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The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

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Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#161

Post by stonemetal »

shin_lao wrote: post #117
lotso wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Look at that money over there. Let's take it!" What's next, Wal-Mart charging Ralph Lauren every time a customer comes in wearing a Polo shirt (because why should other clothing companies get free advertising in their store)? Could you explain this analogy because it makes zero sense to me. >The other issue? For the author to be completely honest, every "benefit" mentioned…

How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)? On Steam I can play my games while being offline, I can play my games on multiple computers (the games are bound to the account, not the computer), I have good prices, I can install and deinstall gam…

On Steam I can play my games while being offline

xbox one check.

I can play my games on multiple computers

xbox one check, well multiple xbox ones.

I can install and deinstall games as much as I want

xbox one check.

I have good prices,the amount of choice is incredible,

Have you checked the prices on Amazon's digital downloads? Out side of steam's sells they are almost always better. On steam, prices don't fall like they normally do in the other retail channels. So post release period steam is almost always more expensive than other channels. Who knows about xbox one digital selection? It being a PC under the hood would have made it trivial to port everything on steam over(if porting is even necessary).

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#162

Post by zanny »

katbyte wrote: post #136
DominikR wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They turned off the MSN Music DRM Servers! People that bought there lost the ability to transfer their music away from their device. I sometimes play games that are many decades old, and as anyone that collects games knows, consoles tend to live shorter than physical game copies. So what am I going to do with a Xbox One in 20 years after the DRM Server were turned off? Hope that the console never fails so I don't los…

> I sometimes play games that are many decades old Thats one thing steam is actually pretty good for, its got lots of older games (some from the early 80s!) that generally just work on pretty much any modern PC.

By Steam you mean GoG, they don't even have DRM on them, but they update the Windows installers so they work. Though I have to criticize their lack of the Linux ports of the old titles =\

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#163

Post by corresation »

chaostheory wrote: post #14

The problem is that Microsoft put a saddle on the car by offering physical discs. I really didn't see the point of it if it was always online, given that MS has their music and movie stores. Moreover it didn't really give consumers the main benefit of always on DRM: lower prices for games. This is why consumers don't care about the DRM on iOS or even Android. Another major problem is that for all the features offered…

Your first sentence absolutely nails it.

To be clear, Microsoft still can have both the "horse" and the "car" with the Xbox One, just as they can with the Xbox 360. Removing the unnecessary restrictions on physical discs doesn't have to change the digital distribution gaming platform one iota, allowing the Xbox One to have both the Steam model and the classic game cartridge model. If Microsoft provides a compelling case for the Steam model (which can simply be "not having to get up to switch discs"), people will use it.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#164

Post by BoppreH »

just2n wrote: post #140

What a terrible article. First, the analogy is completely wrong. Second, Microsoft is realizing people are getting seriously tired of the bullshit "always on" concept. It's hard to justify and is widely rejected as a valid technical limitation on platforms where you expect to always have an internet connection (and is only accepted when the gameplay itself REQUIRES a connection, unlike the late SimCity). It's complet…

If I understand your solution, what's keeping Person A from restoring from an earlier backup where the access was still valid? Or even sharing the backup with all the games available?

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#165

Post by zanny »

bobsy wrote: post #103

The main issue is how badly Microsoft marketed the XBOX One. They completely failed to get their message across. As a result they were getting shit on by Sony. Facebook and reddit have seen a huge number of anti-XBOX posts.. I don't know what pre-orders were looking like but I would imagine they aren't great because of all the bad publicity. I wonder how things would have looked if Microsoft had a decent marketing te…

What I don't like is how they overly complicated the beating around the bush of digital distribution.

The whole if and or but clauses with "used" games they had only hurt their platform. You are never buying a piece of plastic for $60, you are buying a license for IP and a very long number etched on that polycarbonate. Used games were always at best a legal gray zone because the end user never had an explicit license to redistribute the copy for money and the first sale doctrine is really just an antiquated idea that makes the copyright scene a giant mess.

I would have preferred if MS went straight "here is your xbox account, you can buy games online or in a store, anywhere you buy them they link to your account, you get cloud saves and can download the game whenever you want (tbh they could have had a great API for asset streaming to allow people to play games while they download as a convenience), every xbox needs to be signed in on, and once signed it it doesn't need to sign in again unless you change the accounts or install another game.

Yes, it eliminates the used games market, but you could easily go to a friends house, log in on your account, and play your games there (preferrably streamed) and you aren't wandering in gray IP law territory.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#166

Post by nhangen »

skeletonjelly wrote: post #49
nhangen wrote: post #28

I think the OP here is giving MS more credit than they are due. I don't believe they were trying to build a car, and I don't believe they had a messaging problem. I think they were trying to pull a bait and switch. Pitch a car and sell a faster horse. They got caught, and the Internet won. You can easily get to that conclusion by gauging the HD storage shipping with each unit. Add to that the average speed of Interne…

> Add to that the average speed of Internet in the US, and you have a poor situation for over the net gaming. Now maybe. The article mentions that it's a device designed for the next 7 or 8 years.

I don't think this generation of consoles will survive without a refresh in the next 7 or 8 years. Tech is moving too fast.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#167

Post by jerf »

gcb0 wrote: post #58
jerf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"market probably bought 1 game per 10 consoles sold" You seem to have reciprocated your fraction there: http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/Tie-Ratio/G... Globally, the PS1 sold about 9 games per console. I don't necessarily fully trust that site or that number, but it's probably at least within a factor of two, which still leaves it a great distance from your number.

Never said global numbers. I meant specifically the emerging countries.

My apologies.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#168

Post by mike_herrera »

ewbuoi wrote: post #41
NZ_Matt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with convert to cloud is that it would require every Xbox to go online in order to check with the mothership before running the game, even from a disk. Otherwise you'd be able to share the disk with offline users who could continue using the physical copy. They had two choices: Require an internet connection before running a game. (the 24 hour check) or The disk must be present at all times.

You could mail them the disk, and maybe a small processing fee. They could then destroy the disk and convert the license token to a digital copy. It would cost the customer, but since they could have bought a digital copy in the first place it seems fair.

Sounds nearly identical to the Vudu / Ultraviolet model for DVDs.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#169

Post by potatolicious »

zanny wrote: post #165
bobsy wrote: post #103

The main issue is how badly Microsoft marketed the XBOX One. They completely failed to get their message across. As a result they were getting shit on by Sony. Facebook and reddit have seen a huge number of anti-XBOX posts.. I don't know what pre-orders were looking like but I would imagine they aren't great because of all the bad publicity. I wonder how things would have looked if Microsoft had a decent marketing te…

What I don't like is how they overly complicated the beating around the bush of digital distribution. The whole if and or but clauses with "used" games they had only hurt their platform. You are never buying a piece of plastic for $60, you are buying a license for IP and a very long number etched on that polycarbonate. Used games were always at best a legal gray zone because the end user never had an explicit license…

> "Yes, it eliminates the used games market"

And that's where the merry go round comes to a screeching halt. It's great that the Xbox is being developed in a part of the country where literally no one has to sell a game to play another one, but this is far from the reality in the rest of the country, let alone the world.

For a great many users, "it eliminates the used games market" is where the sentence ends, because everything that follows, no matter how cool and awesome, is moot.

There are many, many user-facing advantages you can bundle with digital distribution (and thus DRM) that would convince users to hop on board. Steam did this. Microsoft didn't.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#170

Post by Kylekramer »

eddieroger wrote: post #160
Kylekramer wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamers seem to love Steam.

Steam's DRM stays out of my way, in the same way iTunes' used to. Microsoft's DRM forced me to play in a way they saw fit.

Which is the point. DRM isn't the boogeyman. It is how DRM is presented.
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