News - Microsoft backtracks: unpopular Xbox One DRM policies torn up

[crossy]

Regardless of how much this change would benefit the devs it benefits the publishers so much more - and they are the people with the power to change the current system.

Fascinating discussion, thanks for that, although I don't agree with your stance that having bought an A rated game for £45 on my XBox then I have no right to sell it on because, like a pot of yoghurt, once I've opened the packaging it's "consumed".

Of course the answer may be to move the publishers to move of an "agent" role, and make the dev's the "supplier". One thing I did like about MS's original stance is that they seemed to be saying that they'd set a minimum price for a game. This is something I can appreciate, so if you only play Gears of War 5 for two days then you get nearly the full price in resale credits, play it for a month and it's "depreciated" by 10%, six months the depreciation is 50% and so on. Although I hate the analogy, kind of like a car.

Getting back to my original point - maybe games devs need to setup some scheme like anti-virus software vendors. So you get the product for a period, with all bug fixes and DLC, then after that you have to pay an annual "maintenance" subscription. Escalating packages too - so up to 3 titles by the same developer is say £12/year, 6 titles and so on. And that money goes directly to the devs. Meanwhile the publisher - as a "mere" agent - get's a (large?) portion of the initial purchase price but no further monies. Publishers are rewarded for supporing devs and getting the game to you, but your "contract" is with the developers directly.

Upside of this is that good developers will thrive, while ones that content themselves with lazy film ports will suffer. Heck, this would even account for EA's drug dealer habit of putting out yearly respins of their sporting titles (I think they're developed in house) so punters would be giving them a subscription to upgrade rather than having to repurchase.

Upside for us punters is that we'd end up in a community for good devs and not necessarily feel like we're being left in the cold - and the initial purchase price could probably go down. If a dev goes under then all you miss out on is the updates and DLC which you wouldn't get anyway. If you then decide to sell that game, then the next joe in line will have to realise that they're getting just what it is on the disk.

[kalniel]

Sounds like you'd push devs to deliberately leave out features that could be included in the initial game, not something I like.

Likewise some of these ideas about incentives to keep playing would push developers to making games as time sinks, rather than creative experiences. Some of the best games are short and intended to be played only once or twice, but they are in danger of being commercially non-viable if length of play becomes the determining factor for success.

[george1979]

I don't necessarily think we want to push them towards making games a time sink, or even that it would. I've said before that there are some games that I enjoyed so much I never got rid of them. The Gears of War series for instance. Once I got bored of multiplayer I rarely picked any of them up again but still never traded them in.
I wouldn't advocate length of play but the quality of the experience. There are some games I have very clear and fond memories of and they have some sentimental value to me. Some games to lend themselves to long periods of play such as Skyrim and other RPGs. All of them seem to lend themselves to DLC releases. There is no reason they can't survive on the purchases of DLC for at least a few years after release, if they are good enough of course.

[kalniel]

There are several game types that don't lend themselves to DLC at all, some kinds of story based ones for example.

[The Hand]

@Jammers231: Some very good points there
My main concern about the XBO is not really the DRM, but the fact the PR has gone so wrong, it seems that vast numbers of customers are just not going to buy the XBO, which completely undermines it on the communal/online play front, which is vital in the console war. Groups of friends and gamers will be making decisions between them on which platform to go for and I'm willing to bet at this point, its unlikely to be the XBO.
Some comparisons have been made between the Smart phone market and the console market on the net, but this a key point where such comparisons breakdown, since in the phone market, all phones can call/text each other etc regardless of OS or manufacturer; With Consoles, each console has its own closed online gaming community which cannot interact with other community on games at least, so it's absolutely essential to each console online gamer/user base is built as large as possible. A lot of people will feel that their hand will forced to go with the largest platform, simply because thats where the largest online community is or because their friends are on it and so has the best perceived online play. You could see entire social groups moving en masse to PS4 for example. This is the real dilemma I believe for Microsoft, with this new console generation.

On the other hand, maybe the XBO is aiming for a slightly different demographic to the PS4; Everyone is now 8 years older since the 360 launch and maybe the XBO is trying to cater for the differences in peoples lives over this time frame. Maybe people now have kids and a mortgage etc and maybe don't feel like having 3 hour gaming session after every week day, but is still want a platform powerful enough to play the latest games when they can etc, even if its not highest spec console available. I would've liked not having to put a disc in every time I want to play a game, it does feel very dated, a bit of a hassle and its a bit annoying having physical media cluttering up the place. The second hand game/DRM issues doesn't really bother me, although it does strike me as restrictive.

To be honest, MS have made a mistake buy forcing potential customers to go for the XBO with Kinect included, since is just pushes the price up. It's a bad business decision, even though the tech and software is clearly excellent and the price difference is not that huge. I'm certain MS are working on an XBO without Kinect at the moment, just so they can price match or even undercut the PS4 and build a user base to start off with and MS could sell Kinect to these users later. The 300K server/cloud service may turn out to be great, but you need a community/user base there in the first place for it to be realised and something this large will need to be paid for one way or another.
An XBO with Kinect should be £399 and an XBO standalone model should be ideally be £329, just so MS can undercut the PS4 and win some favour back... but to be honest, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, so MS *may* have blown it.

[Saracen]

....

Thanks for Reading (Unless you haven't and you skipped to this part, and if you skipped to this part... )

I did read it, though I have to say, a paragraph break or two would have made it far less of a wall of text, and far easier to digest.

....

All in all I think this was a bit of a cowardly move from Microsoft and I think they should of stood their ground and really proved people wrong about DRM and shown them that there are more Pros than Cons when it comes to new and often 'Unpopular' technology. At the start of the gaming era people thought consoles in people's houses was a stupid idea and look where we are now. If Microsoft had taken that risk then I think they would of greatly of benefited from it. I do still intend to buy the Xbox One though if anyone was wondering, i'm no Xbox Fanboy, but I do prefer many things when it comes to gaming on Xbox, and this whole situation has made me doubt Microsoft a bit but I hope they stick to their guns more in the future.
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But there's the issue. Do the con's outweigh the pro's, or vice versa? For me, they absolutely do, and nothingMS could have said or done would have convinced me to buy an XBox One under those conditions, because a major reason for me having a games console is because I use it when away from my main home, and simply do not have a net connection. A console requiring a connection every 24 hours to play standalone games, which is what I use, is as much use to me as a chocolate teapot.

So for you, the pro's win. For me, the conditions made it an absolute non-starter, and utterly useless.

And MS have to assess what proportion of people would take the line I do, which is that I'd either buy a PS4 instead, or not buy a console at all. And once I've bought a PS4, I'm going to lose interest in all things XBox for several years. If MS lose me now, no amount of arguing, rationalising or attempts at convining me are going to matter, because having bought a PS4, I simply won't be listening, even if they subsequently give in and do the 180 they've just done. It would be too late.

But I would have thought it was not beyond their wit to come up with a way to offer the main advantages you want, without imposing unacceptable conditions on the rest of us. If they can, fine, but if they re-impose those restrictions, the One is of no use or interest at all to me. It's merely an expensive bookend, or doorstop, and they aren't going to "show" me that the pro's outweigh the con's, for the simply reason that, for me, they do not.

[b0redom]

PS4 is cheaper, better specs and better exclusives, the Xbone is done. M$ have already shown their true colours in how they are willing to screw over the consumer.I will not support this **** corporation and the ignorant and arrogant idiots that run it... cough ..Don Mattrick

Raven1001's system - Windows 7.