PS4 OR Xbox One
- Thread starter Kenney_The_Blue
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Kenney_The_Blue
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* update
Kenney_The_Blue said:
Microsoft To Reverse Xbox One Policies After Fan Revolt
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In a stunning reversal of the announced capabilities and restrictions of the Xbox One, Microsoft has just made the next generation console race much more interesting.
Confirming a report from Giant Bomb earlier today, Microsoft has announced today that they’ve listened to player feedback, and are lifting two of the most important restrictions of the console. Here they are, pulled straight from Microsoft’s blog. The link may be not working, but rest assured the post was live at one point.
An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.
In addition, they’ve done away with region locking, and it should be noted that these changes come with a price.
“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. ”
But what’s been shouted from the rooftops the past few weeks is that this is a price most customers are more than willing to pay.
This seems like the best of both worlds, and it’s more or less identical to what Sony has proposed for the PS4 on first glance. You can stick with disc based games to lend and share if you want, or you can build a digital library, understanding you can’t share it. And though the online check-in would have realistically affected a relatively small percentage of the player base, that group is surely celebrating right now. The same goes for those affected by region locking, which in truth is probably the bigger deal.
This whole sequence of events is, quite frankly, stunning. Microsoft was ultimately led to the right decision regarding these policies, but they had to be dragged kicking and screaming through the mud to get there. The past month has been nothing but a PR nightmare for them, with E3 possibly doing serious, lasting damage to the Xbox One. Even with these changes, it’s unclear what sort of trust and good faith they’ve lost along the way.
It’s hard to see this as anything but surrender from Microsoft to both outraged fans and Sony. Obviously Sony isn’t being mentioned at all in these new proclamations, but their shadow looms large here as these new policies mirror their own. I have to wonder how this affects any deals Microsoft had cut with publishers regarding used game policy, as there were surely many of those in place leading up to this change.
This was a necessary, direct response to public outcry, as even longtime loyalists were starting to swear off Microsoft as a result of these policies. And it wasn’t just rabid fanboys, the entire Xbox-loving military took offense to an internet requirement policy that seemed to say to them, “the Xbox One is not for you.” In truth, that’s how many people felt, those who liked lending discs, trading in old games for new ones, or having the ability to play completely offline. The Xbox One was not for them.
The question is, what happens now?
How forgiving will Xbox fans be with Microsoft here? To what degree does this pull them back on equal footing with Sony? There are still issues aplenty for the Xbox One, even with always-on and game lending/resale sorted out. There’s still the increasingly creepy Kinect, with its all-seeing and hearing eyes and ears that’s a mandatory part of the system. And most importantly, there’s still that $100 price difference from PS4′s $399 to their $499.
Before, the choice was incredibly obvious between consoles as the PS4 has way less restrictions and cost less to boot. Now, they essentially have the same capabilities, but one is $100 more. Between that fact and the goodwill Microsoft may have lost for good among customers, the PS4 is still in a pretty great position heading into November, even if the playing field has been leveled somewhat.
Still, it’s rather insane that the backlash to this was so great that it actually caused Microsoft to do a full 180 here. Perhaps it was mandatory with how much the Xbox One was getting slammed by the press and the public, but it’s still amazing they actually did it. Imagine how many headaches they could have saved by just having these policies from the get-go. This was Sony throwing a wrench in their works, plain and simple, and they were forced to respond. If the PS4 had simply fallen in line with Microsoft’s utopian vision of a new era of digital downloads and constant internet access, the resulting outcry would have surely been met with silence by both companies.
This console war just got even more interesting, and now it’s likely to be a much closer race in the early stages than before. This development obviously requires much more follow-up, and we’ll be checking in with Microsoft, publishers and fans for more angles to this breaking story.
kippaxwarrior
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Pride_In_Battle
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Definitely Xbox now after their change of heart. No point getting the PS just because it's more powerful, because the developers will just code it for the Xbox and port it over, just like current gen. They make little enough as it is due to piracy, no way they're going to develop two versions of the same game!
AntiUnited
Well-Known Member
Pride_In_Battle said:
Thats what the Ps zelots where saying about the ps3 being soo much more powerfull and yet games looked better on the 360 "THE CELL" and forza 5 is being clocked at 60fps and yet ps4 games are hardly getting 30 fps. nuff said really. and yes games will be made for the one then ported over to the ps4 ( Skyrim anyone?)
This is good read on why this u turn could be a bad move and after reading it I kind off agree...
The Xbox One Just Got Way Worse, And It's Our Fault
KYLE WAGNER
Yesterday 5:53pmg 274,515
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. Or, at the very least, it could have staved off price increases.
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 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 affect 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.
The Xbox One Just Got Way Worse, And It's Our Fault
KYLE WAGNER
Yesterday 5:53pmg 274,515
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. Or, at the very least, it could have staved off price increases.
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 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 affect 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.
GStar
Well-Known Member
I don't understand why anyone would want to buy a PS4, certainly not for the first 12-24 months of its release. It's not 'next gen' in anyway.
I haven't read the article update, but if its basically saying "Gamers are immature idiots who can't see past their own noses" then i'd agree.
The XB1 concept was potentially a long term road to cheaper games, unlimited server power, better integration. It had a few areas that people disagreed with, unfortunately it doesn't seem there's any middle ground.
I haven't read the article update, but if its basically saying "Gamers are immature idiots who can't see past their own noses" then i'd agree.
The XB1 concept was potentially a long term road to cheaper games, unlimited server power, better integration. It had a few areas that people disagreed with, unfortunately it doesn't seem there's any middle ground.