Microsoft Tries to Clear Up Xbox One's New Policies

@andorski: amen to that.

Goddamn the amount of people totally fine with getting fucked by corporations anti-consumer polices is depressing. This whole thing is unacceptable. I really think Microsoft is gonna crash and burn.

I am accustomed to Steam. This doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. Used games are worse than piracy IMO.

EDIT: I hope GameStop dies.

@plugger603: Publishers don't make games. Quite the opposite actually. They impose restrictions and reign tyranny upon developers who do all the actual work. All they want is money, and clearly this machine is made to appease them.

Awful lot of "third party" developer talk in there, but no mention of "first party," i.e., Microsoft. Sounds to me like no used Halo 5.

And this opt out stuff isn't as encouraging as it seems. If you shut off the creepy Kinect listening features, you probably have to deactivate the Kinect features you would want to use. And I like how Microsoft says the Kinect isn't "listening" all the time. "Watching" is probably a different story.

Please don't screw up the PS4, Sony.

fuck that shit

I bet if sony follows in suit of something like this, people will consider next-gen the "rapture" of videogames.

Never has this been so accurate.

@small_law: They said that MS Studios games can be resold and traded in.

• In our role as a game publisher, Microsoft Studios will enable you to give your games to friends or trade in your Xbox One games at participating retailers. Third party publishers may opt in or out of supporting game resale and may set up business terms or transfer fees with retailers. Microsoft does not receive any compensation as part of this. In addition, third party publishers can enable you to give games to friends. Loaning or renting games won’t be available at launch, but we are exploring the possibilities with our partners.

Don't see how you sound like a jerk since you've seen the requirements and deem them acceptable for yourself.

Most of this is fine by me, but the handshake every twenty-four hours and the sudden and utter inability to borrow friends' games put me off of it completely.

I'll wait to see what Sony has to say, but considering the atrocious controller design (again!) it looks as though I'll be saving my $400 to combine it with another $600...

I feel more confused now than I did post-reveal...

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Sony isn't going to follow through on similar policies. Wishful thinking, I know. But is a man not entitled to his dreams?!

Haha, do you really think this will do anything to stop Piracy?

Actually, i'm going pirate from day one exactly because of this shit!!!

Like every time they do DRM on PC, the guys who actually buy the games legit, are the ones affected by DRM, whille pirates enjoy their free games...

And it's gonna be the same here, whille legit consumers get the shaft, the pirates will be enjoying the Xbox One like it was meant to be...

So fucking sad...

Money. Money, Money.

Money is the reason for these requirements. Lets stop with the outrage over something a big publicly traded company does. It is not surprising MS is trying to maxamize their profits.

If you truly disagree with MS, do not buy it. Tell your friends not to buy. Buy a PS4. Cancel your gold subscription. Sell your 360. Sadly money is the only thing these company care about so this is the new era of gaming unless the money stops flowing.

I think I'll still get one anyway.

Well let's say a used game goes through 3 hands of people in it's lifetime on a $60 game, that is still $20 off each owner of that game. Now when Skyrim get downloaded over 1 million times that is 0 dollars to the developers. Just don't sell to Gamestop they give you pennies you will atleast get half your money back when selling online on ebay.

A lot of the negative press and speculation that Microsoft faced after their press conference could've been avoided had they put this information out there at the same time.

Not that these answers are all that clear, but it sure would've helped them in that PR clusterfuck last month.

Well I guess I'll just stick to PC this go-round.

@krakn3dfx said:

Never has this been so accurate.

Oh man, that's amazing.

I can't believe someone actually believes this. It is literally unfathomable to me.

Have you guys been following this Guardian story about Microsoft being one of the first companies (starting in 2007) to start handing private data/skype calls/etc over to the NSA? Imagine the Federal Governments power when they can actually watch you via Kinect. Sure they say they'll walk you thru privacy policies during Kinect setup, but from this leaked info - it really sounds like they let the government spy no matter what privacy settings you enable. No doubt this is why Patrick's interviews got cancelled last minute!

people in this forum are putting microsoft in the same bag as sony, i dont think sony will follow the same policies if they want to get the old user base back. and some of you are saying that this is publishers pressure, let me tell you there is no pressure when you have the best selling console, so thats it.

Still just seems way way more complicated than it should be. None of it actually sounds like something to be excited about. It's like they're trying to sugar-coat a bunch of extra restrictions they didn't have before. No thank you. Also, if I will be unable to use the system after chuckin the Kinect in the trash where it belongs, I will not be buying that system. Which kinda sucks, since I've owned every console since the NES, Jaguar excluded. The 360 was my favorite console, and it's depressing how the One is turning out. It's like Microsoft is pulling out every trick it knows to ruin what it once had.

Really hope PS4 turns out well, otherwise it'll be a pure PC generation for me.

This sounds like some sort of Orwellian contract. Thanks for giving me permission to give a game away, Microsoft! Thanks for allowing me to play a game for 24 hours with no internet connection, too! Such glorious privileges we receive at the hands of Big Brother.

If only there was a way to keep track of all the people saying "FUCK THIS I AIN'T BUYING IT!" so we can chuckle briefly when they buy it eventually anyway...

As somebody who didn't particularly like any of the XBoxes, solely because it's pretty dead in my country, this doesn't sound that bad really. Probably because I'd never buy used and generally prefer digital downloads if available, and always have access to internet. I do find it a bit surprising how many people apparently go for more than 24 hours w/o an internet connection.

Likely I'm still not going to be buying one, especially as I am skeptical that the Kinect would work in a place the size of my apartment, even if they say it works in smaller rooms now. Still, not all doom and gloom.

They should have come out with this way sooner though, as now they still have to do something to earn back all the goodwill they burned up front.

@krakn3dfx said:

Never has this been so accurate.

hahahaha amazing

WOW THANKS MICROSOFT FOR GIVING ME THE PRIVILEGE OF GIVING AND LOANING OUT THE STUFF THAT I BUY WITH MY OWN MONEY HOW UTTERLY FUCKING MAGNANIMOUS OF YOU

Where the hell is my clarification on thousands of people's $300 headsets suddenly being worthless due to nefarious-as-fuck deal with Turtle Beach?

The only thing I'm going to buy is maybe an Xbox One controller, so I can hook it up to my PC. Since it's already more powerful than this thing, and there's really nothing separating PCs from consoles anymore.

Publishers can if they want, let you trade in your games. You cannot loan games to a friend only gift it. As someone who shares a game library with my best friend because neither of us can afford to buy all games this is not good news =(

I am fully prepared for Sony to have similar things but I really hope its much more lenient. If these restrictions were across the board for both systems that would be clear grounds for collusion. No matter what, if its Sony/Microsoft working together or multiple publishers leaning on the console manufactures to enact these rules its all working together to control the market which is super illegal. Microsoft knows how much time and money can be wasted by fighting with the FTC.

The advantages are twofold. First, while not impossible, these policies are meant to engender or otherwise promote a greater ratio of unique copies to unique owners in the marketplace. Second, by implementing them on a console, they are already operating in an environment with less piracy. So, less used game revenue and less expectation/success in pirating games. The entire system is designed to stop or otherwise plug exploits where people collude to suck the most out of their games by trading them around.

Consoles are becoming more like PC's and PC's are becoming more like consoles as has been said for a few years now. Let the awkward games begin.

Based on what I saw in this video, everything seemed clear to me by the end. Basically, you have to more or less be connected all the time, but if you have no connection to the internet, then that Xbox becomes a brick until it connects again after 24 hours being offline. If my friend's Xbox is disconnected, then I have 1 hour to play my games on his box offline or just play his games (although this is the one part not specified. I'm assuming that I can play their games 24 hours offline). This isn't much of an issue on PC (Steam gives 30 days before requiring an online connection) because physical disc stuff is meaningless. For years, any retail game I bought functioned as a cd-key delivery mechanism for Steam, Origin, or whatever.

Here's the real catch as I see it. The market cannot or, based on what I've seen in the current digital distribution space, would not support a system like this that also does not operate under a very elastic price precedent. Long story short, PC games can get away with Steam and the like because pricing is incredibly elastic. If Microsoft wants to cinch up the ratio between unique players and copies, it's going to have hard time doing that without giving a price break in return. Otherwise, it's simply asking for more customers to pay full price if they want to play a game.

Now if people are willing to adapt to the family system, then it might offer enough in the meantime to see how their pricing adapts. The family system as explained here should work like this: 1 account owns a game --> 10 accounts have access to that 1 account's shared library --> one account at a time when connected to the internet can play one given game from the original account --> original account can play at the same time. Now here's the question that should make this work ideally: can any of those 10 act as full accounts and also own licenses to the same game? If so, then instead of 1 accounts allowing one other to play, it should allow 2 accounts to act as the sharer and 2 other accounts in that family to act as the sharee. Put another way, using Vinny's analogy, then if Vinny and his brother can play together, then if his little brother also has a copy, then their dad can act as his little brother's sharee. Instead of buying 4 copies of Battlefield, Vinny would only need to buy 2 and enable all 4 of his family to play at the same time.

Either way, if it works as it was described, then 10 people can play one game in a circle assuming it's able to be shared.

I don't think publishers really believe piracy is the big boogie man, its just a scapegoat. People who are going to pirate are going to pirate, you're not suddenly going to get them to pay for games. Gamestop, on the other hand, has been actively undermining publishers for years. Publishers have been putting up with it but this console cycle is the battleground for them attempting to kill that business model.

Also, $60 for the first copy and nothing for the sale of the next 2 is a $60 loss in the eyes of a publisher, not $20 per person.

I'm also of the opinion that if the physical market (namely Gamestop's used games racket) shrivels up, publishers will be more willing to price competitively on the consoles (similar to how Steam handles pricing). Hell, seeing how much the publishers are pushing the buttons here, I can't imagine a marketplace on PS4 or XBOXone that isn't modeled after Steam now that I think about it.

I have some friends who played Super Mario Brothers 3 when they were kids, and now they play it with THEIR kids, 25 years later. Does anyone believe for a second that MS will keep their XBL servers up for 25 years so you can keep replaying your favorite XBONE games?

@themanwithnoplan: I wholeheartedly agree with you. It is not unthinkable for someone to be without Internet for longer than a 24 hour period. For instance, when I move it took well over a week before my Internet was finally moved over as well. Sure, I could use my phone as a wifi hotspot, but considering the poor service here that is a dicey proposition. And I am certain that there are people who have even more trouble when it comes to Internet access.

While being able to stream in a game you own from the cloud if you go over a buddy's house or something is a neat feature (and likely bandwidth intensive), that is the only part of this that seems as such.
I want nothing to do with this. If the PS4 has the same policies and such, this will be a great opportunity for me to catch up on previous gen games (or to take up a new hobby... like stamp collecting).

pure fucking evil from MS side

you people that "are ok with this" really do not understand the policies and what will happen when access to servers are down due to high load, outage etc. Your internet connection is not all that might fail. And when MS shuts down the servers in 10-15 years you will have a worthless box with worthless games

@lively: Make that 99.99%. How did that COD boycott go? It's weird but I think many of these 'gamers' have a touch of asburgers. Go read GAF and you'd think MS is trampling the constitution. If you don't like it don't buy it. If enough feel that way then MS fails. This is nothing more than what the Steam Box will be.

Not really true at all, if there was no way of getting a pirated version of Skyrim it would of sold a lot more copies, it's just so easy to pirate on a PC. We are in the age of pirated games on a PC also get pirated game updates. All they had to do was have something cool for people that buy the game new, simlar to the online pass, you can install the game, get extra content from the game can play the multiplayer. Reward people for buying stuff new, don't punish people that do.

@oginam: Let's say the pirate can sell the games. One purchase many subsequent sales with no money going back to the producers. That's what publishers think of GameSpot.

Well that's that. Not getting an Xbox One. Ball is now in Sony's court.

@patontheback: I am hating myself right nowfor wanting to believe this seductive press release. These promises will repair a lot of Microsoft's self-inflicted wounds, but ultimately, words are wind. I'll upgrade from "not interested in buying" to "wait and see."

When I made these it was more out of laughing when The Peoples keep going back to the catch-all "anti-consumer" well. Even now that it's confirmed you can not only sell and trade your games but you can also share them with up to 10 other people without them even having to buy it - more freedom than currently exists in some ways, and it's still all about these magical rights that in reality never applied to my actual consumption of gaming since I first picked up a console controller in 1985. There's no way whatever 3rd parties do on XONE will be any different on PS4, the rest just seems to be fringe scenario what-if-worry-warting. Anyway I'll prolly be picking up both of these workhorses because videogames.

@ei8htbit: Pretty much my feelings - I don't understand why Sony gets a free pass for not actually declaring anything concrete yet regarding any of this. I really wonder what will happen to their positive wave they've got going with the angry internet when they come out and have to actually answer questions directly.

I don't know if it's giving them a free pass as much as waiting to know what their answers to the questions will be. The difference between Sony and Microsoft is that Sony didn't make fools of themselves during a major press event by spreading obvious misinformation on the comical scale of Microsoft. They at least had their heads together enough to say "We aren't ready to answer that question."

I have no major problems with this.

@ei8htbit: XBOX Live has been down for days at a time before. I remember getting Undertow for free as compensation. ( See Marketing section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertow_(video_game))

hhrrrhhgg... 24 hour checkin is not cool for internet outages and posterity.

I am ok losing $1 or $2 apps when I abandon a phone ecosystem, but games are more like books and movies that I would like to build into a library and live with. They are really taking the license logic way too far away from expectation.

Not that I play old games, but I like to tell myself that I might when I shell out $60+ for it.

So, I can kinda sale my disc, but only to retailers, what about "first sale doctrine"? which I know going to shit and is relatively meaningless for digital goods. And what is happening with the digital rights in the UK, how is that effected? And what happens when I can't connect in the allotted time do I lose the license until I reconnect or forever?

I don't pirate games, I have a PS3 and dozens of original games that I've spent my money on, and I love'em. But honestly, all this hastle and bureaucracy, just makes me want to wait till hackers figure out how to crack the XBONE, and I'll just pirate everything on it, because that is what they're incentivising with all this horse manure.