As far as DRM and borrowing games goes, Microsoft already has this in place whenever you purchase a title off of Xbox Live. They have been practicing this since XBLA started. The arcade games and On Demand titles require DRM so you cannot copy them over to another Xbox 360 in your house and play the full versions unless you also have your gamertag with them. Then if you didn't transfer the license to the other Xbox 360 you have to stay online for them to play or the titles revert back to "trial" mode. Also Microsoft only allows you to transfer licenses once a year. Anyone who has gone through the pain of upgrading an old Xbox 360 to a Slim 360 knows about that. Indy games are even worse as you have to be online to play those titles at all.
All I'm sayin' is Microsoft has already tested it out with the 360 and they made nothing but profit. Primarily from Arcade titles that aren't available on store shelves. From the numbers, enough gamers bought enough content with DRM to warrant the features for the Xbox One. When you agree to the terms of XBLA you aren't allowed to sell your account on craigslist or ebay. Go ahead and try to post your Gamertag on Craigslist and try to sell it with a list of XBLA titles and Games on Demand titles. It will get taken down quick and probably have your account banned from Craigslist. You might even get a fine from Microsoft. It happened to a few people trying to sell their Steam accounts.
It's tough to swallow because it's here black and white but when people were warning people not to buy titles in the Xbox store, people ignored it. So now we spoke with our wallets and this is the future. It's a rough position to be in as us gamers.
Also remember that Sony watched all that money pile up as well. I doubt they'll make a mistake by not charging online multiplayer like they did with PS3. It just wouldn't make sense for business. If players are willing to pony up Sony may have to go that route. I'm not familiar with the PSN store as I've personally decided that I won't buy games as downloads anymore but I'm sure they have some sort of DRM in place for their games. I mean can I just take my PSP over to a friend's and copy the game to a SD card and play it without restriction? Maybe readers can answer that one for me. I've never thought to try.
It will be interesting when Sony's details are out and the comparisons are available. It's sad to me that the days of firing up a retro console for future generations is dying. I love being able to show my 8 year old son the power of the Sega Master System and it's 3-D glasses and light gun. 20 years from now, will you be showing your kids your XBLA collection when the servers are gone and your HDD dies? I doubt it.
I see a bleak future where instead of owning what you bought it's a long term rental service that we're buying into. There's a lot of trust being removed from gamers in my opinion and if enough people don't buy into it, we may save our hobby from certain doom.
Lost art of sharing games and consoles
Today, Astragon announced a new installment of the Bus Simulator franchise, simply titled Bus Simulator 27, coming for PC, PS5, and Xbox.
Limited Run Games, MARVEL and Konami have announced MARVEL MaXimum Collection for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
would love it if xmen arcade offered two modes. the regular single screen 4 player mode and the ultra wide (simulated dual screen) 6 player mode.
How much you wanna bet that this collection will keep the games in their original aspect radios with no visual fidelity or options?
Was excited until I saw that Limited Run was attached. Their so-called collections thus far have been nothing but sloppily slapped together emulations.
A new Resident Evil Requiem graphics comparison examines Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S, revealing performance gaps and visual trade offs.
interesting that the Switch 2 version renders at a higher internal resolution. I wonder if they dropped it down to the same as the Series S the game would hit the 60 mark more often than it does.
Solid port though, can't wait to play this tomorrow (or whenever my preorder gets to me lol)
*You can transfer Licences every 4 months not one a year.
I also think you can't really count arcade games which are about 1200 ms points compared to full 60$ games.
I glad you didn't compare it to steam though.
This is why I tend not to buy digital copies of games no matter the cost. Until digital starts getting treated as physical (loaning, renting, buy and sell) then it's useless to me and bad for customers. I've made an exception with Nintendo and only because they've shown they at least think about what happens to your digital collection and allow you to keep it when upgrading to their new system but that exception will end if I see it moving in a more restrictive direction later on.
Comparing Xbone retail to XBLA is like comparing steam to google play, apples and oranges. You should be comparing Xbone retail games to current gen GoD. I haven't seen the numbers, but I'd guess GoD hasn't had a great deal of success given the prices are generally higher than they are at retail with none of the benefits of a retail release.
"I see a bleak future where instead of owning what you bought it's a long term rental service that we're buying into. There's a lot of trust being removed from gamers in my opinion and if enough people don't buy into it, we may save our hobby from certain doom."
Exactly. People talk about this change as if it's inevitable. It isn't, or at least it doesn't have to be. If we want the industry to allow sharing, borrowing and reselling (which I think should be our right)then we should only buy products that support that practice.
It makes complete sense to me why we should not be able to copy and share a downloaded game. It's actually how I would EXPECT the medium to work. Subsequently, I expect a disc to represent the game. If the Xbone was a digital marketplace only (like XBLA) it would be different ball game entirely. What I don't like is limiting the functionality of a physical medium.
I rarely download arcade games now, and I've only ever downloaded one game demand (I was drunk at the time, haha).
If MS want to prevent the reselling of games, then they should promote the digital marketplace, instead of trying to impose digital restrictions to a physical medium.
The issue really comes down to that when you purchase a game off of the Live store, regardless of cost, that you are agreeing to the terms of use for it. If it's like Sony's store, then whenever you purchase a game, you click something that says you are the only person that can ever own that license. You basically agree to the EULA before you are allowed to purchase.
This is different to the retail market, where the user does not have the option to agree to the EULA before purchase. A company can not say, "He should have known about the agreement beforehand". They would have to provide that information up front to every customer on the outside of the box, and it would have to be signed at time of purchase. Quite a headache of paperwork for any retail environment, and eventually people would start asking why they would have to do such a thing. It just won't happen like that, so EULA, for the most part is unenforceable.
That being said, even now in the EU, cases have already been heard, and precedence already set, to state that the user still has rights to the first sale doctrine. MS is sidestepping that, and some laws in the US, by allowing users the means to trade/sell their games using their own service. It skirts the law, and is against the spirit of the law, so when this all inevitably comes before a court, we may finally get a real ruling on this instead of the usually pussy-footing around the subject that courts have taken up to this point.
I also disagree that it is proven profitable. DRM is just an adverse disadvantage to digital downloads. It's one you live with for the convenience one would find from downloading a game. That still doesn't really test it's legality, because again, it will have to be determined by the courts.
What you meant to say was that Digital Distribution is profitable. This is true for many reasons. But DD is not necessarily DRM, it just utilizes DRM due to it's nature.