Let's Get Serious About This Xbone Stuff Now

I've been having a couple of conversations today about the reversal of the Xbox One's intrusive policies and the features they removed alongside. But most of that was before coming across one particular blog made by a mostly unknown blogger by the name of knightofhytal. I highly recommend you check out his blog, because otherwise I feel like I'm stealing his thunder slightly. And that would be dickish of me.

Anyways, his blog featured a link to an article by a Microsoft employee that spoke out about his disappointment in Microsoft's policy reversals and all that went along with it. Between that piece and some conversations I have had earlier, I have lots and lots of questions that I want to have a discussion about. Not a circle jerk of bashing and malice, but an honest, informative conversation about these removed policies and DRM in general.

To focus the conversation a bit, I'm going to quote some of the aforementioned article and analyze some of what I'm seeing in it. Anything that isn't my words will be in italics, and I will respond to is in a separate paragraph with normal text (like this). I do highly recommend you read the article in full before diving into my reactions and responses, because while there certainly isn't enough room for the more irrelevant paragraphs, I don't want this to be thought of as out of context at all.

"While publishers have never come right out to us at MS and say “We want you to do something about used gaming” we could hear it in their voices and read it in their numerous public statements. The used gaming industry is slowly killing them and every attempt to slow down the bleeding was met with much resistance from the gaming community. I will admit that online passes were not well received nor were they well implemented, but I felt given time to mature it could have turned into something worth having as a gamer much like DLC (we went from pointless horse armor to amazing season passes like Borderlands 2!). Videogame development is a loss leader by definition and unlike other forms of media videogames only have one revenue stream and that is selling to you the gamer."

In this first bit, he's just explaining the necessity of DRM to protect against used games. I understand where he and the industry is coming from, but it's also ignoring the big issue that people have with Microsoft's policy about it. If they had gone to digital only distribution, there would be no used games market. Microsoft realized that some would be opposed to completely ditching physical media, so they gave the option for you to buy a disc and install from there rather than download from Xbox Live. I personally would have rather seen them go all digital. It's what they clearly wanted all along, and that way they wouldn't have been setting any harmful precedence with telling you what you can and can't do with your own property. Everybody would have won, except retailers. And there's still the issue with pricing and the effects of price drops with no alternative retailers to create competitive pricing, but that's an entirely different subject.

First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn’t have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it. One thing we knew is that we wanted the experience to be seamless for both the person sharing and the family member benefiting. There weren’t many models of this system already in the wild other than Sony’s horrendous game sharing implementation, but it was clear their approach (if one could call it that) was not the way to go. Developers complained about the lost sales and gamers complained about overbearing DRM that punished those who didn’t share that implemented by publishers to quell gamers from taking advantage of a poorly thought out system. We wanted our family sharing plan to be something that was talked about and genuinely enjoyed by the masses as a way of inciting gamers to try new games.

So to sum up the point, Family Sharing allows a person to select 10 people who can access a 15 to 60 minute demo of the games they own. Once the time is up, they have the option to purchase without having to download it again. Microsoft's opposition, which this employee said has a horrible system in place, has previously stated in its PS4 console reveal that every PS4 game will allow you to play a demo version as the full version is downloading. I don't recall a specified time limit, so let's say it's the same for argument's sake: 15 to 60 minutes. At the end of that time limit, you have the option to purchase the game without downloading it again. Which means that ultimately these two consoles are doing the same thing; the difference being that on the Xbone, you have to have been selected in someone's 10 people whereas on the PS4 it's just a standard on the PSN Store. I don't see how Microsoft's way of doing it is better; if anything it seems more restrictive because before you can do it someone has to let you. And considering that Sony is not requiring an always on connection or restricting used games sales, I don't understand how Family sharing on the Xbone would justify either policy or how it would need to be removed in the absence of those policies.

It is still possible to implement this with the digital downloaded versions of games, and in fact that’s the plan still as far as I’m aware.

So again, the feature is only being removed from disc based games. If you want to download digitally, then you still can do it even without the old policies. It's only disc based games that can't now, which makes sense.

Another feature that we didn’t speak out about was the fact we were building a natural social network with Xbox One in itself that didn’t require gamers to open their laptops/tablets to post to their other friends nor did they need to wrestle with keyboard add-ons. Each Xbox Live account would have a full “home space” in which they could post their highest scores, show off their best Game DVR moments, what they’ve watched via Xbox TV and leave messages for others to read and respond to. Kinect 2.0 and Xbox One work together and has robust voice to text capabilities. The entire notion of communicating with friends you met online would have been natural and seamless. No reliance on Facebook, or Twitter (though those are optional for those who want them). Everything is perfectly crafted for the Xbox One controller and Kinect 2.0 and given that shine that only Microsoft can provide.

This is a subject I admit I'm not as well versed on in the details, but wasn't Sony doing the same thing by allowing real names instead of profile names and also having game DVR and all the same chat features? The only difference I can see is Kinect, which is obviously a big difference, but isn't related to any removed policies and I don't think they even removed this social network aspect.

The article also did not specifically mention why there was a need for the 24 hour online check ins to enforce this DRM and what its loss means to gamers or Microsoft, which makes me think it was entirely unnecessary as well.

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I also had a conversation earlier with a well known and respected blogger named Crabby_Bastard (follow!), who has openly been supportive of the Xbone all along. In this conversation he mentioned that gamers tend to ignore the positive aspects of DRM in games, but the conversation ended before we could get into what they were. On my own, I have to admit I'm struggling to find the positives about DRM. The only thing I can think of is that it helps developers protect their products, which was directly mentioned in conversations past as well. The problem is that there's always talk about there being lots of positives about DRM that get ignored, but then nobody ever tells me what they are. So I'm asking: what are the positives of DRM? I just want to be informed on this subject, and I feel like it's difficult to get all of the facts from both sides. So help me out if you can with it.

I will warn you that I may challenge something you say if it doesn't add up to me. Like the family sharing thing above, if I see an alternate way of doing it that isn't intrusive to consumers, then I will call it out and question it. I don't mean to do this antagonistically, I simply want to understand this stuff.

So bottom line here: if anyone wants to have this conversation with me, then please comment. If you can teach me about DRM, or if you can provide some insight to Microsoft's policies that I have missed, please tell me. I want to understand.

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“I shall bring my jimmies unrustled.”

-hypernova1024

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