And there goes that thought on the Xbox One
Well, based on this article Microsoft is going back on their limitations in the Xbox One regarding trading of game discs and the always on functionality.
Frankly, I'm surprised. This will have limited impact from a short-term standpoint and a rather dismal impact from a long term standpoint. Short term impact will hopefully be positive PR for Microsoft. Long term impact is that game prices will remain crap, perhaps even gradually rising.
Firstly, this changes everything I said about 1 or 2 generations from now having the DRM for trading games as a more common thing. This probably pushes that back at least another generation or two of gaming consoles. Keep in mind, at present, Xbox is the largest gaming platform. They hold a lot of clout in the gaming industry. If Xbox kept this and PS4 ignored it, you might have seen game publishers demanding this from Sony the next time around if they wanted to have the necessary ports of their games. With Xbox dropping this, the rest of the gaming industry loses its clout in pressuring Sony to get on board.
What you'll probably see now though, with both platforms investing more heavily in online store fronts is a shift to more titles available online only. Remember, Microsoft didn't add that feature because they wanted to. They added it to appease the game publishers. Now those publishers will just look for other ways to try and navigate users to places where they have more control over the long term revenue stream. Online downloads will still be locked to an accounts, so they will try and find more ways to coax you into buying online. So while you can bet they will still sell game discs, expect to see more limited edition discs with a premium cost attached to them. That is a rather easy tactic for herding people to digital downloads... only offer a more expensive version on disc.
Anyway... this is probably a good move for Microsoft from an initial sales perspective. Though I don't think that they will be able to come out unscathed. The bad PR is done. I'll wager if you do a search on Xbox One you'll still find new articles damning Microsoft's draconian practices that were written today. This will probably continue for another couple weeks or so. By launch time, there will probably still be enough articles that mention this circulating around to scare a few people away. And virtually everyone will ignore the profoundness of what just transpired; Microsoft actually paid attention and changed some very big things about an upcoming product. This SHOULD actually have the effect of drawing people from the PS4 camp over to the Xbox One camp. Microsoft has proven that the Xbox team can and will respond to the community. I doubt it will have that effect. I think most people will simply mock Microsoft for giving into the external pressures.
Instead of leaving it there, I decided to go and do a quick search and check the comment section. As anticipated, while some applaud the efforts, the general theme is in thinking that Microsoft will turn these features back on the second they have enough customers. Other flat our failed to read the announcements and accused them of continuing to do things they aren't and yet others commented on articles about the rescinding changes with comments surrounding things completely unrelated to the changes.
Oh well.
Frankly, I'm surprised. This will have limited impact from a short-term standpoint and a rather dismal impact from a long term standpoint. Short term impact will hopefully be positive PR for Microsoft. Long term impact is that game prices will remain crap, perhaps even gradually rising.
Firstly, this changes everything I said about 1 or 2 generations from now having the DRM for trading games as a more common thing. This probably pushes that back at least another generation or two of gaming consoles. Keep in mind, at present, Xbox is the largest gaming platform. They hold a lot of clout in the gaming industry. If Xbox kept this and PS4 ignored it, you might have seen game publishers demanding this from Sony the next time around if they wanted to have the necessary ports of their games. With Xbox dropping this, the rest of the gaming industry loses its clout in pressuring Sony to get on board.
What you'll probably see now though, with both platforms investing more heavily in online store fronts is a shift to more titles available online only. Remember, Microsoft didn't add that feature because they wanted to. They added it to appease the game publishers. Now those publishers will just look for other ways to try and navigate users to places where they have more control over the long term revenue stream. Online downloads will still be locked to an accounts, so they will try and find more ways to coax you into buying online. So while you can bet they will still sell game discs, expect to see more limited edition discs with a premium cost attached to them. That is a rather easy tactic for herding people to digital downloads... only offer a more expensive version on disc.
Anyway... this is probably a good move for Microsoft from an initial sales perspective. Though I don't think that they will be able to come out unscathed. The bad PR is done. I'll wager if you do a search on Xbox One you'll still find new articles damning Microsoft's draconian practices that were written today. This will probably continue for another couple weeks or so. By launch time, there will probably still be enough articles that mention this circulating around to scare a few people away. And virtually everyone will ignore the profoundness of what just transpired; Microsoft actually paid attention and changed some very big things about an upcoming product. This SHOULD actually have the effect of drawing people from the PS4 camp over to the Xbox One camp. Microsoft has proven that the Xbox team can and will respond to the community. I doubt it will have that effect. I think most people will simply mock Microsoft for giving into the external pressures.
Instead of leaving it there, I decided to go and do a quick search and check the comment section. As anticipated, while some applaud the efforts, the general theme is in thinking that Microsoft will turn these features back on the second they have enough customers. Other flat our failed to read the announcements and accused them of continuing to do things they aren't and yet others commented on articles about the rescinding changes with comments surrounding things completely unrelated to the changes.
Oh well.
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