Am I the only one who actually agrees with what Strike Witch just posted?

I wouldn't count on it.

Well excluding the usual "it's the way of the future" talk, Microsoft's original plan happened for two reasons: 1. suggestions from publishers who are sick of losing money on second-hand sales and 2. they apparently heard that Sony was planning a similar program. If Sony had gone ahead with it and the publishers supported them, then Microsoft would have been left high and dry.

However, since Sony didn't take the risk of pursuing digital, always-online systems and DRM due to their shaky economic state, Microsoft ended up having to go it alone on a system that gamers aren't a fan of. See, if both companies had had gone through with the plan, it would probably have gone over as a sign of the times. Both sides would have explained their reasons, and stores like Gamestop and other retailers who exploit their pre-owned sales would have been forced back, which would probably have led to better games since publishers see more money they could then invest in developers.
Well, assuming more money equals better games, of course (it doesn't).

But, since Sony essentially pulled out of this strategy (probably because if it failed they'd lose money), Microsoft is put out there alone, and as everyone knows, Microsoft is an evil company who's out to steal your money and force unfair restrictions on you. So they faced a storm of criticism from unhappy gamers, and since Xbox is a system that relies not on exclusive, hardcore fans but instead on a large casual market of gamers who use it as a catch-all console, they couldn't risk the loss of sales.

Microsoft is, before anything else, a company that pragmatically follows money. They will happily drop unpopular systems and forget they existed if it is a means to profit. Rather than be stubborn like Sony was about the PS3 for a while, they knew that the One needed to scale back the whole system and just push on as a new iteration of the 360.

So what does this mean? Well, for better or worse, it means we aren't going towards a future of digital distribution this generation. Microsoft and Sony aren't taking risks, they're going to incorporate some new stuff, but not everything they wanted. In some cases (especially infrastructure: the One wouldn't have been able to work in certain countries yet due to Internet reasons), this is a good thing, it gives both companies space to grow into their plans instead of just jumping right in. On the other hand, it means that we're probably going to have the same issues we had this current gen: Developers folding, incredibly large target sales that can't be fulfilled, more reboots of old properties in desperate attempts to keep them alive, and more multiplayer facebook crap.

But hey, we survived the past generation. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I had two concerns about XBone. Always being online (I'm poor, and sometimes choose to let internet and cable go so that I can pay other bills), and no backwards compatibility. The backwards compatibility I can live without I guess, but yeah, always needing to be connected would have kept me from buying it. Not because I feel it's intrusive, but because it could have made the thing a useless box of wires for months on end for me.

I don't plan on buying a console, but have been watching "the battle for the living room" from the sidelines, 'cause it's funny.

Thing about comparing the Xbone to Steam is that Steam is free software which can be accessed via your existing PC. You don't have to buy a very expensive games console in order to be able to use it. Your 'net fails, you can use your PC for other things... And Steam has an offline mode to play offline games once downloaded, without needing to sign in to play them every 24 hours...

If MS wanted to cater for digital distribution and move away from physical media for a games console, which people are also familiar with, then they should've done it differently, such as giving customers the choice of how they got their media - And their behaviour still proves that they put their profits of themselves and their affiliates over the satisfaction of their customers. The U-turn was probably caused by people voting with their wallets and the lack of pre-orders...

The comparisons to Steam don’t quite work because the bulk of Microsoft’s Xbox One DRM policies were affecting disc-based games as well as digital.

Steam is a purely digital platform – you buy games digitally, they’re tied to your account. You can buy Steam-enabled games in stores but they are very much “buy the disc, use it to install the game, the game gets tied to your Steam account, forget about the disc”.

Compare this to other media – music, movies, books all have physical and digital representations on the market. Digital distribution is always based around accounts and non-transferable licenses – you buy it and it gets tied to you forever. But physical media is never bound by those same rules – your friend can borrow your book, your CD, your DVD, whatever. Microsoft was trying to apply the rules digital media follows to disc-based games, and that is never the way it should work.

If Microsoft was planning on having an option to transfer digitally-purchased content between people, this was actually a step in the right direction – consumers should be able to sell or trade their digital content in the same way their physical content. If Microsoft scrapped this strategy as well as their always-online policies, then that’s a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and it’s a shame.

Since everyone is jumping to the defense of Steam, I'll also point out that game sharing is very possibly going to be a thing within the next year of two.

In legal terms, of course, it's still going to be license between you and Valve (rather than your legal property), terminable at any point, but it's a step in the right direction.

So MS abandoned the DRM, eh? Well that might give me just enough incentive to pick one up used a few years after its release, depending on how things go in terms of updates.
In any case, I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to force people to pay to install DRM via update in the future.

Building on what OANST said, always online relies on their servers too. What happens if they go broke? What about in 10 years? It's exactly what's happening to PS2 online games - the companies aren't making money from it any more so they shut it down with no compensation.

Assuming they didn't suddenly go broke with no warning, they could easily push out an update that stopped the check-in. Just as easily as they're actually doing it right now.


Valve have promised something similar if they ever go bust. My main problem with their offline mode is that it must be activated. It should be offered by default if the connection isn't working.

The problem is now 95% of people have now pre-ordered a PS4. A large majority are unlikely to change their pre-orders unless something amazing happens. The more people who have the console, the more likely their friends are to get it etc... So Xbone will definitely have lost in the short term. Whether they will pick it up depends on their games and additional features

Whoa, there. Your 10s column is out by a factor of infinity.

I already know quite a few people who have switched back to X1 after the announcement, people are lazy, but not that lazy.

PS4 will outsell X1 by a wide margin just out of sheer supply, even without figuring out demand.

Microsoft have announced that they are no longer going to charge developers to patch their games. To me, that's huge. This was a big sticking point for me that I didn't mention earlier. I just stopped believing that Xbox was going to get the types of amazing small developer games that made Live Arcade so fucking awesome this gen. Developers were sick of not being able to fix problems without shelling out 40 grand, and a lot of them started moving away from the platform. Double Fine, for instance, was one of the studios that made Live Arcade for me. But they have almost completely quit developing for the platform now because it's just such a pain in the ass. If they can convince indie developers to keep making games for them, and also not force me to be online to use the damn thing, I may end up getting one. Eventually.

Yes it's huge, but to me it's disgusting to ask for money to issue patches in the first place. Think about how much money they've made from those fees alone. Too little too late in my opinion. It's clear that Microsoft do not care about indies on the Xbox One. Seems like most indies will stick with the 360/PS4 which is where most of the gamers will be anyway.

Did my brain just fart (And has the XBone been out for years) or does that logic just not make sense.

I'd say both.

Excluding that part with Xbone being out.

The fee wasn't exactly just an arbitrary "give me your money because I want your money" fee. The fee existed because Microsoft did extensive in house testing on all patches that went through to make sure that they were up to the necessary standards for release.

Because, like, every developer asked for it, and they just couldn't test it themselves. Not every game studio is JAW...

Oh, the developers definitely didn't ask for it. Microsoft's theory was that forcing them to do the testing will ensure that the games on their service maintain a certain level of quality, which will drive more people to their service than the other digital services. It didn't really work out that way, and the services that don't charge for patches, or do their own testing on them didn't see a huge decline in quality, so it just doesn't make sense for them to continue the practice. Especially since devs are so sick of the headache of it all.

The current situation also meant that when bugs fell through the cracks they either took ages to be patched or didn't get patched at all. So in the long run, it may have meant that 360 games had more bugs than other systems.

Yup. It was not a great system.

So uhh, I don't know if anyone here cares about this but they did a small Q&A thing with IGN and gave some details about the machine and what you can do with it.

Microsoft needs to work on not spending a whole paragraph's worth of talking to answer a yes/no question.

They'd make great politicians...

Only the last sentence is a valid response to the question they've been asked

Thank god we have Varrok here.