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Phil Spencer: You can share your Xbox One games with any 10 people

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Kuno

Member
I felt this deserved its own thread.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/arti...ames-with-ten-family-members-but-some-details

The idea is that ten people in your family group can all share your games. Think of it like a loaning system, but you're not loaning anyone a phyiscal product. If you're in my family group, you can play my games, and vice versa.

“I think the policy makes sense,” Spencer said. “It’s not ten different people all playing the game concurrently, but when you think about a real usage scenario, and we thought about it around a family, and I know certain people will create a family group of people that aren’t all part of the same family, and I do think that’s an advantage, and people will use that. I saw it on NeoGAF instantly, the Xbox Family creation threads, where people said 'Hey be a part of my family.'”

“No birth certificates will need to be sent in!” Spencer said when I asked if the service required a blood test. “I do think that’s an advantage of the ecosystem that we have.”

So that answers one question: Microsoft doesn't seem to care whether or not the ten people in the group are actually family members. They can be friends, roommates, boyfriends, girlfriends, your dog's groomer… you pick ten people, and you share games with them.

Yusuf Mehdi was intereviewed by Ars Technica and is saying the same thing:

Since its announcement, there has been some confusion over the details of sharing your Xbox One game library with up to ten "family members." Mehdi couldn't give comprehensive details, but he did clarify some things.

For one, a family member doesn't have to be a "blood relative," he said, eliminating the extremely unlikely possibility that the Xbox One would include a built-in blood testing kit. For another, they don't have to live in the primary owner's house—I could name a friend that lives 3,000 miles away as one of my "family members" Mehdi said.

You'll be able to link other Xbox Live accounts as having shared access to your library when you first set up a system and will also be able to add them later on (though specific details of how you manage these relationships is still not being discussed). The only limitation, it seems, is that only one person can be playing the shared copy of a single game at any given time. All in all, this does sound like a pretty convenient feature that's more workable than simply passing discs around amongst friends who are actually in your area.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/microsoft-defends-the-xbox-ones-licensing-used-game-policies/

Update (6/14): Major Nelson is working on a blog update to (hopefully) further clarify things:

jgKkQFI.png


Thanks Troll.
 

mr_nothin

Banned
I wonder if they allow sharing both ways. If I share my library with "Larry", can Larry share his library with me too?
 
“The only limitation, it seems, is that only one person can be playing the shared copy of a single game at any given time,” Ars Technica reported after speaking with Microsoft Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehdi

So what happens if my friend is playing a game I want to play? Can I bump him off or do I have to call him up and ask him to stop playing so I can play?

I can see glorious trolling potential either way.
 
Still think there is a catch to this feature. The company that decided to implement all their DRM and other weird things all of a sudden is gonna let you share all your games with any 10 people any time?

lol. And by limitation I mean something more than the one at a time thing.
 

LifEndz

Member
I wonder if they allow sharing both ways. If I share my library with "Larry", can Larry share his library with me too?

I would guess so. But I think only one person besides the owner can access those games at any given time. Still, being able to share games with up to ten people sounds great on the surface, but as with most things MS these days you gotta wonder when the other shoe will drop.
 

itsgreen

Member
This is actually pretty fucking nice.

If you compare this to other online services this is unprecedented...

But I also want to be able to sell my games myself.
 
Well at least it is an improvement. Better than nothing. Won't change my mind about the system though. They lost me as a customer long ago. If they repair the damage to their rep I may consider an Xbone a few years in.
 
In our role as a game publisher, Microsoft Studios will enable you to give your games to friends or trade in your Xbox One games at participating retailers. Third party publishers may opt in or out of supporting game resale and may set up business terms or transfer fees with retailers. Microsoft does not receive any compensation as part of this. In addition, third party publishers can enable you to give games to friends. Loaning or renting games won’t be available at launch, but we are exploring the possibilities with our partners.

What I bolded above is not referring to this, correct?
 
so this is netflix style where you can't have all 10 people play together right?

Makes sense.


They really should word their policy stuff better.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Still must be a major catch, like only one person playing at a time, etc.

No way does Microsoft rail against used games that cost a publisher 1 or 2 sales and then replace it with a system that costs publishers 9 sales. It makes absolutely no sense.

jagowar said:
And you cant both coop or play multiplayer at the same time... with this you could.

Highly, highly doubtful.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Theres a catch here that theyre being very careful to not highlight.

Publishers weren't best pleased with Sony's PS3 game-sharing stuff, so I can't imagine multiplying that up to 10 people is what they'd want and yet everything else MS is doing is in that "please the pubs" form.
 
So I can buy a game and all 10 of us can share it for only $60? We're only paying $6 for a game at that point....

If that's true....I'm back on board lol
 

RulkezX

Member
This blows my mind , why go through all the DRM shit and try to control the 2nd hand game market , then turn round and let 10 people play 1 game.

Surely that's more damaging than any hypothetical loss of sales from people trading in games.
 
Still must be a major catch, like only one person playing at a time, etc.

No way does Microsoft rail against used games that cost a publisher 1 or 2 sales and then replace it with a system that costs publishers 9 sales. It makes absolutely no sense.

pretty much. Or lets be real, publishers simply won't allow this feature on their game.
 

Alx

Member
So what happens if my friend is playing a game I want to play? Can I bump him off or do I have to call him up and ask him to stop playing so I can play?

I can see glorious trolling potential either way.

Well, that's family for you. :D
You'd better chose real friends, or people you trust, if there is any risk of someone blocking you from playing your own game. For trustworthy people, a simple message through the console should be enough.

This blows my mind , why go through all the DRM shit and try to control the 2nd hand game market , then turn round and let 10 people play 1 game.

Surely that's more damaging than any hypothetical loss of sales from people trading in games.

It's been discussed in the other threads about that "family" program, but there are several ways that system can help improve income for publishers :
- it is a good incentive for people who play single player games exclusively to register a gold account
- sharing the game doesn't mean sharing DLC ; your 10 friends are new potential customers for all additional content.
- it makes you keep all your games instead of trading them, so that your friends can play them even if you don't. So you're still among the potential buyers of content for that game, even years later.
- it can help promote games among your friends. You let them play it, but they cannot do it all the time. If they really like one of your games, they may want to buy it.
 

Seanspeed

Banned
People will still complain, but this is pretty good damage limitation. I think a lot of people could live with that.

There's still some other issues, though....
 

140.85

Cognitive Dissonance, Distilled
This seems like something they should be bragging about a little louder...but they don't. Which leads me to believe there's something they don't want to divulge about it yet.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
I would guess so. But I think only one person besides the owner can access those games at any given time. Still, being able to share games with up to ten people sounds great on the surface, but as with most things MS these days you gotta wonder when the other shoe will drop.

It does not seem to be "besides the owner." It seems to be any one of the whole family, including the actual owner/buyer. I imagine the owner/buyer would have the ability to kick off family members. An ability family members probably won't have towards the owner.

At least from the Ars quote.
 

jagowar

Member
Has this been confirmed?

In the pa article...
The question is how many people can play the game at the same time. Spencer told me he believed that two people can play one copy of a game concurrently, but he urged me to check Microsoft's official wording on the matter to be sure. This is what the licensing page states:

Give your family access to your entire games library anytime, anywhere: Xbox One will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. Just like today, a family member can play your copy of Forza Motorsport at a friend’s house. Only now, they will see not just Forza, but all of your shared games. You can always play your games, and any one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time.

from the news.xbox.com article....
 
Phil Spencer said:
“No birth certificates will need to be sent in!” Spencer said when I asked if the service required a blood test. “I do think that’s an advantage of the ecosystem that we have.”


Yeah, it's so much better than comparative services like PSN, eShop and Steam where you have to prove who your relatives are.
 

Proelite

Member
What I bolded above is not referring to this, correct?

Isn't this better than loaning? You can instantly loan your game to a friend anywhere in the world for an unlimited amount of time.

The fact that they didn't use the above as the answer for loaning means that there is a catch some where.
 
Still think there is a catch to this feature. The company that decided to implement all their DRM and other weird things all of a sudden is gonna let you share all your games with any 10 people any time?

lol. And by limitation I mean something more than the one at a time thing.

I don't believe that either. There's definitly a trap here. That would be almost better than having the ability to trade used games as i can split the cost of a game with up to 10 people ? lol publishers will actually lose if it ever happens and people will abuse the hell out of this system.
 
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