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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?"
Imagine the possibilities! Sony, and Samsung and RCA and Toshiba and (everyone else) can charge Hollywood studios to be able to play their Movies on my TV, DVD and VCR. DRM we can truly love! But the irony would be sweet.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
It'll probably be more reason for cash straped people will opt for the Nintendo Revolution rather then the more expensive options that are PS3 and X360.
Bad idea for MS. Don't 3rd party accessory companies have a hart time turning a profit as it is? How would paying royalties look like an attractive option. They'll likely just develop for the PS3 or Revolution.
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.
This kind of arrogance is often attributed to the downfall of Nintendo (though more so on a software basis). As N came to the top, they got greedy with their control on who could release hardware and also had ridiculous fees for being a developer.
With this in effect, suddenly hardware is going to be more expensive with less competition. With the PS3 and Xbox having basically the same game lineup, this could be part of keeps Sony at the top (assuming they don't do anything stupid like this).
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
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.
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?
If console manufacturers could legally lock out third party accessories, wouldn't they have done it long ago? Nintendo sued Game Genie over patent violations but still couldn't keep them out of the market.
How is this any different from Lexmark's ink cartridge fiasco (a case they lost)? "We'll keep doing it in the face of all of this legal precedent that says we can't" doesn't seem like a sound long-term legal strategy.
I'm not too concerned though, it's going to be the same type of situation as it was with the chips in pinter ink cartridges.
1)DRM-like scheme locks out competitor
2)competitor reverse engineers said scheme
3)???
4)Profit!!
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.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
The NES "lockout chip"
Patent 1
Patent 2
Disabling the chip
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
You're kidding, right? This is nonsense. Third party makers will pay up, and proliferate. There is no shortage of people willing to pay, and they aren't interested in PC games, they want consoles. If you can't afford one you're probably not the market MS is targeting anyway, and will have to wait for second hand equipment on eBay.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Moves like these are based solely on the expected demand from consumers for these consoles. If consumers are frothing at the mouth to get their hands on the new xbox 360, then peripheral manufacturers are going to be frothing at the mouth to supply them with whiz-bang accessories. MS wins: a good business decision.
However, the opposite was true of Nintendo after their fatal decision to stick with cartriges for N64. For years, Nintendo dominated the console market, and for that, they required that all games were authorized by them and I believe even manufactured at one of their own sites. They could do this solely because there was incredible demand for their consoles. When Sony entered the market and support for Nintendo waned, all of a sudden they needed to offer game producers incentives to keep making games for Nintendo consoles.
The only thing that this sort of decision by Microsoft is saying is that they believe very strongly that their next gaming platform is going to be massively successful. And to me, that isn't really such a bad thing.
After paying $50+ for the Everquest2 game, then $15 a month for the privelege of actually using the game, then finding out that Sony wanted a piece of the action on items sold in Station Exchange auctions...I got an idea of how Sony treats its customers. I'm sure they are elated that MS took this step, now they can treat 3rd party vendors the same way.
Am I bitter? Oh, a tad.
I've since moved to Guildwars. It's possibly the best RPG game I've ever played.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
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.
For some reason this brought Batman to mind. "Will the Caped Crusader be able to free himself or will he be fried, roasted and "bat"tered? Why has the joker broken in to jail? Who is this new stranger? Can Batman's utility belt run Linux?
Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.
Either pwnage or I watch too much Batman.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
"Seems perfectly legal"
it's not. Auto makers tried to this very thing, so did printer manufactures, and a hos of other companies.
All of which failed in court. So as soon as someone make an item that gets around the security(and they will) it won't matter any more.
Or someone will sue as anti competitive, and they will win.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
yes, they did!
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.
I disagree that it's about quality control.
Ever since the beginning of the nineties, Microsoft has been working to change the commodity PC into a Windows-only platform. What used to be commodity PC hardware interfaces, have gradually been replaced by complex, undocumented protocols requiring proprietary, vendor-specific drivers.
And Microsoft was succeeding in their decommoditization scheme... until Linux came along.
Now, Linux has an even wider range of hardware support than Windows. The only place where Windows still has a lead is in the latest hardware releases from a shrinking number of companies still willing to partner with Microsoft. Those companies include NVidia and ATI, who, case in point, were convinced to stop supporting Linux Open Source drivers when Microsoft offered to make them partners in the XBox.
It's not only Linux. Apple and Sun have also released PC-based versions of their operating systems. As a result, commodity PC hardware is back in vogue, and Microsoft is losing control.
Microsoft is desperate to get that control back. Otherwise, without the means to sabotage and block their competition, Microsoft might actually have to start to compete. That prospect scares Bill Gates, who knows that Microsoft has lost every fair competition it has faced, and has always found it necessary to resort to unethical, and even illegal means in order to prevail.
The XBox was one of Microsoft's strategies for regaining that control. But it hasn't given them enough control, apparently, so they're making it even tighter.
The other purpose of this step is to increase revenue. It's not that Microsoft is going broke, however, again thanks to competition from Linux and other Open Source software (Apache, OpenOffice, etc.), Microsoft's revenue has been shrinking, or at least growing more slowly. It is getting harder and harder for Microsoft to hide this trend, and, once the markets notice, Microsoft's stock price could take a huge hit.
Hence, this move comes as no surprise to me, and I expect to see more schemes from Microsoft aimed at gaining income, and raising the barriers to compatibility.