Stop complaining about the loss of the shared-library feature. It was a smoke-screen.

[Woodsey]

I rather doubt it'd be 10 or 11 people that you could share with even if it were true, because that'd hopefully be the entirety of the Xbox One user-base with that retarded DRM in place.

I mean fucking hell, some people would let you bury them alive if you told them there'd be a nice bit of shade.

 

[Snotnarok]

But it was a great feature! You would be able to lend games! Hur duurr durr just like you can't with discs! ...Oh wait.

Yeah it was just a afterthought to tack onto the DRM to make it look not so bad. But many compared it to steam when the two aren't in the same league. Yes games are often similarly priced at launch but then there's a insane sale that drops the price to insane levels for a short bit and que animated gifs of wallets being destroyed. ...This compared to 60+ dollars and that's all she wrote and also the 24 hour check wasn't exactly similar either.

Not to mention you don't need steam to have your PC function, but whatever, it was not a good idea, not even close to similar to Steam either.

 

[neppakyo]

I still laugh at people who thought this was a legit thing. Unlimited sharing between 10 of your family members. *snicker*

Like people said, it's just a smoke screen. Like MS using a flavoured condom, so you have a nice strawberry taste as they rammed their DRM penis down your throat.

Xboners defending this is cute. They think they're people.

 

[Revolutionary]

Disagree entirely, it was a feature I was really looking forward to and I'll be disappointed in it's disappearance if I damn well please, thank you. Having said that I don't see why they couldn't still include it for digital games.

 

[RJ 17]

Really is just jaw-droppingly amazing how there literally wasn't a single merit to the XBone as it was originally designed. Every single aspect of it was specifically designed to be pro dev and anti-consumer. Seriously...how the hell did they think they could get away with this shit without pissing off the gaming community? "Gee, two huge, highly-anticipated games like Diablo III and the new SimCity required always-on DRM and the shitstorms they caused dwarfed the shitstorm caused by Mass Effect 3's ending. So here's an idea, lets make our entire console be mandatory always-on with DRM! Yeah! It's brilliant, I tell you! We'll just slap on some bells and whistles to make it seem more appealing, they'll never even notice that we've chosen to completely ignore the wise words of "Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it!" "

Funny thing is, the always-online thing was just the most vocal of the complaints against the XBone. There still remains the unresolved matter of a certain motion-capture console accessory that was a complete failure when it was first released now being stuffed down our throats and driving the console price up $100. They even doubled-down and made the Kinect even more creepy than it already was. Yeah, good luck with that, MS. In all honesty I hope the XBone goes the way of the Dreamcast and causes MS to close up shop on it's entertainment division. They seriously deserve to go out of business for trying to sell this massive piece of shit while saying "Hey! When we piss all over your faces and tell you it's just the rain, you're supposed to believe us!"

 

[Something Amyss]

Wasn't it a glorified demo anyways? I remember that on the blog for one of the creators of the Xbone, he was talking about how much he missed the features of the shared library and thought, if it was explained better, gamers would rally behind it... He then went on to say it would "enable" publishers to allow you to share games with your family and friends from anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour. So yeah, it's just a glorified demo.

That stuff about a dad buying a game on the Xbone, then sharing it with his son who was living in a dorm at college? Total bogus, at least, that is unless the son thought a great gift would be playing a game for 15 minutes, then getting a screen asking him to purchase the full one on the Xbox marketplace.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that was legit. I can't honestly believe anyone with half a brain would sit there and say "If only we explained better to them this system that doesn't even work as we initially promised, but rather enabled limited demo access, they'd all love it!

However, it does look like it was not going to operate as promised.

Disagree entirely, it was a feature I was really looking forward to and I'll be disappointed in it's disappearance if I damn well please, thank you. Having said that I don't see why they couldn't still include it for digital games.

While you're free to completely ignore the reason they're saying to not complain about it, I must point out that it does exist. They're not so much saying "it's a bad thing and you're bad for wanting it" as they are "it's a complete lie," which is backed up at this point. Considering how much they've lied to us already, I wouldn't trust this as far as I could throw Microsoft HQ.

That being said, there's absolutely no reason for them to include it now that they're no longer trying to soften the blow of an authoritarian blow to our ability to control our own purchases.

 

[RJ 17]

Disagree entirely, it was a feature I was really looking forward to and I'll be disappointed in it's disappearance if I damn well please, thank you. Having said that I don't see why they couldn't still include it for digital games.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion and I'm not going to argue against it, but here's a little something just in case you hadn't heard yet:

It would only allow the people you're sharing the game with to play it for a short amount of time, making it essentially a glorified demo at the end of which the person who's "borrowing" it from you would be cut off and prompted to buy the game out-right. This means you're not really sharing the game so much as providing free advertising for it.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Easy to speculate on something that isn't happening at all now. The way it was explained, it wouldn't be 10 people playing the same copy, it would be 10 people sharing the same copy. Like discs now, but remove the handing the disc part off. Meaning one person had the "rights" at a time, probably tied to a master account and shared with other accounts. If person A shared with person B, and person B liked the game enough, they could buy it and add the license to their library. Its only a slight difference than what we have with todays disc-based DRM.
What? Disc-based DRM?
Yeah, you didn't figure out that discs have DRM on consoles? Why do you think only hacked machines will read copied discs?
Of course I'm just being facetious, you guys knew that already.
So we're back to having physical copies of games, as its always been. And I really didn't care one way or the other, though I was curious to see what would have happened.
Still its quite interesting how some of you people just know that Microsoft was lying. I wasn't aware there were so many people who had inside sources on this site... Hasn't anyone heard of NDA's?
Meh, either way it doesn't matter. Speculate all you want, til the cows come home because no one can ever refute your claims since the shared library isn't happening now.
Absence of proof and all...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

**snip**

Because reading it on the internet means its true, especially on a personal blog of someone claiming to work for MS, who clearly doesn't care if they get fired for possibly breaking an NDA and getting blacklisted from working in said industry...

 

[Something Amyss]

Here's the source I saw it from.

Yes, yes, I saw that same story here. I saw the link pasted here ad nausem. Here's the problem I was alluding to.

At least one Microsoft employee -- or somebody posing as one -- is none too happy with the company's about-face on the Xbox One.

Emphasis mine.

It's the first sentence of the article, dude, I'm sure you didn't miss it.

Its only a slight difference than what we have with todays disc-based DRM.

Capping the number of people who can access the content is a pretty sizable difference. Also, while consoles inherently have DRM, it's entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand. CDs don't have copy protection (and those that do aren't really CDs, as per blue book standards), but yuo still share it to one person at a time unless you're doing so illegally. Discussion of existing DRM is pointless. It's solely done to prevent copying (ostensibly for illegal purposes, but let's face it: they don't like those pesky fair use rights and have been fighting them since the medium began) and has nothing to do with legal distribution of the disc.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I made a thread before they dropped the DRM trying to help people understand that the shared-library feature was 100% optional for publishers who (conveniently) had zero reason to use it. I saw people on some forums lining up their "families" ahead of time, visions of 11 people playing all the latest games for just ~6 bucks per. It was never going to happen because it made absolutely no financial sense for publishers.

Naturally, I was given the tinfoil hat treatment.

Yeah and did you make a thread where you said that the blocking of used-games was likewise 100% optional? I bet you didn't. The supposed fact that it was optional doesn't make it any less relevant or important than the used-games issue.

If something is being sold to us as a solution to or replacement for our ability to simply swap discs with friends, then it absolutely does matter if it's a completely optional feature that will never be used by publishers - or, apparently, a glorified demo system. I didn't make a thread about the fact that publishers can still hose us because that's not only not new, it's actually very old. See: project ten dollar, Ubisoft and EA DRM, Diablo 3, etc.

If publishers want to go ahead and kill the used game market in some other fashion, so be it. We can then, as consumers, make case-by-case decisions to support or not support those publishers. Hardwiring an entire console to do the job for them is an entirely different step. One that consumers weren't going to swallow. And it absolutely did carry meaning because none of the publishers are coming out with DRM strategies for the next-gen right now either. They saw what happened to MS. They don't want the same target on their back.

Fact is Xbone supporters were consistently pointing at the "family share" feature as the lone saving grace of Microsoft's new model. That this feature wasn't remotely what they were indicating, based on leaks and simple financial realities, sort of cuts out the one leg MS and its supporters were standing on.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Like I've said in other threads, this is Microsoft being the spoiled kid who took his other cool toys home because you wouldn't let him shove dirt in your face.

See, I don't think this is the case at all. I think if the family-share plan were viable as indicated (allowing you to really share your library with up to 10 friends), they would have kept it in some modified form as an automatic one-up on Sony's feature set. There's no reason to hack out a great feature (on paper) just to spite an undecided (or Sony-leaning) market. You'd want every advantage you could get, wouldn't you?

I think it's far more likely that family-share was a glorified demo system all along, they were presenting it in a fashion that allowed people to imagine much more, and now there's no reason to keep pretending since they've had to roll back everything people didn't want anyways.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

How convenient that you demonstrate my point so succinctly.

The crux of your argument is roughly:

"This optional bonus feature is irrelevant because being an optional feature it would never be used to benefit us"

followed by

"This optional DRM feature is totally relevant because unlike the completely optional shared library system which would never be used, the DRM feature totally would be used and even if it's not it's still offensive enough to blah de blah".

So you're reading these parallel arguments of mine in a vacuum where the profit motive doesn't exist? Is that intentional or just hilariously obtuse?

The form of an argument means NOTHING without context.

The crux of my argument is that "good" features, like the supposed family-share plan, will not be used because they adversely affect publisher profits. "Bad" features, like DRM, will absolutely be used because they positively affect publisher profits. There's no limit to the number of financially nonviable and therefore 100% imaginary features Microsoft could introduce for their new console. They could introduce a "push this button to receive a hundred dollars from a random publisher" button tomorrow, but I feel reasonably secure in my assumption that very few publishers would participate.

Funnily enough, this would not stop Xbone apologists (or some random internet contrarian) from touting the $100 bonus button as a legitimate selling point.

Fact is people have swallowed up that DRM scheme already. They swallow it every time they log onto steam or origin or any other client-based DRM.

So the multiple digital distribution platforms, which directly compete with each other for our dollars, are your point of comparison? The same digital distribution platforms that have drastically lowered game prices while offering minimally invasive DRM? You honestly want to compare these platforms, in aggregate, as a mostly legitimate open market, to a closed garden controlled completely by Microsoft and requiring daily check-ins?

Microsoft wanted us to swallow all of the "bad" inherent in digital distribution while kinda maybe delivering on some of the "good". Nothing finalized, of course. A few months after release, at the earliest. If it happened to be in their best interests. Which we already know it wasn't.

People saw through their bullshit, preordered PS4s en masse, and MS was forced to course correct or lose the next-gen before it even began. That's the whole story.

 

[sageoftruth]

Doesn't really matter to me. Up until now, I was under the impression that no one felt sad to see that feature go (except the people who claimed to come up with it).

 

[klaynexas3]

I know it's extremely late for this, though I am surprised to not have seen it at the start of the thread, but at any rate:

OT: Yeah, the idea of game sharing was alright, but it was nothing but a trade out, one that my main guess was that they shoe horned in at the last second when they did realize gamers wouldn't take to kindly to their shitty policies. It clearly wasn't enough to make up for it in the eyes of the masses, and I'll be glad if it doesn't exist for hundreds of years so long as we don't see Microsoft's DRM policy ever pop up again.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I don't care about context.

Seriously? You're going to just outright say that?

Your argument rests on the idea that one optional feature will never be used and another optional feature will always be used. It requires too many conditions to go in your favour for anyone to actually buy into what you're saying.

If a company stands to make more money for using one optional feature (DRM) and less money for using another (family-share), which ones do you think they will use? Are you arguing against the primary function of business enterprise? Predicting the behavior of a profit-driven entity is no different than predicting the behavior of a fallen object. It's common sense, and it has shown itself to be entirely accurate in light of Microsoft scrapping the feature. I mean you have people on these boards and elsewhere saying they did so out of "spite", which is just as ridiculous as your assumption that you would be allowed to share your games with 10 friends.

And not only that but I haven't seen any indication that Family sharing was in any way optional. It was a gamer decision, not a publisher decision.

You think Microsoft could compel publishers to submit to a feature that encourages users to openly share their games up to 10 times? Entirely online? You think publishers were going to go along with that because... ? The only "indications" we've seen are that the feature wasn't even a legitimate game-sharing platform in the first place.

Minimally invasive my ass.
Any program which REQUIRES that I install it is not Minimally invasive. Particularly after I've already put money down for a game I bought in a store. It's MAXIMUM invasive. It's holding my game to ransom.

So a full-fledged offline mode that works for as long as a month is MAXIMUM invasive, what exactly is a daily check-in equivalent? You're not distinguishing any fine details here, are you?

No, people got scared, were fed misinformation by commentators who do nothing but ***** and complain (Jimquisition, etcetera), and basically shot themselves in the foot. And now console gaming is again stuck in 2004 with the same shitty scheme it had when the 360 first launched.

Except digital distribution is still 100% there. You just don't have to check in every 24 hours anymore. And if you have a disc-based game, you can still sell it if you like. The only benefits you haven't "gained"? The ability to sell your digital games back to their original publishers for almost nothing (which you could then only spend on that publisher's games) and the ability to send your friends hour-long demos of your games so they can purchased additional licenses. THAT is how these features were going to work out. If you choose to believe the rosy possibilities MS was weaving while completely ignoring their profit motives, by all means, enjoy your continued delusion.