http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/

Seems very convenient for families or other situations where more than one person uses the console. So everyone in a household gets gold access for individual gamertags without all having to buy subscriptions. I guess the days of having people play as guests is over. You basically need a gold subscription per console instead of per person. Not bad.

Edit : Major Nelson link is much better

http://majornelson.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-sharing-digital-games-and-gold/

@syed117: Same with PS Plus which is good. That was a bullshit thing to do this generation getting live for separate members of the family

This is great that both consoles are doin this. Makes paying that fee way more attractive kudos to both.

It's better than one account per person. But since most of it is stuff that should be free anyway, it's hard to get too excited.

I'm glad about the games and the multiplayer most of all.

Endgaget? huh maybe their comment section has intelligent and reasonable comments and argume.....nope also terrible.

@vinny_says: It's the internet, it's a blog, and the article is about games specifically related to Microsoft. There was never a chance.

Apparently it's tied to your home console and also your gamertag. So gold features can be used by anyone who uses the home gold console, but if you sign into someone else's XB1, they also get gold access while you are there.

whelp, looks like I'm back in for this gen. MS basically just fixed my issues that I had when they originally cancelled everything that they announced at e3.

Super happy they figured out a way to have the old style retail environment co-exist with their new style digital future.

YES.

Very cool feature. Makes you think why the hell they didn't do this in the first place. This lets people choose to go digital by offering cool services rather than jamming it down their throats.

This is good....but is this any less than what they SHOULD be doing? Appreciate this for making sense and being helpful to you, but don't praise them for it.

Glad they're finally doing this. Should've been done years ago though, IMHO.

Every new announcement Microsoft makes is trying to make them closer in Parity to Sony's offering.

While it sucks that Sony is locking (non-f2p game) multiplayer behind PS+, everything else about PS+ is positive.

Xbox LIve Gold had generally been mostly negative in the past (required to have gold for services you already pay for elsewhere, such as netflix, requirement to have gold to get demos on release date, etc), they're doing what they can to make it into a mostly positive service like PS+, even going as far as adding free games. Although it is currently unknown if they will continue the free game stuff into the XBO time.

What this leaves between the two consoles is:

• PS4 system specs are more powerful (which Microsoft has at least attempted to address with their speed boost, so good on them)
• PSN+'s less expensive cost (XBL still don't quite have feature parity with discounts and stuff on sales, but who knows if that will change)
• PS4's less expensive console cost (Which may or may not be possible to address)
• The fact that they are now perceived by investors and some of the public as the company who now has no plans(after abandoning their unfavorable plans) vs the company that has had favorable policies since announcement (or at least has only shown favorable policies to the public since announcement. Who knows what their original plans were if not what they've announced.)

I've stated it before elsewhere, but I'm really excited for the upcoming console releases. Regardless of whether Microsoft's rapid turn arounds on decisions is good for their ability to deliver on them or not (the fact that the entire backend platform was designed around having the online-drm checks and now no longer has that capability can't be an easy engineering task), their change in stance is good for the consumer, even PS4 consumers, just because it makes the fight that much more fierce/competitive.

Well they seemed to do just fine doing things the other way for years. I mean I get what you're saying, ideally every company would do whats best for consumers but that's not how it works. If MS does something better for the people buying their products, good on them.

cool

As long as xbox live as a core service is better than PSN, people will continue to use it.

Added extras and all those things are great, but Sony needs parity when it comes to the actual infrastructure of the service. Horrendously slow download speeds compared to live, much worse voice chat quality, system level friends integration for friends and parties. These things matter.

They are positioned to get better at all those things, but they need to match up directly. Voice quality will most likely still be worse on the PS4 compared to XB1. Hopefully chat, messaging and all the core features that already work on xbox live can match up. Sony has not proven that they can do it. Being optimistic is great, but it can't be one sided. They've spent two generations trailing behind Microsoft when it comes to everything that happens with the actual online experience. Suddenly expecting that everything will be perfect at launch is not realistic.

Oh give me break. When was the last time (if ever) you downloaded something off the Playstation Network? Admittedly all the things you mentioned are better on Xbox Live, but they aren't "horrendously" worse on the Playstation 3 (and haven't been for some time), and I am sure they will improve on the Playstation 4 (and Sony has stated that they will definitely improve "friend integration" as you call it). I game on the PC, Xbox and the PS3 and to tell you the truth both the Xbox and PS3 are leagues behind the PC in terms of Voice Chat quality and I am confident both will get a needed bump in quality with the coming consoles.

@leftie68: I download stuff on PSN all the time. How else would anyone get demos and downloadable games? There is a huge difference in download speeds. Maybe it's more apparent to me because I have fairly fast Internet.

Xbox live might not be quite as fast as steam but it's close.

Comparing PC voice chat to consoles doesn't exactly work. That's not a system level feature like the consoles. Skyping while playing PC games is not the same as using built in system level architecture. Xbox 360 sounds better than the ps3. The ps4 uses the same tech as the ps3. Bluetooth 2.1. There is a hard limit to how much better it might be. The Xbox one uses new tech and they have been talking about much better voice quality since the unveil. It's already confirmed to be much better.

So is it possible for me to have a game that was downloaded digitally to be played by a friend who is on his Xbox One without me signing in to their Xbox?

@andorski: Nope.

Playing your digital games on other people's XBs will be just like it is with 360. If you're logged in you can play. If you're not, you can't.

Wow, microsoft actually using common sense after 8 years of bullshit. I still can't get over the need to sign into an account to play a local co-op came though. Still ridiculous.

Doesn't this fuck over 360 owners who use the family pack?

@peasantabuse: I don't think it applies to the 360 as far as I know.

It's Useless now

@syed117: Definitely agreed about the invite/party chat integration. However, they've released videos and statements showing that it already is part of the PS4, and party chat was a system level function on the vita (Which is silly). I wouldn't refer to that as "friends integration" though, as PSN has had friends lists since live, and invites. Just poorly done invites. Based off the UI videos and the statements made, though, this should no longer be a problem.

As far as voice chat quality, it is totally dependent on the mic and headset. My USB headset I use on my PS3 has way better reception audio quality than the included headset on my 360, and based off recorded voice messages on both, gives better audio quality as well. We'll have to see what the regular 3.5mm jack on the controllers for the PS4 gives out to the headset and vice versa, as well as new Bluetooth mics (I've heard fantastic Bluetooth- voice quality from some users on the PS3, but I'm betting those headsets were quite expensive.) That being said, voice chat itself, while a system level function, was basically the wild west when it came to games that use it, so I totally understand the concerns.

For download speeds, there have been immense improvement on that over the past year or so. I get on average 1.5-2Mbps from the PSN store, which is roughly the same I get from XBL based off the download times/file sizes. It's not quite the 2.5-3.5Mbps I get from steam, but definitely way better than it was at launch. I can't really speak to your experience, as I definitely think it varies by location, although I doubt Sony has a data center near here (Kansas).

Or maybe they do for PS4 PSN, but it just isn't live yet. Doubtful, but who knows.

@peasantabuse: nope. All accounts now have gold.

This is great news. A good decision on Microsoft's part.

@gamer_152: IGN also says new Kinect has no input lag and the X1 is nearly silent.