
Xbox One forces gamers to pay for games borrowed from friends - mserdarsanli
http://www.osnews.com/story/27056/Xbox_One_forces_gamers_to_pay_for_games_borrowed_from_friends
======
roc
This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature.

As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees _when the
disc is in the tray_ , I don't see any difference to the console status quo.

Used/borrowed copies wouldn't get the play-without-the-disc feature (for
free). But that doesn't even rate as a 'bummer'. That's just a logical,
necessary architectural decision.

Otherwise a group of friends would just buy 1 copy of a game, pass it around
installing it and then everyone would be able to play without the disc needing
to be present. They could even sell the physical disc to Gamestop when they
were done and still all be able to play the game.

Obviously, no publisher would sign up for _that_. So you get account-binding
on install. Again, as long as having the disc exempts you from the fee, we're
not talking about an experience any different from today. And it would still
be more consumer-friendly than purely digital services like Google Play,
Steam, iTunes, Origin, etc.

~~~
danielweber
_This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature._

Without media, I generally agree: no one expects to be able to loan your
electronic copy of a game to a friend, or to resell it.

However, the concern is that this will apply for physical media: it will
require installation onto your box and be associated with your X-Box Live
account. You can take it to a friend's house to play, if you sign into your
account, but you can't leave it there unless you let him stay on your account.

If it accepts "disc is in the slot" as its "DRM," that would be totally fine.
The concern is that it won't do that. Which sucks. If you are selling physical
media for a console, the license needs to move with the media.

~~~
nobodysfool
Well, I believe the new Xbox doesn't actually require the disc be in the
console to play it. So when you loan the game to a friend, how would the
console know who owns the game? Perhaps each disc would have to have it's own
serial number, and if you install it on more than one device with more than
one account, it would ask the original account if they were letting "account
two" borrow the game. If so, that game would remain installed but be disabled.
That seems like the best approach to me.

~~~
drharris
It would be quite expensive to burn unique codes onto all discs. Also, what
happens the first time someone hacks this system, I put in a legally acquired
disc only to be told I'm borrowing the game?

------
drharris
Am I the only one that doesn't care about this? We geeks love to wax
romantically about how the legacy distribution models are insane, but aren't
willing to compromise with any less than free (as in piracy) digital
distribution. It seems to me a paradox to claim that A) Distribution should be
all digital, and B) We should allow sharing, sharing for everybody, all the
things! In the end, people need to get paid, and until somebody comes up with
a breakthrough on rights management, we're left with this model. Simple as
that.

So, either stop complaining about physical distribution, or else stop
complaining about being able to share freely, or get off your couch and figure
out a way to get both and sell it to these companies.

~~~
incision
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Netflix of gaming.

I'd pay a relatively hefty monthly subscription fee to have unlimited access
to an entire library of games.

~~~
smacktoward
You mean like this? <http://www.gamefly.com/>

~~~
incision
No, not really.

I just just realized that I've actually forgotten Netflix is something other
than a streaming service.

What I'm actually thinking of is effectively subscription-based Steam. One
price, access to the whole catalog. The provider could create tiers with a
limited "check-out" system ala O'Reilly Safari if the unlimited idea is too
scary.

I haven't used the DVD-by-mail side of Netflix in years and I did try Gamefly
at one point.

The instant gratification of streaming/downloading is pretty important to me
these days. I don't know exactly when I'm going to have time to play a game or
watch a movie and I can't be totally sure which genre I'll be in the mood for.

~~~
wmf
OnLive and Gaikai (now part of Sony) are going in this direction. I wouldn't
be surprised if eventually the Playstation Plus subscription includes game
streaming.

------
kmfrk
The most interesting about this to me is Microsoft's case-study-awful handling
of this; people are _still_ befuddled as to whether this is the case or not,
and the PR responses read like Jabberwocky.

It's like a politician deliberately following the mantra of "if you can't
convince them, confuse them".

~~~
asdf3
What's more important is that Microsoft can, like Darth Vader, alter the deal.

They haven't been clear, but even if they were clear, the "facts" of how it
works will remain uncertain, simply because it's remote controlled DRM and
that's what DRM does.

~~~
kmfrk
And when do you think it's feasible to alter the deal?

This shitstorm surrounded the PS4 event. There are zero reasons this should
catch Microsoft by surprise, so I can only assume this confusion is by design,
since anything else would imply re-imagining our understanding of
incompetence.

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frou_dh
It strikes me that a shrewd single-player gamer can simply lag behind a couple
of years deliberately.

e.g. If at this point in time, you're playing the best Nintendo DS and PS3
games released from 2006-2011, every single one will cost peanuts on eBay or
Amazon marketplace.

~~~
dmcy22
True. But for many games, especially FPS, players spend most of their time
playing multi-player. By now, the 2006-2010 probably won't have many players
online.

~~~
bentcorner
> _a shrewd single-player gamer_

;)

Still though, for popular multi-player games there are still many active
servers/players.

Also, relevant XKCD: <http://www.xkcd.com/606/>

------
checker
This post has an overwhelming negative skew. I'm sure there's a less
opinionated article which would allow us to discuss the matter at hand.
Perhaps this one? (I'm at work, so I can't actually read many gaming-related
links)

[http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-
us...](http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-used-game-
stance-6408698)

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typicalbender
Does anyone else feel that requiring that my console be online and connected
to the internet is complete crap? Guess its time to break out my SNES

~~~
PagingCraig
Not really considering how my laptop/computers are connected to the internet
24/7...it's not a large leap to have my console be as well.

~~~
typicalbender
It may not happen often where you are but there are plent of places where a
24/7 internet connection isn't guaranteed and personally I'd still like to
play my XBox when Comcast decided drop the ball for the 5th time this week :)

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everyone
This is all a load on nonsense for me.. I'm a PC gamer and I like gog. I'm
very happy to buy aything on gog becasue they _trust_ me. They do not waste
time with DRM and I do not support DRM, its unnecessary and impractical.

~~~
danielweber
Gog is great!

There's a reason they trust you:

1\. You are after older games, so you are probably older, and less likely to
be a thief. (And even less likely to write screeds about how you aren't
_really_ stealing it.)

2\. The games have already gone through the peak of their popularity cycle, so
they have already captured the bulk of their revenue. Anything now is just a
bonus.

3\. The price is so low that they don't lose much to piracy even if someone
steals it.

I haven't even made it all the way through the last bunch of things I got from
GoG, but when I do I'm headed right back there to get some more stuff.

~~~
everyone
You know gog sell new games now too? For instance 18% (roughly) of the witcher
2s sales were on gog. Also they've become a distributor of new indie games
like fez or legend of grimrock

------
oms1005
To me, this is a much bigger issue than the possibility of always online. I
can sign into my friends Xbox and we can play together, but I couldn't just
let him borrow the game. And the fee can be up to full MSRP, meaning that you
can't ever really sell your game because it will, by definition, cost someone
else MORE than a new copy. I understand that PCs do something similar, but I
don't buy PC games with the idea of sharing them with my friends, but I do
with my console games. GameStop, gamefly, and others are in a real interesting
position as to what they will do with the new Xbox One.

~~~
danielweber
The PC gaming industry is a market for lemons[1]. There are legit customers
out there who won't steal your stuff but far too many of them will just pirate
it instead of paying for it. And so everyone has to deal with draconian DRM
methods.

Because there are so few modded consoles, though, the console game market
works much better. You can buy a game, lend it around, borrow it from
Blockbuster or Gamefly, or sell it. If you don't have the disk, you generally
can't play. (Yes, there are people who have defeated this. They are an
incredible minority that aren't worth paying attention to.)

They are taking away that option. I fully understand why publishers of PC
games try to lock stuff down, despite the very best peer-reviewed research
being published on torrentfreak saying they shouldn't. [2] But for consoles I
must object.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>

[2] This was sarcasm.

~~~
sigkill
If the console market is better then why do they want to implement stronger
DRM measures? Feels a bit unfair.

PC: Oh, the piracy is too much we need stronger DRM.

Console: We control the entire chain, we need stronger DRM to maintain that
control.

~~~
danielweber
Yes, that is the basis of my objection.

------
aquarion
If you follow this link, and then follow their source (Which is
<http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/>, though they also
confirm with the Verge, which lists its source as the Wired article), you'll
only need to do this if you want to install it locally. It goes on to say:

cite: <http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/> But what if a
second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without
installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our
traditional concept of a “used game”? This is a question for which Microsoft
did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well
as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired
after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a
plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.)

So taking games around to other people's houses? Or used games? Undefined. Not
evil, not announced. They _might_ be doing something bad, but this is shit-
stirring, and nothing more.

~~~
mullingitover
I take the lack of news to be bad news. If they had a customer-friendly plan
for this, they would've announced that plan proudly. Being opaque about the
details strongly implies that those details are not going to make good press
for them.

~~~
aquarion
You are, of course, entitled to your cynicism, but they've announced the
existence of the console, the next version of Kinect, and what it looks like,
and generated thirty stories on Hacker News alone, and taken over every
console gaming site for the last day. Neither they nor Sony announce
everything at once.

------
BadCRC
isn't this how Steam (the platform gamers love) already works?

~~~
jerf
I see I'm the seventh reply, but I don't think anyone has yet correctly
explained why Steam gets away with it. The reason Steam gets away with it is
that _their prices reflect the fact you can't sell the game_.

Watch any simultaneously Steam and console release you like, for a decent game
that doesn't immediately crash in value everywhere because it stinks. Watch
the prices over the course of the first six months. Watch them both start out
at $60, but watch the Steam price come down first, and more often. It's the
usual pattern.

Watch Steam have their sales where something goes on sale for $5 or $10 while
the consoles are still charging $25 on average.

I played Mass Effect 2 for $5 on the PC, when it was still ~20$ on the
consoles. At that price, I don't care that I can't sell it. The abstract
ethical arguments still theoretically apply, but in practice it's not worth
worrying about. That's already approximately the delta between buying and
selling used anyhow.

Based on history, Microsoft isn't going to work this way. For some reason,
Steam is still the only digital retailer that has figured out the true
supply/demand relationship and tweaked the price curves to maximize their
returns, based an a rational model of the economy. Almost everyone else would
seem to rather sell nothing at $20 than sell lots at $5.

(Nintendo's even worse than Microsoft at this, actually. EA's Origin seems to
have at least partially absorbed this lesson. What's really weird to me is
that rationally, the lower prices almost certainly maximize revenue; holding
on to higher prices is probably based more in politics than economics.)

~~~
nrivadeneira
I believe this is the real reason that Steam doesn't get flak for it. If Xbox
One games saw the same price fluctuations that Steam games do, I don't think
anyone would care about lending games out.

~~~
sukuriant
see/will. It hasn't happened yet, so we can't speak as though it already has.

I'm a Microsoft employee; but I don't know what they're going to be doing with
that.

~~~
jerf
I am basing my expectations on the pricing on XBox Live. The XBLA stuff
fluctuates and there's been a couple of sales (got El Shaddai for ~2$ so I
know it's non-zero), but mostly everything stays pretty high relative to what
the market can bear. If they change behavior, so be it, but let the record
show it's not groundless speculation; the digital download market for Xbox 360
has been around a while.

------
PLenz
After years of being a loyal Xboxer I'll (probably) be on Steam Box next.

~~~
ryandvm
As mentioned above, Steam already does this. So...

~~~
PLenz
But at least they won't charge me a monthly fee for the privilege to.

~~~
andylei
xbox doesn't charge you a monthly fee to play offline games

~~~
chc
You're really reaching here. "Well, there's this one very specific kind of
title where the Xbox is almost as good as Steam, so clearly the Xbox and Steam
are roughly on the same level."

------
squozzer
I think it would be nice to give people a choice -- either play off disk to
keep the game transferable or install to disk and lose transferability.

But of course the nice option is rarely taken by anyone.

That said, this wrinkle isn't my biggest gripe with the new or even current
xbox -- peer hosting is.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not sure how this would work without making the system online dependent to
install games.

If I install a game on my console and then lend the disk to my friend and he
installs it on his, how will the game know it has already been installed on
another console?

If you go with an always online model then you will be able to implement a
formal game lending system into the console itself.

~~~
stordoff
It's claimed that you need to go online once per day with the Xbox One[1], so
could revoke access during that connection.

[1] [http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-
one-m...](http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-must-go-
online-once-a-day-will-charge-to-play-used-games/)

~~~
jiggy2011
In that case there's not much point bothering with the disk, just tell xbox
live to grant your license to your friend for the next 24 hours.

------
drcube
A further blow in the war on sharing. Of course, this is business as usual for
MS.

My mom taught me to share before I was old enough to walk. No government or
corporation in the world is going to change my opinion of it.

~~~
Chronic24
You can share all you want. But me, Microsoft, and other companies will charge
you for it. No need to change your opinion.

~~~
scarmig
Well, you might send a bunch of government agents to knock down my door to
take my house and all my possessions. But no big.

------
acomjean
My question is how?

If its write once media, how are they going to implement this. Will you have
to type in a DRM KEY and get it verified via a MS server (or hold the box up
to the kinect camera to read it? (I should patent that....))

seems odd.

------
maeon3
Sometimes I bring my disk from my XBox to a friends house, and play the game
on their XBox. With this new "XBox One" console, I will be completely unable
to do this. I'll have to tote my xbox around. Of course they will be calling
it "buying a game" even though users don't own it in any sense of the word.
This progression will eventually lead to "Press 'A' to spend 0.01 cents to
leap over this special exclusive objective for an exclusive serotonin
release."

I will be going out of my way to make sure I do not buy anything produced by
Microsoft ever again, operating systems, consoles, software, etc. We are
losing control of our computers. These computers will become a part of us one
day, we must preserve our ownership of the metal on up through the software to
the right to own and use the software itself. This is important.

I fear the day when we are all just extensions of the mothership, when the
system decides you are out of line, the human slaves are simply a "thin
client", they just press a button, and your entire life folds up and
disappears, and resources are administered to another area. Buyers are losing
their RIGHTS here. It's boiling a frog slowly. Soon we won't be able to own
anything.

~~~
jff
Or you could presumably log in to your Live account on their XBox, play the
game while you're visiting, and then log out? Has the added advantage of
continuing to save achievements to your account, giving access to savegames if
you want them, etc.

------
tarzan3419
evil!

