Such a stupid argument. Who says that they don't have a contingency plan for if they shut down the activation/deactivation servers. If steam has the ability to unlock all games if they go out of business, surely Microsoft will too.
Im not sure Steam has the (legal) ability to unlock all the games if Valve goes out of business. Maybe their own, but not all others. It will all be depending on goodwill from other publishers, not Valve
So, Microsoft has yet to confirm other scenarios, and those are the conclusions you draw?
That's a big leap to me.
Yes, they clearly stated in
their statement to CNN (on May 30/31) that it is for retailers, no mention of lending or private reselling whatsoever
"We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One, but we have confirmed that we designed it to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail," the company said, with no elaboration, in a statement to CNN. "Beyond that we haven't confirmed any specific scenarios."
If MS is doing it surely Sony must be doing it seems to be the standard geist on the webs right now. Sources do not seem to be needed, just rational thought (according to them). Does not make sense to me but it seems to make sense for others....
Not that it actually makes any sense whatsoever....
Then you plug in your hard drive and use your account. I'm not exactly sure how the console stores its licences; I think its through Console ID and the main hard drive, so if you were desperate enough you could send your console to be repaired by a third party.
But anyhow, we don't know how Microsoft will react if or when they decide to shut down the 360's servers. And on top of this, their is some really big legal ramifications if they outright shutdown the 360's servers for anything other than them going out of business. The law will basically force them to keep specific servers up for an indefinite amount of time. They'd likely only be allowed to shutdown Matchmaking servers, but would be forced to keep Downloading Servers up.
Microsoft is a huge company, unless they were going bankrupt, I'd imagine they are well within their means to keep a single downloading server inside of some broom closet in their corporate headquarters if only to keep the law happy.
I doubt any law will cover this. Maybe in the future in the EU there will be a law that content operators must give their users the option to "unlock" static content that is locked to server validation but a law will never force businesses to keep servers running indefinitely. And this possible law will only cover digital products, not services.
MS as well as EA and other publishers are transforming games from digital products to digital services. A digital service is based on an ongoing relationship between two parts and cant continue once a parts removes it self. With cloud functionality and more and more online functions games will be seen more as services than products and consumers cannot demand services to be available indefinately. Even though they are sold as products, Sim City and Diablo 3 are more services in which you purchased the front end than an actual product.
There is a difference between Steam and 360/ONE and the PS3/PS4 in that the content is more bound to the hardware in consoles than in Steam where it is bound to the software. Software can be updated and stay backwards compatible on open systems like the PC but hardware on closed systems cannot as we have seen in the current shift to next gen. Both Sony and MS have decided to not implement backwards compatibility due to economic reasons (the cost would be too high considering the wildly different technical architecture).
We will have to question ourselves, will backwards compatibility matter in the next next gen for console manufacturers? Considering they want us to buy digital content it better matter, but as we just have seen the digital content they sold to us in current gen does not appear to be that important to them anyway.
If they really want to gain our trust and succeed they need to implement BC for digital content, just as is possible on PC, Android and iOS. DO you think that the iOS devices would have been successful if all the apps stopped working with each next gen phone?
I believe you can sign into your gamertag under offline mode and it will still work for playing games on another system.
As for your second point, you can't compare game servers and a game store. They are two completely different points. Sure the Game servers and Social services will go offline, that'll take out a good 80% of Xbox Lives infrastructure. The law doesn't care if you shut down a game server. But if you own a digital marketplace which had millions of sales that you can't get anywhere else, I'm sure if someone brought it up a fuss would be thrown in courts. This is why I said that anything short of them going out of business, Some government somewhere (EU Most likely) will force them to keep a couple download servers and at least one authentication server online.
What we all fail to forget is that the law is already starting to look into regulating digital stores. There are cases all over where companies are being forced to allow reselling of digital goods. Soon there will be talk in some of the more consumer friendly governments about how things will be dealt with if a company goes out of business. There will be laws in place soon to deal with digital storefronts, I can guarantee it. And considering that Microsoft has basically said they plan on keeping the 360 alive with new content for the next couple of years, the law will have plenty of time to catch up.
remember that the Original Xbox's servers didn't go offline until 5 years after they forgot it even existed. Assuming Microsoft keeps the 360 alive for 3-6 more years, you still have 8-10 more years before you even have to worry about servers going offline.
Anyhow, I'm done fighting this. I would rather not go against the forum rules by making this thread all about me and my opinion. I think I've explained myself pretty well and I'm out.
As I said above, no government can force any company to keep servers indefinitely. What might happen is that they will force companies to unlock content from online requirements if that is possible. Though there will be occassions where it is not possible if businesses have gone out of business and there might be issues with content provider not having legal right to the digital content anymore, see Out Run.
What would be the best solution is to give the consumer all the power and make cracking of commercial software for personal use legal. It is in some countries but companies are fighting this so it will be soon extinct as a legal option. This way a person can, if he/she has downloaded the product, legally remove any DRM that is available without fear being sued. If the person do not have the skills for it they could go to a third party that will do it.
This forum is for discussing your opinions and you should not stop expressing them in this thread. You bring much to the table.
read this MS responds to CNN in this article from may 31st. Have we recieved have any later statements?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/31/tech/gaming-gadgets/sony-microsoft-drm/index.html?cid=sf_twitter
They don't. It's purely speculation and I'm not sure why they are stating it as a fact. I have not seen anyone say XB1 games/servers will be turned off. Maybe they have a source?
A CNN article with direct statements from Microsoft is purely specualtion?
