Microsoft Hints at Pre-Owned Fee For Xbox One Games

[Frostbite3789]

I often take multiplayer games to my friends' houses so we can play them there. Since lugging my Xbox around is dumb as shit, I just carry the disk.

Someone care to tell me why this new system is screwing me and my friends over when we're using the product as (presumably) intended?

Just sign into your account on your friend's console. This seems like a pretty simple solution that's being overlooked. And it's coming from someone who has had a PS, PS2, PS3 and is a PC gamer. I have no love for the Xbox.

 

[Slash2x]

Let me make sure I've got this

A disc is good for 1 install on 1 500GB HDD. How many AAA games could 500GB hold? Eventually you'd need to delete older ones to install newer games; does this mean they're gonna try to charge customers to play the game that they themselves already bought brand-new at full price?

Forget resale. Can I even play the same game twice?

It also says that this is account-based. So odds are, it will work like Steam, keeping track of all of the games you purchased, whether they are installed right now or not.

My question is more to "What about multi-user homes?" We've got a generation right now where every member of a household has their own account, with their own achievements, friends, and history. I don't think you'll entice too many people to buy the activation for each family member who wants to play the game you've already paid $60 for.

Like me. My son (4) plays Toy Story etc on HIS account... So you know he can not purchase new things on Live. If my other son wants to play on the same system I would have to buy the game again...... Yeah that is not gonna happen.....

 

[JackandTom]

With the current Xbox I may buy a game and play it and then my 2 brothers will play it. Does this mean that they have to pay when they want to play it? And what about borrowing and renting games? Will I have to pay when I borrow a game from a friend or rent a game from Blockbuster? Your losing me Microsoft, hopefully once a game is installed on the hard drive any account on that console can play it. That's not what it sounds like but I can hope.

 

[Vigormortis]

It's not a typo. That's what I'm calling it.

And I love it. I sincerely hope it catches on.

Certainly more so than what I've already been hearing in regards to the upcoming 'console war'. Namely: "Ha! See? The Xbox One(won)! Get it?!"


*shudder* *cringe* *vomit*

 

[Nurb]

Of course no backwards compatability and fees for pre-owned, It's easier to sell you the same game again as a download from their network.

This new console generation is the best advertizing for PC in years because the motto from both MS and Sony is "Less customer-friendly, more fees for you, and more money from us. Deal with it."

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

So...who does the money go to?

Is it the developers of the games or Microsoft. If it's Microsoft then they just beat EA at being greedy. Which is no small feat.

 

[bak00777]

I tried looking but couldn't find anything, does anyone know if the PS4 will have the same issues with used games? If not, I'm jumping ships.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Well that's actually legitimately stupid. One of the reasons I console game is because I like using games on disk so I don't have to worry about loading up hard drive (I've already used most of my 500 gigs on my laptop from steam games). Now you're saying the games have to be completely installed? No. If I was an xbox user (and thank god I'm not) that would be my turn off from the new xbox

I've never heard this before as a reason to use consoles over PCs. That's probably because hard drives are extremely cheap and there's no reason to have 500GB of games installed at once anyway since you can download them again if you need to. I'm having no trouble with all my games installed onto a 250GB SSD.

But the XBone might not have the cheap expansion ability. I would hope that MS goes Sony's route of allowing the user to install their own hard drive, but that's not how it worked on the 360. Having to pay a bunch to upgrade that wimpy 500GB would really suck.

I have a laptop and I still live at home so I don't have the space for a big tower that would be easy for n00b like me to replace parts in, not to mention the hassle of transferring all that data (I shoulda bought a terabyte hard drive in the first place). I've somehow gotten down to 30 gigs and had to uninstall some steam games and delete p0rn. Besides, if you buy a disk based pc game you have put in the serial code to install the game on the computer and play it without the disk. Thus you can't reuse the disk so I can't lend games to my friends to try or resell them so I might as well buy all my games off Steam cheaply, without having to leave my house. But with consoles, I have the flexibility of trading games and borrowing them from friends

Also the Wired article I read said that all of the Xbone's parts are custom to allow more air flow through the system so it runs quieter and without fans. This includes the hard drive so either A) the hard drives will be expensive because they're custom or B) you will not be able to easily take the XBone apart in the first place because of its design

 

[Aggieknight]

So if my son wants to play a game on our xbone with his account, it costs me extras $$$?

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

And to all the people immigrating to the PC because of this: Welcome to Steam-Land! Where every fucking game is tied to your Steam account anyway! (or Origin or U-play...) ENJOY!

But all those people who migrate to PC will have to buy a new PC with the goofy mess of Windows 8 and it's 100 million shipped (but not necessarily activated) copies. Yes, Win8 under the hood is slightly better than Win7 but the goofy GUI is what cripples it.

IMHO, Microsoft as a whole is a slowly capsizing boat. The only reason they haven't sunk yet is the fact that they got gobs of cash to plug the holes with for now.

 

[cdemares]

So...does this mean I can buy a game, install it, and pass it around to give my friends a discount since they can just pay the fee? I hope so. Either way, GS is probably just going to print unlock codes on receipts after making a deal with MS and pubs. Pubs want a cut of used games sales, and this is how they'll most likely get it.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I'm confused, will I be able to take a game over to my friend's house and play it on his console? Or will we have to pay in order to play. This whole thing is ridiculous.

The answer last time I checked is probably not. Sony admitted that devs would be able to use serial keys like with pc games to prevent a game from being reused. But devs and publishers can already do this on current consoles and have chosen not to. Also, you run the games off the blue ray disks and don't do full installs.

Its all a little hazy right now and anything can change come launch day but the ps4 is looking good right now

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

And to all the people immigrating to the PC because of this: Welcome to Steam-Land! Where every fucking game is tied to your Steam account anyway! (or Origin or U-play...) ENJOY!

But all those people who migrate to PC will have to buy a new PC with the goofy mess of Windows 8 and it's 100 million shipped (but not necessarily activated) copies. Yes, Win8 under the hood is slightly better than Win7 but the goofy GUI is what cripples it.

IMHO, Microsoft as a whole is a slowly capsizing boat. The only reason they haven't sunk yet is the fact that they got gobs of cash to plug the holes with for now.

PC gamers who use Steam don't buy second hand games because they can wait for a steam sale and buy it cheaper than it would be marked down in the store anyway.

At least that's true for where I live.

 

[Little Gray]

Let me make sure I've got this

A disc is good for 1 install on 1 500GB HDD. How many AAA games could 500GB hold? Eventually you'd need to delete older ones to install newer games; does this mean they're gonna try to charge customers to play the game that they themselves already bought brand-new at full price?

Forget resale. Can I even play the same game twice?

It also says that this is account-based. So odds are, it will work like Steam, keeping track of all of the games you purchased, whether they are installed right now or not.

My question is more to "What about multi-user homes?" We've got a generation right now where every member of a household has their own account, with their own achievements, friends, and history. I don't think you'll entice too many people to buy the activation for each family member who wants to play the game you've already paid $60 for.

I imagine it will work the same way that online passes do. I dont actually know how they work on the 360 though. On the ps3 its tied to the account but it works for every other account on that system. If you attach your account to a second system as well it then works with all accounts on both.

 

[Lightknight]

Hmm, I actually had the pitchfork out and everything. I was about to make the monster cry about how it fears fire...

But this actually makes sense the way they're pitching it. It sounds like when you buy a new game you're actually purchasing two licenses. An online one and the physical disk. When you trade in the disk you are not trading in the digital license. That's not as outlandish or greedy as it may sound. It does add the nice feature of not needing a disk because you have a steam-like library and it does prevent the same disk from being passed around in blatant copyright enfringement. That potentially means that you can sell back your disk without losing the digital copy of the game. That's significant. Wow.

If it is that way this could be a win/win for a lot of people including making the preowned market a bit stronger even. The reason I doubt this is the case is because a person could buy a game on launch and then sell it back immediately after installing it. They can't get a refund as normal because I'm sure the game stores will be able to identify whether or not the digital license has been used. But having a signficant volume of preowned games mean that the retailers can have $5 cheaper versions of the game only a few days after release. Microsoft will have to make trade agreements preventing such practices if so. To a fair extent at least. This is doable.

Additionally, who gets the money if the rights to make a digital copy is purchased? Does microsoft? It isn't their IP at all. Do they give it to developers? What happens if the developers went under? Lots of questions. If done right, this is brilliant despite being a bad PR move to announce. If done wrong where the disk no longer functions like a regular disk, then it's bad all around.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Turns out that pre-owned fee thing is false, at least if Xbox's official support Twitter is anything to go by.

[Tweet t=https://twitter.com/XboxSupport/status/336933801517260800]

But wrong about which part? Some of this doesn't make sense, like having to force installs because blue ray drives are too slow. Someone already pointed out that there plenty of faster blue ray drives Microsoft could use. Do games still need to be fully installed? If they do can you play them without the disks or do the disks need to be in the drive?

I guess this'll be cleared up in the next few hours

 

[Andy Shandy]

I guess this'll be cleared up in the next few hours

Well I hope so anyway, although I don't think it'll help Microsoft all that much, many people have already taken out the torch and pitchforks.

 

[suitepee7]

Let me make sure I've got this

A disc is good for 1 install on 1 500GB HDD. How many AAA games could 500GB hold? Eventually you'd need to delete older ones to install newer games; does this mean they're gonna try to charge customers to play the game that they themselves already bought?

Forget resale. Can I even play the same game twice?

Will probably work like Steam, you can download, delete local data, re download/install from disc as much as you want. The game will most likely be attached to your xbox live account.

the article i saw on dtoid seemed to suggest that it was tied to your account, so yeah i'd guess its similar to steams system of saving onto your account.

regardless, still not getting this. looks less like a games console to me, and a GAMES console would be the only thing to tempt me away from PC gaming

 

[squid5580]

I think people are jumping the gun with this one, and understandably so. But lets just look at what they are saying here.

With the ability to download a game to your HD and play without a disk, you open a whole can of worms here. What would stop you from going to your local redbox and renting a game, installing it on your hard drive, and then effectively now owning a game you only paid a buck for or buying a game and then giving it to a bunch of your friends so that they can then download it to their hard drives and have a free game? What Microsoft is proposing is that you can still buy used games if you want, but you then are barred from using the no-disk feature of the new xbox. It's a convenience feature. I don't know about you guys but I'm perfectly okay with that. I don't mind having to use a disk to play a game. Hell, I've been doing it for years now. Not only that but the PC has been doing the very same thing for years now.

People are so quick to jump on the hate bandwagon that it worries me.

You are forgetting the first guy is still getting the game for free (or close to it). There is nothing stopping him from buying, installing then returning. Then what? The next guy has to play it off the disc?