http://pastebin.com/TE1MWES2
So a Microsoft employee who worked on the sharing and networking features posted a large rant this morning about how the features would have worked and how disappointed they are in both Microsoft's inability to explain the feature and their recent reversal on policies. They also went on a rant about how used games are a wound that we as gamers refuse to bandage, but that's not what this thread is about. The main point is how, at least according to this employee, the game sharing would have worked. Directly from the rant pasted above:
"First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn't have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they're placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it. One thing we knew is that we wanted the experience to be seamless for both the person sharing and the family member benefiting. There weren't many models of this system already in the wild other than Sony's horrendous game sharing implementation, but it was clear their approach (if one could call it that) was not the way to go. Developers complained about the lost sales and gamers complained about overbearing DRM that punished those who didn't share that implemented by publishers to quell gamers from taking advantage of a poorly thought out system. We wanted our family sharing plan to be something that was talked about and genuinely enjoyed by the masses as a way of inciting gamers to try new games."
Essentially the family sharing was a glorified demo service, except those who played the shared game got to keep their save file. So Escapists, what are your thoughts be you for the changes MS made or against?
Edit: For some reason some of the poll answers aren't showing up, so feel free to ignore it until I get them up.
Edit 2: Alright, all the poll answers are there now. Feel free to vote if you wish.
So a Microsoft employee who worked on the sharing and networking features posted a large rant this morning about how the features would have worked and how disappointed they are in both Microsoft's inability to explain the feature and their recent reversal on policies. They also went on a rant about how used games are a wound that we as gamers refuse to bandage, but that's not what this thread is about. The main point is how, at least according to this employee, the game sharing would have worked. Directly from the rant pasted above:
"First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn't have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they're placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it. One thing we knew is that we wanted the experience to be seamless for both the person sharing and the family member benefiting. There weren't many models of this system already in the wild other than Sony's horrendous game sharing implementation, but it was clear their approach (if one could call it that) was not the way to go. Developers complained about the lost sales and gamers complained about overbearing DRM that punished those who didn't share that implemented by publishers to quell gamers from taking advantage of a poorly thought out system. We wanted our family sharing plan to be something that was talked about and genuinely enjoyed by the masses as a way of inciting gamers to try new games."
Essentially the family sharing was a glorified demo service, except those who played the shared game got to keep their save file. So Escapists, what are your thoughts be you for the changes MS made or against?
Edit: For some reason some of the poll answers aren't showing up, so feel free to ignore it until I get them up.
Edit 2: Alright, all the poll answers are there now. Feel free to vote if you wish.
