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

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

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?

Here's the thing.

Adam Orth.
New Kinect will be shipped with the console and required to play.
The New Xbox would be more centered on Household Entertainment than gameplay than ever before.
No Backwards Compatibility.
New Dashboard would be a watered down version of Windows 8.
New Price tag would be above four hundred.

All 'predicted' just weeks before the release.

Seriously, we live in the age of Wikileaks. Where people can't wait to spoil new tidbits of info, and more to the point, they 'spoil' to actually test the waters of public judgment. Normally if it was favorable, it happens. If it isn't, it's just a rumor and we have to push back the product because of reasons.

Also, we live in the Twitterverse, where people can't help themselves but to complain to the net about why they don't understand X and how stupid they are for not embracing it. Hell, we're on a forum. Search the Net and find me one forum that doesn't have at least 30 percent of their threads devoted to 'Why doesn't the world understand how great/horrible this is?!'. It's breeding a mentality that people feel their opinions just HAVE to be voiced and people MUST be made clear.

I don't believe anything until I have something in my hands. However, the 'predictions' have had a pretty good track record so far.

 

[rasputin0009]

Fake post! It's obviously written by someone on the outside looking in. This is silly, and you should feel silly for falling for it.

 

[wrightguy0]

oh look, only 15-60 minutes of "sharing" allowed. yeah...how innovative.

And Nothing of Value was Lost.

 

[wulfy42]

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

Yes, I do have a reason, because it costs money to make the game, the manual, package it, deliver it to stores...and then those stores take a cut of the profit as well.

Gamestop does not stock and sell all those games for free, they get a percentage of the sale frice for doing it.

As far as gamestop refusing to sell the games....then they would be gone in no time. Best buy etc sure would keep selling them...as they get the same profit for each sale as they do now (which is why it's cheaper to sell digital copies). I doubt gamestop would be happy, but it would be a slow process where less and less people bought physical copies and it'

Eventually it would have a huge impact on gamestop (although they would still be selling the consoles etc), but it would take awhile. There will still be people who need to buy physical copies...and over time..the cost to buy physical copies would probably have to go up as less and less people purchased them (with the increase going to the stores themselves t.

 

[wulfy42]

Stupid adds make it impossible to see what I'm typing..sorry for the cut off lines etc.

Anyway digital copies should be the future, it just shouldn't be forced on us, it should be made to be something we choose ourselves because of the cheaper prices, convienence etc.

It costs less to deliver a digital copy. It ensures no resale of the game which means more over all profit for the original creators as well. All of that is true, but currently the buyer gets no advantage at all (other then convienence) for buying digital.

That is wrong...and if it was rectified...you would see more and more people buying digital copies.

 

[piinyouri]

So it was a sort of demo service then.
Also a really great feature in my opinion, considering not many games released nowadays are released with a demo, and I know a lot of people, myself included, who find the demo a wonderfully useful tool for evaluating whether we want to purchase a game.


Dragon's Dogma's demo sold me entirely on the game. If it wasn't for that, I may not have bothered with it.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

OK... so, I didn't know about the timer. This timer makes the whole feature look rather... silly to me.

Good riddance, then.

As we've concluded already, the 'nice' features were used, thus probably implemented in the first place, to make us swallow the unsavoury variety of heavy DRM. If most of the anti-consumer DRM is now truly abandoned and gone, I guess we can make do without this family feature, which, as it turns out, was never a proper family, but a sneaky, crippling, annoying and tricky marketing feature.

Suck hairy donkey balls, heartbroken Microsoft drone. YOU are what's wrong with the industry today. I don't like your face 'round 'ere. If you're heartbroken over that, you're either plain dimwitted hate bait or you plain don't have no soul.

 

[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?

I'll try again. Because what seemed like a glorious gift to the gaming public, this "sharing" system, would look like so much evil shit on this new reformed console of Microsoft's. The same way Google slash Apple make Microsoft look like Santa Clause instead of the "The Evil Empire" that we all knew and loathed back in the pre-Google days. It's all relative.

That made even less sense that your other explanation. There is nothing in this world that would make Microsoft look like Santa Claus. So anyway I'm just going to chalk it up to twisted bizarro management logic. In which case this heartbroken employee should blame her bosses for being spiteful morons and not the gaming public.

 

[theaudioprophet]

the shared library seemed too good to be true and while they'll probably never truly explain the ins and outs of the system now, it was probably closer to this than anything we'd hoped

 

[JetFury]

hhahahhahahahaha my friend sent me this. This is just too good. The alternative to used games were demos. I can't wait to take this to gameinformer where people actually defended drm and used games BECAUSE of this.....oh wow. Too good.

 

[Bluestorm83]

I take the stance that I always have. That which I have bought is MINE. I have the right and priviledge to use, sell, break, eat, or pee on it. It's MINE. If I bought a chair, and then decided I'd like to sit on the floor, I can sell that chair without the Chairsmith showing up at my house and going, "Used chairs steal from my children!" as he wipes his ass with a fistful of gold bars, because he's goddamn MICROSOFT, who has BILLIONS OF DOLLARS THAT THEY CAN'T SPEND OR INVEST OR DONATE, BECAUSE THEY'VE PASSED ALL OF THE MAXIMUM TAX WRITEOFF THRESHOLDS, SO IT JUST SITS IN BANKS DOING NOTHING.

 

[stabnex]

His explanation of the system in his own words was, "Do our advertisement for free for us with this innovative new lie we sold as a full game feature." Manipulative and hate-filled Microsoft employees just begging for attention. I never used to hate Microsoft as a company, now I know I'll never buy their video game products ever again.

How dare you even think this was justified? You have your heads so far up your own 1st world a**es that you can't smell that the rest of the world is in economic downhill battle. Making this QUOTE-UNQUOTE "Innovated leap forward in home entertainment" at the expense of 99% of your worldwide consumers was a mistake and I'm glad you're failing now as a result.

I've never said the following words about Microsoft before (lord knows I used to say it to Sony on an almost daily basis):

F*ck you, Microsoft.

OT: <youtube=dzS7MIw1zFE>

 

[theultimateend]

"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.

"But we lose money on used games and don't make as much money back!" Here's an idea: STOP SPENDING SO MUCH ON FUCKING DEVELOPMENT THAT YOU GO INTO THE RED JUST BY FUCKING RELEASING A TITLE.

So no, I don't have any sympathy for this whiner. Oh no, we won't be able to share games with our family! I guess I'll just have to go back to asking my brother if I can play on his PS3 again. ANARCHY.

I am the only person of my close friends who can afford gaming without doing trade-ins.

They would literally get no money from them if they killed used games.

Then again I'm also one of the few people who is consistently employed. Doesn't change the fact though.

 

[juchmis]

"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.

"But we lose money on used games and don't make as much money back!" Here's an idea: STOP SPENDING SO MUCH ON FUCKING DEVELOPMENT THAT YOU GO INTO THE RED JUST BY FUCKING RELEASING A TITLE.

So no, I don't have any sympathy for this whiner. Oh no, we won't be able to share games with our family! I guess I'll just have to go back to asking my brother if I can play on his PS3 again. ANARCHY.

I am the only person of my close friends who can afford gaming without doing trade-ins.

They would literally get no money from them if they killed used games.

Then again I'm also one of the few people who is consistently employed. Doesn't change the fact though.

Well, technically they "literally get no money from them" anyway, since they buy used. I would still argue that it might build dev loyalty though, like when I bought used Ico and then bought Shadow of the Colossus new. And would totally buy The Last Guardian if it ever comes out.

 

[AD-Stu]

So even their game sharing wasn't real. It was just a clever way of doing marketing for the publishers.

^ this. Games already have demos and if they don't, as mentioned above there's YouTube and recommendations from friends and reviews and whatnot. The way it's explained this was just a demo service tied in with some sneaky third-party validation from your "family" member, a slightly greater incentive to purchase (keeping the save game) and a streamlined prompt for purchasing.

Some people might have used it and thought it was cool, but let's not mess about - this was a sales tool first and foremost.

Didn't vote because "no great loss" wasn't an option.

 

[theultimateend]

Well, technically they "literally get no money from them" anyway, since they buy used. I would still argue that it might build dev loyalty though, like when I bought used Ico and then bought Shadow of the Colossus new. And would totally buy The Last Guardian if it ever comes out.

My main point was that the situation for them doesn't change but the situation for the consumer gets worse.

Your point about brand loyalty is solid and matches my own life experiences as well.

 

[RicoADF]

*snip*

Could you add "Good idea, badly executed" or something similar. Where by the idea is good but we disagree with how they wanted to go about it.

OT: The family sharing and general online part of the system sounded great, and with some small tweaking to give the consumer the choice of using it or the old disc based system they could have sold it (and the X-box One) on it. However they saw it as black and white, either have it with the downsides or don't have it at all and under that I prefer not to have it.

How they should have gone about it (in my opinion) and would have had the support from the public/consumers that Microsoft wanted:

"You buy a game from retail and put the disc in the console, at this point you would have 2 options:
1) Just play the game like on xbox from the disc, nothing changes
2) Register the game to your console online, which binds/links that disc to your account.

Once it's linked to your account you could install the game to the hard drive and play online and offline without the disc as the disc is locked to your account, even if you went offline and lent the disc to a friend it wouldn't work as it's already 'in use'.

However you could lend the game to friends via the sharing and family system as MS already had planned, which they would have to be online to make sure you didn't have 100 people running off 1 copy, that I could understand, but the original owner can still play offline as the licence is already locked to them and their console/disc.

Then when they don't want the game anymore and want to sell/give it away they simply login online and deactivate the game on their account, at which point it goes back to the first step where people can play from that disc or register it to another account.

That system would give both parties what they want and it can be done. Their not doing it because their acting like spoilt kids taking their ball home because they couldn't win. Go off at M$ for being assholes not the consumers that wanted options and rights, which they were correct to demand for."