SpaceInsomniac

@thegreatguero said:

@face15 said:

Dude, I'm at a loss for words. It's just so perfect. Well done! This is the banner to end all banners.

I don't get it. What am I not getting? I think I would like to get it. Could someone please get it for me?

Xbox Live has been down for days before, and I think at times they even went over a week or two.

As for this being "just like steam," that's simply not the case. XBLA is "just like steam," not Xbox One.

XBLA titles are sold digitally, have lower prices than retail titles, CAN BE PLAYED OFFLINE, and are purchased with the understanding that the game you purchase is not a physical product that can be resold, loaned, borrowed, or given.

Xbox One titles will be sold at retail, will come on physical discs, will have retail game prices, will NOT be able to be played offline, and at first will almost certainly be purchased by many people with the mistaken idea that they are purchasing a physical product that can be resold, loaned, borrowed, or given.

All rather large differences.

If I buy a movie on DVD or Blu-ray, I own the DISC, not the movie.

I do not own the rights to the story. I do not own the rights to the characters. I do not have the right to make copies of movie and sell them for profit. I do not have the right to make t-shirts featuring characters and sell them for profit. I do not have the right to stage a play based on the movie. I do not have the right to show my purchased copy of the movie in my home theater, and charge admission for people to view the movie.

But I DO have the right to loan my disc to a friend, and I DO have the right to rent that movie without purchasing it, and I DO have the right to sell my copy of the movie. More importantly, I DO have these rights despite whatever EULA nonsense that any company would ever require me to click through to watch their movie.

An EULA is only as enforceable and as legally binding as a court of law decides that it is. A company could include a clause in their EULA that said you were now their slave for life, but it being included in an EULA doesn't make it automatically enforceable. Slavery is still illegal in the United States, just as my rights of first sale are still LEGAL in the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_safety_valves

It's not so much that it doesn't explain it, but that it glosses over it, or changes the topic.

I also like consoles because they don't "age" as quickly as a gaming PC, and I also think optional voice commands can be useful, and shifting between games and aps--though a bit of a memory hog--seems like it would be useful at times as well. The thing is that absolutely NONE of these things have anything to do with the DRM issues that are the topic of this discussion. Every last one of these things could have happened just as easily on a console with even LESS restrictions than the 360, much less a more restrictive console.

Even your example of "A future that might see a 'stream box' only version of the device in hotel chains that will let me play my games while traveling without worrying about porting around hardware" could be done TODAY, by any hotel that would simply put an Xbox 360 in their hotel rooms. I could still sign into my gamertag, I could still access my entire library of XBLA titles, and I could still play any game that I brought with me. That could just be a three or four games that fit into my luggage, or--if I left the boxes at home--it could be my entire collection on a CD spindle or in a carrying case. The minor convenience of not needing to bring physical discs with me to a hotel does not strike me as something that is worth the surrender of my property rights.

As for the 10 person family share, what do you think are the chances of Microsoft allowing that to happen, when they're becoming as restrictive as they are with everything else? Sony used to allow a five person share with digital games, which they eventually had to restrict down to two accounts, because of all the abuse that occurred. And you think that MS is going to allow the same thing with 10 accounts?

Hypothetically, let's say that Microsoft is out of their mind, and the 10 person family share system that appears on day one works exactly as you hope it will. Do you really think publishers are going to allow that to continue? MS would only allow a system like that if they WANTED a system like that. And if that were true, MS would be calling this a friend share, not a family share.

But for the actual specific answers that I would like, I would refer you to the end of this article, which does a pretty good job with listing the concerns of the anti-DRM side of this argument. The language is not even remotely impartial, but these are still the main questions at the heart of this issue:

Why are you defending the right of publishers to kill games ownership?

Why are you defending the right for publishers to dictate to you how and when you play your games?

For an even more specific example, as Time.com recently put it:

How, in any conceivable sense, legal or otherwise, is it any of Microsoft’s business who I want to give a game to, or under what circumstances of “friendship”?

Two things:

1) Thank you for bumping this.

2.

True, but I'm arguing that people do still WANT to play older games. And Microsoft's plan would remove any legal means of playing your games once the servers are turned off. That's the other element of this.

Um... lots of people?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=let%27s+play+mike+tyson%27s+punch+out

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Let%27s+play+Mega+man+2

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=let%27s+play+ninja+gaiden+NES

And those games are a lot older than 15 years.

Just to quickly share my situation:

I don't consider myself any sort of fanboy. Along with many other consoles, I've owned a PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox 1 (meaning the first Xbox), Wii, and Xbox 360. I happily paid for Gold, mainly because party chat isn't available on PS3, and that's a large reason why I never owned a PS3. That, and I really don't feel the need to own two consoles that share 80 to 90 percent of their retail library.

I missed out on some very cool looking PS3 exclusives, but in return I got to play some very nice Microsoft exclusives, mostly from XBLA. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. No big deal, and not worth spending several hundred dollars.

With all that said, if Sony simply skips the always online restriction, even if they do accommodate DRM in some other ways, I'll likely be satisfied enough to go with them next generation and never look back. At this point, we really are talking about the lesser of two evils.

Pretty much. http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1955108/xbox_one_its_for_publishers_not_for_you.html

From the Giant Bomb DRM video:

Ryan: "I'm shaking the camera's head at this."

Vinny: "That's fucked."

Jeff: "That is fucked"

Patrick: "[Microsoft is] ruining everyone else's experience, or making it difficult for them."

Patrick: "It's all bullshit."

Patrick: "Looking forward to having all these questions clarified at the interviews I no longer have with Microsoft executives at E3."

Vinny: "I want to be able to loan stuff." "Let me manage my own rights. That is the fight that really needs to happen." "This is kind of like my nightmare situation where this is benefiting nobody but publishers and Gamestop."

- - - -

They must all have tinfoil hats. And I didn't know that the Giant Bomb offices were in a basement.

There's one word in that paragraph that kind of invalidates your whole argument. Can you guess what it is?

I'm just glad to see that the Giant Bomb staff cares about this situation more than a lot of the people on this website. People who DON'T get their games for free, because they're not professional game reviewers. Some quotes from the recent DRM breakdown video:

Ryan: "I'm shaking the camera's head at this."

Vinny: "That's fucked."

Jeff: "That is fucked"

Patrick: "[Microsoft is] ruining everyone else's experience, or making it difficult for them."

Patrick: "It's all bullshit."

Patrick: "Looking forward to having all these questions clarified at the interviews I no longer have with Microsoft executives at E3."

Vinny: "I want to be able to loan stuff." "Let me manage my own rights. That is the fight that really needs to happen." "This is kind of like my nightmare situation where this is benefiting nobody but publishers and Gamestop."