Isnt that the same view Steam had when it launched?

Steam earned the trust of consumers over the last decade while Microsoft has alienated a massive portion of their userbase through a variety of dumb, customer-unfriendly moves with the 360.

I think it just boils down to its something new that angers people

PCs are an open platform with a high piracy rate. To have some kind of protection is out of necessity.

Consoles are a closed and controlled platform with a relatively tiny piracy rate. This is about protection for publishers from used games. Protection from something that is completely legal. People aren't distributing copies to other people, while retaining their own. It's one game, one player. The ethical and legal arguments for the blocking of used games are probably more shaky than any argument you could cook-up to use against used sales.

Many publishers have said they have no problem with used games. Activision (Call of Duty) and Take2 (GTA), as far as i know, have completely rejected 'project 10 dollar.' I think it was the CEO of T2 who said something like, 'The best way to combat used games is to make better games that people don't want to trade-in.'

For me, the piracy argument is earned and the used argument isn't.

Because Valve > MS

I'm in the same position as far as buying new. Although I feel for the kids who won't have $60 to spend. I used to be one, after all. I think more than ever Xbox needs some kind of PlayStation Plus style service where kids can pay a yearly subscription and get some free games each month.

About the internet connection stuff, I totally get why it's unappealing for a variety of reasons. And I do support people being vocal about it, but to an extent, I guess. Like, if you want to write letters or emails to Microsoft, then fine. At least something like that is more of an honest and thoughtful approach. It's the people complaining on internet forums and then yelling at each other that gets to me. It's just so useless and dumb. I guess that comes back to more of a personal thing, though, as I've been drifting away from internet interaction for a good while now.

But yeah, I don't know. I hope things work out well for everyone in the end.

I am amazed people keep making this ridiculous comparison when people have been doing nothing but pointing out the substantive and stylistic differences between the Xbox One and Steam for months. This is easily winning the 2013 "broad misconception of the year that refuses to die" award so far.

The bad customer relations the Xbox division has had with their users isn't new though.

MS is starting the Xbox One at the same place Valve started with Steam. There is no reason why any company who creates these kinds of policies to have their market treat them with faith and optimism. When Steam launched, it was criticized and mocked by their fanbase. I still remember the .gif of the Valve logo performing sodomy on a dude. Only when they have created a track record of being a good service did people start praising Valve's digital distribution store.

MS and Sony should go through the same type of hate. It will only make their services better.

Video game hazing?

@the_laughing_man: If it's anything like the movie Old School, I'm in...

ON THE WALL PLEDGE TAKE THIS HATE!!!!....NOW MAKE BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 2!

I already have Steam, why would I want another one? (Not saying they're the same because they're not, but not wanting the XBOXONE is the same as how I don't want Origin)

If anything I would say it is because of change. Because the 360 doesn't have these things, yet the next one will. People freaked out when Steam first launched.

Steam runs holiday scavenger hunts during sale time where unique achievements pop up every day for players to complete for prizes. They make up ARG's and hide clues in old games. Many Steam games come with free unique items for TF2 - you can then hoard those items and sell them on the Steam Marketplace for $5, $20, $200, etc. If you're savvy about it you can get a steady stream of income for games just by playing the market.

Competitors can undercut Steam's storefront pricing by selling activation keys and that's OK, it'll still integrate thanks to Steamworks. Or you can just buy and play any game on your PC outside of Steam, from any point in it's history. You can create your own dream courier pet for Dota 2, upload it to the Workshop, fans will vote and comment on it and if it's popular, Valve puts it in the game.

Steam does a lot more than provide DRM for publishers and sell games at deep discounts. Valve is crazy and experimental, and I don't see Microsoft going down those roads with Xbox One.

you misspelled "how" op

When Steam shuts down, Valve has said they have a "switch" that will remove any DRM on the games you own, meaning you still have them. When the servers for Xbox One (and, sooner than that, 360) shut down, what happens to my games? What happens to my XBLA games that I bought this generation when they turn the lights off on the 360? I bet I don't get to play them anymore. What I've seen from Microsoft has lead me to worry that I'm paying for temporary ownership of my games that will inevitably be taken away from me. I would hope that Microsoft has a plan to allow me to continue playing those games but, if they do, they have never once mentioned it.

@mariachimacabre: Ehh... I call bullshit on Valve's claim that your digital library will exist if they ever go out of business. I doubt Valve made any agreements with third party publishers early into Steam's life saying that if Steam no longer is in service the third party publishers agree to relinquish any ownership on people's game libraries. With third party publishers pushing for more DRM policies on consoles, I'd imagine that they would want Valve to be even more stringent with their digital protection as well.

@slag: You nailed it. In addition, Valve has stated repeatedly that should something happen to the company and they go out of business or can no longer maintain their servers for whatever unforeseen reason, they will make all games available to play without Steam.

MS has offered no such assurances and unless they remove the 24-hour check-in at some point, there will be some point in the future where going back to play Xbox One games will be an impossibility.

I really think you have to look back to where steam was when half life 2 came out. I bought a boxed copy of it and couldn't play it for a couple of days because of the servers. I had kinda crappy unreliable internet at College, so I drove three hours home with my computer to connect at home to get the first check in. Maybe M$ will be kinda shatty at first but I think we have to calm down a bit and wait and see.

@thrustache: That sucks, I didn't have internet when I was living in a basement apartment and would use offline mode to play games and didn't run into any problems. I still think it's pretty weird if you have a physical disk in the xbox you can't play a game offline for more than 24 hrs.

Microsoft is also part of the Prism intelligence program, if that Kinect really did relay special keywords back to the government it would get out of control, how many times do people yell out BOMB, TERRORIST, SHOOT, GUNS during a online game. It's getting really hard to trust any American company under the Obama\Bush government. http://www.policymic.com/articles/47083/what-is-prism-4-leaked-top-secret-slides-explain-the-latest-obama-scandal

Nicely worded post.

Actually there might not be. If you read the Steam terms of service it states that Valve is not legally obligated to do this. And while you would assume the Valve of today would honor their word and let Steam go free, what about the Valve that is going out of business? Do you trust them to honor their word when they have no legal obligation to?

I do think Steam gets more of a pass because of their deals as well as the fact that their whole business model is based on being an easy DRM service for PC basically.

Thats the the thing with steam YOU CHOOSE to use it. If you don't want it buy else where be it now or in the future.

To be fair, from how it looks at the moment, Microsoft isn't really "part" of the program. No more than you are a "part" of a program wiretapping your phone. It does not appear that these companies are willing participants. We willfully share excessive amounts of information with them, and these governments are taking what they can due to wartime laws that may do more harm than good.

As far as the Kinect 2 is concerned, it will still be interesting to see what kind of data it sends to Microsoft instead of processing it locally. Once it comes out, though, I imagine we'll know within the first week just how much is getting transmitted server-side.

Probably not too much more than we willingly put on public forums and social networks though. For as much information is being taken, a lot more just comes from what people freely put out there.

You choose to buy an Xbox One as well, but I think your main point is that PC offers choice. Sure, but I still almost exclusively use steam. Even still, a lot of my games are steamworks so I don't have a choice. Same with console 'exclusives'.

Steam doesn't lock you out of your computers functions, the Xbox stops you playing any games on your hardware, and requires you to be online every 24 hours.

/thread

The only thing that I have a problem with its the 24 hour check, but that could still change, so for now I won't make too much of a fuss about it.

being able to lend out games to a friend initially bothered me a bit, but when I think about it,I buy most of my PC games on Steam and those I can't lend to someone either.Plus, on the Xbox One I can actually give games to someone (provided publishers allow it).

pc is an open platform? Microsoft and maybe sony if they go this route are literally creating an artificial close market monopoly for themselves on their own platform. That is wrong on every level. That is why we have a lot of gamers swearing left and right they will leave console behind. You hate steam DRM? go to GoG, Amazon, Origin, etc You don't like psn/xbla? Well fuck you, you bought the console.

Xboxone DRM is different from Steam because the OP is a shill on MS's paycheck.

To be frank, I don't like Steam either. Save for their absurdly low prices, I could give or take it.
For me why Steam is acceptable while the Xbox One's DRM is not, is that unlike (what I'm assuming is) the majority of people, I don't have a good broadband connection, so downloading full games (as in games that aren't indies or XBLA sized things) takes a tremendous amount of time. Because of this, when I buy games for my console, I buy the disc version.
Having to get online to play digitally purchased games, while still kind of dumb if you really think about it, considering you still legitimately paid for said games, somewhat makes sense, as being connected to the internet is how you went about getting those games in the first place.
Having to get online to play a game which is in the form of a disc on the other hand, is nonsense.

I use the PS2/GC/Xbox example. I can buy a new or used game for my PS2 and play it without any sort of irritation (having to be online/having to purchase an online pass to unlock content/etc,etc).
If DRM is for combating piracy, then that's a perfectly understandable thing to try and eradicate; but having the consumer who went about buying that game legitimately hop through hoops in order to do that, when previous generations were so simple and straight-forward, is tremendously frustrating.
(apologies for the ramble)

There was no selling used games on PC BEFORE Steam existed. End of story.

The main difference is that Valve has been doing it for nearly 10 years, and even then it wasn't something that was (still in some circles) welcomed with open arms. Trust me, I was there since the release of Half-Life 2.

It wasn't until they started doing those deep discounts that the majority of people started to warm up to it in the first place.

The biggest difference for me is that the PC is an open system. Once I buy my game from Steam or any retailer, I can then do whatever I want to it. In fact, many developers provide the tools for consumers to modify their games and share those modifications. Texture packs, cheats, full scale rebuilds can all be found for many of the most popular games out today. Whatever restrictions imposed by PC DRM is outweighed by the freedom I have with that game while it is in my possession. Console games do not provide such options although Sony did some experiments early in the PS3's life cycle.

Another attractive feature is the pricing Steam and other retailers offer (Amazon, GreenMan, GOG, etc...). I don't trust Valve any more than Microsoft when it comes to gathering and using my personal data, however I do trust Valve to provide top games and irresistible prices. Microsoft, on the other hand still seams to be slaved to a brick-and-mortar model when it comes to game pricing. Sony isn't much better, but they have shown signs improvement. If everything can be bought online through the XBO, then I want to see them achieve price parity with their PC competition. I bought Alan Wake with all DLC earlier this week for $4.00 on Steam; it's still $20.00 base game on XB Marketplace. Microsoft (and Sony) need to show me they are will to adapt to today's fluid game market.

Its piracy that also plays into the prizing of PC games, because its so easy to pirate games they have to make it easier for ppl to buy games.

Piracy is a non issue with consoles though so i do believe digital games will be at retail prizes for a long long time after they are released.

Personally i freaking love Steam because it has been such a breeze playing games via it, patching games without me even noticing it and the forums help if something goes wrong, theres also developers these days in the forums so theres some line of conversation between buyes and makers which i find pretty damn cool.

I know alot of ppl who have consoles and they are online with them maybe three times a year so i guess they are going to buy a console that does not have a 24hr check in built into it. Thats the main difference when discussing console and PC gaming, most if not all gaming PCs are connected to the internet but that is not have been the case with consoles and i guess thats one main draw with the systems in the first place.

The difference is, on Steam the benefits outweigh the restrictions. Easy.

Also, DRM exists on PC to fight piracy (illegal activity). DRM exists on consoles to combat used game/resales/rentals (legal activity).

So basically, drop you pants and bend over, oh, and don't forget to pay the annual fee first. Thanks.

Since the Xbox One will be going all digital (ala, hard disk mandatory installs), I say that No, it will not be different than steam. Modern day gaming has become social centralized (so to speak). These days, the majority of PC games that you buy are forced to have some 'online account' associated with them. I'm talking about legitimate uses here so no cracks. The old days of PC gaming are long gone. The only difference was that everything came on a physical media, and most importantly, it did not require a legitimate user to have some online account tied to the games.

That is my main gripe with modern day gaming. Everyone NEEDS to have some stupid account in order just to play their games. This of course does not include the DRM restrictions put on top of it.

You pay less money on Steam; you can play games offline for significantly longer than you can on the XBONE; Steam is not a necessary service (you can game on your PC without Steam, but you can't play XBONE games without having an XBONE); I like Valve and their sales.

Because Microsoft am the devil while Gabe Newell is the sole defender of the core gamer from hordes of disgusting casuals.

Apart from all these vaild points about the differences between Steam and Xone I've got to add another one:

Steam and in general DRM on PC grew out of neccessity. In the good old days before the internet everybody copied games. Back then I paid only for about 5% of the games I played and I wasn't the only one. CDs and Floppy got passed around in the school yard. Then the internet came and it got even worse. By the time they introduced DRM with online keys and activation I was old enough to understand that this was more or less needed to keep the amount of pirated games down. They got grief and Steam was hated initially, but they have treated us good and I kind of understood the need.

Today in the console world this is not the case. You don't have 95% of pirated games on xbox 360. These DRMs are in place because the publishers saw how big gamestop is and wanted a piece of the used marked cake. Taking away valid rights of custumors without an imminent need. I cannot support this.

But it is different to Steam, so can you people saying it's the same please actually read this thread where people have pointed out why it's not comparable.

If you are all fine with Microsoft locking you out of a key function of your system just because you didn't phone home within 24 hours then sure go ahead and buy one, just don't go crying when DRM schemes like this get worse in the future once they take note of how little you resisted the first time around. I can't believe people are actually ok with a company disallowing you the right to use a primary function of your Xbox just because you might not have the Internet. Also, if Steam goes down, I can still play my games, same with if my Internet was to go down for a while. I'm almost certain Steam lets you go to offline mode without setting it prior as long as you were logged in within a recent period of time.

It's different because consoles aren't supposed to have all sorts of convoluted bullshit like PC does.

People that can't appreciate the difference between Valve's and MS's corporate culture and business model, do deserve getting XBONED, Walmarted, CocaColaed, McDonaled... they truly brilliant individuals with discerning capabilities and critical thinking.

Its all us bitter people who look for a better option that respects our consumer rights, because ya know we "don't like change" I guess... I mean yeah, because the xbone is so "evolutionary" right?

Steam is bullshit, XBone is more bullshit; answered.

Cuz steam doesn't charge you just for browsing their store (which is insane to me), nor for anything else. Also 30 day offline mode works really great for people who work off-shore for 3-weeks here and there; Microsoft now seemingly hates those people and wants them to suffer boredom.

Steam actually gives you less rights than the proposed Xbone stuff. But it sold people games for cheap so they don't care. People would give up the right to free speech if you gave them a check for 50 bucks.

sweet jesus. I was wondering about that when I saw this latest national security scandal hit. but yeah reading around this is looking worse by the minute. I wonder if that's the real Microsoft cancelled it's question and answer session?

@truthtellah I call bs on that. If they wanted to they could fight this a lot harder than they say. Verizon in particular just rolled over with no fight at all. Just claiming "we have to do it". That's a lot different that actually fighting. Twitter apparently is a holdout that won't participate. Apple held out until last year

according to the Washington Post, Microsoft was the very first partner to sign up for PRISM back in 2007. Before any of the telecoms

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

" PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy...

'98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we don’t harm these sources,' "

Now they have issued a denial, but it doesn't match up with the leaked info about the program

This is an important point. I won't comment for anyone else but I had enough trust in Valve to get Steam working well enough for Valve games. Beyond that I shrugged and just assumed it was another one of those "fly by wire" platforms that only Valve would be interested in putting software on.

As time went on, Valve earned my trust that they can get third party games without being overbaring. I thought for sure that Valve couldn't resiste the temptation to twiddle Steam to make their games appear specular while letting others be dull or that Valve would squeeze every ounce of money they could from every vendor but thankfully that didn't happen. That doesn't mean there isn't some burden but it isn't abusive as other electronic stores.

Steam is just one of many, many ways to play games on PC; if you want to play any game on Xbox One you have to do exactly what Microsoft says, otherwise you console is just a TV watching device.