13y ago
  "Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded." I'm not sure how delusional you have to be to believe that the reason your customers hate your DRM is because your competitors had a "viral team" that persuaded them to be.
  • rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    The amount of delusion necessary to create this massive of a failure is beyond comprehension: - "Scratched discs" and my "little brother" messing with my games are two use cases I have never encountered in my entire gaming life. For those who have encountered those issues? Bummer! Life goes on. In fact, props to PS3 for using Blu-Ray, which has extra protection against scratches by design. - How in the world is GameStop the enemy? Forget the War on Drugs -- this War on Trade-Ins is perhaps the most absurd thing I've ever heard. The fact that publishers, developers, etc. feel entitled to a cut of that $5 most people get for trade-ins says a lot about how up-their-own-asses this industry has become. - I don't want Microsoft OWNING any part of my house, thank you very much. - Any "savings" Microsoft will give customers for new games (which will never happen anyway) will be made up with the cost of XBox Live. - The "phone home" model is shit. Absolute shit. Stop keeping tabs on me. - Lack of indie dev access? How can a gaming system that's marketing itself as 'ahead of the curve' be so ridiculously out-of-touch with what's successful in the market? - The ONLY TIME the 100% digital model works for me is when the convenience of information transfer outweighs the cost of the game itself. Steam is great because whenever I have to reinstall Windows, all of my games just automagically re-download. In iOS, I'm purchasing new devices (iPads, new iPhones, etc.) on an almost-yearly cycle. All I have to do is enter my credentials, and all of my apps and data are right there. Not too shabby considering most apps are $10 or less, not freaking $70!
    • oeb 13y ago
      I don't think it's the cut of the $5 that the consumer gets that the publisher wants, it's the $30 that gamestop slaps onto that to resell. I don't know what way gamestop prices things everywhere else, but in Ireland it's a rip off to all parties. You buy a AAA title for €60, don't like it, trade it back in again a few days later. You get €10 - €20 for it. This then goes back on the used shelf at the €50 - €55 price point, just enough to make it slightly more attractive than purchasing at the rrp.
• mcescalante 13y ago
  So tl;dr Xbox One = MSFT Steam Console?
• maemilius 13y ago
  As someone that used to work in a game resell shop (not Gamestop), I can't sympathize with the Gamestop comments. Particularly the ones about buyback value. We paid our customers about 60% of what we were going to sell the game for. I've never understood how people can think that the game they spent $60 for is going to sell for anywhere near that after a year or two. To use the example in here, a $5 buyback value game would sell for about $10 where I worked. I don't know about Gamestop's percentages, but I imagine it would sell for closer to $15 there. Moving on to Steam, my library is clogged full of shit I'd love to sell back or give to someone else. I still, to this day, hate Steam. It's convenient, sure, but I still often shop at the alternative instant download providers and I'm not talking about Origin or Amazon. Beyond that, and back to actual gripes about the XBone, the only thing that has my friends and I completely against it is the always on Kinect. I don't like the idea of having a device in my home that can be used to monitor everything I do or say at any time. If it's proven you can turn that functionality off, it takes away about half of the reason I give people to not buy it. Even then, I'm paranoid enough that I won't be getting one. That aside, I don't need a media center, so the XBone doesn't appeal to me. My console is for playing video games; I have a computer for Internet shit (e.g. Netflix).
• nostromo 13y ago
  The real misstep here is that Microsoft is still selling physical media. Nobody (well, almost nobody) gets mad when they can't resell their iPhone games or mp3s or Kindle books; compare that to the outpouring of anger when a company puts limitations on used optical media games or CDs or books. Humans are wired to see a physical item (disks, etc.) and think mine.
  • tedsanders 13y ago
    That's a very good point, and explains why gamers care more about reselling Xbox games more than they care about reselling Steam games.
    • ScottWhigham 13y ago
      I would disagree. Most people get upset if they can't resell a $60 game. Few people get upset if they can't resell a $5 game.
      • tedsanders 13y ago
        Do you think that people who pay retail on Steam are upset that they can't resell their games?
  • bigfrakkinghero 13y ago
    I think the problem here is how important physical retailers are as partners in actually selling the console. You don't want to piss off Walmart/Best Buy/Game Stop too much or they might not stock your device.
  • malvim 13y ago
    There's obviously that, good point. I also think we can't forget the price point. I buy my iPhone games for $5 at most. Steam usually has a lot of promotions and discounts, so I get lots of games for under, say, 15 bucks. Physical media games are usually way above these prices.
  • mortenjorck 13y ago
• georgemcbay 13y ago
  "Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc." That's a neat theory, but if you listen to virtually any publisher or developer talk about used games and game pricing it is abundantly clear that they view $60 as the game price (and as far as they are concerned, you're getting a huge bargain), and used sales beyond that as virtually akin to theft. They absolutely do not view it from the angle of the game being worth $30 and the rest being money they're forced to charge to make up the losses. On the PC with Steam the publishers are willing to drop the price to compete with piracy, but assuming the Xbox One is not cracked to the point of a Dreamcast, I can't imagine them ever allowing Steam-like prices.
  • KVFinn 13y ago
    >On the PC with Steam the publishers are willing to drop the price to compete with piracy, but assuming the Xbox One is not cracked to the point of a Dreamcast, I can't imagine them ever allowing Steam-like prices. Yup. Prices are lower on Steam mostly competition provides downward price pressure. If Microsoft opens up their system to self-publishing and lets devs set their own low prices, including offering steam like sales, then that would maybe produce lower costs. Used games is a red herring. Large publishers probably don't want downward price pressure on the platform. Look at IOS where even 3 dollars is considered expensive. To them, restricting pricing and availability to keep prices high is a feature that may encourage them to go with one platform or another. I'm not totally averse to that argument either -- I hate what the f2p model has done to game design on IOS. Right now Steam is a great middle ground and I hope they can maintain that.
• alekseyk 13y ago
  Speaking as a PC gamer.. Steam who everybody 'loves' does not allow you to transfer games. You can't even transfer games from one account to another account that YOU owe. It's not allowed. Just some perspective into this. And I don't agree there should be ANY limitations for hard media.
• jfb 13y ago
  It's certainly possible to have an interesting conversation about the changes to the way markets will work when the cost of reproduction falls to zero; it's ridiculous to think, however, that the place to start this conversation is at the introduction of a new gaming console.
• 6thSigma 13y ago
  The issue, that Microsoft seems to be blinded to, is that the games will still be the same price as PS4 - absolutely nothing has been said otherwise.
• kinnth 13y ago
  If it's physical you should be able to swap or sell it on. If its digital it should be cheaper and tied to an account. That's it.
• malbs 13y ago
  That is all well and good, anonymous MS guy can claim that the games will be cheaper in the long run, citing steam as the model that works and drives prices down. Not in Australia. In Australia we pay 89.95 / 99.95 for a AAA game released on Steam, versus the USD price of 39.95 / 49.95 / whatever. It must be the shipping of the bits over the pacific that jacks the price up right? Yes, eventually the prices drop, and you can buy a game that originally retailed for almost $100 for under $20, but that takes a long time. I just gave up on buying big studio games on steam. I only buy indie stuff now. I was really excited about the xbone (day one owner of original xbox and 360), then the official word came out about it, and I decided I would buy the ps4 instead.
  • bcRIPster 13y ago
    Actually, I saw recently that the reason for the price difference is because Aussi minimum wage is around $17/hr where as in the US it's around $8, so your pricing is inflation adjusted against common wages. I still think the pricing is inflated on digital content across the board though.
    • malbs 13y ago
      Depends on your age/industry Aus minimum wage is as low as $5.87 (for a 15 yr old)
  • raudabaugh 13y ago
    Even here in the states, the cheaper games line feels empty. So much of these decisions the result of pressure coming from the big publishers who are in trouble. Historically their idea of a sale for a console game is like 54.99 instead of 59.99. The only reason we saw steep cuts from Steam is because PC piracy was at an all-time high and is so much more accessible since you don't have to hard-mod anything. Also, it's worrisome how little MS is supporting the indie scene while they tout digital distribution as the future. With our current Internet infrastructure, they should be going after the indies first! Right now it just makes way more sense to download a bite size game over your connection than a full AAA title.
• MereInterest 13y ago
  Even if used game sales would kill the business model and force AAA game producers out of business, I would say that the First Sale Doctrine is more important than the entire industry. If I buy a product, then I am free to use it, abuse it, break it, sell it, give it, modify it, or throw it away however I please. If the AAA game industry cannot survive while used games exist, then I would rather the entire industry die than end up with a precedent of buying something yet not owning it.
• beloch 13y ago
  The engineer bases his argument on an assumption that is usually erroneous: The price of a product is related to its cost. This is a logical assumption, but almost always false. It is far more commonly true that the price of a product is dictated by what consumers are willing to pay. If the PS4 version of game X sells for $59.99, it is more than likely that the Xbox1 version will sell for the same price, because people will perceive both versions as having the same value and be willing to pay the same amount for them both. What Valve does with Steam prices is something different. New releases still cost roughly the same as traditional DVD copies bought in stores. Bargains start to appear on titles once they reach an age where a lot of stores stop stocking them. It is true you can get heavily discounted games on Steam, but this is totally unrelated to the lack of a used-game market. Somebody simply realized that a) A title nobody is selling makes no money and b) gamers will spend money they wouldn't have otherwise if they think they're getting a deal. Put a and b together and you have a recipe for profit. This also eliminates demand for used games. Why buy a skeezy dog-chewed box when you can get a steam-download for the same price or lower? Don't get me wrong. If MS builds a curated steam-style store for the Xbox it will undoubtedly be a great thing for many (although not all) gamers. However, lower prices on new titles will not be one of the benefits this move brings. This is really just a grab for dollars that currently go to the used market, and it will likely work.
  • pyre 13y ago
    | the price of a product is dictated by what | consumers are willing to pay The value is dictated by consumers, but anyone can set the price unreasonably high, and sit around wondering why no one is buying.
  • Buzzzz 13y ago
    Thing is that here in europe/sweden steam is always the most expensive choice sine must publishers equals 1 usd to 1 eur. So here the only sane reason is to wait until they have sales since then it is just expensive and not overly expensive. //Anders
    • baq 13y ago
      That's because 1 USD plus VAT pretty much 3 equals 1 EUR. USA has sales tax which is not added to the price, it only shows up on the receipt.
• bluetidepro 13y ago
  Regardless if this is actually legitimate or not... > "* Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back...*" First off, it's "convenient". Secondly, that's a horrible argument when those consoles are meant to be geared towards mature gamers that would never have this issue. And as others have mentioned, you can't play both sides. Either you go all digital and have this model or you don't. If you try to play in the middle, you're always going to be screwing someone in your audience over.
• interpol_p 13y ago
  He doesn't really address the issue of lending games. When my wife bought me a PS3 for my birthday last year I had zero games. My friend at work lent me a huge stack of games — he's a gamer and had a ton of games he loved but didn't play anymore. It was a great introduction to gaming for me and it led me to purchase many of the sequels to the games I played initially. I have purchased about 10 games since, and about 7 of those were purchased purely based on games I had played from the initial stack that I borrowed. I don't understand why they feel the need to capture this as a "revenue stream." Focusing on great games and great convenience will surely get them more money in the long term.
• archagon 13y ago
  As I see it, DRM is much more of a problem on consoles than it is on PC. In my Steam library, I have Commander Keen right next to Bioshock Infinite. There's no "expiration date" for my games. On the other hand, consoles come in generations. They only last a decade at most, and it looks like we're not going to have backwards compatibility going forward. What's going to happen when Microsoft decides to pull support for their 10, 20, 30 year old DRM-laden consoles? Not every game is going to get an HD remake, sadly.
• lominming 13y ago
  It is true that textbooks are extremely over-priced in US because they are priced with multiple re-sale in mind. It maybe true for games but even so, it will take some time before the effect kicks in. Part of the problem is that if something is physical, people expects it to be lend-able. E.g. Books, CDs, DVDs, etc. (you can also think of things you can borrow in the library) People don't expect their digital downloads to be lend-able (e.g. iTunes songs, Kindle books, etc.) In that sense, Microsoft has to play the game carefully. I think it will still work if games on XB1 sells at <$35 compared to $60 on PS4. On the note of internet connection, as much as Microsoft thinks that everyone should have an internet connection at home today, it is still something that you should not expect everyone to have. Many XBOXes are sold globally and internet broadband connectivity may not come easily. Besides the issue of lending of games, I do agree on the vision that the console will be a center piece of the living room. It is much more than just games.
• gohrt 13y ago
  Wow, a whole lot of product/business vision and dealmaking/tradeoffs, all of it quite sensible, and yet I see 4 pages of lecture and not a mention of fun, engaging games Back to my NES...
• JOnAgain 13y ago
  <rant> >> Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4 Stop telling customers "take it or leave it". Tell them, "I'm sorry you can't do that", or "we've decided not to support X because Y". You keep telling us to go fuck off and buy a PS4, we might just do that. Then you blame your half-assed approach on competitors (right after saying competition is good). You're Microsoft! King of anti-competitive practices. Why do you care what Target, Walmart, Gamestop, or Amazon think? If you wanted to build a Steam competitor, why didn't you build a Steam competitor? Why did you create a shitty Steam DRM system on top of physical media. >> We want to own the living room. Do consumers want you to? Every update to XBox 360 has made it worse. - more ads on the landing page instead of instant access to recently used apps (e.g. hiding Netflix). - the horrible decision to make subtitles the system default, then keep turning it back on (seems like every 2-3 weeks it forgets I don't like them) Prediction: XB1 home screen will just be wall to wall ads with a tiny little "play game" thing in the corner 7 screens over. Every time I want to play a game, I will probably have to scroll by shitty music offerings, shitty game previews, shitty video offerings, etc. >> You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off I bet this will be obnoxious and tedious. Switch on the back? Inside a settings menu? >> We basically made a huge cloud compute shit and made it free Really?!? No more Live fee? Did I totally miss this? or by "free" do you mean for "for sale costing money on an ongoing basis for consumer, but free for publishers"? >> If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4. This is why we're pissed and you seem to have missed that. Xbox should be a game console first, and a media machine second. MS has said they've made a really awesome Tivo + Roku machine and it also plays games. So yeah, that's why MS is getting flak. But the real issue is that no one at MS seems to understand that! </rant>
• mesozoic 13y ago
  Wow Microsoft is really keep their engineers real high on that Kool-Aid. I'll believe this when I see Xbone games cheaper than $59.99. AKA I'll probably never believe this. We'll see they may be progressing home entertainment forward but they're really taking a gamble by screwing over their core audience to do it. For reference almost all of my console gaming is done via rentals and from what I see the Xbone doesn't support that at all so I'm definitely out.
• brownbat 13y ago
  I hate this phrase, "trying to own the living room." We think people want living room devices, but really they just need a living room computer. A few months ago I went this way. No overengineered media center, just a tower next to the HDTV. Full-sized wireless keyboard and mouse. High-DPI to read text. The experience immediately killed the 10 foot interface for me. All the 10' UIs out there feel slow, clunky, hobbled when compared to "just use a computer from your couch." I understand that people are trying to simplify the experience, like Apple did with mp3s. Maybe you don't need to simplify here, though, because people already know how to use computers, they just don't see them in other rooms. They just need a little nudge, a little help to see that it doesn't mean tiny text and wires across the living room floor.
  • yk 13y ago
    > I hate this phrase, "trying to own the living room." Why? I find it refreshingly honest. ( And I absolutely agree with the rest, next to my TV is also a desktop with a wireless keyboard. )
    • brownbat 13y ago
      True, I respect the honest disclosure, just bothered by the loaded assumptions: that this is a space that can/should be conquered by some closed device driven by a tiny remote control (supplemented by gestures and/or voice).
• redthrowaway 13y ago
  Microsoft has always struck me as a company that makes some really cool technology, then tries to find a way to make it relevant to the rest of us. For them, it seems the consumer is an afterthought and the technology is key. Windows 8 was an impressive attempt to merge mobile and desktop OSes so that mobile users are no longer second-class citizens and have access to everything desktop users do. The problem? Mobile needed fixing, not desktop. In the push for engineering parsimony, they made the desktop experience worse simply so that it could be shared with mobile. Kinect is a wicked piece of tech. It's just seriously, seriously cool. But what does it do? How does Kinect make gaming better? Outside of that one boxing game, I just don't see it. It makes everything demonstrably worse, like QTEs that work as cinematic finishing moves for bosses in God of War, but are completely pointless in 95% of the games they're included in. Kinect has the same problem: it's a really cool solution in search of a problem. Perhaps the best example of this is Clippy, where MS used Bayesian algos to analyze text and offer suggestions. Again, a really cool little bit of datamining/ML, in 1997, no less, and running on the computational equivalent of a potato. Clippy is a really cool program. But it was completely pointless. It solved a problem no one had in a way that pissed off everyone. And really, that's Microsoft in a nutshell.
  • calhoun137 13y ago
    I should probably make a throw-away for this comment but whatever, as much as it hurts to admit it: I kind of like windows 8.
    • shock-value 13y ago
      On a tablet or desktop? I have it on a desktop and every affordance it makes for tablets and touch interaction is annoying to me. And its desktop UI is ugly. It is fast though.
      • redorb 13y ago
        to me being fast is a feature. I think it added speed to my ole thinkpad. Getting past metro is 1 click after boot.
• tomkarlo 13y ago
  Why not just go straight to free-to-play model? CoD for $0 for the first level, but $5 each level after that. I'd try a lot more games out if I didn't have to pay $60 up front, and it would encourage developers to make better games rather than the current AAA tentpole model where they depend on the pre-release hype.
• jwhitlark 13y ago
  I have no idea what the demographics are these days, but certainly I, and most of my friends, are least concerned about price, and most concerned that most game are not that fun, and the damn console keeps doing less and less of what I want each year. My PS3 is the only thing I can think of that has gotten less capable with each update. People say the kindle is different, but if my books became unavailable, I'd grab them from other sources, no questions and no qualms. If you want to sell me something, then sell me something, don't quibble about it after the fact.
• merlincorey 13y ago
  I, for one, quite like Gamestop, and I can't wait until I can buy YOUR used PS4 games for $5.99 or less. Thank you, Gamestop. Signed, Patient Gamers Everywhere
• DigitalSea 13y ago
  Wow, seems the hiring standards over at MS are lower than I thought. I read through all of that and it mostly sounded like ramblings of someone on the verge of a nuclear mind meltdown. There were a few good points the anonymous poster made about the advantages of non-physical media like no scratches or brothers/friends losing your discs, people just aren't ready to have a mostly medium-less console. It works for an iPhone or eBook reader, but a console is something that is synonymous with physical mediums. "Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4." — we don't have a Gamestop here in Australia but I presume Electronic Boutique is basically the same and while sometimes you get reamed on trade-ins, chances are if you are trading in, you don't care how much you are getting because you're parting with the game anyway. If XBOX One games are cheaper as a result of the lock-in console DRM, then Microsoft might have a worthy advantage in the fanboy fight against Sony. But we all know games won't be cheaper (especially new and exclusive titles). I think the problem with the whole digital vs physical debate is that bandwidth is an ongoing cost (especially if you go over). Although my Internet plan gives me 500gb of bandwidth a month (times that by the 5 people currently in my house who love downloading TV shows and movies a lot) and a digital game is chewing up bandwidth left-right and centre.
• i386 13y ago
  I wish pastebin had a mobile interface. It's almost impossible to read on the iPhone 5 screen.
• matiu 13y ago
  <prejudice>I think most of the whiner's are American's with a high sense of entitlement</prejudice>. Personally, I'm just gonna quietly switch to PS4. I think MS's thinking is a bit ahead of its time, and possibly a bit too Americanized. USA and a lot of other countries have cheap, reliablish Internet. The onliny model will be OK for them. But there are still a lot of places that have XBox's that have expensive + useless Internet. Like where I live. I'm moving from XBox 360 to PS4 because, as it is on the 360, I get a "Can't connect to XBox live" message about once an hour. If I went to XBox4, I'm assuming it'd be more annoying. I bought the computer/console and the software; I expect it to work for me, not to police me, not to try to advertise to me, just do what I paid for.
• drivingmenuts 13y ago
  We'll still be paying the same for games - this just means more profit goes into the executives and the shareholders pockets. We're getting boiled just like that poor old frog. Turn the water up slow enough and he'll never notice.
• geuis 13y ago
  For what its worth, the double punch Wednesdays was confirmed to me my a MS friend.
• batgaijin 13y ago
  It's funny how his view is that M$ is somehow on the long tail of video games and that it's the consumers that are being misled. Sony bought Gaikai, you dumb fucks. They are going to offer a subscription for unlimited video games streaming WHILE selling tradeable games because you lot were too busy in your fiefdoms jacking off. You dipshits couldn't even understand a fucking pincer business idea like that; all you know is embracing, extending and executing small dumb companies and have no fucking clue how to actually compete.
• CurtHagenlocher 13y ago
  I call fake. I'm skeptical that anyone working in Studio A would call out that it's on 40th street. Even more damaging is that Typhoon is in the Commons, not in any of the Studio buildings. And I've never heard anyone call it "Streets of Asia" -- "Typhoon" is both its primary name and faster to say.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• Blockhead 13y ago
  Complete bullshit. It's not a "long tail" strategy at all. Allowing people to sell their games means consumers can recoup some of the cost and put it towards a future purchase. So the $60 price tag isn't as bad as it seems, and developers shouldn't actually see any lost sales as long as they continue to make games. You can also circumvent unfair DRM on the PC by pirating games, so the consumer ultimately has the power to take back their rights in that situation. On a console, this sort of DRM would absolutely be the death of "owning" your games. That's why the reaction to Xbox One's DRM has been so extreme. I doubt the guy even works for MS though. His writing is barely as good as your average forum-trolling college dropout.
• Cyril_Boh 13y ago
  "The goal is to move to digital downloads". Somehow this phrase really irks me. Are we on analog downlods currently?
• simplexion 13y ago
  "The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)" Steam Offline Mode: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555 https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agc...
• smrtinsert 13y ago
  pastebin should clone their site and name it minileaks.com
• DannoHung 13y ago
  I would like to AGAIN reiterate that Steam does not enforce DRM. Valve provides Steam DRM as an option for people publishing on the Steam platform. (An argument has been made to me that if Steam goes away for good, not being able to install games from Steam is also a form of DRM, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with this position) It's like this fucking myth that refuses to die. The Microsoft situation enforces something different unless they decided they didn't want people to understand that the phoning home thing was a publisher option.
• sidcool 13y ago
  I don't have access to the pastebin from office, can someone please post it here? I am very much interested in reading this piece. Thanks.
• reaver478 13y ago
  Jesus Christ this guy is a cocky fucker. I'll never buy a xbox piece of shit again. DRM my ass. I'm against piracy but don't force me into something like DRM. With Sony you can still download games as digital and physical media. Fuck you MS
• ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
  === Bullshit Detected === "If you want games cheaper than 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow." Author thinks publishers will lower game prices to $39.99 since used games won't cut into their profits. Author clearly doesn't work at Microsoft nor in the game industry. Nor has a clear idea of how Capitalism or running a company works. Facts: A Game that launches on all 3 platforms: Xbox 360 (disc based, allows used games), PS3 (disc based, allows used games), and Steam (digital DRM based, no used games) all launch at the SAME price. Despite Steam's DRM the PC version is NOT discounted. Publishers are not going to surrender extra income out of the "goodness of their hearts".
  • _pmf_ 13y ago
    > Facts: A Game that launches on all 3 platforms: Xbox 360 (disc based, allows used games), PS3 (disc based, allows used games), and Steam (digital DRM based, no used games) all launch at the SAME price. This is not the case in the EU. I also think this is bullshit for the US territory.
    • ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
      Resident Evil, Battlefield, Dead Island, and other Tripple A titles that have launched on all the platforms have been full price on the PC. I know this because my little brother is a game addict ($1,000 Gaming PC & twitch.tv streamer and all) and buys them all. The Digital PC version however does discount those same games much quicker than the consoles do.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• _pmf_ 13y ago
  He's definitely right in assuming that the people who think Sony is suddenly their best friend are complete and utter morons.
• _pmf_ 13y ago
  > Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy Using the Kinect generally does.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• sourceless 13y ago
  1) If they're so big on moving away from disc sales, why sell discs at all? Afaik some stores already sell download cards for games, why not use those? 2) It may well be that it has to check if it's connected every 24 hours, but what happens if you need to move house? Do you just sign in again, or does something worse happen? 3) They're forcing the kinect onto the user - you can't make a product successful by forcing people to use it, they have to want to use it.
• zamnedix 13y ago
  You see, I also hate Steam.
• workbench 13y ago
  Still sounds shit m8
• andyhmltn 13y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Maybe internally they look at it like this. But I honestly think the reasoning behind the always online policy is so they can collect analytics from the kinect. From an advertisers perspective, it's the holy grail. Imagine being able to see the viewers heart rate, where they were looking, how they were sitting, how the move and body language. All of that data would be very useful. I'm sure there are systems like this already, but to my understanding they are in a controlled environment. If you sat me in a room and told me to look at an advert after having to travel etc I'd act a lot differently to just sitting on my couch.
• gr3yh47 13y ago
  I'm getting really sick of console DRM being compared to Steam DRM like they are equals. they aren't, not even close, because steam has sales 2x a year where even brand new games can be had for up to 75% off
• lucian1900 13y ago
  The comparison to Steam entirely breaks down when you consider that Steam is opt-in, whereas the Xbone's DRM is not even opt-out, but entirely mandatory. The main reason I don't complain so much about steam is the existence of GoG and direct DRM-free sales (Humble store), which I always prefer if they carry the game I'm interested in.
• wisty 13y ago
  > On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc This is rubbish. Better DRM is what makes the difference. I bet resales are about 1/100th as costly to studios as piracy, especially for single player games.
• Lendal 13y ago
  Comparing its strategy with Steam doesn't work for me, since I already boycott Steam anyway, for the same reason I'll boycott the Xbox One. I don't want to be under surveillance while I play a single-player game, or even a multiplayer game in LAN mode. I don't want to be under surveillance at all in my own home, by any entity public or private.
• yoster 13y ago
  If Microsoft was so big on fucking DLC, then they should make the DLC from the 360 backwards compatible to the new Xbox. Thank you Microsoft for fucking me over and wasting shitloads of money which will not be usable on the new system. Thank you for being fucking arrogant about it as well, and telling me that I better keep my 360. I always have been an Xbox fan. Come end of the year, hello Playstation. Fucking arrogance like this crap cemented the idea of switching, "if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4."
• ScottWhigham 13y ago
  The logic is just too silly, too not-well-thought-out for me to buy into it. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games... The biggest problem here is that this - the whole crux of his paste - did not happen at launch. If this were true, then MS would make new XBox One games cheaper than $60 - but they didn't. The XBox One games are all $60. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow MS did find a way - the new XBox One model is built around this. But the games aren't cheaper. Nice try, but it's either (a) bogus, (b) faulty/incomplete understanding by a lower level employee, or (c) some lower level employee buying into a bunch of management speak.
• Zigurd 13y ago
  This does not ring true. "Developers?" If you substituted the word "publishers" for "developers" THEN it makes more sense. Surely any engineer working on Xbox knows the difference.
• _progger_ 13y ago
  So, what you promise us is that games will cost less then on PS4? That's a strong selling point!
• ConAntonakos 13y ago
  So what's the overall reaction to the recent reversal of MSoft's Xbox One policies?