FIXED! Infinity debunked. Xbox One is the official name.

[Lemony Vengeance]

It's not about being first. It's about dividing the discussion on this topic, which has been taking place for pages and pages in this thread.

Agreed, but I didn't know that this was the only place to get X1 info.

Don't get your feelings hurt because somebody pointed out that information you posted was already given in another thread. That's what people do on message boards.

 

[Magician]

IGN is now reporting that Microsoft has changed it's tune. No online check in and used games will be the same as they used to be.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06...game-policies?abthid=51c2196c4436666054000016

That was never a concern for me.

I still say fuck'em.

 

[Earthquake24]

http://kotaku.com/surprise-xbox-one-drm-reversal-requires-day-one-patch-514419715

Surprise Xbox One DRM Reversal Requires Day One Patch, Cuts Features

Stephen Totilo

You win some, you lose some. In changing its drastic Xbox One DRM policies today, Microsoft will actually be cutting some of the cooler features announced from the console. Everything's got a price, folks.

"There’s a few things we won’t be able to deliver as a result of this change," Marc Whitten, v.p. of Xbox Live told Kotaku, "One of the things we were very exicted about was 'wherever we go my games are always with me.' Now, of course, your physical games won’t show up that way. The content you bought digitally will. But you’ll have to bring your discs with you to have your games with you. Similarly, the sharing library [is something] we won’t be able to deliver at launch."

That means that two features are being cut, at least for now, from Microsoft's Xbox One plans. Microsoft's concept of having your full game library travel with you is gone.

Microsoft's offer to let you share Xbox One games with up to nine other "family" members is gone, too.
The play-your-games-from-anywhere feature had been tied to the idea that all Xbox One games must be installed to the system's 500GB harddrive in order to run. In theory, if you had registered the game online—a requirement that's also been dropped for disc games for the Xbox One—you'd then be able to play those games from any other console you were logged into. Now, with disc games not needing to be registered, you'd have to bring the disc with you to prove you had the rights to play the game on it.

Those sacrifices are the cost of the new DRM policy that, Whitten says, will give people an Xbox One experience with disc-based games that matches what they had on the Xbox 360. Games won't have to be registered online, and players won't have to connect to the Internet in a 24-hour period to play offline disc-based games. "The way to think about it is that it works the way it does with the Xbox 360," Whitten said. "You can give them, loan them, trade them, play them. They will work exactly as they do today."

It's clear that Microsoft was not planning to make these changes. Even though it's June and the console doesn't launch until November, Whitten said that Xbox One consumers will have to download a day-one patch to enable the Xbox One's offline mode. Presumably, without it, the console will still think it's living in the Xbox One era of E3 2013.

Microsoft also announced today a loosening of the Xbox One's regional restrictions. "You could buy a console in any country and use it any country," Whitten said. "You can use any disc in that console."

How did Microsoft get their initial plans for the Xbox One so wrong? "We believe a lot in this digital future," Whitten said. "We believe it builds an amazing experience—the ability to have a broader sharing platform and my content coming with me, [but] what we heard is people still wanted more choice… they wanted the familiarity of the physical disc."

Microsoft is obviously doing a big flip-flop here, but is putting a proud face on it. And a grateful one. "The last thing I would say is, 'Thank you for the feedback.'" He wasn't addressing me. He was addressing you. Your voices really were heard.

 

[SonGohan]

Agreed, but I didn't know that this was the only place to get X1 info.

It's not. But don't try to act like my initial reply to your thread was some vain attempt to gain recognition as being the first or receiving credit, which I had to explain to you two times now why it wasn't.

I mean, do you even have an opinion on this topic? Or is posting news all you care about?

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

It's not. But don't try to act like my initial reply to your thread was some vain attempt to gain recognition as being the first or receiving credit, which I had to explain to you two times now why it wasn't.

I mean, do you even have an opinion on this topic? Or is posting news all you care about?

If I didn't have an opinion on it, you think I'd be posting it? Really?

want my opinion, here it goes (the RD version):

MS fanboy. 110% from the console, to the mobile OS, to the desktop and enterprise SW solutions. I work in IT, have sold MS products in the past, and deal with all their wonderful software, from the awesome to the downright shitty.

So naturally I see the features (and I'm saying features genuinely) that the X1 was bringing to the table as a near future proof console as a +... Until the backlash came. I kept quiet, especially after seeing all the garbage it was getting here. I honestly felt disappointed by the response from the public, but undeterred, preordered one anyway. The 10 member family to share games, being able to really play ANYWHERE, and kinect voice controller really appealed to me.

Because of the announcement, two of the cherries on top of being able to play cutting edge games (or rather, the futuristic WAYS to play games) have been taken away. I'm still getting one, but it was a pretty big blow to me.

There are many more that I can list but, yes. I do have opinions, ones I'm very passionate about, but have kept them to myself.

 

[SonGohan]

Was that so hard?

 

[MilkManX]

Well now this console war is back on track. People now have a tough choice if you are only buying a single machine.

 

[Moon Jump]

Edit..sorry this link was already posted. My mistake!

http://kotaku.com/surprise-xbox-one-drm-reversal-requires-day-one-patch-514419715

Now they scrapped the whole 10 people in your "family" can share games in your library. Which was one of the consoles best features.

Still even though they did a total 180 on the DRM and used games, 500 dollars is still too rich for my blood, because I still need to go out and get a game or two and new controllers since my joysticks and stuff won't work on the Xbone. I also do not want the thing packed in with the fucking camera. Even if it only dropped the price of the console four dollars I'd still pick a package without the camera.

 

[IcBlUsCrN]

Well now this console war is back on track. People now have a tough choice if you are only buying a single machine.

Im going with ill believe it when i see it , thats on either console. about as much flip-flopping as a political race. When they go into the public's hands then ill decide.

 

[Earthquake24]

Edit..sorry this link was already posted. My mistake!

http://kotaku.com/surprise-xbox-one-drm-reversal-requires-day-one-patch-514419715

Now they scrapped the whole 10 people in your "family" can share games in your library. Which was one of the consoles best features.

Still even though they did a total 180 on the DRM and used games, 500 dollars is still too rich for my blood, because I still need to go out and get a game or two and new controllers since my joysticks and stuff won't work on the Xbone. I also do not want the thing packed in with the fucking camera. Even if it only dropped the price of the console four dollars I'd still pick a package without the camera.

Maybe they do a reverse on that too, decide that they will release a package without the Kinect for $100 less. There was a MS guy saying closer to launch "there will be more news from feedback we've heard".

 

[Earthquake24]

Here's a little something for those on the other side of the coin, more supportive of the digital route MS wanted and/or who didn't have an issue with DRM, thoughts welcomed:

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

The Xbox One Just Got Way Worse, And It's Our Fault

Kyle Wagner 6/19/13 5:53pm

Microsoft just announced that its much-maligned DRM policies won't look at all like they originally had originally been described.

They're going to more relaxed, sort of like the PS3's. Good news, you say? No. Bad news. The Xbox One just got worse.

But what? Isn't all DRM bad and anti-consumer? No. Often it is, sure. If applied in the ways that gaming culture has been anxious about for the past few weeks, it would be disastrous. But that's not what was really at stake.

This was:
These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.

That SUCKS.

The Vision

Here was the simple vision of the Xbox One, selling and reselling games:

Every game you bought, physical or digital, would be tied to your account. This would eliminate current-gen problems like buying a disc, and then being unable to store it or download it from the cloud.

Because every single game, physical or digital, would be tied to an account, publishers could create a hub to sell and resell the games digitally. Let's refer to these as "licenses" from here, even though it's a loaded term.

Because reselling games would now work through a hub, publishers could make money on resold games.

Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others' rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.

You also would have started getting a better return on your "used" games—because a license does not have to be resold at a diminished rate.
How do you know that this would have been the case? Because that's exactly what happens on Steam. But wait!, you shout. Steam is CHEAP cheap, and it has crazy sales. We love Steam! Micro$oft is nothing like that. Well, no, it isn't now, but Steam was once $team, too. It was not always popular, and its licensing model was once heavily maligned. Given time, though, it's now the only way almost every PC gamer wants to play games.

Sharing games would have worked either by activating your Live account on someone else's Xbox One, or by including them in your 10-person share plan, which would not have been limited to "family.". Details on that had been scarse, but even the strictest limitations (one other person playing any of the shared games from your account) would have been a HUGE improvement over the none that we have now. We don't get that now.

The 24-hour check-in would have been necessary for the X1's store, which it is not for Steam, because the physical product (game discs) would still be available. This check-in, literally bytes of data exchanged, would confirm that the games installed were not gaming the system in a convoluted install-here-and-then-go-offline-and-I'll-go-home-and-check-in-and-go-offline-too-and-we'll-both-use-the-game methods.

You would also, as it happens, have been able to share and resell your digitally purchased games. That's a REALLY BIG DEAL. We won't be able to do that now, though. We still have to use the disc for games we buy physically. This is the loss of some of the most future-facing features of the system, things that changed and challenged the traditional limitations of console gaming. We are literally standing in stasis, refusing to move forward, at the behest of those who are loudest and not ready for the future.

The DRM Boogey Man Is So Last Decade

More than anything, the outcry over the Xbox One was a reaction to buzzwords that are easy to distance ourselves from. "Censorship," "retcon," "person who disagrees with Joss Whedon." DRM is right there with any of those for Microsoft's core gaming audience.

The real fear behind DRM on games is the idea that at some point in the future, you'll be told that you are no longer allowed to use the content you'e paid for. It's that you're "allowed" to use anything at all, instead of outright "owning" it. And in the past, shitty DRM has absolutely worked like that. Walmart MP3s and the like have taken their servers offline, stranding file formats and leaving them to die, forgotten.

That is not how DRM, by and large, works today. There is very little risk of any particular format dying off. The dangers, as such, lie in a dropoff of support, or at worst, confiscation. That for whatever reason, Microsoft would tell us to screw ourselves and stop supporting Xbox One games, or kick you, specifically, out.
Fair enough. But compare that to the benefits of DRM. It helps build an ecosystem that is easy and convenient and, most of all, affordable enough to draw customers. That's what Apple did with iTunes and music, and it's what Amazon did with books. The content was just too easy to get and too cheap to bother with pirating it. We could have had that with the Xbox One and games.

Here's a video game example of effective DRM in practice: World of Warcraft, more or less the most popular game of the past decade. WoW, a Massively Multiplayer RPG by Blizzard, is played entirely online—always online, even. Your account is not your property, Blizzard can ban it, or remove items from it at its pleasure. Everything is within its right.

And yet, all Blizzard does is run customer support to users who have been hacked (oh, so many are hacked) or who accidentally deleted something or any number of other problems for their accounts. They were even years ahead of the two-factor authentication push, basically giving away authenticators at a loss, with in-game bonuses, just to keep customers from being hacked. Because Blizzard knows that its whole job is keeping its customers coming back for more. And it works. And no one complains.

Our Capacity

Today's news proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the internet has a voice. You're heard, and you can effect change in the things that you care about deeply. It's oddly fitting that the news comes as fan-saved Futurama gets ready to go off the air again. But today also proves how widely that nerd-influence can swing an entire generation of hardware, based solely on the whims of internet jokes based on information that isn't even accurate, and tinfoil fears about worst-case scenarios.

Cheaper games. Easier sharing. The end of discs. The Xbox One would have been just fine despite the chorus of haters, would have been a better system for ignoring them. Microsoft losing its nerve on this isn't just disappointing for the features we lose. It's unfortunate because it shows just how heavy an anchor we can be.

 

[El Maricon Loco]

My thoughts are Kyle Wagner is a douche.

 

[Maury V.]

Y'know, I miss a time when games were fun to play and didn't have to go through all of this mess just to be enjoyable. Gamers allowed stuff like this to happen.

 

[bokmeow]

Kyle Wagner believes in the market unicorn. He also needs to get his caps lock key fixed up, pronto.

 

[Lagduf]

What was the rationale for the once-a-day check in?

Was it ultimately an anti-piracy measure?

 

[T.A.P.]

My thoughts are Kyle Wagner is a douche.

Here here!

 

[bokmeow]

What was the rationale for the once-a-day check in?

Was it ultimately an anti-piracy measure?

I think that's the gist of the article. Someone with weak will wishes to fall for this Jedi mind trick, as evidenced by this article comment:

charlitos: "I just dont get it. Is there a way we can start a petition online to get the DRM back? All the sharing options were beyond what you could ever dream of with Playstation. This is BS, i dont want to suffer the consequences thanks to a bunch of whiners online. They cant do this Ugh this is so frustrating."

LOL

 

[Lagduf]

A lot of the technology MS is talking about w/ regard to the cloud based gaming/access, etc sounds awesome.

But regarding DRM - consumers need to have better, and more complete, control over their content. If you choose to buy digitally then you need to be able to resell the game. If we're buying nothing more than licenses to play the game then I need to be able to transfer that license with little more than the click of a mouse (or controller) to another user. If I buy a disc, I need to be able to sell that disc and another user be able to play that game without me having to transfer a license.

Can you transfer ownership of content you've purchased on a service like itunes?

I'm pretty sure you can't on Steam. I'd like to see that changed.

 

[68k]

Amazing what voting with your dollars will do.

 

[bokmeow]

A lot of the technology MS is talking about w/ regard to the cloud based gaming/access, etc sounds awesome.

But regarding DRM - consumers need to have better, and more complete, control over their content. If you choose to buy digitally then you need to be able to resell the game. If we're buying nothing more than licenses to play the game then I need to be able to transfer that license with little more than the click of a mouse (or controller) to another user. If I buy a disc, I need to be able to sell that disc and another user be able to play that game without me having to transfer a license.

Can you transfer ownership of content you've purchased on a service like itunes?

I'm pretty sure you can't on Steam. I'd like to see that changed.

Stuff you buy on iTunes can be loaded onto any iOS capable device, as long as you logged into your account when connecting the device. The nightmare scenario of losing your stuff because someone else's library was written over yours doesn't happen when you set it for manual transfer. It was never a problem — once you bought an App or a music track, you owned it. I suppose one might want the ability to sell the purchased music or App, but it does seem awfully mental to sell it for a dime when you bought it only for $0.99. Apple or publishers had never asked for a cut yet.

 

[Lagduf]

I didn't pay a dime for a video game - I paid upwards of $60 and frankly a lot of games aren't worth that much. I'm not a collector and most games are a passing form of entertainment. They aren't works of art. They often don't have much longevity. Sometimes they do, and many games with lasting power come out every year, but not most of them, not even 10% of them.

I need to be able to transfer my licenses.

Either that or lower the prices absurdly like on Steam.

 

[Earthquake24]

The Family Share Plan was intriguing when introduced but it still made me raise an eyebrow. The whole 10-game share plan was kind of ass-backwards to begin with. It might be gone now but I'm not sure why it existed to begin with.

Publishers liked Microsoft's DRM plans, am I right?
The whole point was to curb used games sales and control that aspect of the market, right?

The logic was that with this DRM, you restricted the way people could sell games to each other on the second-hand market, which apparently publishers thought made them lose significant sales. Aren't you losing 10 significant sales if you let any 10 people on XBL play an accessible online-copy from a friend?

The even more ironic part is that single-player games were at the highest risk of being traded-in or sold via second-hand market, because they had limited, short-term content that could be finished and done with. Yet, this Family Share Plan made it easiest to share single-player games because once you're done with it, Jimmy can play it, then Susan, then Billy, etc. until everyone on your 10 game list is finished with it. I'm sure 10 people with different schedules could manage to somehow complete it between them all within a short time frame.

So first you want DRM to curb used game sales, then you implement a feature that discourages a group of 10 people from each buying their own copies of games? I doubt a used game would even see 10 owners, but this feature would have effectively eliminated 10 potential future new games purchasers in total.

Am I missing something here? This seemed like for publishers it would be a step forward with DRM and a step backward with family share. Why was it implemented? Just as a way to ease the blow from the DRM policies to the consumer?

It's kind of funny, there's this pic floating around that has people thinking Valve is following MS's lead to allow game borrowing with Steam and now MS removes the feature:

From the latest Steam Beta update:

Update to Steam Beta. Steam > Settings > Beta Participation
Go to you Steam/Public/steamui_english to verify

"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title" "Shared game library"
"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText" "Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it's time to quit."
"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText" "This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library."

 

[genjiglove]

I don't think they'll spring DRM on us later. Imagine the uproar if thousands of people who purchased this thing were suddenly not able to play it.

 

[Lagduf]

The DRM thing appeared to me to really be a result of MS trying to push digital distribution on us.

Remember when you buy an Xbox One game in a store all you're getting is a disc with data on it that you install to your harddrive.

 

[DangerousK]

Like Gran Turismo 6 was going to be any better. I'll take Forza 5 instead and be happy.

You speak as if Gran Turismo 6 has already been released.

Do you know something about the game and how it compares to GT5?

I suspect GT6 will be the equivalent to GT4 and GT2. GT5 was the equivalent of GT3 and GT1.

Even numbered Gran Turismo games are much better.