Yep. This is clear as day, yet people are ignoring it. There is no way this sharing feature was ever going to fly.
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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
Yep. This is clear as day, yet people are ignoring it. There is no way this sharing feature was ever going to fly.
Stone Ocean
Member
Because Steam is a digital only service and this whole ordeal is about physical media being restricted, how fucking hard is it for some people to understand that these are completely different situations?
"If MS did this or did that", the whole point is that they fucking didn't do jack shit. We lose our rights to resell disc games, that means the MSRP will go down, right? Think again.
levyjl1988
Banned
Ha jokes on you. I don't have any friends in real life that I would share my games with. BAM!!! (Note: We each buy our own copy).
Personally I want the best of both worlds but it can't happen.
I don't consider the current system the best, not after the possibilities discussed.
Well except digital music was much cheaper for the most part. Most albums had a good songs. Instead of paying 14.99 for them you could pay 99 cents x number of good songs. Then you have the form factor of music on the go for the gym or travel. Digital for games outside switching discs does nothing better than physical. Not like game discs are huge and heavy like books were. Want people to buy digital games go to steam pricing and be done with it.
fatty
Member
I don't know why we bother explaining this over and over and over. People are still going to ignore it and call us 'short-sighted' and not willing to 'move forward' even though you broke it down pretty clearly.
But have you seen Titanf...err Family Sharing??
Right, which is why it needs to be taken further.
YuriLowell
Member
Your missing the point that Steam is not the only game service on PC.
uncledonnie
Banned
Couldn't you then just give away the disc?
Right, and who will be the first to make it popular on console?
I guess some people feel that model has no room to exist in the console world. If you want all digital, stick to PC.
If MS had anything close to Steam prices in preparation, they would have talked about it instead of trying to sell the whole online check/drm stuff with empty statements and hazy promises.
In fact, if they really had anything to make us gamers accept all of this happily and willingly, they would have stuck with their original plan. The simple fact that the XBO plan was swayed that much in only two months doesn't strike me as MS having a lot of faith in it.
Yes. And I think that's fine.
Some movies come with both Blu-Ray, Dvd, and a digital copy.
You could essentially do the same there.
Or has lower prices due to that, or a permanent offline mode that can be used on a shitload of PCs.
Alx
Member
I still like the idea. Yeah it's not "I can play the whole game for free", but it's the closest to having a free demo of any game (provided you know someone who has it). It's nice for the user who can try almost everything, it's nice for the publisher who can have free promotion...
Nobody loses.
and Steam is wrong also. I would never buy one of those. Which is all I've ever said about XB1 games with DRM, I'll never buy it.
Yeah there are in fact physical games that only work with a steam account. I found out the hard way when I bought RAGE off the shelf.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
Father_Brain
Banned
If true, that would have been one hell of a catch. If MS issued a single statement even hinting that the family share plan was limited to a timed demo mode, I must have missed it.
I don't get this argument. You can be 100% digital on PS4 and Xbox one. That hasn't been lost. Everyone now has the option they prefer.
Stone Ocean
Member
How many games fall under that situation? A few cases and an entire library aren't the same thing.
Being digital now is useless on xbox one or ps4.... no benefits to it now.
Blame MS. Not gamers who wanted physical copy rights to be what they always were.
Alx
Member
"certain games" is useless. There are already demos for "certain games". It would have been great to possibly have demos for all games, like we did for XBLA. With an additional social aspect, like "hey, look at this game I just bought, it's great you should try it !"
mightynine
Member
You don't have to get up and make that long walk from sofa to console to swap out Blue-Tinted Gun-Shootin' Game 362 for Brown-Tinted Gun-Shootin' Game 201. Don't sell digital so short.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
Right. Absolutely. But no one will tolerate any advances in digital distribution if it gets in the way of physical copies for consoles.
It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things.
No one will ever know if digital games on Xbox 1 would be cheaper with no tie down to physical copies. Yes, I know MS was still going to have discs in stores, but that means nothing. That's all just distribution like those steamworks games.
There are the same benefits as there were ever going to be, save having to download vs ripping from disc.
Prices were never going to be like Steam, and sharing was never going to work as implied. Take the pipe dreams away, and nothing has changed.
how cute
spookyfish
Member
Come on -- people are clamoring for a system that was never demonstrated, never explained adequately, and would actually be MORE detrimental to publishers than used games. 10 people sharing one game? I just have a hard time believing that would have ever happened.
I still go back to why wasn't this touted so highly in Microsoft's E3 conference? It was mentioned on the last day of E3, almost as an afterthought.
Sorry. I would have to see this in action to believe it. There's an old axiom: "If it sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is."
And, as others have said, there's still the obvious: There is nothing stopping Microsoft from implementing this program, even with the new policies. NOTHING.
I still go back to why wasn't this touted so highly in Microsoft's E3 conference? It was mentioned on the last day of E3, almost as an afterthought.
Sorry. I would have to see this in action to believe it. There's an old axiom: "If it sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is."
And, as others have said, there's still the obvious: There is nothing stopping Microsoft from implementing this program, even with the new policies. NOTHING.
MS should do a split DRM scheme.
Physical purchases act exactly like they do now in current gen.
Digital purchases are able to be shared using the DRM scheme that they proposed for the "Family Share" feature.
At any time you can go offline, but when that happens you lock all of your Family out of the digital purchased goods. You can still play them yourself, but the library is closed until your console performs an online check.
In this way they're still giving people what they want AND they give greater incentive to digital distribution (something that they claim to want).
Physical purchases act exactly like they do now in current gen.
Digital purchases are able to be shared using the DRM scheme that they proposed for the "Family Share" feature.
At any time you can go offline, but when that happens you lock all of your Family out of the digital purchased goods. You can still play them yourself, but the library is closed until your console performs an online check.
In this way they're still giving people what they want AND they give greater incentive to digital distribution (something that they claim to want).
No proof of that cause it never happened.
Right, because Steam has competition and MS doesn't. But someone wanted to be the first for console to do it but that is dead in the water.
Bottom line fans feel if you want cheap digital games.. go to PC and don't fuck with my physical console games.
I blame retail and by proxy narrow minded gamers who actually think what we have now is a good solution..... We should not need to constantly sell games back to be able to afford the next one. I would rather have a cheaper price upfront and not have to mess with reselling games.
I do blame ms for their horrible messaging and inept way they tried to explain their system. I will never understand why they did not give a demo of how their system would work on stage and show all the benefits, then trot one of the big publishers out there and say all their new games would cost $39.99 along with mgs games. That would have set the bar that everybody would have had to copy.
You have no idea what it would have been like either..... people here automatically assumed the worst possible scenario. The reality would have been somewhere between the two extremes.
I agree 100%, totally what I am trying to say.
Alx
Member
You got me there. But since it doesn't look like we will have timed demos for all digital games, there may be a reason.
Maybe the publishers would consider that many people would be fine with playing only an hour of a game here and there, and would just download anything and buy nothing. While going through sharing, you would only let people play a game that has already been paid for, and "friends" would mostly share games that fit their tastes. It's like targeted social advertising.
I don't see how digital will be the same as this gen with the new news. If Microsoft want people to buy digital, they can have sales for a selection of their games on demand weekly. If they want to please retailers they can have the same policy that they do currently. All of my games on demand purchases this generation were games that had great deals. (ie. Borderlands 2 just one sale recently which was far less than retail)
If they have more frequent deals next gen, I'll be buying much more digitally than physical.
If they have more frequent deals next gen, I'll be buying much more digitally than physical.
Deals are good, but I think it needs more than that. Digital sharing seemed like the next step in convincing people that digital did have certain advantages over physical games.
Not having to get MS's permission everyday to play my games is a much better solution.
Forget the sharing/renting/used arguments. The 24 hour, internet required DRM, was not worth it at any price, with any other feature.
ColonelColon
Member
Steam has an offline mode. It does not require you to connect to a server every 24 hours to get permission to play your games. And Steam does not mandate DRM. There are games on Steam that you could play without even launching the Steam client.
24 hour thing was total bogus I agree. No arguments there.
Family sharing did sound great. Though I'm not sure exactly why they've gotten rid of it for digital versions of games as well. If they had the system in place only for digital sales I'm sure that'd be a great way to make people go digital.
Agreed.... which is why they should have modified that instead of going back to the old system. There are ways they could have fixed their current policies to remove most of the issues people legitimately brought up.
This is why I think the family sharing thing is bs.
It could have been but we'll never know now. I was all for giving them at least a year to see if everything panned out. At that point I would either jump in, or stay out.
If all it's going to take is a patch they could have done this later if it all came crashing down. I guess the risk was too high.
My hope now is split DRM in the future with benefits to digital only titles. Heck if the dash board can change, I guess this can too.
ColonelColon
Member
Yeah, I don't think that was ever going to happen. And it still wouldn't justify the DRM.
You need to forget the family share plan it was never going to happen like MS promised at first. No publisher was ever going to sign off on a system were people could have instant access to games they did not pay for. The reason publishers want digital so damn bad is 2 reasons. 1 to get a larger cut of money up front cutting out retail and 2 everyone who plays their game paid them money to do so. Sharing kills number 2.
dragonelite
Member
Subtervotion
Member
All MS had to do was give us options. It was that simple. But they couldn't even do that. I would have been all for a system like the one you described.
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