The way all of this went for the last few months with them - my theory is that this whole family sharing, every 24 hours check-in system was never actually built anywhere but on paper and on the Q&A page.

They announced it, tried to use PR and positivity at E3 and in interviews to spin it, and wanted to see how extreme the reaction was. If the reactions died down and people accepted the changes with their paltry "benefits" they were offering, they would go ahead with the system.

If after E3 the reaction was still strong enough and pre-orders were affected, they would "pull" all the DRM requirements and save the day.

I just don't see them building something as extensive as this system wide check in and sharing system into the OS only to pull it 3 months later.

I think that the no drm Xbox One always was an option, they just wanted to see if they could get away with always online and no used games. There's obviously no real proof, but I think it totally makes sense, with how strictly defined their narrative was with it at E3 and then a week later when they have pre-order numbers and continuing negative feedback, it's all gone. What do you think?

I can't see that being the case unless they were actually that oblivious about how much negative publicity it would garner them. If this actually is the case and they just wanted to test the water then they are idiots because they burned a lot of bridges with their DRM policy and came off as very arrogant. But after how they have handled the Xbox the last couple years anything goes I guess.

I have zero faith in any statements coming from Microsoft nowadays. They have been so all over the map with their messaging that it is impossible to know where they are coming from or what the truth is. I mean, they were touting how important and integral these new online and DRM policies were to the core Xbox One experience. Major Nelson was promoting them only a few hours before the entire system was dropped.

I doubt it. There are easier ways to get a feel for something like that than to announce to the world THIS IS WHAT WE ARE DOING with the huge risk of it blowing up in your face. I think the infrastructure was there. Or was getting there, at least. It's not like they really save too much face from this, it's just the reaction to what they were doing (and how poorly they communicated it) was just so vitriolic that they felt compelled to back-pedal. It was fairly universally agreed that regardless of them having a lot of good games to show, Microsoft got a fair shellacking from Sony and were absolutely haemorrhaging the good will they'd built up.

I also don't imagine they're throwing anything away as much as just putting certain things on the shelf. I think we'll have to see a lot of the policies return in some form eventually.

Ehh. As crazy as it sounds to rip out so much engineering, it'd be way crazier to be this far into the game without those systems being built at all. There's less than half a year until the launch, and everything has to be donewell before that. It'd be absolutely ridiculous to wait until now to theoretically start building the tech.

Besides, their language pretty clearly paints a picture that they've been surprised about the reaction. That's why this whole thing has been such an unregulated nightmare. If they went into this with the idea of "testing the water", I think their PR would've been a bit more... prepared?

I imagine they would have done. Such a system requires it to be well integrated into the Xbox OS and it's probably not something that can be designed, developed and tested in 4 - 3 months.

If that was the case, they would have announced this policy reversal waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay earlier than they did.

I assume the reason their pr was so prepared and adamant about the policies was to see of they could spin the story as positive without really having any positives to offer the consumer.

We may never know, but I thought it was a fun conspiracy to think about.

At this point both systems are as real as the phantom. The PC is the one true platform.

Yes I like the PC best too, but the PC will not get ports of every game unfortunately.

Since there's now a day 1 update that needs to be installed to reverse some of those things, I would say yeah.

this, and to to mention the amount of paperwork and legal shit for it to come to be was absolutely required before hand

I don't know why it would be right to assume that the whole DRM and sharing was anything other than firmware. Someone's work got shelved. At this point the only physical units would be developer builds wouldn't they? So no real loss for MS.

They better have been pumping out units at some point, and have had authentication servers at the ready. Granted, with MS being everywhere and nowhere at once on this subject, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't ready for the inevitable connection difficulties that would have accompanied the launch.

Well, they said that the day one patch that is required is what will negate the DRM and stuff. So I'd say it was already there if we need a patch to get rid of it.