Changing discs is so last generation.

Hmmm so used games kill the industry huh? Not enormous budgets and unrealistic sales expectations?

Man the horror of having to get up and actually change discs when you want to play a different game!

So...you're lamenting the fact that something wasn't taken away from the consumer? The reason Steam is successful isn't because they block used game sales, it's because they have proper game sales.

If Microsoft wants to join the digital future, they need to price the games competitively like Steam does. It really has nothing to do with allowing used game sales or not. If people can buy a relatively new game from Xbox Live for 5-10 bucks they will drop discs like a bad habit.

#dealwithit

I thought we were beyond consumers blaming other consumers for "ruining" the Xbox One. Guess I was wrong.

I'm curious about something.

How old are the supporters of Xbone's original DRM and how old are the people against it? I can't shake the feeling that DRM/used games are eeeevviiiiiil supporters have never lived without Internet. It's something that has always existed to them. Couple that with the general apathy toward the erosion of consumer rights and I'm thinking there's a pattern here.

Assuming a 40 gigabyte game, 9 hours on a full speed 10mbps connection, 53 minutes on a 100mbps connection, 5 minutes if there's a steady gigabit connection and the console can handle that rate of download and writing to disc. A helluva "shit bro I forgot the disc".

But what an interesting world it would have been to live in if MS had not done a single 180. Pros and cons. I would still have been alright with a short period of games being locked to systems (weeks to 2-3 months), as long as we'd received some of those gains from losses to rentals (huge) and used sales (gigantic) back from the publishers. (Which we would not have. BF4 would still have been a broken little pile of a game, also see NBA Live 14. Fucking industry.)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/used-games

This issue of used games is more complex than the black/white people make it out to be, check out that video for a more in-depth look.

Digital is the future, but I'm not convinced Microsoft wanted to steer it along the right path. Also, while I'm not one of them, some people don't like steam for it's DRM, and I can understand those people wanting options, particularly the option of physical media.

It must be worse than I thought if that would have been the best feature.

@tesla said:

Instead, we get $60 titles filled to the brim with microtransactions. Microsoft is pushing for more expensive, not less.

I don't think the reason people love Steam is because they don't have to change discs. I highly doubt Microsoft would have had that open marketplace with crazy sales like Steam has. With Microsoft putting everything they possibly can behind their paywall and putting microtransactions in every game, they don't exactly deserve the benefit of the doubt.

If anything, Sony is the one I'd trust more with that considering the great stuff they've done with PS+ and also their recent partnership with Amazon that's going to allow for Amazon to sell games for PSN. Sony basically gave up their closed marketplace where everything is $60 and are now allowing competition.

The bottom line is that there is an expectation that goes along with releasing games on discs. If you don't want to be forced to switch discs all the time, just buy all the games digital from here on out. However, don't blame others for expecting some form of consumers rights in regards to physical purchases just because the negative effects of the policies weren't a problem for you personally.

I really hope you're not implying that if the DRM policies were still in place then the microtransactions wouldn't be there, because that is speculation with no basis in fact.

Sheesh, some of you guys sound like this hit a sore spot. It was just an opinion and some speculation!

I did mention that comment was somewhat sarcastic. And this whole generation is about convenience: voice commands, gestures, tablets. You think it isn't lazy that people are complaining that the Xbox voice commands for TV don't work well? The TV already has a remote! You don't have to get up to change the TV channel! Yet, it's a feature of the new Xbox.

Who knows, if Microsoft had more control over game sales they might have begun implementing better sales anyway? Who says they aren't already on the way to doing that?

I'm not giving you my exact age, but around 20. Also I'm a software developer, so I think a lot about the whole software licence/what do you own/piracy stuff, if that helps give more context to my opinions.

While this is true, I could still take the disc to my friend's house. It's a better alternative to be able to download the game and play without the disc, rather than not having that option at all. And I agree, it's really interesting to speculate what it would have been like! That's why I wrote this. I don't write blogs like, ever.

I don't know, the Xbox hasn't got that much else going for it! (Yes, the title was a little sensationalist.)

My favorite part about buying a new game is going to my mom and pop style game shop and talking to people.

Sometimes I go in for a AAA and leave with a used gem from the past.

I was all for a digital download world until I got burned by DRM over and over.

A few of the DL only games I have on my Xbox 360 constantly become corrupt and I am forced to restart them. No idea why. I also can't play them if I'm not logged online for some reason.

The biggest and most obvious reason. I don't trust Microsoft with that much control over my paid content, IMO everything they have done has been selfish and at the expense of their community.

it was too beautiful for this world

Ugh Digital Only sounds awful. I want to go buy a game and instantly play it, not wait half the day for a 50 gig download, thanks. Call me in ten years when the network infrastructure can actually handle it - oh wait, it won't, because those games will just be 5000 gigs or whatever.

I think your "I could just download this game at my friend's house to save all this time" scenario falls apart when you realize the games are like 30-50 GB. Even if I was at a friend's house with great internet, it'd still be faster to go home and get my disc. Unless he lives, like, three counties over.

I wish I had a store like that I could go to. GAME stores in the UK are lifeless and the staff aren't necessarily that interested in games.

I don't know, I'm pretty sure if you told people they had to change discs every time they switch game in Steam they'd be pretty bummed out. I never claimed it was the sole reason people like Steam, but it has made PC gaming a lot easier, and owning a huge Steam library actually manageable.

As for not trusting Microsoft, sure. But I did say this was an optimistic interpretation of the future Microsoft had in mind.

It's is also very important to note, that unlike Sony which has opened it's marketplace up to Amazon. Microsoft would hold a monopoly on all game transactions on it's platform. This should sound familiar because Microsoft is infamous for this. Is that really the world you want to live in?

This is true. It depends wildly on your friend's internet, and the distance between your houses. But an option is better than no options, right? Then again, I guess you could say the same for used sales.

I bought an XONE and have bought two full-priced digital games so far. Its pretty darn convenient to post this and then switch back to gaming.

@chavtheworld: What if your friend doesn't have the drive space for another 50GB download? What, specifically, makes any download scenario more convenient than bringing your own copy over?

@chavtheworld: You did say 50% sarcastic which means there is some truth there. I just don't like when the consumer is blamed for things like a company's inability to budget and plan accordingly. For you (and honestly me too) I was fine with the DRM things but for many others they weren't.

I agree 100%. However I don't think that Microsoft's original vision need be left behind in their new DRM structure. Here's how I imagine it could be accomplished so everyone wins.

Perhaps, instead of requiring a disc be in the console despite having all its contents loaded on an HDD, you could activate a game's ownership rights on your account temporarily.

Each game would have a unique "CD-key" attached to it much like on the PC which you can choose to input (hopefully via a QR code). If you input the code it will lock down that disc to your account specifically so you no longer need to place it in your console (the same as if you downloaded it).

Then if you want to resell/trade/trade-in this game you select the option from the start menu to generate a new code. This game would now unplayable on your system without the disc (as it would be currently) and you are sent an email with a new slip you can print out and place back in the game box. The point of resale could then scan the code to make sure it is unused before accepting the sale.

@chavtheworld: This isn't wholly relevant to your point, but around my neck of the woods the internet is pretty poor in general. Downloading, like, 2GB is an overnight affair for me, so the concept of a digital future where we're downloading xbone/ps4 games willy-nilly seems completely crazy -- though I understand I'm something of an edge case.

You posted from the Xbox itself? Hows' IE?

In that scenario I was saying in case you forgot the disc, not as a replacement. To be honest, the disc installs seem pretty damn slow as well anyway, so the difference is probably not all that different. Although, I haven't seen comparisons.

Aye, that comes from me writing software myself. The whole concept of "used" software is mad. Software doesn't degrade, so comparing it to used physical products is insane. Anyway, that's an entirely different discussion not for here. I understand some people get their whole gaming experience from used games, but it makes me sad to know all of that money is going to shitty establishments like GAME/GameStop and is not helping fund new games at all.

This this this this this a thousand times this! As I was writing this I considered this concept exactly, it would be glorious. I hadn't even considered it generating new codes when you go to trade in - it could be more black and white, if you use the code, you can't trade in - but that is super clean. There are ways to have the best of both worlds!

Yep. Blame gamers for a gigantic company limiting usability by blatantly pandering to publishers, and then fucking up by taking it all back. Great.

I have a bandwidth cap. One next gen game downloaded off the internets and it's halfway gone for the whole month. Yeah, no thanks.I'm okay with discs.

This is dumb, we lost nothing really, go all digital, it is what I am doing, and nothing is stopping you from doing it as well.

Oh no, I know entirely where you are coming from. I used to get like <100kb/s down speeds. The downloading at a friend house was just an example of where this could become useful, say you forgot a disc. Of course still installing from a disc in the first place is the ideal option, and then you could just put the disc away and be able to swap between all your games with the Xbox multitasking.

@superkenon: Well then you would have continued to buy games on disc with the benefit of never having to switch them unless you needed to reinstall an old deleted game.

There really were no disadvantages to Microsoft's original plan unless you had NO internet at all. I'm 26 by the way and have been gaming my whole life. I was really looking forward to them breaking down the barrier between "disc-version" and "digital-version" like PC has had for many, many years now. It was very pro-consumer as I could get the same version of the game from Amazon on disc or directly from Microsoft, whoever had the better deal.

I hate when we don't screw over the consumer more too

I like how everyone on the internet believes enormous budgets are an easy thing to lower. You literally have no clue what your talking about and how hard it is to manage budgets.

I'm a facilities engineer and have manage to multiple contracts yearly, and it is the hardest part of my job. Things come up, man power/equipment changes, and deadlines aren't met, these all cause projects to go over budget and can't be accounted for. Also, games now have to have large budgets to look good alone. Not everyone wants to play 2-D pixel plat formers forever, we want large Transformers/Avengers type blockbuster games. Now with developers not being able to count on getting money on every sold copy due to Used games it's eventually going to lead to bad things in the industry. Online Passes, more expensive retail prices, more microtransaction/dlc game devs need to make their money back somehow and MS tried something new and everyone shit on them for it. I believe last console generation was the last we see any large budget games taking risks because they know people will buy it but then just sell it back when they are done. Look how bland the last couples years were for new IP's yeah we had a couple but they were pretty much copies of successful franchises.

Anyone who has ever said "All Digital Future" with a serious tone is a funny person

Xbox, Go DRM.

Used movies and used music never seemed to have killed their respective industries so that argument doesnt make sense to me. Unrealistic budgets/sales expectations are way more harmfull i think. I agree some good might have came from this, but i also see plenty of downsides. If digital only is the way to go in the future then the videogame industry as a whole needs to do some growing up. I just dont think we're ready for it. Networks are not stable enough yet. And monetization of certain types software is still in its experimental stages. And far from perfect in my opinion.

But more then anything, i do not trust a Microsoft or a Sony or a Nintendo to keep my library of software intact. I cant play any of my digital games bought on 360/PS3 on the Xbone/PS4. And only poorly on WII-U. And even then, not all of my games. Something Steam can do right now. But i am not a PC gamer ;-)

Discs everytime all the time. I like to have the option of selling something I've previously bought. Plus I buy used games very regularly simply because they are cheaper. The only ones that get my money at full price are the ones I really can't live without.

This is a fair point, although how long until Steam has games on it that are so old that newer PCs just aren't compatible? GOG has been doing good work making really old games run under Windows 7 and so on, but one day that has to fall apart right?

@chavtheworld: Yeah thats probably true, but the PC is an open platform so the internet will find a way there i think. As it has in the past with the transfer from 95/98 to XP and then to Vista/7. And the people at GOG are just awesome too! I really like what they do to/for old games :-)

I stopped considering going all digital with PS4 right around the time I realized that 40gb installs would be the norm this generation. Fuck Duct. If Im going to constantly have to play the data management game then I want to install off of a disc. Steam works for me because most games off of steam are small. My 1TB HDD is holding around 145 games right now along with other media and still has 350Gb left. With the file sizes exploding all of a sudden even 1Tb of space seems small.

Now? I think you meant... always. Used games aren't any more prevalent that they were 13 years ago when gamestop was founded, and even in the decades before that. In fact, I think it's safe to assume that used games have less of an impact now than back say 20 years ago when games were occasionally even more expensive than they are today, and most of the audience was kids with little or no income so there was a much larger incentive to trade a game, rather than keep it and buy a new one.

You can't tell someone, "You literally have no clue what your talking about", and then just go on to make broad assumptions.

And please, realize that when you're blaming consumers for forcing companies to implement sketchy restrictions(online passes, microtransactions), you're really just excusing those companies for shitting on all of us. I love huge blockbuster games too, but if a company can't make one without their game trying to pry extra money out of me, they fucked up.

I'd say, never, actually. The beauty of a PC is that you'll always have that core data to work with (as opposed to on a console that isn't backwards compatible so there's absolutely nothing you can do) And as long as you have that game data, it's likely that there are fans out there who are creating patches, cracks, and whatever to allow old games to still run.

For example, I bought Freedom Force on Steam. Unfortunately, it just wouldn't run at all on my OS. Until... I found a patch that some random people had made, and it worked perfectly. That scenario is impossible on a console. But it brings up a very real fear, too.

In an all digital console world, there will come that time when those old games aren't supported any more. But that also means all of your games that were only downloads may not be available. Since you have no physical copy, and the digital one is inaccessible, you'd suddenly never be able to play those games that you paid for and wanted to keep.

Don't blame "us" for MS's shitty policy stuff, especially when there are plenty of pros to having a console that uses downloads and disks.

@chavtheworld: IE is nice and snappy. Its zoomed in by like 2% so you can't see part of the avar. Quoting is a little impossible. And I love pinning websites to the homescreen.

My problem with your argument is we don't have any proof Microsoft was going to bring a steam model to consoles. Secondly if you look at how so many micro-transactions are showing up in Xbox one games at launch it worries me more. Sure there are many cool factors in having a game download only but the online stores are no where near where steam is now. I don't think we should be forced to wait until the online market on consoles get better. Steam paved the way so other models should be hitting the ground running and being awesome on day one.

Also i don't see the perks outweighing buying disc game on clearance at retail or having the option to trade or lend to a friend. It just seems weird to me that we only get the perk of convenience. where is day one digital on all platforms?, Where is pre-loading before release?, where are new ideas like gifting a friend a game you bought at the store for a few hours to play?

Point being that i don't see the good for the gamer ideas flowing from the all digital movement. All i see is it will help the companies and they can keep prices high if they want to. This also does not cover the problem of anyone who has a crappy internet connection or low caps on internet.

I'll never understand this whole, DL the game at friends house. Is this really a feature people want? When was the last time you went to a friends house to play games and they didn't have the game you wanted to play. Never, because It's a non issue in a real world senario.

That's awesome. Does GiantBomb think you are in a mobile browser? It does that when I use my Surface, and only shows Reply not Quote. Also mousing over to make the hover buttons appear is a pain.

True, as I said, it was an optimistic view of what I hoped MS had in mind when they made those decisions.

Also i don't see the perks outweighing buying disc game on clearance at retail or having the option to trade or lend to a friend. It just seems weird to me that we only get the perk of convenience. where is day one digital on all platforms?, Where is pre-loading before release?, where are new ideas like gifting a friend a game you bought at the store for a few hours to play?

Hopefully these are things that will come with time, right? If this Steam box shit picks up, maybe it'll put more pressure on Sony and Microsoft to keep up.

Point being that i don't see the good for the gamer ideas flowing from the all digital movement. All i see is it will help the companies and they can keep prices high if they want to. This also does not cover the problem of anyone who has a crappy internet connection or low caps on internet.

Well, my suggestion was to be keeping discs, just have them redeem on your console so you don't have to use them after the install, unless you want to reinstall.

I see people saying that MS needs to price games accordingly and have sales LIKE STEAM DOES, while at the same time saying that they need to keep the DRM out.... Idiots.

Steam is able to do this because the DRM is there. Game publishers can be sure that every single sale on Steam goes to one person, not passed around like a joint at a high school party.

But that's cool, keep whining for conflicting features, it will totally happen.

Not really. Piracy and used sales for console games is almost a non-issue when compared to the levels of piracy for PC games.

Sure, you can run a VM or DOSbox to run old ass games, but a lot of that is beyond the average user, so is largely irrelevant. Consoles are about accessibility, and convenience, and that's what I was discussing here. Plus, I'm not talking about throwing away discs, I was using the "inevitable all digital future" discussion point as a frame of reference.

Here's the problem with that. At the end of the day, how hard it is to budget for a game is of no concern to me. As a consumer I have ZERO responsibility to accommodate for the fact that triple A games are usually budgeted poorly because they have unrealistic sales expectations. Also, I REALLY don't think used games are "killing" the video game industry, I think its just a line companies love to trot out so they can justify screwing over the consumer. As for people shitting on MS for trying something new, people shit on the idea because it was a BAD IDEA. I will never believe that CONSUMERS are the reason for overly safe and low ambition triple A games. In the game industry, companies seem to have a very adversarial relationship with their consumers. They try to squeeze every last cent out of us because according to them we constantly steal from them by buying used games and pirating. Maybe if companies decided to listen to consumers and not their shareholders the industry would be in a much healthier place. Just look to indie games which tend to be a lot higher quality. They listen to their consumers and as a result make better games.

Re: Digital Downloads (on 360)

Why is it that it costs more to buy a AAA game digitally than if I went to a store and bought the disc, or buy at some online shop.

e.g. Call of Duty Ghosts (This is in AUD)

Xbox Marketplace $99.95

JB Hi Fi: $69.00

Oz Game Shop: $65.99

As for used games I'd prefer the option was there. I never really buy used or sell back to a games store but why should the choice be restricted?