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...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it wasn't Apple claiming it was "courage"...

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.

Re:While the intent was good...

[Luthair]

it's not going to be easy to retrofit the proposed resale mechanism in because of all the existing contracts of sale.

The government can (and should, though its not likely to happen) change the law to require it.

I'll never forget it...

[ausekilis]

MS had this long drawn out "you can do this but not that" speech that took minutes to explain.

Sony says "here's how you lend your friend a game with Playstation" and hands a box to his friend.

It didn't even take 10 seconds for Sony to eat MS's lunch there.

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.

Re:And then there was Kinect

[tepples]

Or is the answer "don't, let the customer have 2 TVs"?

Correct.

Case in point: Look at how many games nowadays support only online multiplayer, not same-screen multiplayer. Publishers rationalize the decision not to spend time=money on same-screen multiplayer by claiming limited GPU and RAM resources, as well as the fact that the average age of a gamer has trended upward since the NES and Super NES era.

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:Steam Library Sharing

[CyberNigma]

This is kind of in support of what you're saying (innovative stuff) so don't take it as a counter post, but a supportive post clarifying part of what they were trying to do for anyone reading it.

Steam Library Sharing, while progressive, is not nearly as good as what Microsoft was trying to do (and to a limited point actually did) with the family sharing.

Owning two XBOX One machines, I do not have to buy every game twice for me and my wife. She can play on my Home Xbox and I can use my Roaming License on the other Xbox so that we can both play the same game at the same time.

With steam only one user can access the library at a time.

If Microsoft could have expanded the licensing to the entire family (instead of just giving one home xbox license and one roaming license) then a family would only need to buy a single license for a game and the entire family could play it at home on separate xboxes. Steam does not do this. In fact, almost nobody does this aside from GOG. You typically need to buy the game for each family member (whether disc or digital) or play one at a time.

Single people and people with only one xbox are not affected by this as much as those with multiple machines. Blizzard used to do something similar with their games (spawns).

tldr; Microsoft gives users two (2) licenses for each digital game that they purchase on Xbox One.
Xbox Home Gold Sharing (digital game and xbox live gold sharing) > Steam Library Sharing, assuming you have more than one person in your family that games.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

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.

Designed from the Ground Up for Ads, Not Games

[Kunedog]

- $100 higher price to cover the cost of Kinect -- a device few wanted

What do you mean nobody wanted a microphone and HD camera focused 24/7 on their living room or bedroom (or kid's bedroom)?

It was also intended as a platform to force-feed ads, first and foremost:
http://www.sticktwiddlers.com/...

So what about the future of advertising on the Xbox One? “It’s going to be an exciting transition though because the 360 console wasn’t built with advertising in mind, it was more of an afterthought, so we’ve had to adapt to the technology and how we work to fit them in to the console,” said Technical Account Manager for Xbox LIVE Advertising, “whereas this new one is going to have advertising in mind. So a lot of the limitations that we have now, hopefully the release of the boundaries will widened so the opportunities will be a lot greater.”

http://hothardware.com/news/mi...

The Xbox is developing native advertising, where ad content is displayed alongside relevant material, either embedded in search results, promoted on a network like Facebook, or a "Liked X? You'll Love Y!" style of marketing. Not to worry, though -- the company plans to use Kinect to make these advertisements even more engaging than their current counterparts. In the future, Kinect may offer you a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style narrative in which you speak commands or give orders to an ad as its playing to change the final outcome.

The other way the company wants to use Kinect is to monitor what's going on in the living room to serve you group-appropriate content, rather than resorting to the plain old method of bombarding you with non-interactive advertising for things you don't care about. Microsoft claims that the demographic data the ad team can access is very limited, but it's hard not to see shadows of the same patent for movie licensing that the company applied for last year.

Overage fees

[tepples]

People love digital downloads. They love not having to look for a disc with the game on it

Perhaps in the land of FTTH, cable, or VDSL. But if the only Internet access where they live is satellite or fixed cellular, they don't love the overage fees associated with downloads in the double digit GB.

Second rule of business

[meglon]

Your business has absolutely nothing to do with what you want to sell... it has absolutely everything to do with what your customers want to buy.

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.

I usually get my Steam games

[rsilvergun]

for a fraction of the cost of a boxed retail release. Usually around 87% off (no kidding, $5-$7.50 vs $60). Either that or I'm buying a niche title (like GG Xrd) where I can't really complain about the premium I'm paying since the base sales will be low. On a console if I buy a used disk I might get $20-$30 off that $60 price point (I paid $27 for a copy of Marvel vs Capcom 3 for PS3 used years after release).

So yeah, I'm giving up the ability to sell/share it but I'm paying a fraction of the cost.