51–60 of 294 posts
I'm not sure how delusional you have to be to believe that the reason your customers hate your DRM is because your competitors had a "viral team" that persuaded them to be.
Yeah, Microsoft really sucks at storytelling. All they had to say was something in the lines of... "If you want to buy a disc, pay $59 for a game due to all non-digital crap the disc has to go through. And then do what you want with it. HOWEVER, if you download the game, it's like $29 (50% OFF!!!11), but then it's just yours, and yours alone, you can't sell or lend it - and we'd have to check every once in a while it…
The problem is that they still charge $59.99 for Games On Demand. When Black Ops 2 came out digitally, that's what it cost. Same with lots of the Games On Demand - many are $10-$15 more than I can get the disc for new. Not used, NEW. In the shrink wrap. So you'll pardon me if I think this is full of crap. I want to see low priced games like on Steam. But until I see it from MS, I'll probably switch to full-time PC ga…
This comparison to steam is a bit of a false equivocation. I can run Steam on a variety of hardware configurations, which I can buy from a variety of vendors. Steam is better not because the DRM system is different, but because it's hardware agnostic. Once the XB1 lifecycle is over, I have no guarantee I will be able to play the games I bought. As far as I'm aware XB1 is not backwards compatible at all. Once my 360 d…
> Once the XB1 lifecycle is over, I have no guarantee I will be able to play the games I bought. Sooner than that though, right? Weren't they shutting off Halo servers when new Halo games came out during the same console lifecycle? Of course that is a problem you'll have with multiplayer on all the consoles I guess. Maybe gamers are okay with that. I would be bummed as hell if I couldn't play the occasional quake mat…
Halo 2 was released in 2004 (on the Xbox!), and the online play servers were just shut down earlier this year. Given that the platform it was released on has nearly been superseded twice by now (first by the Xbox 360, and soon by the Xbox One), I think they've given it a fair run.
As far as I'm aware, all of the other Halo games are still playable online.
Microsoft thought they had a dominant market position and tried to stretch a little. They miscalculated. Sony were concerned they were heading towards irrelevance - they upped their game to win share back. I'd say it was a perfectly efficient market - and then I remember we're talking about kids being able to swap games like I did in the 80s as if it's a revolution ... the boomers heading these companies right now sh…
Did you read the link? Your post sounds like every other one discussing MS's strategy without taking into account anything the linked page said. I'm not saying it's true or that it'll succeed, but it doesn't describe MS trying to "stretch" at all.
Makes me sad that execs actually sat round a table listed those as objectives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that they still charge $59.99 for Games On Demand. When Black Ops 2 came out digitally, that's what it cost. Same with lots of the Games On Demand - many are $10-$15 more than I can get the disc for new. Not used, NEW. In the shrink wrap. So you'll pardon me if I think this is full of crap. I want to see low priced games like on Steam. But until I see it from MS, I'll probably switch to full-time PC ga…
The games on demand pricing has to be that way though. If Games on Demand cost literally half the price Gamestop charged, the retailers would revolt, which would cause the publishers to revolt. The only reason Valve has the power to charge what they charge is because they incrementally built that power - retailers at one point threatened to pull games from shelves for using Steam's authentication!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps, this may be more the case for games with small amounts of content or mediocre reviews. I don't see significantly less people being willing to buy COD or whatever for $60 if they can't resell. Unless they move to PS4 at least.
You're right, but that could just mean that COD is priced too low even under the current system (where games are always $60 max not including DLC etc).
Although I'd guess that people's gaming budget isn't as simple as X number of games @ $Y max each and so-called blockbuster titles could easily start charging more without losing too much of their fan bases.
The comparison to Steam is false to begin with. PC gaming has NEVER been a trade with your friends (legally) culture. Console gaming has ALWAYS been a trade with your friends culture (legally). When was the last time you saw a used PC game store? Second, there is no evidence that companies who's job is to maximize profit will have any incentive to lower their prices for disc-less games. For this, we CAN look at Steam…
What killed it (I think) was that people would sell a used boxed PC game and then download the pirate version but re-use the legitimate CD key for multiplayer.
So you would buy a used game and try to play it online but get "Your CD key is already in use" messages half the time. I got burned by this a few times.
This is also one of the reasons that stores stopped accepting returns of PC games. People would buy a game , copy down the CD key and then return it for refund claiming that it didn't work.
I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realisticall…
To use the example in here, a $5 buyback value game would sell for about $10 where I worked. I don't know about Gamestop's percentages, but I imagine it would sell for closer to $15 there.
Moving on to Steam, my library is clogged full of shit I'd love to sell back or give to someone else. I still, to this day, hate Steam. It's convenient, sure, but I still often shop at the alternative instant download providers and I'm not talking about Origin or Amazon.
Beyond that, and back to actual gripes about the XBone, the only thing that has my friends and I completely against it is the always on Kinect. I don't like the idea of having a device in my home that can be used to monitor everything I do or say at any time. If it's proven you can turn that functionality off, it takes away about half of the reason I give people to not buy it. Even then, I'm paranoid enough that I won't be getting one. That aside, I don't need a media center, so the XBone doesn't appeal to me. My console is for playing video games; I have a computer for Internet shit (e.g. Netflix).