Jimquisition: Xbox One and the Death of Ownership

[Atmos Duality]

I largely agree with the video except on two points:

EDIT: I went back and rewatched the video, and sure enough, I misheard.
It was "Indie RETAILERS".

Fair point. And I'm pretty sure Gamestop has been shafting local game retailers just by proxy for over a decade now.

2) Gamestop will not benefit from controlled Used Game sales.

Used Games is profitable because of something called "Arbitrage".

Arbitrage is basically buying a good at a lower price in one market, and selling it at a higher price in a similar but separate market. In this case, between the New Game Market and the Used Game Market.

Arbitrage is more effective the less restrictive the market is. (well, until you get into the topic of Black Markets and smuggling which can get complicated very quickly)

Gamestop grew filthy rich by exploiting arbitrage. Normally, I'd agree with those developers and publishers who say that Gamestop is ripping their sales figures a new one, because logically, they were.

However, I don't feel sorry at all for those same publishers when they continued to do business with Gamestop anyway; they're obviously still benefiting from exposure and exclusive deals enough to warrant doing business with them.

Anyway, by restricting that supply of second-hand goods AT ALL, regardless of what the customer gets in the second-hand market (which at Gamestop, is pittance) they are restricting the source of games Gamestop can resell at a full margin; That is, the cut of the cash the shop receives on the deal.

100% is always going to be the largest cut Gamestop can get, and they get it *only* from Used Games.

Yet, on the Xbone, the only way Gamestop will be included in M$'s Used Game program, (which is being done on a per-game basis) is if the Publisher OKs it for their game.

So, why would the Publisher OK it unless they can get a cut of the deal?
Say what you want about crony-ism, there is no backroom deal or threat that Gamestop can make that would end with the publisher giving the entire sale to Gamestop.

Gamestop stands to LOSE a lot of revenue from this no matter how you slice it, because arbitrage works best between markets with few to no restrictions. (Incidentally, for anyone who wonders why those annoying and seemingly unnecessary Region Locks exist; it's mostly to prevent arbitrage between relatively rich and poor markets)

 

[MercurySteam]

This week's Jimquisition is a perfect example of why there has never been a better time to migrate to PC gaming. I'm gonna hold onto my 360 for dear life but at this point onwards, my transition from console to PC is absolute.

 

[Strazdas]

http://business.comcast.com/docs/ent-solutions-docs/bus-svcs-tcs-ver20-published-130401.pdf?sfvrsn=0

This is Comcast's terms of service. Please look at Article 15A, on the bottom of pg 12. They have 24 hours to send out a repairman, or they issue a credit for the 24hour period to your account. They are not required to provide 99% uptime, and they are not required to come out within 2 hours.

And I fail to see how the fact that your internet hasn't failed means that internet never fails for anyone else anywhere.

well, the part you pointed states 24 hours, so thats not "next friday" though.
there is no uptime sadly or i missed it (havnet read the whole document), but:

Comcast makes no representation regarding the speed of the Internet Service. Actual speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. any factors affect speed including, without limitation, the number of workstations using a single connection.

WOW. our contracts have an "Article" where it states that speeds privided cannot be slower than that of the plan chosen and if any such problem occur due to providers fault it shoudl be remedied as quickly as possible (no time given though) with exception of unreasonable circumstances (like someone stealing the cables or something). the actual situation is that most of the time speeds are higher than per plan due to "hey we got free capacity thats nto used at this moment we may as well let people use it" thinking. the cables are there anyway, and you only need to limit it at peak hours. no doublr speeds or something, but my 50mbps (cheapest) plan goes up to 80mbps sometimes. though for those with 300mbps this probably dont happen. at least i didnt notice when i had that, but that could be due to my limited router back then that i used to connect a laptop+PC combination to.
ANd we do have a clause for 99.9% uptime (because 100% is "unreasonable" according to them), and they deliver by now, that used to be problematic in the past, say, 5 years ago, when once a month it would go out for a few hours or so and thne you could try counting the %, though as far as i know noone sued them yet (our people dont like to sue everyone for everything unlike americans).
And if there is a problem you usually call them and they fix it from thier end over phone. firend onf mine had internet that woudl reset every few hours, so he called them every day, for 2 weeks, they got pissed off and fixed it

Dark blue regions have the most access to internet. That is Canada, Australia, EU, and America. Blue regions have moderate access (South America, Russia). Light blue regions (the rest of the world) have 40% or less internet penetration. In other words, internet is not readily accessible for large regions of the map. Microsoft is cutting out a large customer base.

notice how almost whole europe and parts of asia is darker than america? US is 33rd in the world compared by internet speeds.

While yes, there are large regions that are lighter, you have to look at them. they are usually 3rd/2nd world countries, where most inhabintants would not be affording a console anyway, and those that would likely has internet to begin with. The amount of people who have internet acess is 300 times larger than the amount of people who has current generation consoles (even if we ignore that one person may have multiple consoles and those sales that were made to replace broken one).
Microsoft is cutting out a small userbase who prioritized consoles over internet when they are so poor they cant afford both, but not poor enough to afford at least one. and a few people who need the console on the go (liek soldiers) of course, but i dont think thats ther target audience to begin with with what they been showing us.

Regardless, that still doesn't answer the question. How is someone's gaming experience is improved by being forced to connect once a day? What purpose or benefit does the daily connection serve, other than the server checking for hacked systems?

Its not, there is no benefit of forced used control for the users. Hence me and plenty of other people are not buying it out of the principle and not because we do not fit the requirements.
Still that is not to say that the console will sell poorly because people lack internet - they dont. it will sell poorly because its anti-consumer product.

We own a copy of the media to do as we please.
[/img]grumpy cat[/img]

sadly, this statement has been false for quite a few years now.
remember the guy that got jailed for jail-breaking PS3s? he did not have a right to do as he please with hardware that he "owns" because "sony didnt like it".

Deus Ex HR is a recent, new game? Really?

well lets see. it came out August 26, 2011 for EU audience (me). that is less than 2 years ago. Id say thats pretty recent.
Then again, i think Fallout3 is a recent game, and if you want to talk old games, lets talk Return Fire (1996).
Your probably one of those guys "omg its 6 months old, thats old garbage i wont play it".

What you don't understand the principle of convenience. It doesn't affect me, so I don't care. As long as their change is integrated in a seamless way where it doesn't affect me why should it bother me?

government spying on your does not bring inconvienience. People blowing eachother in middle east doesn ot bring us inconvienience. and yet we care. you know why? because convenience is not equal happiness.

Thing is, this shit has happened long ago. It happened when I bought Half Life 2 from a store, was forced to install Steam, and saw that my game didn't actually work off the shelf because the disc only had 95% of the game. Now nearly everyone is ready to bend over for whatever Valve wants and will defend them to their dying breath. Gamers will get over it.

I still dont use Steam. and if i buy a game that requires it, there are ways around it. and yes the disk does hold 100%, they just want to check it with the steam anyway.

That's the thing, Valve killed ownership LONG AGO. Microsoft is simply catching up. But get in any Valve thread and speak against them and what happens? Everyone jumps on you like a pack of wolves.

are you new to escpaist? while admittedly not everyone, but there are plenty of people that hate Valve for this.

That is a pretty good question, if they are still going to have physical media, why not just use that to "lock/unlock" the game as they do now.

you can copy the keys and if them achine does not check online for verification, you can, effectively, have unlimited installs on unlimited machines with same key, even for uillegaly obtained copies. also requires the console to know combinations to check for them for games nto created yet = impossible or extremely restrictive on code generator (which will get cracked). Using server-side checks for that does go around the whole "offline so cant verify if tricked" part.

Gamestop grew filthy rich by exploiting arbitrage. Normally, I'd agree with those developers and publishers who say that Gamestop is ripping their sales figures a new one, because logically, they were.

However, I don't feel sorry at all for those same publishers when they continued to do business with Gamestop anyway; they're obviously still benefiting from exposure and exclusive deals enough to warrant doing business with them.

and you know why it worked so well? because most games were a one-off 5 hour spectacles, that you woudl trade back in then ext day. if the games were actually attractive enough for you to keep them for, say, a year, the arbitrage market would fall upon itself due to lack of supply. and whne supply finally comes the demand would be too small because we all know games sell over 80% of their sales in first 3 months.

 

[Atmos Duality]

and you know why it worked so well? because most games were a one-off 5 hour spectacles, that you woudl trade back in then ext day. if the games were actually attractive enough for you to keep them for, say, a year, the arbitrage market would fall upon itself due to lack of supply. and whne supply finally comes the demand would be too small because we all know games sell over 80% of their sales in first 3 months.

5 hours sounds a bit too low, but yeah, I see your point.
Not helping is that the increased homogeneity between games. How many shooters are on the market now? How many are relying on multiplayer to keep people playing? How many of them feature hyper-linear campaigns?

I'm not saying that all shooters are bad, but it's not exactly helping when each game is doing very little to distinguish itself.

(When a Transformers game is in serious contention for being among the most distinct shooters I've seen and played in the last generation, something has gone SERIOUSLY wrong.)

 

[misg]

My solution is simple. Keep playing PC games, keep showing others that PC isn't a scary monster they think it is. That there is endless free and diverse choices on the PC. My PC is my gaming machine, my entertainment center. My work station my form of communition in Digital form. For those who think that PC's are over prices you don't need 5k to have a good rig. For those out there who are upset with Xbox and know to game on the PC show and teach your friends. Everyone i know used to be big into xbox and know everyone plays 90% on their PC. PC is still King.

 

[bat32391]

was that a fist dildo?

Yes it was, I think someone sent to him as a joke. I'm pretty sure its called a Bella Donna ***** Fist.

 

[HalfTangible]

Ya know what's really sad?

Back when RE6 was released, Jim, you were citing the exact OPPOSITE problem. Back then, companies were trying to hard to please everyone at once.

Now, Microsoft and others don't care AT ALL about pleasing their customers.

 

[HalfTangible]

Ya know what's really sad?

Back when RE6 was released, Jim, you were citing the exact OPPOSITE problem. Back then, companies were trying to hard to please everyone at once.

Now, Microsoft and others don't care AT ALL about pleasing their customers.

Actually, I don't think they ever cared about pleasing everyone with their games. More like they just want to please the Call of Duty fanboys.

I always thought they did want to please as many people as they could, they just didn't know how to do it. RE6 was a perfect example simply because it tries to please too many different demographics at once. Since then, however, we have slid more and more towards a game industry that doesn't even care anymore. The "crowning glory", as Jim put it, of shameless pandering. And now we have the exact opposite: not giving one single licking FUCK about your customer's opinions.

Microsoft has, since the Xbone reveal, basically told their customers 'fuck you we do what we want'. If you'd told me a year ago that Microsoft would do something stupid? Yeah, I could believe that, but if you'd told me that they would literally tell their customers TO THEIR FACES to not buy their product, I would've told you to stop sniffing paint. I am honestly shocked that this is an actual thing that is happening.

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

The Xbox Two will require you to wear an ankle brace that has to connect to the internet every 12 hours or the the ankle brace blows your leg off.

Good one!

If anything, this only confirms that I will be getting a PS4

 

[badgersprite]

If only this video could be shown on screen at the E3 conference while Microsoft is up on stage trying to convince everyone that being treated like a criminal and not being allowed to own the things they buy is really super awesome we promise because ummm, TV!

A problem I don't think many people have really sunk their teeth into yet is the end game of the xbox one. What happens when the servers for the Xbox One inevitably are permanently taken offline? With no authentication servers I guess your Xbox one would be rendered useless and your games unplayable. Maybe you'd be forced to buy the Xbox Two in order to keep owning your...holy... their trying Zune again. Keep paying or all the stuff you bought is gone! Sure you don't need xbox live to play the games I assume(so the zune model isn't immediately obvious) but eventually you'll have to fork over more money to buy xbox two unless you want your expensive game collection to go bye bye. Well that's my theory anyway and with the frankly disturbing things Microsoft is doing, would what I said surprise anyone if it came true?

Exactly. I mean, seriously, there are games that are only about two years old that I can no longer play because the servers were taken down. What's going to happen when that affects not only a single game but an entire console and all of its content?

We can't be acting like there aren't a lot of us who are still playing the first games we ever played, or play one game for years to master it, and a lot of us are still doing that on the first consoles we ever owned. Even if Microsoft's plan is to stick with the Xbox One for twenty years or whatever, it's still not going to have the same theoretically unlimited longevity as a SNES or a PS2 because the service that's necessary for the Xbone console to run will still be shut down at some point, which can never happen to an offline console.

Maybe that won't be an issue until fifteen or twenty years down the road, but it's still an issue. I regularly play games older than that.

 

[Althus]

This image someone linked some here now makes perfect sense :

X-Box One vs a Brick :

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/7460_487168678026076_1390314665_n.jpg

 

[Arawn]

This image someone linked some here now makes perfect sense :

X-Box One vs a Brick :

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/7460_487168678026076_1390314665_n.jpg

Well played. Still that's a very expensive brick. Can you imagine building a house out of X-1's? None the less I'm still thinking there's hope for the console. Perhaps they'll see the error of their ways and patch those features everyone is against. But if sales reach a decent number chances are nothing will change.