Xbox Boss: Xbox One DRM Controversy "Hurt Me Personally"

[Jessie Dixon]

So much fo dat secret sauce eh Microsoft? Something told me DRM is alive and well. They did all that 180 just for Phil feeling hurt by DRM not working.

Well gee I wonder why Xbox is not selling like ps4. Microsoft lost sight of games and gamers. Halo tv, past halo.

personally, I thought Microsoft learned. Well I'm console agnostic. Just not letting em pull the whool

 

[Jessie Dixon]

Gaming should about games and gamers, not appeasing stockholders...

 

[Jessie Dixon]

double posted accidentally

 

[Jessie Dixon]

Prolly gonna grab a ps4. Tired of Microsofts bumbling mishaps and sad ass excuses. But be forewarned Xbots ahoy will attack.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Oh boo fucking hoo you complete tool. Everyone knew your DRM bullshit was bad from a mile away and you did absolutely nothing to prove otherwise. You have noone but yourself to blame.

 

[Vrach]

"It was a mistake sugar coating the DRM controversy"
"We were doing it for the right reasons"

I'm not the only one who noticed that, right?

I don't give a shit about your emotions Phil. That was a colossal mistake and it's amazing how no one at Microsoft saw the backlash coming. A bunch of incompetent Apple wannabes.

Also, this^

 

[Vrach]

Online multi-player and the monthly free games are a fair paid subscription offer

I have to ask an unrelated question here, why is it ok charging customers a subscription fee to play online MP games? PC does just fine without it, so what's the deal? Does Microsoft provide the servers? If so, why should gamers give a toss, if a developer/publisher doesn't provide the servers, but relies on MS for that, why shouldn't they be the ones charged, seeing as they're getting the service (as opposed to the game who is already paying the full price for the game, that's more expensive than a PC game in the first place)

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Online multi-player and the monthly free games are a fair paid subscription offer

I have to ask an unrelated question here, why is it ok charging customers a subscription fee to play online MP games? PC does just fine without it, so what's the deal? Does Microsoft provide the servers? If so, why should gamers give a toss, if a developer/publisher doesn't provide the servers, but relies on MS for that, why shouldn't they be the ones charged, seeing as they're getting the service (as opposed to the game who is already paying the full price for the game, that's more expensive than a PC game in the first place)

Actually, those are good questions. I haven't used a console for online play in almost 2 years and have no interest in either Sony's or Microsoft's offerings this gen. So, I might not be the best to explain what I'm about to, but here's what's in my head:

Thanks to MS and now Sony, the console side now thinks the paid subscription thing is fair while the PC side still sees it as blasphemy to dare charge for multiplayer unless it's an MMO. MS was taking a chance back when Live first came out by charging for it. But it was new for most console gamers and was the first really successful[footnote]Playstation's online was still a splintered mess with multiple third party systems for PS2, if I remember correctly. And Dreamcast's online might have been successful, if the system lasted for more than 2 years.[/footnote] online service for a console and is still working. It was also required broadband before that was as widespread, therefore many saw it as a premium service and either dismissed it or bought into it. And since it was slightly better until PS Plus came around, its price was accepted by many. Now with the monthly free games both services give out, the prices are a little more justified.

PC users expect the free multiplayer because it's their norm. Most developers and publishers are smart enough to support the servers for a long time or let the players host their own dedicated servers. Whenever they don't, the game's PC sales don't look pretty and the publisher spews out the usual "PC is dead" spiel that no one with a brain listens to. I would hate to wake up wanting to play some TF2 and find out Valve wants $2-5 a month to play their games, while I paid for maybe 2 full years of Live.(Though, I did finally grow tired of the increasing numbers of guys that did have/use their mics, kids who should be mute IRL, and guys who think they'll be rewarded with something of real value if they won the match.)

As for justifying the subscription cost outright. I'm beginning to wonder if they are ripoffs. Every game for 360 I've ever played only used MS's servers to perform matchmaking, then the guy with the lowest ping to everyone else becomes the host server. With the fact that MS only needs to provide and maintain servers to track stats and match up players, the fact that the paywall doesn't keep out trolls and jackasses and the glaring fact they make a lot on the marketplace, maybe they shouldn't charge for online multi-player. It's even more insultingly greedy that many publishers are taking away four player split-screen and LAN options, so group of people wanting to play something like Nazi Zombies just together in the same building needs a copy of the game, a system, a tv, and a online account for every 2 people along with the necessary network hardware and internet connection. The Netflix deal is still petty greed when other devices let that service be used for no extra cost and still provide updates to keep Flash, HTML, Netflix and Youtube working.

If the publishers provided their own game servers they'd charge the players extra. FFXI and FFXIV both have an extra subscription fee on top of MS's fee for Live. I don't even think it's fair that MS pulls money from someone if the only online game they play is on a third party sever that is already payed for. And hypothetically, if MS took over that responsibility they would either keep those players paying the extra price as long as they played those games or raise the base price of Live if enough games went that way.

 

[Blargophone]

I'm going to be the outlier here. I'm an occassional gamer (3-4 AAA purchases, 6-10 smaller/discount games per year), many of which are on Steam. I see absolutely no difference between what was being proposed and Steam, and I, for one, would have loved it. I have lots of hardcore gamer friends who could just jet me the game when they were done, SAVING me even more money. They never sell their games (don't know why), and I think this would have been huge.

Just me.

 

[Atmos Duality]

No Phil, you lost your invitation to the pity party when your company refused to provide clear explanations for how and why the Xbone's online elements worked, and what was in it for gamers.

And frankly, all I saw was a painfully transparent attempt at throwing a coup on the few liberties console gamers had left.

"Ohh, you get to share your games! But only after meeting this list of online requirements."

"There are no Used Games except those through a program controlled by us and our publisher bedmates."

"The Cloud! Nevermind that using it for rendering boosts is impractical on anything but fiber optic or LAN, or the fact that it's so obviously a honeypot platform to later enable Always-Online DRM at the behest of big publishers, it's FUTURE PROOFING OUR CONSOLE! Buy our technobabble dammit!"

"It isn't always-online! It's just every 24-hours..."

"Gamers don't matter anyway. $500 CABLE BOX BLU-RAY PLAYA!"

Of course, admitting the truth outright would only spark a firestorm: Your company thought the console gamers were total sheep who were only too happy to casually throw away the practicality of a console so you could wring some more control and money out of them.

I'm sure the fact that every system would be mandated to go through Xbox Live was no coincidence either.
(Ooohh. Retro-actively requiring a subscription to play their disc-based games across an entire platform! Now there's a colossal dick-move we haven't seen yet!)

 

[Vrach]

snip

It's still weird though. I get that you may get your money's worth out of free games, but then that's what you should be paying for, if you want it - ie. how PS3 PS+ works. I happily paid several months (about 7 months paid, got 3 months off some promo thing too) for PS+ because I got the console late and there were a bunch of free games on PS+ that'd have cost me more than PS+ itself.

But why charge the customers for the multiplayer? Either the publisher provides the servers, or they're the ones who need and should pay for that service from Microsoft, not the gamers. Hell, Titanfall, XB1's flagship game at the moment, can't even be played without a Live subscription, seeing as it's all online.

I don't think MMOs are a far comparison on PCs either. The reason to pay for an MMO subscription is (or should be) the content updates, so it kinda works like DLCs, assuming of course the MMO does the subscription right (and if it doesn't, it doesn't deserve being a subscription MMO and thus they're usually free to play with microtransactions). And if I'm not mistakes FFXIV is an MMO, so I'm not surprised they're charging their own fee there (not sure on the others, or even XIV in fact, I never played FF games).

As you said, it's damn near unimaginable being charged a fee for Steam games and the like, so I'm curious as to why we (or rather the console gamers, I'm not much of one to be fair) accept it as a norm on consoles.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

snip

The publisher isn't going to pay for servers for a multiplayer game unless they directly profit from them. It's too late for a big name publisher to win game and DLC sales by providing free online play on a console. Remember companies are greedy and shift any increase in cost to the price a customer pays. They'd rather lay off loyal employees instead off taking a 1-2% drop in profits or a modest pay cut off their impressive salaries and bonuses. Even with a paid service they drop support of old titles, and will go out of the way to stop hacked third party servers since that can cut into sales of their new games.

Paid multiplayer is the norm because console gamers allowed it to be. If they ignored any paid online service excluding decent MMOs, then Live if it survived would be free and PSN would be free even on the PS4. We should have boycotted games when they started dropping LAN support and 4 player split screen. But now its rare to have those goodies on a non-Nintendo game, and people are regrettably used to that. The DRM debacle was a rare time where a company pushed too far too fast, and it made me happy to see everyone stop letting themselves get pushed around but saddened me that it took such a shove to awaken people when MS and others have been taking more and more a little at a time since the 6th Gen.

 

[Lightknight]

This is getting repetitive. Adam Orth's "Deal with it" should have been early enough warning sign to reverse the decision.

That's a big point. The controversy that Orth's comments caused were so far ahead of the launch that for Microsoft to not be aware of the issue would mean gross incompetence which is an even worse sin than stubbornness where business is concerned.

Didn't communicate "it" the right way?

A.K.A., you didn't disguise Microsoft's DRM intentions with enough meaningless corporate drivel and so consumers actually figured out what those intentions were? Oh, the horrors!

Well, they think we're too dumb to understand DRM if it's under a sheet.

 

[Snotnarok]

No...see this is the problem, they were trying to launch with Always Online DRM with the compromise that you'd be able to share games with even more tighter restrictions on the DRM and with select games.

And the MAJOR problem is...the crowning moment in all of this pathetic attempt to force always online DRM is that steam, right now, allows you to share games with family members, as long as you are not playing they can access your game.

So all this moaning and groaning about requiring 24 hour or less check ins was moot since in the end someone did it better without the restrictions

 

[La Barata]

Ok, this is starting to legitimately piss me off.

Just this constant lying through their teeth, this wailing and striking their foreheads, the eternal lament of 'Poor us, poor us, we only want to help' when their attempts at fucking us right in the ass are stymied.