News - Microsoft offers to reprieve Xbox One 'Family Sharing' feature

[HEXUS]

Also it is revealed that the Kinect costs "almost as much" to produce as the console.

Read more.

[ConnorLowe]

The so called 'Lads Night' would be ruined if you couldn't bring your games round to your friends house. A night of drinking, FIFA and FPS games would go straight out of the window. I for one wouldn't be very pleased with that!

[kawauso]

That red light looks awfully familiar...

[brasco]

Power to the people, and kudos to them for actually doing something about it (not that they have a choice).

I don't think every decision made while they developed it has been a malicious "let's screw these gullible suckers" attack on the consumer - the media has definitely enjoyed covering it like that.

That said, some of the policies were bad ideas and they'll pay the price of a PR disaster for quite some time - to Sony's profit I imagine.

[mojothejester]

You could do that even with the DRM in place, you'd just have to log your own user name into your mate's Xbox. But Microsoft do listen to what their customers want, we will end up pleased with their new console, we just don't see it yet

[Bagpuss]

"Kinect costs "almost as much" to make as the Xbox One"



Microsoft's problems in a single sentence and why I'll never buy it.

Casual gaming, set top box pile of crap with second rate GPU/RAM, all to pay for that POS Kinnect.

[sykobee]

"Xbox turn on"

"Sorry Dave, I can't do that"

I still think that the inclusion of this new Kinect is a mistake, due to its cost. It's inclusion has meant the rest of the console is underspecced.

[Agent]

Just shows how much they've screwed this up. Policy after policy change.

It's confusing for consumers and makes them look like fools.

[Saracen]

"Kinect costs "almost as much" to make as the Xbox One"



Microsoft's problems in a single sentence and why I'll never buy it.

Casual gaming, set top box pile of crap with second rate GPU/RAM, all to pay for that POS Kinnect.

Pretty much agree with that. Kinect isn't the only thing I disliked about the XBO, but it, and it's effect on price, was a major part of it, and having (apparently, and for now at least) sorted the 'always on' issue, The price is the biggest single negative for me. I have zero interest in Kinect, and sure as hell don't want to (read that as won't) pay for it now it's built-in.

So, if they come up with an XBox Lite or something, at a sensible price, sans Kinect, at some point, then maybe I'll resurrect some interest. Otherwise, it's a case of too little, too late.

[shaithis]

Just shows how much they've screwed this up. Policy after policy change.

It's confusing for consumers and makes them look like fools.

As I have said before, if the masses make an (uninformed) outcry, PR feels that something needs to be done because of image.
You cannot blame Microsoft when people scream about a progressive licensing model without understanding the implications.....and now that the dust has settled and people are seeing the 55ukp+ pre-order prices on XBO and PS4 games, I think they are a bit more interested in the original licensing idea......funny that!

I think they will probably end up offering 2 versions of every title. A retail box and a digital license. Retail box will follow the current console method and the digital will follow the steam model with family sharing. Anything else I feel would be a logistical nightmare.....at the end of the day they will have to have some kind of steam model for family sharing to work.

[Saracen]

As I have said before, if the masses make an (uninformed) outcry, PR feels that something needs to be done because of image.
You cannot blame Microsoft when people scream about a progressive licensing model without understanding the implications.....and now that the dust has settled and people are seeing the 55ukp+ pre-order prices on XBO and PS4 games, I think they are a bit more interested in the original licensing idea......funny that!

I think they will probably end up offering 2 versions of every title. A retail box and a digital license. Retail box will follow the current console method and the digital will follow the steam model with family sharing. Anything else I feel would be a logistical nightmare.....at the end of the day they will have to have some kind of steam model for family sharing to work.

The thing is, a lot of us DID understand 'progressive' licencing all too well. It's why we screamed.

Though, personally, I didn't scream. I simply said that several aspects of the original proposals were utterly unacceptable to me, and that if it sent ahead as outlined, I would be buying neither hardware nor software. And nothing that changed that viewpoint. Under the original proposal, no way, no how. Period.

[rootminus1]

Interestingly the anonymous Microsoft insider also said that "the success of the Kinect carries much more weight" for Microsoft than the Xbox One

I'll say! KinectV.1 sales of 24m compared to total sales of Xbox consoles (77.2m) is quite misleading to the scale of how much of a gimmick it is. According to that statistic, about 1 in 3 Xbox owners bought into project Natal.
The interesting question is just how many carried on using it? Not many as far as I can tell. Looking at the total sales of Kinect specific titles (all 76 of them), 59m were shifted. But how about actually sold, how many did people actually part with cash for? 39.2 million in all (about the same as the original Mario Bros game). So after applying some maths, that means everyone who owns a kinect bought one and half games for it, 2.5 games if you count the Wiisports clone.
But wait, what about the mainstream games that came with Kinect integration? According to the same site 31 million games built with kinect in mind were sold, but only 1/3rd of those game buyers have a kinect, so the total figures come to 24m kinect consoles are playing 49.5m kinect games, that's almost exactly 2 paid games for every Kinect controller.

I still have more games than that for my GameBoy Colour.

Just as I suspected in 2009 when I first heard about the push for mocap gaming, it's a party trick we as consumers would be suffering a hangover from for a long time still

[The Hand]

It's highly likely now that we are going to see a XBO without Kinect emerge at some point. Just imagine if that came out at £249? That would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

[Percy1983]

Its a hard one with kinect, bundle it in every box then it has the userbase and the support and could be epic, don't bundle it and it could go the way of kinect 1.

I will say Sony have dropped the eye to cut the costs, yet every controller as a light on for the eye to see, so now support will be patchy and it will leave us thinking why did they bother.

As for the family share (DRM) etc with xbox one, I can see both sides and surely the best way is make it optional, ie I would happily run it on 24 hour check ins and install games and play without discs, yet it should still have an offline option, ie the old school needing a disc, best of both worlds.

[Spud1]

So, if they come up with an XBox Lite or something, at a sensible price, sans Kinect, at some point, then maybe I'll resurrect some interest. Otherwise, it's a case of too little, too late.

They are missing a trick by not doing this imo..

Both the "next gen" consoles are incredibly expensive,and offering a version without Kinect would give them a massive price advantage over Sony, and I would pick one up for sure if they did (even if I probably would still get a PS4). It's truly crazy that a simple gimmick like Kintect can cost them so much to produce (relatively),especially when its something that the vast majority of users won't ever use more than once, and the vast minority don't want.

[aidanjt]

Microsoft has gone crazy. First Fullscreen 8, then XBone. They could do with gutting out upper management entirely.