Early forum posts are in, people are upset about having to pay a fee for second hand gaming. Let's take a step back for a moment, and contemplate on how this is not going to have much of an impact on the lives of most gamers.

Let's assume that new games still cost $60 on the Xbox One, and let's say that there is a $5 fee for installing a second hand game. In today's used game market, buying a game used that came out a week ago will cost you $55. With a $5 installation fee, you would now be spending the full $60 on the game. Luckily for consumers, that is not how the used game market is going to work next generation. Due to this new fee, retailers are going to have to reduce the price of their used games if they want consumers to continue to purchase them. Meaning that used games will likely be dropped down to $50. Everything will even out for you, much like everything evens out for Jerry Seinfeld.

Before you rage, take a minute to think about how the world works.

That is assuming the fee for borrowing from a friend is 5 dollars. In one article, someone compared installing it off a disc to downloading it from online where the Xbone doesn't care where the data comes from, which made it sound like it would be a full price fee.

This is also assuming there will be a fee for used games in general.

*edit* In this Kotaku, yes, Kotaku, article, they interviewed the Microsoft vice president who said if you take a brand new 60 dollar game to a friend's house to play on his Xbone, you will have to pay the full price as a fee, as in 60 bucks.

http://kotaku.com/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-micros-509140825

I rent games from my local video store, and I'm wondering how this scheme is going to affect my situation.

Full price fee. Unless their "solution" for used games differs from that, it's actually a pretty big deal. The impact of this can be far more influential than you think, such as Get Well Gamers Foundation boycotting the Xbox One.

From recently published articles, it will be a full price fee to play on a seperate console. Pretty big deal.

Calling it a fee is a misnomer since you are paying full price.

If the fee is $5-$10 then it's no big deal. If you are basically rebuying the game then that could be a huge problem.

I agree, if it's a full price 'fee' then that annihilates the used game market. However that wasn't the impression I got when I read that they would charge a fee.

Its been confirmed it will be whatever the retail price of said game is. So if its a brand new 60 dollar game, the fee is 60 bucks

Nobody complains about this on STEAM.

Yes, but you could just log into your account and play it that way, like on steam... Your friend won't own the game and you can still play it there with them.

It will be a big fucking deal to little Jimmy's unexpecting Average Joe dad who goes up to Gamestop and buys him last year's Call of Duty for fifteen bucks cheaper and comes home to find out that he has to pay five or ten or whatever more just so his kid can play it. That's a recipe for a quick return, and I would be willing to bet that MS will lose no small number of sales to parents who are used to buying most of their kids used games to save money here and there.

That said, the number of people who grew up and got jobs and continue to play games but buy them all brand-new now has grown a fair bit since 2005. There's a chance that it might not have as much impact as you think.

EDIT: It's also going to disappoint the hell out of Little Jimmy when he brings it to his buddy's house for a few hours, only to find out that it doesn't work on his buddy's Xbox.

@thehbk: Can you source this though? I've read it installs the game for your Xbox, not necessarily your account. Your friend's profiles on another xbox would have to buy the game if you wanted to play split screen on his Xbone it sounds like

Also, noone complains about this on Steam because there wasn't a huge market for used PC game sales before Steam.

I wonder what Gamefly subscribers (Me) can look forward to... rent a game and install for 15 bucks then send it back. Nah that would be crazy.

Edit: What happens for the first person that rents a game? Free install unless Gamefly puts it in a system first before they send it out.

Yes it is.

Not a big deal for you. Half the games I play on consoles I borrow from friends.

Eat it, cheapskates!

If anything, I hope this means MS can create a competitive market for digital versions of games. You could go out and buy a grubby version of a game that some kid and his dog probably drooled on... or you could buy this shiny new digital version for the same price and play it right now!

I dunno, there are a bunch of games that I borrowed from an old roommate, that I eventually bought, that I would've completely avoided had I needed to pay money upfront.

MGS4, Uncharted/2, RDR, Brutal Legend, Halo ODST/Reach, to name a few...

I like to refer to myself as cheap, but I actually like putting my money to something I have faith in. I feel like I'm going to be missing out on a whole bunch of potentially great games, because I don't really want to drop 40-60 bucks on something that I won't love.

@kittyvondoom said:

Haha, you're kidding. This is a joke... right?

Guys they said on twitter there will be no used game fee.

It's anti-consumer for no good reason. A better solution would have been to offer games through downloads only. Just straight up copy Steam. Then there wouldn't be an expectation of reselling/rebuying games and the used market would still die.

So right now I have two xbox 360's...one at school and one a home and I like to carry my games back and forth on breaks and I can play online games because my gamertag is on both systems, which is really convenient. When it comes to taking it another friends house or something with this new system, couldn't you do the samething, just recover your gamertag on a different system and then install and play the game? or will your gamertag know which was the orignal system or something?

There is no fee.

I think the people who it screws over most are kids. When I was a kid, I used to buy loads of 2+ year old games for under £10 each. Having to pay another £5-10 on top of that would be doubling the cost of the game. Kids don't have $60 to spend on the latest releases. Kids play cheap, used, older games. And at Christmas and birthdays, the parents buy a couple of $60 new releases for them. Plus the kids then grow into adult gamers who have money and pay $60 for the latest releases.

If kids are playing half as many games, are they going become as invested in gaming as a hobby? Are they going to ask for the latest games at Christmas? Are they going to continue playing into adulthood and start spending $60 on games themselves? The answer is probably still yes in the majority of cases, but I still think this whole thing is very short sighted. Microsoft and Sony should be looking at long-term investment in their platforms, not short term cash-grabs.

I will bet any amount of money that this will be the case on the ps4 as well. With the cost of developing AAA titles absolutely skyrocketing with this next generation I'm sure publishers insisted this feature be implemented to continue developing these big titles. Think about it, there's simply too much risk associated with developing big budget games. A lot of them need to sell millions of copies to be profitable. Developers and publishers are the true benefactors of this feature. It's only a matter of time before Sony announces the same thing. Though it was a good move to let MS do it first and weather the ensuing shit storm.

Is this sarcasm?

The fee has to be high or else it'll make groups of friends buy one disc then have everyone install it and pay the fee. There's simply no two ways about it or else Microsoft has made bad choices indeed.

'This is not a big deal if this highly unlikely payment figure i've divised turns out to be the true'

Also Games on Demand is still a ripoff when compared to buying the game used. So Microsoft apparently doesnt know how the world works or just doesnt want to compete with the used games market. And personally i've bought tons of cool games I never would've played had I not saw them cheap in a bargain bin.

He means there no fee for used games they have literally come out and announced it.

I rent games so I can buy Xbox live Arcade and Xbox Indie Games and DLC. The disc games I do buy I play with my children, sometime they play them on their own account. It's kind of a big deal.

Anyone notice when the guy was talking about "Xbox memories" in the conference, he mentioned "the first time you took your Xbox console to a friends house"? Yep, looks like kids are going to be doing a lot of that it the games are tied to an install on their account! I guess they can log into their friends console, but they probably won't want to spend hours re-downloading their games on their friends consoles. Unless this 'start playing your game as it downloads' really works as intended?

Are you ignoring the fact that that Twitter account has refuted what the vice president, Phil Harrison, has explicitly stated? Are you really going to trust a Microsoft support Twitter account to the words of Phil Harrison?

@fluxwavez: could you at least post a picture of what your talking about?

man microsoft sucks ass at relaying messages to people and scheduling, this conference should have been 2 hours

sony's reveal was so much better

@connerthekewlkid said:

https://twitter.com/XboxSupport/status/336936354913071104

And the Kotaku article that has the actual knowledgeable person, you know, the VP, talking about it was linked above.

@jonnyboy: I belive they have said that any account on the Xbox will be able to play the games you bought but the rented games is a whole other story.

You aren't paying for it. You're basically complaining that you won't be lucky enough to mooch off of others.

I'd rather have the ability to install a game and say "fuck it, don't need this any more" and throw the disc away and have games installed to the system that don't need to spin up a disc than have the ability to pay $5 less than retail for a game.

I'm curious how it'll work if you want to bring the game over to a friend's have they said if it'll be console locked, or account locked? Account locked is fine, because you'll just need to sign in to play it on their console.

Fine fine, but its still technically not a fee but now a full on charge, do I win?

Okay, Major Nelson just said there is no fee as long as it's played on your profile. So there is a fee. Damn.

@connerthekewlkid said:

So, to you, the term "fee" applies only to a certain amount and a full price fee is not actually a "fee"?

Ok.

TAKE A JOKE BUDDY JEEZ

@connerthekewlkid said:

Video games are serious.

Should have been clearer, sometimes we play together on mine, sometime we play together on their machine. They only get 2 hours a day on their machine, sometimes they don't want to play with their old man.

I rent games from Redbox for $2 and occasionally use Gamefly for longer games. Why would I want to pay a fee when I'm already paying a fee for using those services?

http://majornelson.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-and-used-games/

We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what we’ve confirmed today. While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail.

Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.

Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.

Ah that is a serious problem then. Looks like you may have to go with the PS4 this time around unless Microsoft makes their policy clearer and it turns out to be better than we thought.

I'm extremely confused. How much is the fee? Is it full price? Is there even a fee? Seems to be a whole lot of information going around.

Which means I can't let my friends or cousins borrow my games for weeks at a time. My profile isn't going to be signed in at their house. Their profile isn't going to be on my system when I borrow their games. Hell the dudes at the giant bomb office are constantly swapping their games.

Deal Breaker CONFIRMED.

@benny: That's a good thing to clarify. As long as one of the signed in accounts on a console has a game, it is apparently accesible for play by everyone on that console. Thus, if you go over to a friend's house, they'll be able to play a game with you and vice versa.

It also addresses family members playing a game, as one account confirms all of the console for use. The only difference is if a friend wants to play without you there. Then they would have to pay to buy the game.

It's a bit confusing right now, but hopefully they'll -really- clarify this soon so that it is abundantly clear.

Who knows at this point.

All I know is that if I do get a BONE, I'm gonna try to get in some sort of community account sharing thing. An orgy of BONE accounts.

Yeah.

If the whole point is that you install the game and no longer need the disc, there is no way the fee is small. if it was, people would just hand the disc around to their friends and sales would plummet.

I'm in the exact same boat, but hey, apparently we're scum for renting games and don't deserve all of that next gen glory so whatever.