7 ms·

>It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Look at that money over there. Let's take it!" What's next, Wal-Mart charging Ralph Lauren every time a customer co

• chaostheory 13y ago
  > How is it different than Steam, other than the point than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now They don't allow developers to self-publish, and Valve is privately owned by a benevolent dictator who won't be prone to public investor pressure for short term quarterly profits. People trust Valve to do the right thing. Microsoft on the other hand has a history of just shutting down their DRM servers without making it right for the customers who bought into their DRM'd products.
  • mynameisvlad 13y ago
    > Microsoft on the other hand has a history of just shutting down their DRM servers without making it right for the customers who bought into their DRM'd products. Source? Microsoft is incredibly well known for supporting products int he long term. They only shut down Xbox Live for the original Xbox in 2010. And Windows XP is still infamously supported.
    • nos4A2 13y ago
      My Kin studio and Zune say otherwise.
      • mynameisvlad 13y ago
        IIRC Zune still works, since Xbox Music is a rebranded Zune Marketplace. Even if it doesn't, it's a device, it doesn't need internet. The Kin is partly Verizon's fault, really.
    • lelandbatey 13y ago
      When what's being created is a timeless piece of art, 10 years is not long-lived support. People still play NES games, and I want to be able to play my current gen games 30 years from now.
      • mynameisvlad 13y ago
        And I'm sure there's some sort of long term solution that would disable the 24 hour check (which obviously doesn't need to happen anymore) when the authentication servers were to be decommissioned. This isn't Microsoft's first rodeo.
        • DominikR 13y ago
          Yeah, even if they did, how are you going to use your games once your Xbox One is defective and you can't transfer your games to another console, because the DRM servers were turned off? Edit: I don't accept a solution where I just have to hope that they will do something that enables me to play my games once the authentication servers have been decomissioned. If I buy something, I want to know upfront what they will do, and it has to be guaranteed, not just a PR statement. It has to be part of the TOS and I should be able to hold them accountable if they do not deliver.
• tokenizerrr 13y ago
  > I would imagine they would allow you to play parts of the game without needing to install the whole game, similar to Steam. What games on steam do that? I've literally never seen that. Unless you mean like seperatation of single and multiplayer, but those are both still rather big.
  • lke 13y ago
    Half-Life 2 (or so i remember)
    • tokenizerrr 13y ago
      Are you referring to the episode 1, episode 2 stuff? It's just a bunch of different games, that were released seperately.
• lelandbatey 13y ago
  It's interesting, because in this whole thing I've noticed that there's a reason that I am ok with Steam on my PC when I'm not ok with digital downloads for a console. Primarily, it's because of the kinds of games that are released and played on them. On PC, I have games that are inherently ALL about the online experience, games like TF2, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Counter Strike, ARMA, and many more. These games (from what I've seen) make up the biggest contingency of PC games, and they all "fit" within Steam and it's business model very well. However, on console you have an entirely different type of game: the game as a story. These kinds of games make up the bulk of the console market, games like Uncharted (1, 2, and 3), the Bioshock series, the Mass Effect trilogy, the Far Cry series, the God of War games, etc. Even just the way you label them (series, trilogy, etc) shows the difference: these are static creations. Ultimately, on a platform that most people use to consume STATIC pieces of content, why do we need to be chained to some other service? Why must I have an internet connection to enjoy a great single-player experience?
  • asynchrony 13y ago
    The majority of the games that you listed for console are also available for PC (on Steam).
  • batiudrami 13y ago
    That might be correct for you, but it's not really for most gamers. Each year the annual COD release on consoles is huge on consoles (bigger than on PC). FIFA is similarly huge in Europe. Halo, one of the biggest console exclusives, is praised at least 50/50 for it's single/multiplayer content. Online gaming is a big part of console games, even if it isn't for you. At the same time, most of the games you mentioned as single player experiences are available on PC. Plus many (I'd say most, even) PC-exclusive titles are heavily single-player focused. Obviously, this doesn't affect your personal reasoning, but I don't think it's shared by many people.
  • freehunter 13y ago
    Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, Just Cause 2, and Civilization are just a handful of mostly single player games I saw scrolling through my library that I and I would guess most gamers would prefer to play on PC even though they're also on consoles.
• Kurtz79 13y ago
  "How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)?" The main difference is that Steam is an OPTION, not the ONLY WAY. I can get most of the games on Steam off the shelf, either used or new, as a physical copy, or from another digital source (even indie games have most of the time the option of buying a digital copy from their site). It's a forced comparison: there are ALREADY services, both for xbox and PS3 that do exactly what Steam does, that is to say, provide games as a digital downloads, as an alternative to pysical copies. Steam makes it very convenient to use their service, but it's not something that is forced on you. What Microsoft was planning was removing any choice. If they come up with a similar service that is convenient and with actual benefits respect to the normal way of doing things, people will start using it by themselves, without it being forced on them.
  • Shivetya 13y ago
    Is STEAM an option? Only if I do not wan to buy certain games. Two games I bought in a big box store REQUIRE a Steam account to play. Perhaps you have heard of the Civilization series? More than once when Steam had a problem or I had one with my provider I could not play certain games off line. I don't like Steam, I do not like the idea I have to have their permission to play a game I paid fifty bucks for and have the physical media for. If I had known it would not let me play without an internet connection I would never have bought it. When the label stated "Requires an Internet connection" I figured it was for multiplayer only.
    • Kurtz79 13y ago
      "Is STEAM an option?" It is. If certain games require it, then it is something forced by those games, not by the service itself. Just as those "off the shelf" games that are account tied, as Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2, it does not imply that all physical games are account tied. An exception does not a rule make, while in the case of Microsoft that would have been "the rule".
      • 13y ago
• shin_lao 13y ago
  How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)? On Steam I can play my games while being offline, I can play my games on multiple computers (the games are bound to the account, not the computer), I have good prices, I can install and deinstall games as much as I want, the amount of choice is incredible and last but not least if I don't use my account for one year and log in again, all my games and savegames are there.
  • stonemetal 13y ago
    On Steam I can play my games while being offline xbox one check. I can play my games on multiple computers xbox one check, well multiple xbox ones. I can install and deinstall games as much as I want xbox one check. I have good prices,the amount of choice is incredible, Have you checked the prices on Amazon's digital downloads? Out side of steam's sells they are almost always better. On steam, prices don't fall like they normally do in the other retail channels. So post release period steam is almost always more expensive than other channels. Who knows about xbox one digital selection? It being a PC under the hood would have made it trivial to port everything on steam over(if porting is even necessary).
• katbyte 13y ago
  > I would imagine they would allow you to play parts of the game without needing to install the whole game, similar to Steam. afaik steam does not do this, is it a recent feature?
  • talmand 13y ago
    I don't know of this feature either. Maybe it's a reference to demos?
    • joshstrange 13y ago
      Some of Valve's games will download the engine/binaries first then the levels after in order so you can start to play the game while it is still downloading. I have personally experienced this. Also: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1400485 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14004... >>Apparently some of Valve's singleplayer games let you do so. > Yeah, some do such as Half-Life 1 where it'll prioritize downloading of the binaries first, then the levels. > Granted it makes for long load times if you hit a level transition for a map that's still downloading. > Granted, the list that support that 'feature' are slim.
• Spytap 13y ago
  > How is it different than Steam...? The short answer is that the digital aspect of the two is similar, if not the same: digital games are sold once and can be used anywhere the user can log in to the account. That seems to be the same both before and after Xbox's 180. The biggest difference is in the analog aspect of Xbox One. Steam doesn't have a physical sales component - it was created specifically to avoid that scenario. Xbox does though, but because it forces analog sales into a digital construct (via forced installs of games - not a bad thing necessarily, just a design decision they made) it forces the analog component to function by the same rules as the digital sales component. Going all digital was always a choice with clear positives and negatives. You could avoid the negatives (one being no resale, for example) by sticking with physical discs for certain games. It was always a decision. However with that design decision to force the analog into the digital construct, Xbox one wanted to remove that choice. With Xbox One's prior rules, physical copies of games could only be sold once. That's it. Then it would require an additional secondary sale to Microsoft to function. And the primary sale could only happen to select retailers. That's breaking what's understood and expected from that optional analog construct due to design decisions, without providing any additional value to the consumer. Yes, forced installs allows mimicry of the all-digital experience and adds a certain amount of convenience, but doesn't allow any advantages beyond the all-digital experience. Certainly not enough to make up for the lack of choice in forcing consumers into a suboptimal construct. The key here was subverting customer expectations and taking what used to be a choice and trying to A) force it into what MS preferred, and then B) trying to monetize that. It reeked of a money grab because it added no new value beyond what was already available via digital sales while removing established value for consumers. tl;dr: It's different than Steam because Steam is one all-digital service while Xbox One tried to force all physical and digital sales into following the same ruleset as an all-digital marketplace.
  • ethomson 13y ago
    You keep saying "analog" when I suspect you mean "disc" or "physical copy"? You're talking about a discrete physical item (thus digital by definition) which has a game stored in digital format... I fear that I sound like the language police, but really, your comment was already fairly complex before I had to puzzle over what you meant by "analog" and "all-digital" as if this device had a coaxial output to a CRT TV.
• csense 13y ago
  > How is it different than Steam? It isn't. DRM is DRM and it sucks. I mostly stay away from Steam. Multiple times, I've walked away from purchasing games when I saw they required Steam. I've never taken my current-gen consoles online.