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

[Miss G.]

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

It may or may not be legit. If it was full game sharing no developer/publisher would back this (optional at their discretion) process when their main concern is turning a profit from as many sales as possible. ONE sale and up to 10 other people using it for FREE would be a nightmare for them as much as the used game sales they've been trying to kill. As demo sharing, that's a lame feature. You can download a demo to play yourself now or at least watch a let's play if you're the type that just wants to see it without the needless hoop-jumping.

 

[Rickin10]

So, let me get this straight, the glorious Family Plan that Xbox apologists were so excited about, and then later dismayed when it was removed to the point they were making claims that those criticizing Microsoft had set the progress of games back years, was essentially and extension of our abilities to play....demos?

No wonder Microsoft wouldn't elaborate if this was all they had up their sleeve.

 

[WeepingAngels]

So nothing of value was lost. Oh and that Game Trial shit on PS+ is crap, I used it once and will never use it again. It takes 3 or 4 hours to download and install a game and you only get to play for an hour.

 

[mjelaine]

All the douche-y whining about "I'm sorry for not educating you!" like gamers are morons who need to have things explained to them like infants by the Glorious All-Seeing Microsoft just pisses me off.

Gamers are not as stupid as this Microsoft employee seems to think we are.

Game studios are the ones that keep pushing for better graphics, more hardcore cinematics. Your average gamer would happily trade slightly poorer graphics for good story and gameplay. Why do you think Indie games are becoming more and more successful? And why many gamers (myself included) happily replay titles that are much older? Because story and gameplay are more important than how pretty it looks. Game studios are the ones that keep pushing to bankrupt themselves with every game they make.

Maybe if you didn't release a new Call of Duty every three seconds. Or didn't focus on giving us photo realistic cut scenes, but let us play through cool sequences with reduced graphics.

Look at games like Animal Crossing and how successful they've been without blowing the budget on visuals.

Yeah, visuals are nice. I enjoy them too. But if it's a choice between story/gameplay and visuals? Visuals will lose every time.

 

[omega 616]

Wait, Wait, Wait, it wasn't a blockbuster type thing? I always thought it was like you place halo in the share "folder" (for lack of a better word) and any person in your family list could play it till completion (if they wanted) if you weren't playing it.

What it actually was, was a demo system from the PS1 days, when just about every gaming mag came with a CD or 2 filled with demos? I remember playing one demo cd constantly, it had vigilante 8 and some weird shooter, you aimed with the triangle, X, O and square buttons ... I played it for hours, the same levels over and over.

Used to annoy me that vigilante 8 was the farthest right and the shooter was the farthest left.

Anyway, this demo system doesn't seem like much to brag about. I feel totally misled by this 'cos they never once said "demo" or "short term rental" or anything to suggest that kind of system, it was always implied you could play the full game.

Am I just an idiot or was anybody else caught out?

Should have realized, nothing seemed good except this? Nah, it all had to be crap, didn't it.

EDIT: the game I couldn't remember the name of was "apocalypse".

 

[WeepingAngels]

Anyway, this demo system doesn't seem like much to brag about. I feel totally misled by this 'cos they never once said "demo" or "short term rental" or anything to suggest that kind of system, it was always implied you could play the full game.

Am I just an idiot or was anybody else caught out?

Should have realized, nothing seemed good except this? Nah, it all had to be crap, didn't it.

I never heard them say you were sharing demos either. They flat out lied when they said you could share your games with 10 people. Does it matter now? To me it does, you don't so easily forgive other people when they lie to you.

 

[Haefulz]

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

Yeah, I'm not buying this. The letter was posted by a guest on Pastebin? Sorry, I don't think this is real.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Essentially the family sharing was a glorified demo service, except those who played the shared game got to keep their save file

My mind is completely blown. That was it? Seriously? They were going to force 24 hour drm checks for that piece of shit? They didn't "give" gamers anything. They took away the ability to share games physically so players could do it with fucking advertisements as little as every 15 minutes and they were excited about it?

Then again, I guess I should take this with a grain of salt but I highly doubt Microsoft would have been more generous than this

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

Maybe not, but the way Microsoft dodges questions plus the ability to instantly share any game with any 10 people seems like it would have a more negative affect than used games

 

[WanderingFool]

So, this was basically a system that allowed other people you know to, not actually play games attached to your library, but play demo'd versions of them...

No big loss...


*Edit*

Actually, considering this is a anonymous article, I guess there needs to be some salt...

 

[PeePantz]

Assuming it's legit, of course.

This is a huge assumption right here, but if it is fact, this saddens me a great deal. When the fuck did playing demos become such a selling point? I thought the game sharing/family thing was such a great feature, I was willing to overlook the other crap and get the system (mainly because I rarely buy used games and the internet connection isn't a big deal to me).

If this article is true, it might be enough for me to swear off Microsoft/Xbox. I don't like being misled on a feature that would have made the XBox One a day one buy. It's a shame because I've always enjoyed the incarnations of the XBox over the Playstations, mainly due it's introduction to me with KOTOR and other great (BioWare) exclusives like Jade Empire. I learned to love the interface and I believe the controllers to be vastly superior.

 

[Snotnarok]

Yeah great game sharing that requires 1 hour check ins, it's not really sharing just extremely limited permission on top of the other person having to purchase a license for permission to play for $60 bucks.

Consoles need to be simple the DRM scheme was not only twisted but complicated as hell vs any other option

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

Thank God that DRM is gone. Shame about the game-sharing feature though; that would've been a neat way to lend friends and family members your games without having to actually give them the disc, in cases where those people live far away.

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.

.........Oh.

So you were never going to be able to share your games at all then. You'd be granting people access to the demo. The Xbone was somehow even worse than we all thought! How much more restrictive and anti-consumerist can you possibly-

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).

I...

.....

There are no words.

 

[Drauger]

What a shitty model..... wow really it would have been worst for M$ to realease it like that imagine the backlash xD, but well its a paste bin comment right? let's hope M$ wasn't that retarded..... right?


" I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2"

No you dumb ass xD playstation 4 is playstation part 4..... and we need to be fucking educated right?

 

[wulf3n]

The funniest thing about this is that there's nothing stopping Microsoft from doing this with their Digital store.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

You know, since this is an unconfirmed pastepin comment featuring WTF ARE YOU DOING level PR, I'm wondering if it's an extremely clever troll who made this to incite more rage against Micro$oft. On the other hand, this sort of horrible PR is exactly what M$ has been doing so far. Damn you Poe's Law!

 

[idarkphoenixi]

So Microsoft's "best" feature was a glorified timed demo?

I guess there's a reason they never actually explained the fucking thing until they finally canned it.

 

[Rickin10]

There's an ITK guy on Neogaf who's apparently got a VERY good track record of calling stuff ahead of time. He's basically confirmed this is legit. The only thing he said was that it was a set 60 minutes.