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MS eliminates its best new feature: 10 person, 60 min Family Sharing plan for Xbone
- Thread starter Horse Armour
- Start date
Don't take my post too literally dude. Surely you got my point.
mightynine
Member
And I would like to note that Gies' "response" said nothing about the timer, which I imagine is what publishers would've supported.
Can you chime in on the 180 that MS pulled yesterday?
LiquidSolid
Member
So they really did just copy Sony's PS+ idea. Wow. And they really tried to hype that up as a benefit for their all-digital system?
SRTtoZ
Member
The statement reads as:
"We STILL believe this whole online thing we are doing, but for now we are removing it because we need to sell consoles".
They openly state that they still believe their vision is the way to go.
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
That explanation of the game sharing seems far too descriptive for something that can only be used for an hour, surely? Oh well, another reason why the Xbone in its previous form was not worth bothering with.
Don't take anything Agies says with anything more than a grain of manky salt. This is the same guy who claimed secret sauce for Durango, defended Sim City's always online for it's cloud based malarkey (which turned out to be false) and more.
Arky Virus
Neo Member
Microsoft just over glorified demoed versions of the game and said if you liked it you could "insert coin to continue." There was never any full game sharing.
Kill Your Masters
Member
Yeah that's true, most would be out of a job then.
Yeah, I'd have been pissed with this as the end result. Don't feel dumb for interpreting things as written, though, instead of through crazy filter MS was apparently using. Setting themselves up for some unbelievably epic backlash apparently.
SRTtoZ
Member
That given time is 60 minutes.
purnoman3000
Member
Holy shit if true hahaha. I knew somehow MS wasn't actually trying to push a forward thinking idea like this with all the DRM bs spouting, cloud computing wunderkind, we can't explain any of our policies explicitly drivel.
.
.
Marty Chinn
Member
See this is why I don't think this was a glorified 45/60 min demo. The language there contradicts that notion. The 60 min thing sounds much more in line with the fact that games had to check in every hour in order to validate which is something we already got a confirmation of. That seems way more likely than 60 min and you can't play the game any further.
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
Certainly fits with their openly misleading language since E3. The reversal Press release was the only intelligible thing they've said in weeks.
Officerrob
Banned
The Family Share Plan was never going to work the way is was being described, common sense should tell you that. Lets just be glad that all this bullshit is in the garbage where it belongs
I forsee them swtiching it back, but I really don't see why they couldn't make it a choice..
If you want Classic Style Xbox, take this update, lose these features A B C...
If you want Future Style Xbox, take this update, lose these features X Y Z...
would that fracture the console's userbase? The infastructure seems complete enough to handle both... It still kind of confuses me
not psycho
Member
The difference is the game sharing groups that sprung up on the internet immediately after hearing the news.
Everyone was planning on sharing all the games instead of buying them, because they could just join up with groups they found online, and they didn't have to trust anyone because they never had to send a physical game or use their account. It was risk free, anonymous, global free for all game sharing so you'd never have to buy a game again.
Lending a disc to a friend isn't even in the same galaxy as that.
test_account
XP-39C²
I dont think that you get a digital download version of the game when you buy a physical copy now that the DRM stuff is gone. That would be one hurdle for why this wouldnt work now. It might work with those who buy the digital download version though.
mightynine
Member
While the Pastebin said "special demo state", it also mentioned you would be able to save, etc. so that when you bought your own copy, you could pick up where you started.
The check-in every hour was confirmed by MS, so why is it so hard to believe when an hour was up, you would get a friendly "INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE" screen?
Literally anything sounds more likely than being able to share your games, in their entirety, with any 9 people, whether that's 0 or 9 simultaneously. Not needing to travel and pass discs physically to someone would have made this imaginary family plan much worse than used games have ever been.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
Well I always assumed the situation was only one person can play at once. I think that restriction pretty much stops it being something people just use to buy one copy of a game and everyone plays it.
Admittedly I could've seen a "wait guys we're dialing this back down" thing, but yeah. Seems like it was either worthless, or if you can keep playing for 60 minute intervals (once per day?) at least VERY ANNOYING. Anything short of "they can play as long as they wanted so long as no one else was playing" was going to be worthless and wouldn't justify the 24 hour thing in any way, especially when/if publishers didn't allow trading in used copies anyway.
ThatGuy707
Member
Maybe but it really depends if the game retailers feel they are at enough of a disadvantage competing with digital downloads. Now digital games would have some pretty cool features retail games wouldn't have. In their original plan you could still sell/buy used games. If anything it might give big retailers more power by excluding smaller retailers.
The only cause for concern with retailers was paying the publishers to sell used games if the publisher wanted that. Publishers would still need to make retailers happy or risk losing support for their games. Also if a publisher really wanted they could find a way to make their game online only a la Destiny.
I am saying it makes no sense for MS to remove a good feature just to "get back" at some people who complained. Why would they want to lose a possible advantage over Sony? It doesn't make sense and seems people are reaching to make MS look bad.
SRTtoZ
Member
How do people not understand this? In the real world, you lend a game to a friend now and then and most likely its a game they would have NEVER bought in the first place (at least its that way with my friend). In the sharing library thing people would have filled up their 10 person list with people they didnt even know, people from a forum, people from whatever just to share games.
synce
Member
+1
They obviously want to maximize profits for publishers, what benefit is there to letting people share entire games with any 10 people? It's like getting a used game for free.
NoLootBoxDev
Member
I cant wait for the next,next gen for Microsoft to go full train with the DRM, and I am almost sure it will be the horrible version CBOAT knows.
lol 60 min demo.
John Caboose
Member
Yeah wtf...
100% this.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Same thing as PS+. The thing is that the way it worked there is you would have to download the whole game for it to work.
who is downloading 25gb of data to play 60 mins? And before you say share the disk, you can do that now and get the whole game, no restrictions.
CharmingCharlie
Member
The entire Ethos of the Xbone one was about restricting the consumer as much as possible and channeling them into "approved" ways of purchasing games. That is what DRM is always about, it is about taking content control away from the customer and herding them into practices that bring the maximum amount of revenue.
When they started talking about this family share plan it smelt fishy. Everything they had announced about the xbone was contrary to this "sharing". It just didn't ring true that they would allow you to share full games with up to 10 people.
Now we know the sharing scheme was yet another scam to try and funnel people into buying games and had nothing to do with "adding value" or "being the gamers friend".
When they started talking about this family share plan it smelt fishy. Everything they had announced about the xbone was contrary to this "sharing". It just didn't ring true that they would allow you to share full games with up to 10 people.
Now we know the sharing scheme was yet another scam to try and funnel people into buying games and had nothing to do with "adding value" or "being the gamers friend".
No it's still not the same, because for example I could play from 7:00 to 9:00, and then immediately text/call my friend that I've signed off, and he would be able to immediately play at 9:00. You can then do this with every single person in your family plan. There's no way you can do that with physically handing the disc to people.
Literally not the same thing.
With a single physical copy I can only lend my game to my friend one at a time. With the way people thought this family plan would work, I can send out the full game to up to ten different people at the same time. 10 different people will have a full digital copy of the game to play with as they like. You obviously can't do that with a physical copy.
Proliferation of the game by the (now debunked) Family Plan would far and wide. Such a situation would destroy Publishers' revenue targets and sales targets, not to mention MS's cut in royalties.
You can't take away something that you have not given. Nobody should be sorry.
First of all, the only sharing that was mentioned at E3 was XBLive gold sharing. Way to omit supposedly the best feature your alternative system provides. I think either this kind of sharing was never planned or it was some minor feature with extreme restrictions, which had to be brought up to divert attention from their clusterfuk DRM scheme.
This also explains why they didn't keep their DRM scheme for digital downloads. People who buy and download digital content shouldn't moan about connection requirements and most of the complaints were about disc restrictions. If their DRM scheme was so wonderful for consumers, why haven't they kept it for digital downloads? Xbox could have been the best consumer friendly digital distribution platform. I'll tell you why they haven't kept it: their DRM outright sucked and it wasn't really supposed to do those wonderful things they later claimed it would do. Now they are using this non existent utopian feature to make them look like they had good intentions.
So no, don't feel sorry at all. Nothing was lost, everything was won.
First of all, the only sharing that was mentioned at E3 was XBLive gold sharing. Way to omit supposedly the best feature your alternative system provides. I think either this kind of sharing was never planned or it was some minor feature with extreme restrictions, which had to be brought up to divert attention from their clusterfuk DRM scheme.
This also explains why they didn't keep their DRM scheme for digital downloads. People who buy and download digital content shouldn't moan about connection requirements and most of the complaints were about disc restrictions. If their DRM scheme was so wonderful for consumers, why haven't they kept it for digital downloads? Xbox could have been the best consumer friendly digital distribution platform. I'll tell you why they haven't kept it: their DRM outright sucked and it wasn't really supposed to do those wonderful things they later claimed it would do. Now they are using this non existent utopian feature to make them look like they had good intentions.
So no, don't feel sorry at all. Nothing was lost, everything was won.
The description on MS' page was a little vague, but we were trying to dissect how many people could share a game at the same time.nat no point did we remotely consider you weren't actually sharing full games. It is insane, but at least explains why none of the MS execs were keen to talk about it.
I'm back in the 'fuck MS' camp,sorry. Don't care what they are doing with DRM now, this is just disdain and contempt for their consumers over and over again. Fuck'em
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
A bunch of my mates who were already in on xbone are gutted about this too.
I'm ready to dicth the discs and go all digital, the old way would have ment I could shop around for the best prices instead of just the Xbox store.
I hope places sell codes.
I would have liked it to be an option you loose trade is you apply it to your library, you loose online if you join family sharing etc.
The xbox UI was made for all the games to be there too, game switching instantly, matchmaking one game while playing another. Hopefully that stays with DD but get ready to get up and change your disc.
For me it's a shame, I hope they can keep some 'features' moving forward with DD.
Oh and no way to I buy that 45min pastebin limit in thats been put in the title.
I'm ready to dicth the discs and go all digital, the old way would have ment I could shop around for the best prices instead of just the Xbox store.
I hope places sell codes.
I would have liked it to be an option you loose trade is you apply it to your library, you loose online if you join family sharing etc.
The xbox UI was made for all the games to be there too, game switching instantly, matchmaking one game while playing another. Hopefully that stays with DD but get ready to get up and change your disc.
For me it's a shame, I hope they can keep some 'features' moving forward with DD.
Oh and no way to I buy that 45min pastebin limit in thats been put in the title.
I thought it was obvious there would be some catch. But GAF keeps getting whipped up in the hype without all the details known. :/
Come on, why is everybody believing a pastebin post? Just because it sounds like it was written by somebody desperately out of touch with the reality of why the Xbox was hated, and just because CBOAT corroborated it, and just because Arthur Gies disagreed with it...
Okay, there's actually a compelling case for that pastebin writeup being genuine.
Okay, there's actually a compelling case for that pastebin writeup being genuine.
ThatGuy707
Member
We should start a campaign to convince people to boycott Xboxes to save ourselves from that future.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Azure Dream
Member
To me, it sounds less like demos, and more like Nagware. Play 45-60 minutes, be prompted to buy the game. But they said it kept your saves, and the paste said you could start it back up, but they were trying to decide how many times they were going to allow that.
Personally, I think they ultimately would've settled on a system that doesn't limit it, but it goes from pestering you every 60 minutes, to every 45, to every 30 or 20, with some "offer" to sweeten the deal and encourage you to buy in, if you've stuck with it that long. Like a small amount of wallet credit to use on future purchases.
It does says access to your game library, not necessarily the entirety of each game.
Personally, I think they ultimately would've settled on a system that doesn't limit it, but it goes from pestering you every 60 minutes, to every 45, to every 30 or 20, with some "offer" to sweeten the deal and encourage you to buy in, if you've stuck with it that long. Like a small amount of wallet credit to use on future purchases.
It does says access to your game library, not necessarily the entirety of each game.
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