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Microsoft Confirms Xbox One's Phone Home Requirement, Game Resale Rules
Following the confusion surrounding Microsoft's announcement of the Xbox One, the company has now clarified many of the hot-button issues in a set of posts on their official site. First, they confirmed that the console will need to phone home in order to continue playing games. On your primary console, you'd need to connect to the internet and check in once every 24 hours. They also announced that you'll be able to access and play any of your games by logging in on somebody else's console, but the internet connection will be required every hour to keep playing that way. Other media don't require the connection. Microsoft also explained how game licensing will work. On the upside, anyone using your console will be able to play your games, and you can share your games with up to 10 members of your family for free. The downside is the news about used games; Microsoft says they've "designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers." The key word there is can, which implies that you can't without the publisher's express permission. Finally, the company made a set of statements about how Kinect's audio and video sensors will collect and share your data. "When Xbox One is on and you're simply having a conversation in your living room, your conversation is not being recorded or uploaded." They also say data gathered during normal use won't leave the console without your explicit permission.
Seriously, the need to phone home once/day is a deal breaker. Not being able to take a game over to a friends place without signing into my account is a deal breaker. Telling me how I can sell or giveaway my used games is a deal breaker.
There's nothing about this that I'm interested in. I don't play games online, my XBox isn't connected to a network because they started putting ads into the games, and I refuse to give them a channel for it.
So, my single purchase (or non-purchase) is insignificant, and Microsoft won't care. But of the people I know who own an XBox, pretty much all of them have said they don't want this either.
There's nothing about this new platform that sounds good for the consumer, and it certainly doesn't leave them much choice.
So whatever the first next-generation console is which can be ran entirely offline without any network connection over its lifetime stands a pretty good chance of getting bought. But Microsoft can eat shit if they think I'll pay them for the privilege of owning one of these (which I'm sure the EULA says we don't own anyway).
Either I and people like myself will pretty much be irrelevant, which is fine, or there's going to be a huge consumer backlash against this, and Microsoft is going to find themselves holding the bag on a gaming platform nobody wants.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The WiiU is already less invasive. Odds are Sony will use this as a club to beat MS with. If they have a console that offers customers the ability to own games that will be huge.
It's been fun, Xbox, but this is where we part ways. None of these things are technically even huge issues for me- I have a stable internet connection and wouldn't want to bring the console to a cabin or anything. I never sell my games, since I like collecting them- and hell, I'm sure that in 15 years when they take the servers down they'll probably just gut the DRM or lock the games to a specific console and remove the online requirement or do SOMETHING to make sure our games don't become fancy, expensive coasters.
But it's a matter of principle. I don't want a console that treats me like I'm a thief, needing to check up on me once a day to make sure I'm not smoking pot or something. If I fall on hard times and need to sell somethings to get by, I want to know that for the 60 dollar game I bought that there's an option to do so and potentially feed myself for a week. I don't want to worry what will happen to my favorite titles in fifteen years, if I'll be able to play them- that's nothing someone SHOULD have to worry about (And honestly I still prefer Halo 2 to any of the later games anyway...)
I hope the generation that follows this learns from the mistakes being made here. Until then, I'll see you on the PC/Wii U.
I think Nintendo will just become king of the hill again in that case. They can promote the WiiU being the only console that has this and stores will push it hard.
What if I get banned from Xbox Live? Does this 24-hour check-in fail? Am I no longer allowed to play my single player games?
"When Xbox One is on and you're simply having a conversation in your living room, your conversation is not being recorded or uploaded."
Considering the stories about the NSA datamining in both the telecom and computing services industries, I have two words to say:
"Likely story."
It will be turned on to record, to find "terrorists."
This gets a big "nope."
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BMO
for the longest time xbox live was hands above the playstation network and wiichannel. that has changed over they years but for under 50 bucks a year (coupon codes are or were easy to get) i didnt find it to be unreasonable. The new stuff with this new console is a total deal breaker however.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Steam DRM is ridiculously EASY to crack given that with their authentication setup they could make it nearly bulletproof if they chose(and they are well aware of this but have done nothing much to fix it as it's a feature and not a bug) and more importantly, they have PLENTY of competition on their platform which forces them to price their fare accordingly.
I guess it depends on whether you owned the game in the first place. for instance, Adobe's licensing makes it clear that you don't own the software that you bought, you just own a license to use it. If game developers use similar license agreements then the law you mention probably does not apply.
I can currently give or sell a game to anyone with no requirements that the recipient is on a friends list. They use wording to give the appearance that they are enabling things, but it is really a matter of stating what they are allowing you to do and what you cannot do.
Buying and selling used games is a huge market and creates liquidity for people to buy new games. This is no different than how buying and selling stocks on the stock market creates liquidity for IPOs. But now they are killing that liquidity for game customers.
On your last point, I would argue that sharing a game among users is an irrelevant feature. In my experience, if a game is worth playing, it is worth owning. I do not want to depend upon the generosity of my friends (and vice verse) to be able to play a game. Everyone loses control in that scenario.
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So, the game developers will just make their game require the Xbone's "cloud services." Sure, you can sell the *game*, but if it won't work without access to the *service* (which is independent of the game, at least conceptually), and since the service is precisely that (a service and not a product), it cannot be resold.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Calling home every 24 hours, restricting games to accounts (even sharable), etc, these all required a lot of extra work to implement. As this is a commercial product, somewhere a manager has signed off on the cost of this effort, believing that this will increase profits, customer goodwill, or some other marketable resource.
Since these actually cripple existing functionality from a game-player perspective, make the product less attractive to game players, someone, somewhere must believe that some other 'customer' is going to pay more to make up the difference in lost sales, loyalty, and increased customer dissatisfaction.
It's not the retail stores, which are being cut out almost entirely - gamestop, best buy, walmart, or large rental agencies like gamefly, who's entire business model is inapplicable for xbox one games. If you can play your games at a friend's house without bringing the disc that means digital distribution for everything.
The only one that makes sense is the large game distributors, EA and their ilk.
I'd like to see the math that says EA & etc will make more money off this than will be lost. Seems like a risky gamble to alienate end customers in order to lock down a distribution channel.
Steam doesn't have a microphone or camera that's always on. Even if I have them connected to my system, I can turn them off or disconnect them and Steam won't care.
The fact that Xbox One won't work without the Kinect system is suspicious. There's no reason for that kind of design unless surveillance is one of the top priorities of the device.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.