MS Bans you from Ownership?

[Taxious]

Yeah they sure seemed quick to about-face all this stupid DRM stuff. As someone on reddit said, if it's that easy to turn all of this off, then it will be easy for them to turn it all on again once people have purchased the consoles..

[Kulaf]

Well they do have 5 months before the console launches. But I am sure they will cook up something evil in the meantime.

[Ddrak]

Ars has a pretty good take - the problem was really there was no significant and tangible upside to the obvious hard downsides.

Dd

[Kulaf]

The tangible upside was not having to swap discs because all of the games would install on the HD. Whether or not that is "significant" is relative.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Wonder how they're going to handle that now?

Install game to harddrive, never have to worry about disc again. Sell disc, recoup some of your money. XBone became the best system for penny-pinchers.

[Ddrak]

Nope - works the same as X360. Disc games need disc in drive.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Thats not how they explained it working before. It was "Insert disc, Install to HDD, Never need disc again"

[Taxious]

Thats not how they explained it working before. It was "Insert disc, Install to HDD, Never need disc again"

I've never heard of that, I've always read that you'd have to have it in the drive.

[Kulaf]

The original goal would be that everything was installed on the disk drive and you would not ever need to manage your discs. You would also have been able to play on multiple XB1's in your home......and switch games as easily as telling the XB1 to load a new game. You were also to be able to log in from a friends XB1 and have access to your games.

Now all of that is gone and you are back to sticking in one disc at a time and having to manually switch discs to play a new game.

Good bye innovation and ease of use. We are back to getting up off our fat asses to change the channel because we lost the remote.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Console kiddies saw this as a power grab by Microsoft and rebelled. All it was for Microsoft was trying to bring the Entertainment Center that is the XBone to be more like PC gaming.

In the end the masses got their way, which is the preferable method for Consoles (imo). At the end of the day if the Console is going to operate like a PC, just build a damn PC to do your gaming on.

[Ddrak]

The original goal would be that everything was installed on the disk drive and you would not ever need to manage your discs. You would also have been able to play on multiple XB1's in your home......and switch games as easily as telling the XB1 to load a new game. You were also to be able to log in from a friends XB1 and have access to your games.

All of which would have been possible with one-time activation, on-access checking, or falling back to "check the disc" if no internet available.

The problem was they started with the assumption that everyone's a pirate that will go through ungodly amounts of inconvenience to get around license payments. That assumption colored everything they did and positioned them as consumer-hostile. It's the same trap the MPAA/RIAA fell into except in this case there was a viable competitor positioning themselves as consumer-friendly.

Dd

[Kulaf]

No, they started with the notion that the VAST majority of gamers have Internet access.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Rose-colored lenses.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

No, they started with the notion that the VAST majority of gamers have Internet access.

Which is a fucking stupid assumption because:

1) Active duty military
2) Minors with no control over their access or provider
3) Rural areas
4) Users without PCs tend to not bother with internet

The gaming community has already been through this multiple times, and the consumer outrage has always been profound. They were fucking retarded if they didn't think this would incite backlash.

[Ddrak]

No, they started with the notion that the VAST majority of gamers have Internet access.

Sorry, but I disagree. That's not a starting point because it doesn't actually follow through with any action. They didn't decide to do "always on" because a "vast majority of games have Internet access" any more than they'd want you to telephone in a code because a vast majority have telephones.

Dd

[Kulaf]

And I understand why you think that way, because to you the XB1 is a gaming console. To Microsoft it is an entertainment delivery mechanism, and they see the future of said delivery as digital over the net.

I can't even recall the last disc based game I purchased......Wrath of the Lich King perhaps. Every game in the last 4 or 5 years I have bought for my PC has been a digital download.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

Consoles aren't PCs, and shouldn't try to be. The XBone doesn't need to be anything more than a game console, and MS is fucking retarded for trying to make it something more than what it actually is.

The biggest problem with the console market today is how similar it already is to PC gaming. Literally every single console game I've bought for this gen requires a download to play. I picked up Last of Us two days ago - that game came out a week ago, and the day I bought it I had to install an update. The allure of console gaming was and always has been that it's self-contained plug-and-play, wholly unlike PC games. This is no longer the case. We either get back to that, or the console market dies off completely within two more generations.

[Ddrak]

And I understand why you think that way, because to you the XB1 is a gaming console. To Microsoft it is an entertainment delivery mechanism, and they see the future of said delivery as digital over the net.

I can't even recall the last disc based game I purchased......Wrath of the Lich King perhaps. Every game in the last 4 or 5 years I have bought for my PC has been a digital download.

No, I get that too. My point is they've decided what they want (digital downloads, no discs, whatever) and then appear to have gone "how can we remove all possible chance of those customers getting away without paying, no matter how inconvenient for them, so that we can look good to the publishers". Following that, they failed to actually make a decent case to consumers for their decisions and often seemed to be downright derogatory. It was just a really bizarre meltdown that gave me the sense they never thought for a second "what will consumers think of this".

Dd