Four Years Later, Xbox Exec Admits How Microsoft Screwed Up Disc Resale Plan (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We're now approaching the four-year anniversary of Microsoft's rollout (and subsequent reversal) of a controversial plan to let game publishers limit resale of used, disc-based games. Looking back on that time recently, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Windows and Devices Yusuf Mehdi acknowledged how that rollout fell flat and discussed how hard it was for the firm to change course even in light of fan complaints at the time. In a blog post on LinkedIn posted last weekend, Mehdi writes: "With our initial announcement of Xbox One and our desire to deliver breakthroughs in gaming and entertainment, the team made a few key decisions regarding connectivity requirements and how games would be purchased that didn't land well with fans. While the intent was good -- we imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing and new ways to try and buy games, we didn't deliver what our fans wanted. We heard their feedback, and while it required great technical work, we changed Xbox One to work the same way as Xbox 360 for how our customers could play, share, lend, and resell games. This experience was such a powerful reminder that we must always do the right thing for our customers, and since we've made that commitment to our Xbox fans, we've never looked back." It's an interesting reflection in light of an interview Mehdi gave to Ars Technica at E3 2013, when the executive defended Microsoft's announced plans for Xbox One game licensing. Mehdi, then serving as Xbox chief marketing and strategy officer, stressed at the time that "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... 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."

Comments

While the intent was good...

[bugs2squash]

for Microsoft

Re:While the intent was good...

[gravewax]

The actual benefits were awesome for users too, it was just the sticking point of requiring "ALWAYS" connected that had us all pissed, it wasn't worth getting all those awesome sweet bits when it had a steaming turd sitting on top. had they said licensing would need to be validated once a week or such they probably would have been fine, always connected just is not an option.

Re:While the intent was good...

[spire3661]

All of those benefits came at the cost of the loss of the First-sale doctrine. It was a bad deal, period. Always connected was not the major issue, the major issue MS was attempting to kill this legal doctrine as it applied to them.

And then there was Kinect

[Kohath]

If that was their only problem, they could have recovered more easily. But they also had:
- $100 higher price to cover the cost of Kinect -- a device few wanted
- the TV stuff and the Snap interface so you could split-screen TV and gaming -- providing a poor TV-watching experience and a poor gaming experience simultaneously
- a giant box that looked like a VCR with a big external power brick
- somewhat worse performance than the PS4 because of the speed of the RAM interface

It's difficult to dig yourself out of a hole that deep.

Nope

[argStyopa]

"...we imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing and new ways to try and buy games, ..."

If he can't even be honest about the basic intent of drm as a method of protecting revenue, why should I take ANYTHING else he says as credible?

Steam Library Sharing

[darkain]

For anyone that uses the Library Sharing feature of Steam, this is essentially what Microsoft was attempting to do. But because Microsoft was building a traditional console, not a download-only service, is why it was met with such negativity. I'll dis on Microsoft as much as the next guy, but they due try to do new innovative shit all the time, they're just notorious at always fucking it up or never actually releasing it in the first place. Other examples include UAC (sucked in Vista, fixed in 7), WinFS (never released), Photosynth (released, then dead shortly thereafter)

Re:I reserve the right to resell

[Luthair]

An unfortunate aspect of games this generation - virtually every game needs a large update to make the game playable. The size of the patches and installs means you probably don't have sufficient hardware space so once Sony & Microsoft stop providing online services for the console those disks will effectively be unusable.

As complexity increases it becomes less likely we'll see emulators thus many of these games will be lost forever in ~10-15 years.

That was never the issue with DRM

[LeftCoastThinker]

"...we imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing and new ways to try and buy games..."

OK, fine, but thats not what people were pissed about, and you know it. There is no rational explanation for DRM (aka digital non-rights) to prevent resale. You want to digitally revolutionize and save money on distribution and make things more convenient for your customers? Fine, but give me a button in my Xbone UI that says "release rights" or some such or better yet, an online marketplace to resell digital content I no longer want. Why should I give up the fundamental right of resale on my $2000 plus library of games just because the original seller saved $7 on not having to sell me a physical disc, case and manual? Hell, digital should give me more rights or a discount, like the right to rent my copy out to others when I'm not using it.

This was a straight up money grab by MS and the developers, and the consumer bitch slapped you down because there was real meaningful competition. Own it and move on.