Poll: "Heartbroken" Microsoft Employee Explains How Family Sharing Would Have Worked

[CardinalPiggles]

I still prefer Sony's innovative game sharing ideas.


It allows for more than *gasp* 15 minutes of play!

And the Kinect is still there, the price is still $100 more and I'm willing to bet MS will still shove ads into our faces even with premium membership.

 

[Zenn3k]

The thing is, they CAN STILL DO FAMILY SHARING.

They just give the user a choice to use their always connected system or NOT, its that easy.

You agree to their terms, accept the DRM...everything works as it would have.

You don't agree, you get to be offline, but lose family sharing.

Boom, done, "Best of both worlds" as they say.

Microsoft can do this, its very possible, they probably will in the future, but right now Microsoft is acting like "Its our ball, and we're going home!". Stop being children M$.

 

[Griffolion]

This is a good summation of the article:
Honestly, I think this is fake. But, in case it isn't...

Seriously, stop acting the victim. You were on the wrong, and losing, side of this whole situation. The right side won, you changed your tune, and now things are starting to go slightly better. I can't believe you thought attempting to guilt the gaming community would work. Time will tell who's right, but I wouldn't place any bets on yourself.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

After quickly skimming through it, all I got to say is this:

If all this was true, then I'm happy that this thing was thrown into the incinerator. The very few advantages of this amounting to nothing more than glorified demos is just silly at best, especially when the now-former downsides of the Xbox One are taken into account.

Like many others have said, however, this should definitely be taken with a few grains of salt. An unproven anonymous source could be absolutely anybody. For all you know, I could be the anonymous poster who said that and am just going full-meta to throw people off of my tracks. Now time to buy some delicious Doritos and Mountain Dew. >

In short, until something official or solid-evidence backed comes out, treat this like the rumor that it is.

 

[Reyold]

"Used games are an open wound?" No you shitstain, they are a convenience that people will go for, because the person who bought the original game has already paid you.

It really blows my mind when people act like used games are the devil. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no other industry whines and cries about used sales. NONE AT ALL. So how come the game industry feels entitled to all that money? It doesn't help that this is supposedly coming from an employee of Microsoft, the company that managed to usurp EA's throne of being the most hated gaming company in one fell swoop.

Here's an idea: STOP SPENDING SO MUCH ON FUCKING DEVELOPMENT THAT YOU GO INTO THE RED JUST BY FUCKING RELEASING A TITLE.

Let's add Reggie's advice to that: make the game good enough that I won't want to trade it away. Better yet, make it so good that I pre-order it because I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

 

[Undomesticated Equine]

Lol, that sounds totally stupid why not just let that family member play it on your account without any stupid restrictions. Pathetic excuse for always online requirement. You can let your friends play your game for 45 minutes ohoho look at us we are so generous overlords.

 

[Norrdicus]

While not confirmed by official sources, a long-time NeoGAF leaker CBoaT confirmed that the sharing had a 60-minute time limit [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=598291]

 

[Something Amyss]

We didn't do a good enough job explaining all the benefits that came with this new model.

No, you were too busy telling us to "deal with it" or to stop being "backwards." That being said.....This explanation doesnt'exaclt make me want to get onboard with the old system.

 

[Weaver]

lol I'm glad this isn't happening then.
Exclusive game demos where you have to know a person who bought the game to play it.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Oh, wut. And here I was thinking it was whole games. How about you take a leaf out of Sony's book and simply make a demo available for every game. They'd have to be connected to the internet anyway, might as well get a demo. Won't be as fast, but really, if all this feature does is give you access to a demo of any of the games someone owns, there are probably more families who'd get more value out of simply sharing the disc. And they were trying to make sure you didn't beat the game using only the sharing system as well.

Well, if nothing else, this explains why Microsoft never gave a good explanation as to how the feature would work, and instead let us all believe it was much better than it is.

 

[wulfy42]

I am getting......tired...of this "used games are bad" rant I keep hearing.

Used games are only sold....at all....because they are the cheapest way to get games for players. It's the GREED of the original game makers that allow used game sales in the first place. Used games are rarely sold in the first month or two...but game prices rarely drop much if at all, within the first 6 months after a game is sold.

What is more....DIGITAL games are sold at full price...even though they cost much less to produce and there is no re-sale cuts etc (no money goes to gamestop, bestbuy etc).

You want to stop used game sales? Offer your games through digital purchase......for less. Both initially...and drop the digital sales price every few months as well.

Poof...do that long enough and used game sales will dry up naturally.

Physical copy of a game sells for $60.....Digital for $50.....at launch.

2 months later the Digital copy drops another $10....to $40.

Yes, you could buy a physical copy at that point for $50 probably...so you could STILL get a savings by buying digital.

After 4 more months, drop the new game price to $30 for digital and $50 for physical (or even drop the physical constantly to $10 more then the digital...if you really want to be agressive against used sales).

Doing that will ensure used game sales are rare to non-existent because very few people will pay more for a physical copy if they can get a digital copy at home...for less....especially without tax (not sure on the tax situation everywhere though).

Yeah, gamestop etc won't be pleased by the situation..but the can still make money selling physical copies of games...at least till most people decide there is no reason to buy them anymore.

But the rediculous restrictions Xbox one wanted to put on everything was crazy. We, as a gaming community, need to stand up and demand that digital games be sold for less, both because it saves us money...and because it freaking solves the whole "used game" problem they are always going on about.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Ok putting aside the fact that your game sampling service doesn't sound all that great, in fact the way you describe it makes it sound rather shitty, why the hell did Microsoft have to take that out? All we wanted was not to have the internet connection be mandatory. Why couldn't you have still made this game sharing thing available to those that did have their Xbox Dones connected to the net? Or would that have gone against Microsoft's "All or Nothing" policy?

 

[Ren_Li]

Assuming this is legit... It sounds like an interesting idea, yeah. I might have made use of it to check out titles that my friends play that I might otherwise not pay attention to. If I were going to get an Xbone, that is. Which their PR has ensured I won't, even with their back-tracking.
But if it comes at the cost of cutting out a rather large amount of potential customers with the online requirements, clearly the way to go forwards should be pretty damn clear.

I'm not sure, personally, why it's one or the other though. I mean, obviously you need to be online to do the family sharing- but why would you need to cut that option in order to remove a need to sign in just to play games? It's possible that I'm missing something, but otherwise it's a case of them cutting a kind of minor but interesting feature in order to go "THERE, you whiny entitled brats, now it's JUST LIKE THE 360, are you HAPPY now, will you stop bitching now there's NOTHING NEW, not even interesting new stuff?!"

 

[Something Amyss]

Ok putting aside the fact that your game sampling service doesn't sound all that great, in fact the way you describe it makes it sound rather shitty, why the hell did Microsoft have to take that out? All we wanted was not to have the internet connection be mandatory. Why couldn't you have still made this game sharing thing available to those that did have their Xbox Dones connected to the net? Or would that have gone against Microsoft's "All or Nothing" policy?

It really seems like a "screw you" for complaining.

Because MS had a change of heart and pulled out all of the evil shit. Which this was apparently one of.

They were visited by three ghosts the night before, and found a new love for gaming.

Not only does the PSN have demos as far as I know. The PS4 claims that games will stream so that you can play as they download. I don't understand why something like that was not implemented from day 1 since many of the demos are way too large to download (because they are the whole game with an unlock key.)

They're talking about physical games here, which will be 50 GB. also, I think you need 50%. While this is still probably a good thing, I'm mentioning it because I'm not sure it'll benefit you.

I would just hope that content does not start downloading until it is soon to be needed. So you could play just an early part of the game and then delete it after you figure out its total crap 2mins into the actual game (after a slow drawn out intro with 0 information content that you cancel after 5mins) like 9 out of 10 games that look worth trying.

See, this would be a useful feature. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it would further bloat game sizes.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Snip

This is something they SHOULD do, but never something they'll actually do. Brilliant idea though, hire this man Microsoft!



OT: Family sharing, cloud, and whatever else they wanted to do with online is something they always could do, the DRM and check in crap was never necessary for that, and there is no reason any online system whatsoever that would require things like that. All it would ever require is an internet connection, people who DO have constant internet connection can op to use it while those that for the family sharing and so forth while those who have crappy, expensive, or nonexistent internet connections or just plain don't want to do it could still play the games. The DRM and check ins were just to appease publishers, it was NEVER about giving their customers any benefits whatsoever.

Captcha: Hearts Content

No captcha, I'm not content with Microsoft yet, not until I'm sure they won't pull another 180 on this later and add everything back.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Ok putting aside the fact that your game sampling service doesn't sound all that great, in fact the way you describe it makes it sound rather shitty, why the hell did Microsoft have to take that out? All we wanted was not to have the internet connection be mandatory. Why couldn't you have still made this game sharing thing available to those that did have their Xbox Dones connected to the net? Or would that have gone against Microsoft's "All or Nothing" policy?

Because MS had a change of heart and pulled out all of the evil shit. Which this was apparently one of.

Not only does the PSN have demos as far as I know. The PS4 claims that games will stream so that you can play as they download. I don't understand why something like that was not implemented from day 1 since many of the demos are way too large to download (because they are the whole game with an unlock key.)

I would just hope that content does not start downloading until it is soon to be needed. So you could play just an early part of the game and then delete it after you figure out its total crap 2mins into the actual game (after a slow drawn out intro with 0 information content that you cancel after 5mins) like 9 out of 10 games that look worth trying.

Anyway I am developing this kind of model for DIY games. So games can be super lightweight and resources can be shared to minimize the transfer overhead (on both sides of the connection) and waste of space on disk drives. Things like intros can usually be streamed once and not even cached.

Speaking for myself personally. I have satellite internet so downloading GBs on a lark just isn't in the cards.

What? The whole sharing system what "evil shit." Anyway, I'm still not understanding why the sharing system had to be pulled (assuming it was, because I glanced at the article and got the impression that it wasn't), why couldn't they keep the system and just have it only available to those that are online, but have the online part be completely optional?

 

[mike1921]

You want to stop used game sales? Offer your games through digital purchase......for less. Both initially...and drop the digital sales price every few months as well.

Poof...do that long enough and used game sales will dry up naturally.

Physical copy of a game sells for $60.....Digital for $50.....at launch.

2 months later the Digital copy drops another $10....to $40.

Why sell digital games for $10 less? Do you have a reason to think it takes $10 to make and stock a disk when you're doing it in bulk?

Yeah, gamestop etc won't be pleased by the situation..but the can still make money selling physical copies of games...at least till most people decide there is no reason to buy them anymore.

that's exactly why gamestop would just refuse to stock the game. If you're a triple A and gamestop refuses to stock your game because you made it $5-$10 cheaper on steam you're fucked