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MS Seeks Entrance Fee to XBox Accessory Market
pwnage writes "According to CNET, Microsoft's newest licensing model for the next-generation XBox will effectively lock out 3rd-party accessory manufacturers who don't enroll in Microsoft's licensing and royalty program. The new console will employ hardware security mechanisms to ensure that only products created by developers willing to fork over cash to Microsoft can connect to and work with the console. Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by making traditional 'approved product' licensing mandatory for 3rd-party developers? Or will companies line up by the dozens to tithe to King Bill? Finally, will Sony follow a similar strategy to eke additional revenues out of its PlayStation 3?"
Hopefully along with the fee comes a Microsoft quality screening similar to the process that the games go through. Every gamer knows that first party controllers, memory cards, etc hold up better than most third party, and that there is a huge gap in quality between a Logitech controller and some no-name piece of garbage.
Since Logitech is more likely to pay the fee than a get-rich-quick company making "2x the MEMORY!!" memory cards, hopefully the market will see a big step forwards in the average quality of third party peripherals.
I think with the success of the original XBox and the way that things are looking for the XBox 360 companies will fork up the money to do it. Just look at Apple's strategy. It keeps only high quality products being created. This will ensure that the XBox stays a hot product and will also ensure that people aren't exploiting the XBox. I think it's a good move.
No, because the potential pay-off to the 3rd party people is just way to big. They will pay up. But I suspect whatever scheme MS comes up with will be cracked within 72 hours anyway...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by making traditional 'approved product' licensing mandatory for 3rd-party developers? Or will companies line up by the dozens to tithe to King Bill?
More likely... Manufacturers will circumvent the protections and make compatible items anyway like with the original NES. There's even prior case law from the original NES days, and even the Lexmark case that will help them get away with it.
Ultimately, this will raise the price of peripherals, and discourage their purchase. As I understand the model, they should try everything possible to get the hardware in your hands so that you will buy more games. Especially for those people that buy accessories at the time of the system purchase, it will give them a lot of reasons to consider whether to buy it at all.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
As far as MS is concerned, it's a win-win.
It's very unlikely that the accessories for a system will significantly change the sales of that system. With the exception of some fairly serious add-ons (like the Powerglove, Robie, etc), most accessories are just "nice to haves".
If the Xbox 360 does well then companies will flock to MS and gladly pay the license fee. MS makes lots of money off this program, and most of the companies who would have made accessories to begin with will continue to do so because it will still result in a profit.
If the Xbox 360 does poorly, then there wouldn't have been very many 3rd party accessories to begin with.
The only people who lose out in this scenario is small accessories companies who might not be able to afford the cut into their profits, and potentially consumers if these license fees are large enough to cause the accesories to be priced significantly higher.
I guess it's to be expected - let other companies spend years building a business making 3rd-party accessories for consoles, then squeeze them for licensing fees in order to stay in the business.
I wonder how much it will be? $2? $10? The problem with this kind of deal is that it almost always hurts the little guy more. Logitech isn't going to have to pay nearly as much per-unit as one of the smaller players, so we end up with fewer choices. I would be one thing if we could somehow be guaranteed that MS will make the best controllers out there, but it's not like their track record has been that good.
So if a developer wants to sell a driving game with a wheel or we want to get the HD version of Dance Dance Revolution (yay) then it's going to cost even more than before.
Really though, I doubt this is about controllers. More likely it concerns other types of accessories...like mod chips. If they can prove that "unlicensed" mod chip makers are avoiding a standard license fee, they can sue them for those fees to either put them out of business or make it too expensive to make a product. If it's not illegal yet, I'm sure there's a lobbyist somewhere working on it.
"The Mad Catz license agreement also puts limits on the type of controllers that third parties can make. Most notably, the add-on products can only be of the corded variety, while Microsoft itself is supporting wireless controllers.
In addition to the restrictions on wireless products, the Mad Catz contract excludes light guns, memory units, hard drives and cheat cards. Licensed peripherals include game pads, steering wheels, arcade sticks, flight sticks and dance pads.
So,can we expect DMCA action "Cheat cards"? I'm guessing there will also be adaptors for unlicensed xbox360 controllers at some point. Get them while they're grey market!
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
If some extremely cool 3rd-party controller/widget maker just doesn't want to get into the MS zone, then they can just focus their ultra-cool talents, superior pricing, and fantastic wonderfulness somewhere else. And then no one will want the walled-off fancy ivory tower product, and that will be that.
Or not. But the point is, it's a wildly competitive product space. It they can't attract the right 3rd party stuff at a good price, and assure their users that 3rd party stuff is going to be something other than a rip-off, then they'll lose. Let them, or support them. It's a choice - and the choice is X or not X. S or not. N or not.
If it was my product, I suppose I'd probably also have an interest in not seeing its reputation tainted by someone's experience with a cheesy, ill-behaved, flaky third-party add-on. Because some 10 year old is going to come back from his friend's house talking Dad into buying him a Sony box since the Xbox kept hanging up when they were using the Acme Kick Boxing Motion Sensor Gloves that only cost $10 on eBay.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So, hobbyists won't be able to connect custom stuff to the XBox 360?
I think I'll sit that one out. Not because I want to do it but because amateur hackers thinking up new uses for stuff is a great source of new ideas and gadgets... the more Microsoft locks up their systems, the less they'll have a part in the next generation of inventors.
I talked to an employee of a software company that has been around the Revolution's development crew, and I am starting to understand why Nintendo didn't release their controller's specs.
The phrase "tactile feedback" made my mind go crazy. And here I thought it was going to be some sort of successor to the Power Glove.
THIS will be Nintendo's contribution to the gaming industry. As microsoft just prevents wang-chung-foo from making ad-hock pieces with security dongles inside their parts, Nintendo actually raises the bar.
Whether "tactile feedback" or "inspired by the DS" actually is what I imagine, it sure ain't gonna be some sort of banana boomerang.
Very unfortunate if they did (try to charge $200 for a keyboard).
I am considering buying an xbox 360. The decision hinges on the ability to use it with my unused 19" CRT monitor. It's in excellent condition, but a laptop means I don't use it anymore.
The 360 is supposed to have VGA out, so that's that.
But of course, I'm a PC gamer. I was hoping that I'd be able to use a mouse and keyboard to control FPS games on the 360. After all, the 360 has USB ports, so it's theoretically possible if there are standard keyboard/mouse drivers.
But if devices need to be licensed to work, I can forget about this, because the mouse and keyboard are obviously not licensed.
And so the situation you describe could very well happen, although we might end up in an even more rediculous situation; we made need an adapter to hook up a keyboard and mouse to the 360, like we do for the current xbox and PS2. This time around, though, the adapters and the keyboards plugged into them will have the same type of connector. So stupid!
"So, for those of you old enough to remember, Nintendo charged exhorbitant licensing fees for anyone who wanted to make NES games. The way that they ensured that companies paid this fee was to build a lockout chip called 10NES into NES cartridges which only Nintendo could make. A few companies, most notably Tengen, reverse-engineered the chip, however, and made some unapproved games. Tengen actually cheated and used Nintendo documents to reverse-engineer the chips and ended up getting sued, but if this licensing fee is too high then what is going to stop accessory makers from reverse-engineering the chips and being done with it?"
Tengen - aka the home gaming division of arcade maker Atari Games Corporation (now the intellectual property owned by Midway) and not to be confused with Atari Corporation (now back to Atari Inc. and a brand of Infogrames) - sued and lost to Nintendo over that whole incident as well. Tengen manipulated the Patent Office into revealing the digital signature of the NES lockout chip. When Tengen lost, they stopped making games on the NES and switched over to supporting the Sega Genesis. And once Time Warner regained full ownership of the Company, they were also made to cooperate with Atari Corp. and license their title library over for the Atari Lynx. Time Warner at that point owned 100% of Atari Games Corp. (this was around 1991) and 25% of Atari Corp. and they also started distributing EGM as well if memory serves me correctly.
Atari Games Corp. really despised Nintendo and its lock on "Atari's" market. They were given the go-ahead by their parent company at the time - Namco - to proceed. That was the main motivation. The fact that Nintendo controlled the manufacturing process on third party game cartridges on the NES (in response to Atari Inc.'s failure to control third party quality on the 2600 causing the industry crash) and shorted Tengen lots of cartridges fueled the flames.
Nintendo one-upped Atari Games by aiding other parties in officially acquiring the rights to Tetris which Atari Games did not officially owned because of Robert Maxwell's bogus rights ownership of the property. Unfortunately, that meant Atari Games could no longer offer its version of Tetris (which was superior) on any platform and handed Nintendo a victory in being able to ship their Tetris with every Gameboy (much to the detriment of the Lynx, the superior handheld). The Tengen NES version of Tetris became quite a collector's item, and saavy stores were selling it for $90 thereafter.
The better companies to cite (especially legally) in terms of beating the licensing game was...uhm...whoever marketed the Game Genie.
Galoob? Camerica?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
You know, I feel as though this is more of a quality control issue than what many people are considering it. The number of peripherals released for anything that garners even a decent amount of popularity is nothing short of disgusting. For instance, I work at CompUSA, and I must say that I cringe every single time I have to stock a new iPod accessory. Some of the iPod accessories that I've seen lately are nothing short of pathetic. Example: Today, I came across an accessory that turns a car's cup holder into an iPod holder. Lame. Seriously, I hope that this works in Microsoft's favor. Maybe these developers will think twice before releasing several variations of what is, essentially, the same damn controller. Now, if there's no sense of quality control, though, I think this will ultimately only lead to more expensive throw-away peripherals, rather than dirt-cheap ones. Let's hope for the best. I really hope that Pelican (one of my favorite third party peripheral developers) brings their quality products to the 360.
And I'm going to do something similar with my house. Microsoft will have to pay me to run their XBox. Sony will have to pay me if they want to run their playstation in my house. Dell will have to pay me if they want to run their computer in my home.
I'm thinking that this will hand a "legitimate use" excuse to the mod chip makers.
"MS would be best off not suing under the DMCA, seeing as the SCOTUS was pretty firm in the Lexmark case about the DMCA not extending to interaction between components."
Interesting thought, but wrong IMHO. The DMCA is protected not only by DRM these days, but also by the US PAtriot Act. Microsoft doesn't need to sue someone who sets up a website that publishes DRM cracks any more. The same C&D letter to the website administrator can now be CCed to the DoJ, who will use criminal "conspiracy to commit" charges (or worse). The current regime in power is in lockstep with the **AA in regarding copyright violators to be (practically speaking) "terrorists".