Microsoft defends the Xbox One’s licensing, used game policies (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Collins]

It's interesting how Microsoft's Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehdi tried to defend the licensing policy for XBox one... "This is a big change, consumers don't always love change, and there's a lot of education we have to provide to make sure that people understand." He even went on to say that the reaction from consumers was "kind of as we expected."

The pitch the Mehdi is trying to make is that the need for physical disc isn't something that will be moving forward. Much like the industry believes that optical disc for movies will become obsolete. Of course, members of this forum don't believe that, but we are kind of fighting a losing battle with the broader consumer base. Mehdi states "We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better."

If I think about it, I don't know of many people that collect game discs, like we collect movie optical discs. Also, there isn't going to be a difference in quality of the game if it is being streamed from the Internet or played via a disc. While there is a difference in online movies vs. physical disc, it isn't the same for game titles. So, in some regards, I actually think that it is an interesting value proposition. I have never sold any of my game discs, so I can't say that I am in the camp that would be all up in arms about not being able to sell my game discs or buy a used disc. Of course, when I can get most XBox titles at the company store for a good discount, that doesn't really come in as a factor...

What do you think?

 

[Hanson]

If the games are cheaper digitally, then yes, it is a value proposition. But there is no indication that will be the case, which means they're just gouging the consumer.

There are a lot of kids who play video games, and if I'm their parent, especially if I'm not a gamer myself, I would never sink the kind of money they're looking for into the X1 if there is a clearly better, more economical alternative out there. What sucks for MS? There IS.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Maybe if they start selling 99-cent game levels/ chapters, like song downloads, discless gaming will have value for consumers. At this time, it has negative value for me. I trade in games and buy used games. Contrary to the apparent beliefs of the gang at Microsoft, my personal gaming budget is not going to magically expand to support dropping $60 on every game.

Of course, at my age, my current PS3 and Wii library will hold me until well after I've shuffled off this mortal coil. But I'm thinking of the children!

 

[sean1976]

The pitch the Mehdi is trying to make is that the need for physical disc isn't something that will be moving forward. Much like the industry believes that optical disc for movies will become obsolete. Of course, members of this forum don't believe that, but we are kind of fighting a losing battle with the broader consumer base. Mehdi states "We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better."



What do you think?

I think Microsoft should stop selling this as if they are doing us a favour. Look at the last sentence - WE'RE trying to do blah blah bla, WE believe blah blah blah. Whatever THEY believe, their consumers seem to believe differently if the outcry against the xbox one is any indication. Whether or not the future of gaming IS in the cloud, right now everyone want's physical media - a sense of ownership, and the ability to do with it as they please ( sell, trade, buy used , play offline). It takes a lot of nerve to tell a customer 1. you can't have anything you want because OUR way is better and 2. I'll tell you what WE want and you'll take it. Oh, AND we charge more. The nerve alone is galling to me. Just my 2 cents

 

[FoxyMulder]

I have no problem with everything being cloud based if the price for the game dropped, it won't, i do sell things on, helps to pay for buying future tech, i'm not really keen on a console that has to be hooked to the internet once every 24 hours because that could present an issue if my internet develops a fault because something goes down at the local exchange and they can't trace it straight away, sometimes those things can take weeks to fix.

Also the price, the PS4 has GDDR5 memory, a faster GPU too and yet the Xbox One is more expensive, i guess Microsoft are not subsidising as much as Sony, i was actually wanting Nintendo to come back into the game and compete with both of the big boys, they failed.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Sony said they are making a small profit and not subsidizing the PS4. I guess they got a better deal with AMD or MS is gouging customers more. Maybe Kinect 2 is THAT expensive?

Things being cloud based is fine...for PC games. For console games that aren't MMOs (where you expect a long-but-finite length of game time) I worry about a day when you literally can't pop a game in and play it because the servers are gone and its a single-player game.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Ditto.

 

[Sam Posten]

Repost from shady site:

>The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for shit value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.

>The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)

>It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm shit as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted shit.

>Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.

>Competition is the best man, it helps drive both to new heights. See technology from the Cold War. If we had no USSR, we'd be way worse off today. TLDR: Bring it on Steam

2/4

>Yeah we passed that around the office at Xbox. Most of us were like "Well played Sony, Well played". That being said they are just riding the hype train of ZOMG THEY ARE TRYING TO FUCK US FOR NO REASON. Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back... [...] just simpleminded people not seeing the bigger picture. Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded.

>Everyone and their mother complains about how gamestop fucks them on their trade ins, getting 5$ for their used games. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games and everyone bitches at MS. Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4.

>The goal is to move to digital downloads, but Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Amazon are KIND OF FUCKING ENTRENCHED in the industry. They have a lot of power, and the shift has to be gradual. Long term goal is steam for consoles. [...] If you always want to stay with what you have, then keep current consoles, or a PS4. We're TRYING to move the industry forwards towards digital distribution... it'sa bumpy road

>Publishers have enourmous power. Microsoft is trying to balance between consumer delight, and publisher wishes. If we cave to far in either direction you have a non-starting product. WiiU goes too far to consumer, you have no 3rd party support to shake a stick at. PS4 is status-quo. XB1 is trying to push some things, at the expense of others. We have a vision, we'll see if it works in the coming years

>Living room transformation. We want to own the living room. Every living room TV with an XBox on input one. It's the thing that gives the signal to your TV, everything is secondary. The future, where games, TV, internet telephony, all that shit happens magically on some huge ass screen with hand / voice gestures... That's our goal.


3/4

>Google TV + PS4 + Minority report level gestures, that combined with a sick second screen experience (which is really hot for TV, I know I know.. tv tv tv tv tv... but it's fucking sick when you have it). Games will be the same, there are more exclusives to MS then PS atm, and Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy.

>By default it's on, listening for "Xbox On". You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off. OFF off is required for Germany / other countries that require it (no vampire appliances) [...] It has to be plugged in for the console to post. You can turn off everything it does from the settings. Think of it like airplane mode for the iPhone. You can't just unplug the cellular radio, but you can turn it off.

>Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day. And if you don't. Don't buy an Xbox 1. Just like if you didn't have a broadband connection don't get Live, and if you don't have an HDTV the 360 isn't that great for you either. New tech, new req. This allows us to do cool shit when we can assume things like you have a kinect, you have internet, etc.

>Current plan is basically you're fucked after 24 hours. Yeah... I know. Kind of sucks. I believe they will probably revist the time period and / or find a diff way to "call in" to ensure you haven't sold your license to gamestop or something... but there is no plan YET. I'm hoping the change it, but I don't work on that so I don't have much influence there /sigh

>If the power goes out you ain't playing shit. I'm assuming you mean the internet goes out but you have power for TV and Xbox. Yes, You're fucked for single player games. Again, that's the PoR (Plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 clusterfuck

>What fee? There is no fee to play your games at your friends house. Never has, never will. Even x360 digital downloads could do that.


4/4

>The cloud capabilities is the shit they like the most. We basically made a huge cloud compute shit and made it free. What people are doing with it is kind of cool. THe original intention was to get all the Multiplayer servers not requiring 3rd party costs (Like EA shutting down game servers to cut costs), as well as taking all the games that servers hosted by the clients (Halo, etc), and have all that compute done in the cloud allowing more CPU cycles for gameplay. That will really expand what developers can do. Anything that doesn't need per frame calculation and can handle 100ms delays can be shifted to the cloud. That's huge.

>SmartGlass + IE is going to be pretty freaking sweet. 1 finger cursor, 2 finger direct manip. Basically if you think of a laptop trackpad where your phone/ slate is the trackpad and the monitor is your TV... it's that. The tech is there, just needs to be applied. There is some really cool shit going on with Petra + controllers that pairs people with controllers. So if person with controller two trades controlers with controller 1, their profiles magically switch. It's sick. What does this matter? Now if you lean left/right it knows which person is leaning, even if 4 people are all int he same room. It's awesome.

>New service using Azure for cloud compute. Allows developers to not use clients for hosting multiplayer servers, or other tasks that do not require per frame calcuations. It's pretty sweet.

>Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.

This was all from the Microsoft engineer that was on /b/ last night.

>It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want.

 

[mattCR]

I love how he keeps comparing to steam. But a few notes:

* If Steam goes down, my computer doesn't become unusable.
* In fact, a lot of games I've bought on steam play just fine in Offline mode when I'm travelling.
* Steam doesn't require a camera to be connected to use.
* Steam has no yearly fee to use it.
* You can turn it off is countermanded by the fact it still has to connect once a day.

I don't know, from where I sit the idea of a steam-based system on a Console where the games are in a nearly uncopiable Blu-Ray format, I don't understand the benefits at all, outside of f-- the customer.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Steam basically launched with Half-Life 2. I have a brand new computer, actually its 2 brand new computers since then. It's been 10 years. I can load up steam and play HL2 and it runs fine.

My big concern with Xbox One is: who says I'll still have access to Xbox One's servers in 10, 15, 20 years? I will be able to play PS4 disc-based games until I am unable to find a working console, but that won't work for the Xbox One. The XBL and PSN (heck, even Wii/Wii U/3DS) online stores allow people to download games in a "steam-like" system, so why is that not good enough but a disc-based market is? Downloadable games remove the DRM, used game, and internet-requirement issues, so why couldn't they just say you can use discs AND digital downloads?

If the price of games is so high because of used and stuff, why not incentivize digital sales (which cannot be traded in) by offering discounts on the digital versions? Simply making a game available as a download lowers the cost to deliver it to the customer to basically nothing so that should be reflected. Sony does this on the PS Vita (digital games are 10% cheaper than in-store) and its been working really well.

Basically, I think MS took the worst approach to get the best end result and seem surprised people are unhappy with it.

 

[Edwin-S]

That spew makes me want to buy an XBOX1 even less. All that tells me is how arrogant the drones working for MicroSoft really are.He actually thinks it's a good idea that MicroSoft should "own" our living rooms. Maybe he likes that idea, but I don't. I'm getting sick of these Megacorps always trying to gain a monopoly so that they are the only game in town. He's also an asshole, referring to people who don't want to swallow MicroSoft's Kool-Aid as simple minded.
The NSA and all the other too many letter government agencies would love MicroSoft to own our living rooms too. It would make it so much easier for them to vacuum up even more our data either with or with out MicroSoft's help.

 

[JoeyR]

Almost all the guys I game with were primarily Xbox players only, now with the Xbox1 almost 80% are preordering a Playstation 4. Microsoft really screwed this one up.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

>Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day.

So this person thinks that kids will be taking their XBox1 to school and connecting it there or parents to work? That is where the "speck of internet at least once a day" comes from for most people.

 

[DaveF]

That spew makes me want to buy an XBOX1 even less. All that tells me is how arrogant the drones working for MicroSoft really are.He actually thinks it's a good idea that MicroSoft should "own" our living rooms. Maybe he likes that idea, but I don't. I'm getting sick of these Megacorps always trying to gain a monopoly so that they are the only game in town. He's also an asshole, referring to people who don't want to swallow MicroSoft's Kool-Aid as simple minded.The NSA and all the other too many letter government agencies would love MicroSoft to own our living rooms too. It would make it so much easier for them to vacuum up even more our data either with or with out MicroSoft's help.

Are we equally paranoid about Sony? Don't they have the same capability?The PlayStation 4 Eye camera takes a cue from Microsoft’s Kinect controller, utilizing a second camera for increased depth-sensing capabilities, providing an 85 degree viewing angle with a fixed F2.0 focus, and captures images in RAW and YUV formats with a maximum resolution of 1280x800 at 60fps. Additional resolutions are 640x400 at 120fps and 320x192 at 240fps. The camera also includes a 4-channel microphone array.

 

[Hanson]

I love the sneering tone towards the little people who don't have an HDTV for even the XBox 360. All of these complainers -- they don't deserve to buy the XBOne.

Fucking little people. They're the worst, The world would be so much better without them.

Oh, didn't the majority of XBox 360 sales happen after price drops and the wide availability of used games? MS doesn't want their business anymore.

 

[DaveF]

What is the current position on reselling and lending games on XBOX? I'm talking with a friend who is positive that the message on no used games was an errant MS employee who was fired promptly after that. I thought MS had double downed on no used sales, no lending. But quickly skimming this thread again , I'm not sure what was said or confirmed?

 

[mattCR]

Are we equally paranoid about Sony? Don't they have the same capability?The PlayStation 4 Eye camera takes a cue from Microsoft’s Kinect controller, utilizing a second camera for increased depth-sensing capabilities, providing an 85 degree viewing angle with a fixed F2.0 focus, and captures images in RAW and YUV formats with a maximum resolution of 1280x800 at 60fps. Additional resolutions are 640x400 at 120fps and 320x192 at 240fps. The camera also includes a 4-channel microphone array.

Big difference, though, Dave. The PS4 Eye is optional.. and even if you have it, you can unplug it, put it in a drawer.. and the system still works.
Disconnect the Kinect and the XBOX One doesn't function (period)

 

[mattCR]

What is the current position on reselling and lending games on XBOX?I'm talking with a friend who is positive that the message on no used games was an errant MS employee who was fired promptly after that.I thought MS had double downed on no used sales, no lending. But quickly skimming this thread again , I'm not sure what was said or confirmed?

Ok, here's the thing:
You can sell to someone who is in your friends list for at least 30 days. The sale will then need to wipe any copy of information off your drive which they handle, and there -may- or -may not- be a fee that would be owed back to the original provider (like an EA or whoever)
The second hit with that is that since that would be a "new" transaction, no one has any idea of if you'd be responsible for the sales tax on it, check your state for that one.

As far as lending goes, it's basically none. It's yours or you get rid of it, you can't loan it out, and there will be no rental system (gamefly, redbox, etc.) for it.

 

[DaveF]

Hrmmm.....didn't appreciate the kinect was necessary. It looks neat, but don't know if it will work in my room, etc. The used sales and lending are complicated. Needing to have the buyer be a 'friend' means no eBay, so no used games sold. But it makes for a burdensome lending system. I want to like the Xbox one, but they're not giving a good meta message.

 

[DaveF]

I've lost track of which thread has the ps4 price: does the $399 include the eye?