Hop, Skip, Run, Jump LEAP

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Saturday, May 25, 2013, 08:39 (4199 days ago) @ narcogen

For instance, if I have two consoles (and I do, and have experienced this exact situation) and I want two players to play the game simultaneously on the two consoles,I need to make sure that I've correctly distributed my profiles and license or else I won't be able to achieve what I want without buying a second license.

Yes, and?

If I understand you correctly you want to play two copies of the game while only buying one.

This basically means the system wants the opposite of what you suggest. Far from being logged into or last logged into the console on which content was purchased, the purchaser's profile should be anywhere else, and your guests or family members should be on the console used to buy the content.

Eh. What you're suggesting is, to me, something close to piracy. Not in the evil you stole the product sense. But in the you bought one copy of a game but somehow expect to play it in multiple places simultaneously. Because your two consoles are in the same room means you should only need to buy one copy of the game? What about me where my two Xboxes are 40 miles apart? Should be me and my brother be able to play one purchase of Bioshock Infinite at the same time? We certainly didn't think so which is why he bought it first, liked it, then bought me a copy as a gift. Same reason we have two copies of Reach, Mass Effect 3, Halo 3, and others.

Having all games be downloadable will be a nice step forward, but unless I misunderstand you, you want it to also mean you can play any one game purchase in two places at once. That you can do it with the current implementation of XBL is likely more an unintended loophole that worked around the one game, one disc / cartridge, one location at a time restriction that has always been present on consoles.

It would be nice, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Any lending time sufficient to play through your average SP campaign (say, ten hours) could easily cut into used purchases significantly, perhaps making the whole revenue stream not worth going after. And if that lending can be done with downloadable titles instead of just physical media, then MS has just set up a huge electronic lending library for the same games they're trying to sell, so that definitely won't happen.

Developers (supposedly) hate used game sales because they make no cut. If, when I lend you a game, it marks it so only your profile can play it until I unlend it, then the status quo is maintained. It would be the digital version of me handing you the disc without the difficulty of getting you to search around for it in your piles of stuff when I want it back. If it help kill off one person buying a game then giving it to another, a process where the developer makes no money, then so much the better… from their point of view I'd think.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is also just as much about eliminating what piracy these platforms have. Essentially, X hours from the last time each Xbone connected to the Internet, it will start treating your legally bought media as if it might have been a pirate copy because it can't positively verify that your license rights haven't been revoked.

I'm sure piracy is part of it. But I'm fine with it as long as my Xbox trust my offline profile enough to let me play my games without connecting to the internet. I would even be understanding if it locked out lent copies of games if I hadn't been online in a certain period of time. A small step backward from handing someone a physical disc to be sure, but I would accept the easier ability to lend and unlend in exchange for a bit more oversight to make sure piracy isn't going on.

As for selling games and the developers getting a cut of each sell, thus necessitating some sort of in store tracking system… yeah that doesn't sound fun. It means Microsoft gets to pick and chose who can resell a game. It would also mean you can't hand me a 20 and me hand you a copy of a game I'm done with. Unless there is some way to do it from in front of my Xbox, profile based or something. I might accept that, even with a small fee to be payed by the game's new owner. Say 10% of the game's original retail price. If they were to do that then Microsoft and the game developers who currently see 0% of the money from a game's sell would always see some money from any sell. That's a small win for them.

Now admittedly, everything I've said here is from my usual optimistic point of view. But I don't see the point in being negative about things until we have enough info to do so. I am however very unhappy with the way Microsoft is handling all this. I'd far prefer they have one set, unified message, even if it is just "we don't know yet." That would be far better than all these mixed, conflicting messages we've been getting over the last few days.