Oh please, PLEASE bring back Xbox One's hated DRM - say Xbox loyalists Xbox One loyalists want Microsoft to reinstate the new console's tough copy protection controls and mandatory online connection requirement that were axed following a backlash. Thousands of gamers have put their names to a petition piling pressure on Redmond to give them the Xbox One console it promised at gaming conference E3 …
Somehow this does not surprise me, I mean we know there is a large cache of humans that are forever chasing the Bell curve, they exist by definition as sure as those others riding atop and leading it..
It's possible, perhaps even likely that Redmond is secretly administering a large scale IQ test to the citizens of the world, maybe as a hyper-advanced marketing technique where they will ultimately sell the user information of those 8,000 DRM demanders to the highest bidder, because they would certainly be among the most desirable demographic imaginable.
I looked for a good Icon avatar to express my opinion but sadly there is none that suffice. Even the facepalm cannot do this story appropriate justice.
Here is my suggestion for a new avatar for these numerous Microsoft stories ...
http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/9229/rwj.gif
... Head banging against wall.
I'm split. One part of me wants this to be heard, because a DRM-riddled XBoxOne will sink faster than the HMS Victoria. On the other side, it sets a bad precedent in the gaming industry, something for which the consumer should have zero tolerance. The fact that 8000 people are asking to get reamed with this awful scheme proves that at least someone will buy into such an awful scheme.
These people must be the same astroturfing fuckwads that skewed the survey indicating most Americans turned against Snowden for revealing PRISM. I'm normally against the death penalty, but there are those who sometimes convince me that the human gene pool might occasionally need chlorinating.
The other thing that shits me is this: It'll only take 8,000 signatures to get Microsoft to put back the DRM, while it took 8,000,000 signatures to get them to stop it. This is why I feel such hatred for these arseholes that support reduction of freedom - because of this social mechanism whereby it only takes one screaming fool to cause a company (or a government) to ratchet the wheel of oppression one more notch.
Dear Mr. Sweaty Ballmer,
As loyal (albeit entirely fictional) supporter of Microsoft, I hereby petition you to reinstate me as a slave immediately, contrary to the heinous wishes of that nasty majority who refuse to prostitute themselves as Microsoft shills.
Yours with love, affection and an invoice for payment,
[INSERT NAME]
--
NB: See also Microsoft's Letters From The Dead.
Yup, I think people were pretty well informed regarding the limit of trading a game once, ever, and only to selected stores.
The demand for the family sharing bit is understandable, but I would think there'd be some limitations, such as only 1 or 2 can play the game at any one time - throw in the download time for the game and it'd be quicker to borrow someone's disc.
It wasn't confirmed by Microsoft but it is generally thought that the family share feature would only allow friends or family to play an hour or so of a shared game before being asked to pay full price for their own copy.
Quite why these people want that feature back I don't know.
No, it wasn't confirmed by Microsoft. It was completely rubbished by Microsoft (http://winsupersite.com/xbox/xbox-one-preview-what-really-happened-family-sharing). The "generally thought" bit was a load of crappy tech sites regurgitating the rubbish that was pasted on Pastebin - hardly a bastion of truth.
...0 out of 5 of them were serious, at of the time of writing.
Methinks this chap is going to have fun reading through thousands of sarcastic comments calling him a twat. My pick of the front page has to be a paragraph by "Fuckfaic McGee", Australia:
I love restrictions. I want always online DRM. I want the game rental business to become obsolete. I don't want to let my friends borrow games, because fuck them. All I care about is my god damn new age console that'll blow everything else out of the water! Fuck the PS4 and fuck those Sony guys for catering to fans who care about their gaming experience. Fuck PC, that shit is stupid. Steam? Fuck that shit. They never have sales or anything. It's not as affordable as buying my games from the XBL marketplace. I love Microsoft and their business practices will be the best forever. Fuck yes. <3 Xbox.
DRM can only be a good thing. Look at Ubisoft, look at EA, look how amazingly their DRM turned out. We need that kind of high quality DRM on the xbox also.
Lets face it, game companies are implementing their own DRM anyway, whether it be in a form of actual DRM (EA and origin) or DRM as in "buy our game and get this free DLC whcih is basically half the game.... FUCK YOU SECOND HAND MARKET!!!"
I'd actually like to point out, I agree with the 'fuck the second hand market' stateent. Especiall here in the UK.
Buy a game for £40, next day trade it in because it was so damn short. Get £10 back, go in the next day, my game is on sale for £38. £2 less than retail.
You don't see a used car going on sale for 5% less than the new model, so why is it that way with games? Especially when a lot of games these days you're losing out on the 'free' DLC.
I also kind of think Microsoft was a little childish about the whole matter. "Okay we'll remove the DRM you hate... But we're also removing all the good bits you wanted like sharing stuff over the webz because we didn't get what we want, you don't get what you want."
Which has kind've shot them in the foot since now Sony are delivering the content Microsoft removed (pretty much) without the DRM restriction Microsoft said they needed to make it happen.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ps4-users-will-be-able-to-access-game-library-from-any-console-1165098
"You don't see a used car going on sale for 5% less than the new model, so why is it that way with games? Especially when a lot of games these days you're losing out on the 'free' DLC."
Agree. Plus the annoyance that you often also lose the DLC if you buy it once it's 6 months old or so. Had that the other month with Assassins Creed .. err .. 57? DLC code expires on this date regardless of whether you bought new, but are we putting the price down to compensate? I think not.
Same with DVDs/BR disks with double/triple-play 'download' options. Again, this usually vanishes a few months after release but is still touted on the box as being provided.
Have you seen the second hand price for a genuine, low mileage release date car? after a month or two it will still be sold for close to retail...
When I was after a demo Evoque just after release I was still looking at full price....
DRM is a necessary evil, but there are some of us that are casual gamers... ive a nice collection of used PS3 games - with a job, wife and kids I get exactly 2 evenings a month to play games - which is when a bunch of mates in a similar position rotate round hosting a boys night... its just not worth paying £50 for a game with such limited use!
Have you seen the second hand price for a genuine, low mileage release date car?
Please get a clue, when the new cars can't be sold as new, they get 10 miles put on the clock for 'delivery' and are sold as second hand through partner garages for ~60% of price. This is for actual new cars, not really 2nd hand games.
I'd actually like to point out, I agree with the 'fuck the second hand market' stateent. Especiall here in the UK.
No, I don't agree with "fuck the second hand market". "Fuck the rip off retailer second hand market", on the other hand, absolutely - this :
Buy a game for £40, next day trade it in because it was so damn short. Get £10 back, go in the next day, my game is on sale for £38. £2 less than retail.
This, I agree, is ridiculous. But we, the consumers, are partially to blame for allowing, indeed encouraging, it. If you want to sell a game then do it direct - on ebay, in a shop window (remember those days....) whatever. That way you might get £25 instead of a tenner, and the second hand buyer doesn't get ripped off either.
And if the game studios and publishers want to discourage the second hand market, they could try making the games worth keeping hold of. Make it good enough that I don't want to sell it, and guess what - I won't sell it. There's a fair few games that I haven't sold, because I still go back to them. There's a lot more that got sold because they had no replay value.
So you're saying that we in Malaysia don't deserve to own an Xbox One?
Malaysia is not one of the 21 countries that will receive the Xbox One, and thus the console will not operate after it does an IP check and determines that I'm not using an ISP from one of the 21 countries on launch. Even after the console launches after the planned Asia launch date of sometime in 2014 (apparently MS anticipates high demand of the console in the UK, Europe, US, Aussieland and Kiwiland on launch that Asia can wait until 2014 as to allow everyone in those regions to get their consoles and gloat at friends stuck in Asia first, and even after the fact Malaysia will get a pared down launch with many services disabled two whole years after Singapore (seriously, we just got Xbox Live a few months ago. Singapore has had it for years, and even then we still can't play online because a gold subscription isn't available in Malaysia).
Tell you what MS, you put the stupid DRM back, and I assure you I will only get a PS4 and overlook your Xbox One. Since We have had PSN long before you launched XBL, and we already have PS+ while you're still not launching XBL Gold. You do want my money, do you? My shiny Malaysian Ringgits? Sure, it's crap since Singaporean dollars are shinier and bigger, but think about it! Extra moolah! You want it? THEN DON'T PUT THE STUPID DRM BACK. OR AT VERY LEAST OMIT THE REGION LOCKING $H!*
My original plan is to buy both. But if the DRM comes back, Xbox One can kiss my ass again.
Region locking. I'm sick of this shit. Between not being able to watch Hulu or Netflix, having a more limited iTunes store catalog, not being able to buy downloadable games for my 3DS (and needing to carry around a large pouch of cartridges which costs three times as much as they do in the US), and being blocked from buying many apps and videos EVEN FROM THE LEAPFROG APP CENTER- YES, EVEN A KIDDIE APP STORE HAS STUPID REGION LOCKING (it wasn't there before, but was put in recently. Overnight my method of watching shows I could no longer get in Malaysia because of the anal censorship board and religious bodies (this is why religion and politics mixing is a bad idea people!) became an expensive paperweight.
I'm sick of this.
MS' XBOX One plans would have worked and worked quite well and been reasonably fair... but only if the games were released at a reasonable prince taking into account the restrictions. In my mind that would have been 20% or so of the current sales prices of console games.
However we all know that this would never happen, particularly with the studios carefully telling us how many 10's of millions of $ it takes to make a current hit clone / sequel / cut-scene-delivery-mechanism. There is also the problem that the console hardware is usually loss-leading and the recovery is made in the sales price of the games.
A solid percentage of the moans would have evaporated if the announcement of the XBO was identical in every way but with "..games will now only be £24.99 as a result of these changes"
Ahahahahahahahaha, no. Which Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft are you thinking of? Last I checked, games on the online console stores were usually way more expensive at launch, not cheaper. Far Cry and FIFA were 60 quid at launch, and 35-45 in the stores.
If you honestly think they would have reduced prices like that, when you would have no other way of sourcing the games, you're naive.
Well I cleary don't expect it.Just said it's what they should have done.
If we're to accept games will be either worth less second hard, untradeable or needing some sort of extra payment (ie devs,MS get a cut with each sale) then almost every argument people have/had against it would have gone if they initial purchase price was dropped.
Not Naive, simply suggesting a simple, and fairly obvious way MS could have won this particular battle.
I've no dog in this race. I own both current offerings and will probably end up with both of the new ones too. Just a matter of which first. Like last time.
My inner cynic thinks they were working for Microsoft.
No, seriously. I find it hard to believe Microsoft have the capability to make all of the changes involved in turning off their DRM system in a reasonable timeframe.
I wouldn't put it past them to engineer this petition as a way of weaseling out of a promise they couldn't keep.
The point is people complained about enforcing DRM on bought and paid-for disks, preventing them being traded second-hand without Microsoft taking a cut.
The idea of being able to trade DRM-controlled downloads was fairly novel (for the industry) and fairly welcome.
Microsoft, presumably having tied both so tightly together in their implementation they became inseparable, withdrew both features, thus screwing customers on one hand whilst captiulating on the other. The thought of which makes me want to wash my hands of the whole affair.
But fuck common sense, this is the console industry...
I say we all chip in and buy these people the, ahem, gaming attire they seem to be in need of (see icon) - after all, they won't have any money after buying all those high-priced games they won't be able to resell.
(unless, of course, they choose to spend the checks they are getting from Microsoft's Bribery and ExtortionMarketing and Sales group - but that's just being unreasonable now, isn't it.)
Some people genuinely want the DRM. I read some guy praising paying for XBL as it keeps the riff-raff out. The same person seemed to think that going round a mates house with a disk is too much effort and would prefer to fill up the tiny (500mb) disk with a download of his game. As if downloads are instant?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
