XBone or PS4

[HeXen]

Yeah I think they need to code it in so that in standby the memory is loaded to the disk or doesn't completely shutdown and just saves the state like computer sleep mode (use more power) and I don't know if that could be done all through software.

Shouldn't be hard, it works pretty easy on PC. I have Alt-tabbed out of a couple games before and used standby and it's certainly very convenient however PC's are more finicky, I always have the problem of it turning back on for no reason at random times.

I also don't think that the DRM was the hellish nightmare people expected, but Microsoft's P.R. failed at straightening things out on that front. If it was true that you could share a game with up to 10 people, and even potentially have one of them play at the same time as you, it would have been well worth the DRM check (though it could have been implemented better). Being able to basically split game costs with 3-4 people on each purchase would be awesome.

A lot of it reminded me of Steam minus the fact it's on disc and the sharing thing sounded like a good idea. I think people have some skewed perspectives when they think of console or PC, it's all digital and whether it's tied to an account or does online checks shouldn't have been a big deal on console if it wasn't for Steam.
People defend Steam with a passion but take away used game sales on console and it's rage. I think it's possible to resell digital games, just split the profits, a chunk goes to developer/publisher, another goes to middleman (Gamestop..etc) and another to seller. Not much difference now except 90% of profits goes to middleman and the seller only gets like $5 or $10 out of it anyway.

 

[Topweasel]

Shouldn't be hard, it works pretty easy on PC. I have Alt-tabbed out of a couple games before and used standby and it's certainly very convenient however PC's are more finicky, I always have the problem of it turning back on for no reason at random times.



A lot of it reminded me of Steam minus the fact it's on disc and the sharing thing sounded like a good idea. I think people have some skewed perspectives when they think of console or PC, it's all digital and whether it's tied to an account or does online checks shouldn't have been a big deal on console if it wasn't for Steam.
People defend Steam with a passion but take away used game sales on console and it's rage. I think it's possible to resell digital games, just split the profits, a chunk goes to developer/publisher, another goes to middleman (Gamestop..etc) and another to seller. Not much difference now except 90% of profits goes to middleman and the seller only gets like $5 or $10 out of it anyway.

I am not a fan of all the hate that was targeted towards MS for the Xbone pre 180. In fact I was looking forward to it as a user that would like to loan out games without having to hunt them down later and doesn't sell his games later.

That said PC market and console market have been very very different for a while. The idea of installing a game onto a console is still relatively new. Something the PC market had dealt with for 20+ years. This idea of totally digital "activated" installs is something not very alien to PC users even pre-steam. We had been activating games since the mid 90's. Steam brought sales competitiveness and more attention to games we never got to play. This on the other hand would have allowed MS and developers tighter controls on pricing keeping game prices inflated (or at least its a reasonable guess at the results). MS and Sony still haven't even approached the competitiveness in pricing, heck the only way to even get close on the PS store is to subscribe to +.

If MS had shown that ruling over a digital storefront and having pretty much the only say in pricing they would stay competitive and it wasn't such a culture shot. They may not have seen the backlash. But PC games have never really been a "lendable" solution and Consoles had always been. They should have seen that coming.

 

[HeXen]

You used to be able to lend out PC games and sell them, Even ones with CD keys and activations without accounts. It wasn't until more recent years this past decade where it became more popular to activate to a specific account.
I still have some old PC games I could lend or sell but hell they don't even work that well since Vista.

Historic ideas can change, actually most in the tech industry have long ago. Nowadays even TV's are toss away devices, people used to keep the same TV for some 20 years.

 

[Lil Frier]

A lot of it reminded me of Steam minus the fact it's on disc and the sharing thing sounded like a good idea. I think people have some skewed perspectives when they think of console or PC, it's all digital and whether it's tied to an account or does online checks shouldn't have been a big deal on console if it wasn't for Steam.
People defend Steam with a passion but take away used game sales on console and it's rage. I think it's possible to resell digital games, just split the profits, a chunk goes to developer/publisher, another goes to middleman (Gamestop..etc) and another to seller. Not much difference now except 90% of profits goes to middleman and the seller only gets like $5 or $10 out of it anyway.

I agree, when Steam started its sharing, I was like, "so it's what Microsoft planned, but it's MUCH more-restrictive, and people are loving it, after they railed on Microsoft." Realistically, Microsoft just took the dumbest route possible with their sharing. Having to check in to access games shared with you is 100% reasonable, because it keeps you from taking a campaign-centric game (like the new Wolfenstein) offline and sharing them with a bunch of people.

However, for the original owner of the game, they should have allowed the person to use the disc as an alternative to the online connection. If you've got the disc in the drive, there's no legitimate way for you to be over-sharing the game, because only one person (the original owner) can have the disc at a time. They could have had a better implementation of the system, but they opted not to.

 

[Anteaus]

However, for the original owner of the game, they should have allowed the person to use the disc as an alternative to the online connection. If you've got the disc in the drive, there's no legitimate way for you to be over-sharing the game, because only one person (the original owner) can have the disc at a time. They could have had a better implementation of the system, but they opted not to.

I'm with you, except that nocd cracks were really easy to acquire on PC. Even people will little real computer knowledge could download a patch or workaround to completely null out disc DRM, which is why more intrusive methods ultimately came around. First it was single cracks on BBSs, then Neverlock Universal and Rawcopy, then onto sites like gamecopyworld. Back then my copies of Neverlock and Rawcopy were cracked. A cracked copy of software whose sole purpose was the crack other software. Oh the irony.

With consoles its a bit different because it's a closed platform. The maker can engineer the optical drives firmware to only allow specific discs. Any attempt to render the DRM null usually means voiding the warranty or in some extreme cases forcing the unit offline permenantly in case the maker sees the mod and deactivates it.

Any DRM can be circumvented one way or the other, but with game consoles it's a bigger gamble which is why you see much less of it these days. With regular updates and memory monitoring, console makers make it a lot harder to circumvent DRM than it used to be.

 

[Arkaign]

Yep, Microsoft lost both the messaging battle for the potential positives AND had a lot of practical obstacles inherent to a console that mandates online checkins.

The downside in marketshare by locking out users with poor/unavailable internet connections was too large to overcome, and it's getting worse rather than better in many parts of the nation. And downloading AAA games? Good luck with that in many areas.

This is not Microsoft's fault really, but the state of internet quality in the US is absolutely abominable if you're not in a major market. And tens of millions of console players exist and buy games/content in areas not serviced by decent internet. A great example is up here on the 380 corridor. I know places where you can get 15mbit internet for $50/mo, no caps. Then communities literally across the street where the only thing you can get is 1.5mbit 'uverse' (actually re-branded '90s DSL, lol). A business I service out there actually has two of those crap lines I have running through a Zyxel USG-50 to load balance it.

Anyway, make no mistake, if XB1 had launched without the '180', they would be in even worse shape than they already are in. At the same time, they could easily have offered 99% of what they talked about even with the removal of the mandatory check-in and disc game registrations. They could have simply segregated the disc games from the DD games via XBLG. Eg :

Buy a game disc? Use it exactly like you do now.

Buy a game DD? Use it exactly like they talked about pre-180.

And for the 'I don't like switching discs' people, nothing is stopping that person from going DD exclusive, not sure what the complaint there is, other than the initial download itself. The upside to having a marketable console is way better than having the entire thing go down in flames like it would have.

It simply boils down to this :

Absolutely zero people that were interested in the XB1 changed their minds when the online checks were removed.

TONS of people that couldn't use the XB1 with the initial plans changed their minds or at least can be potential customers post-180.

 

[Topweasel]

You used to be able to lend out PC games and sell them, Even ones with CD keys and activations without accounts. It wasn't until more recent years this past decade where it became more popular to activate to a specific account.
I still have some old PC games I could lend or sell but hell they don't even work that well since Vista.

Historic ideas can change, actually most in the tech industry have long ago. Nowadays even TV's are toss away devices, people used to keep the same TV for some 20 years.

I don't know, you could but not every PC gamer back in the day was PC savy and even then trying spend an hour every week trying to figure out who needed all needed to fix their no-cd and activation code for RE2 or Generals because everyone's bases exploded gets boring really quick. The annoyingness of working on borrowed games happened well before steam.