8 ms·

During this whole fiasco, I was trying to put myself into their shoes on what they were trying to achieve. On the outside, it looks like a great idea. The abili

by nivla 13y ago

During this whole fiasco, I was trying to put myself into their shoes on what they were trying to achieve. On the outside, it looks like a great idea. The ability to share games with family. No longer you need to carry discs to your friends house. You can lend them games to strangers on the Internet without worry about losing it. You can have an organized catalog on the cloud, and never have to get up to pop the disc in. Sell the disc game to X over the internet and cut out the middle man (Gamestop). etc... However the whole, connect 24 hours to verify the ownership of the game is a big turn off. I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. So if it were you, how would you go by achieving all the pros and none of the cons without enforcing DRM? Not supporting DRM but genuinely curious.

superuser2 13y ago
Deactivate on the first console before allowing sale?
- nivla 13y ago
  But how does that work when you are trading in the physical disc at Gamestop and you still have the game stored on your console that is disconnected from the internet? Or if you were to sell it virtully, pop in the physical disc onto your first or second console that has been disconnected from the internet before the sale.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Uh, yeah, just require to deactivate the disc before sale. That's reasonable and doesn't have the intrusive feel. This isn't hard. Edit: I see, if the DVDs are identical then that's not possible. But plenty of software comes with a serial anyways. Just make the serial transferable, problem solved.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      That would have the problem of not allowing you to sell your games if your console was broken or stolen.
      - georgemcbay 13y ago
        Not necessarily, there's already a web component to Xbox Live at xbox.com that you can login to from any browser and you can even do things on it (today) like reset all your Xbox 360 digital content licenses (I think this is limited to once per year) for exactly this sort of situation where your console died and you had to buy a new one. So, log in to xbox.com, see list of your active licenses, click 'deactive' link on the games you want to forfeit your current digital license for. No console required.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        If your console allows you to play disc purchased games without the disc in the console, then being able to "deactivate" the disc on the web before reselling it would allow you to continue to play your game on your un-networked console. You can't have disc-less disc games that allow trading and don't require some form of "always on". You have to give up one of those; this time around it seems they are giving up "disc-less disc".
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Having serial numbers on CD is not above current technology, and I'd wager that the number of people willing to never connect their system to the internet due to the fact they're pirating a bunch of games is statistically insignificant.
- bskap 13y ago
  The only way to do that would be to limit used game sales to specific retailers that have the ability to check if a disc has been deactivated before accepting it. You know, that thing that people got really annoyed at because they want to just hand the disc to another person and be done with it.
thisisdallas 13y ago
I believe it would be pretty simple. Keep the family sharing plan and the 24 hour check but only for digital purchases. If you have a disk based game than you wouldn't be able to share it but you also wouldn't be required to have the console connected every 24 hours.
- nivla 13y ago
  Guess this is their only choice right now. Have a divide between digital and physical copies. People who buy digitally gets better rewards (subjective) than people who buy the physical disk.
- jstevens85 13y ago
  I'm guessing that the publishers were only willing to allow features such as family sharing etc in exchange for limiting used disc sales.
magic_haze 13y ago
Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the disk again before allowing disk-less play. Make sure the offline transition can be done through smartglass, and you handle the hurricane/somebody-cut-the-fiber scenario as well. Any holes in this approach?
- thwest 13y ago
  Main problem being explaining it concisely so all the journalists at E3 understand.
  - magic_haze 13y ago
    They could market it as a "360 mode"... it's exactly the features currently available in the xbox 360, nothing more.
- nivla 13y ago
  +1 I guess this is a very good solution. It merges the best of two worlds. However, with the mixing of digital and physical world, I wonder how many fraudsters will sell their games digitally and then try to sell the disk on ebay? Or vice versa.
  - magic_haze 13y ago
    hmm, I wasn't aware you could sell your physical disks on the xbox store... that just seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems like such a corner case, though, that I think they could get away with only allowing downloaded games to be resold online. Physical disks would have to be resold through Gamestop or similar, which would actually act as an incentive to purchase the digital version!
- contextfree 13y ago
mikelat 13y ago
My guess is that it started with the simple idea of "we want to move to digital so we can phase out retail and get more out of each sale like steam does" (pressure from shareholders and increases in development costs). Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible, like a group of friends sharing a single licence of skyrim and just leaving their consoles offline, and made rules around them. It probably didn't really click with them and they thought this was a great idea up until the point they got absolutely grilled at E3. The thing is with steam, they don't really care about people sharing steam accounts and being offline, it's only a violation of the TOS but they have no checks for it since it's not a rampant problem. I think if they sold games for a decent price and trusted their customers they wouldn't need any invasive DRM schemes.
- interpol_p 13y ago
  > Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible It's such a bad idea to develop a product like this. Developers who focus on anti-piracy measures miss the point: focusing on a frictionless way for consumers to acquire your product (and keep it up-to-date), while ignoring all those who pirate it will lead to more money in the long run. Most anti-piracy measures introduce friction for genuine consumers who want to give you money. It's a poor trade-off.
  - AlexDanger 13y ago
    The success of Valve and Steam distribution show this is absolutely true. As far as I'm concerned its all that needs to be said on the piracy debate. The proof is in the profits. Valve are a private company but certainly worth billions and $500-800m annual revenue. Gabe claims, per employee, they are more profitable than Google and Apple. See the forbes article for more analysis [1]. Note its from 2011 and Gabe has said elsewhere that Valve had a huge 2012, approx 50% revenue growth. Here's another short article with Gabe commenting on their entry into the Russian market. [2] GoG is also a private company, but well established and popular with netizens. I'd be very interested to see their financial figures. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-an... [2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111023/22062816484/just-as-valve-shows-that-you-can-compete-with-piracy-russia-russia-starts-cracking-down-piracy.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111023/22062816484/just-a...
interpol_p 13y ago
> I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. They don't seem to understand that the inconvenience of doing this will prevent the vast majority of people from doing it. If the option to disconnect from WiFi is behind even one layer of menus, most people will find it too annoying to switch on/off in order cheat the system. If they simply ignored all those people who want to cheat them — let it happen — and make it super easy for people to play and share within their system, I think they would find that they earn more money. (Though personally I am not bothered by a 24 hour check-in. Since all my devices are always connected, I doubt I would notice this in practice.)
hobs 13y ago
The lend game thing was limited to once per game, ever to friends of 30 days or more. Its like saying "you know that potential infinite thing, we are now definitely saying you can only have one." It reminds me of the difference between free refills and no free refills, the actual amount of extra drinks you get probably is not high, but some soda heads will be pissed if they dont get free refills.

by nivla 13y ago

superuser2 13y ago

Deactivate on the first console before allowing sale?

nivla 13y ago
But how does that work when you are trading in the physical disc at Gamestop and you still have the game stored on your console that is disconnected from the internet? Or if you were to sell it virtully, pop in the physical disc onto your first or second console that has been disconnected from the internet before the sale.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Uh, yeah, just require to deactivate the disc before sale. That's reasonable and doesn't have the intrusive feel. This isn't hard. Edit: I see, if the DVDs are identical then that's not possible. But plenty of software comes with a serial anyways. Just make the serial transferable, problem solved.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    That would have the problem of not allowing you to sell your games if your console was broken or stolen.
    - georgemcbay 13y ago
      Not necessarily, there's already a web component to Xbox Live at xbox.com that you can login to from any browser and you can even do things on it (today) like reset all your Xbox 360 digital content licenses (I think this is limited to once per year) for exactly this sort of situation where your console died and you had to buy a new one. So, log in to xbox.com, see list of your active licenses, click 'deactive' link on the games you want to forfeit your current digital license for. No console required.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        If your console allows you to play disc purchased games without the disc in the console, then being able to "deactivate" the disc on the web before reselling it would allow you to continue to play your game on your un-networked console. You can't have disc-less disc games that allow trading and don't require some form of "always on". You have to give up one of those; this time around it seems they are giving up "disc-less disc".
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Having serial numbers on CD is not above current technology, and I'd wager that the number of people willing to never connect their system to the internet due to the fact they're pirating a bunch of games is statistically insignificant.
bskap 13y ago
The only way to do that would be to limit used game sales to specific retailers that have the ability to check if a disc has been deactivated before accepting it. You know, that thing that people got really annoyed at because they want to just hand the disc to another person and be done with it.

thisisdallas 13y ago

I believe it would be pretty simple. Keep the family sharing plan and the 24 hour check but only for digital purchases. If you have a disk based game than you wouldn't be able to share it but you also wouldn't be required to have the console connected every 24 hours.

nivla 13y ago
Guess this is their only choice right now. Have a divide between digital and physical copies. People who buy digitally gets better rewards (subjective) than people who buy the physical disk.
jstevens85 13y ago
I'm guessing that the publishers were only willing to allow features such as family sharing etc in exchange for limiting used disc sales.

magic_haze 13y ago

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the disk again before allowing disk-less play. Make sure the offline transition can be done through smartglass, and you handle the hurricane/somebody-cut-the-fiber scenario as well. Any holes in this approach?

thwest 13y ago
Main problem being explaining it concisely so all the journalists at E3 understand.
- magic_haze 13y ago
  They could market it as a "360 mode"... it's exactly the features currently available in the xbox 360, nothing more.
nivla 13y ago
+1 I guess this is a very good solution. It merges the best of two worlds. However, with the mixing of digital and physical world, I wonder how many fraudsters will sell their games digitally and then try to sell the disk on ebay? Or vice versa.
- magic_haze 13y ago
  hmm, I wasn't aware you could sell your physical disks on the xbox store... that just seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems like such a corner case, though, that I think they could get away with only allowing downloaded games to be resold online. Physical disks would have to be resold through Gamestop or similar, which would actually act as an incentive to purchase the digital version!
contextfree 13y ago

mikelat 13y ago

My guess is that it started with the simple idea of "we want to move to digital so we can phase out retail and get more out of each sale like steam does" (pressure from shareholders and increases in development costs). Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible, like a group of friends sharing a single licence of skyrim and just leaving their consoles offline, and made rules around them. It probably didn't really click with them and they thought this was a great idea up until the point they got absolutely grilled at E3. The thing is with steam, they don't really care about people sharing steam accounts and being offline, it's only a violation of the TOS but they have no checks for it since it's not a rampant problem. I think if they sold games for a decent price and trusted their customers they wouldn't need any invasive DRM schemes.

interpol_p 13y ago
> Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible It's such a bad idea to develop a product like this. Developers who focus on anti-piracy measures miss the point: focusing on a frictionless way for consumers to acquire your product (and keep it up-to-date), while ignoring all those who pirate it will lead to more money in the long run. Most anti-piracy measures introduce friction for genuine consumers who want to give you money. It's a poor trade-off.
- AlexDanger 13y ago
  The success of Valve and Steam distribution show this is absolutely true. As far as I'm concerned its all that needs to be said on the piracy debate. The proof is in the profits. Valve are a private company but certainly worth billions and $500-800m annual revenue. Gabe claims, per employee, they are more profitable than Google and Apple. See the forbes article for more analysis [1]. Note its from 2011 and Gabe has said elsewhere that Valve had a huge 2012, approx 50% revenue growth. Here's another short article with Gabe commenting on their entry into the Russian market. [2] GoG is also a private company, but well established and popular with netizens. I'd be very interested to see their financial figures. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-an... [2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111023/22062816484/just-as-valve-shows-that-you-can-compete-with-piracy-russia-russia-starts-cracking-down-piracy.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111023/22062816484/just-a...

interpol_p 13y ago

> I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. They don't seem to understand that the inconvenience of doing this will prevent the vast majority of people from doing it. If the option to disconnect from WiFi is behind even one layer of menus, most people will find it too annoying to switch on/off in order cheat the system. If they simply ignored all those people who want to cheat them — let it happen — and make it super easy for people to play and share within their system, I think they would find that they earn more money. (Though personally I am not bothered by a 24 hour check-in. Since all my devices are always connected, I doubt I would notice this in practice.)

hobs 13y ago

The lend game thing was limited to once per game, ever to friends of 30 days or more. Its like saying "you know that potential infinite thing, we are now definitely saying you can only have one." It reminds me of the difference between free refills and no free refills, the actual amount of extra drinks you get probably is not high, but some soda heads will be pissed if they dont get free refills.