Poll: "Heartbroken" Microsoft Employee Explains How Family Sharing Would Have Worked

[Doom972]

Xbox division sound like real dicks. I haven't read all the way through, but I was a little annoyed to learn that they made an effort to make Gears of War a 360 exclusive (don't know if it was their effort that actually caused this), and when he used that old excuse about used games killing the industry.

I read halfway through and realized I don't care about anything else this guy has to say.

Looks like future Xbone users haven't lost anything of value. Good for them.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Snip

So they design it to be modular so that it can just be updated every once in a while so that it keeps current.

500k-2mil? That's actually a LOT more than is necessary to make a good game, some guy in a basement can make great games for practically nothing, just look at the indie scene. Besides, that's still FAR less then they typically spend on the average AAA game. My overall point in that there's really PLENTY game developers can do to get the cost of making games down, but because of this mentality the industry has gotten stuck in lately that tons of money is needed to be able to make tons of money they make no real effort to do so.

 

[Rack]

While this does answer some questions as to why it seemed so generous I'm not sure I believe this. Why put any restrictions on the demo mode at all? Was all the 10 members and family and talk of not playing simultaneously just to make it sound like it was a proper game share? This was framed as a way to account for the fact you couldn't lend your disk to a friend I mean I wouldn't be totally shocked if MS wanted to keep it secret they had no plans around allowing that but this sounds too much.

 

[9thRequiem]

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

Agreed. Someone posted something on PasteBin claiming to know the "Real" story. LOOKS LEGIT TO ME!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9818-The-Anonymous-Source

And this Pastebin source has even less credibility than that.

 

[loc978]

...timed demo, eh? Hopefully Steam's possible version [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125168-Rumor-Game-Sharing-Coming-To-Steam] will be closer to what Microsoft was advertising (absolutely classic move by them there, if it had gone forward).
If it's not true... it's not enough of an exaggeration of their usual policies... quite boring, as lies go.

 

[loa]

Making an effort to make gears of war xbox exclusive is "in the interest of gamers"?
Yeah, no I smell troll. Especially since none this is on none of the larger sites.

 

[lacktheknack]

That's not family sharing, that's a glorified demo service with a "share" button attached.

Nope... I call BS. That pastebin is full of lies and troll bile.

 

[JetFury]

How is Sony's gaming sharing(actual game sharing) horrendous? They limited the account number to 2 consoles no doubt because of sales, and ps3 has no restrictive measures in terms of sharing I'm aware of. Unless you count sign in info as restrictive lol.

 

[Rickin10]

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

Nope, not legit, not even funny, the author just sort of picks random pieces to annoy/troll anyone who read it.

I was thinking the same. But on NeoGAF there's an ITK guy who has an apparently EXTREMELY good record of getting inside info before it's released and he says it's legit. The only thing he said was, that it was set at 60 minutes.

Also there's this: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4451172/xbox-engineer-disappointed-pastebin-note-rumored-features

 

[Norrdicus]

I only ever lurk here, this forced me to ask:

Do people require literally zero proof of legitimacy of ANYTHING? You referenced an anonymous article that references another anonymous article without links OR names.

You don't actually believe that article is legit...right?

Nope, not legit, not even funny, the author just sort of picks random pieces to annoy/troll anyone who read it.

I was thinking the same. But on NeoGAF there's an ITK guy who has an apparently EXTREMELY good record of getting inside info before it's released and he says it's legit. The only thing he said was, that it was set at 60 minutes.

Also there's this: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4451172/xbox-engineer-disappointed-pastebin-note-rumored-features

Yeah, CBoaT has been leaking stuff before the start of the current console generation. Some of the newer leaks were a bunch of E3 reveals (although he was wrong about Prince of Persia reveal, it was a Halo trailer instead), and that Dead Space 3 was going to be a co-op game, and one of the weapons in that game was called "shootbanger"

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

So it would work exactly like the demo system already in place on XBL, except I could only demo games one of my friends had already paid for (rather than any game on XBL for free - as it is at the moment) and could only play it for half an hour (rather than the ability to play demos indefinitely - as it is at the moment)?

...

...

...

Glad this 'idea' didn't see the light of day.

 

[A Curious Fellow]

http://www.heyuguysgaming.com/news/12507/heartbroken-xbox-one-employee-lets-rip-must-read

Eugh. I feel like I'm reading propaganda. And I probably am.

Used games aren't killing publishers, publishers are killing publishers. Exorbitant budgets and inflated dev teams on AAA games are killing publishers. I hope I don't have to remind people that Dead Space 3 sold like sex and still failed to make a profit against the MILLIONS of dollars EA put into it. Publishers can't run their businesses into the ground like a chimp in a biplane and then just turn around and blame poor people looking for a bargain. I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing it.

It's all like that too. The guy goes on to bemoan the death of the family sharing plan but it's like he thinks we killed it. Microsoft killed it. It's really simple: Play offline whenever you want as long as you have the disc in tray, play on the Cloud if you have access, eliminate the idea of licenses and leases. They could have implemented that plan without forcing Always Online Digital Rights Management. Instead they axed the plan altogether like a two year old having a tantrum.

And the whole thing closes with a restatement of "If people didn't like it, they could have just played 360." Oh really? We're a not loyal enough to your brand so we can go fuck off? We find your reductive policies too Draconian and stifling and it's us who have to change? The consumer is the PROBLEM? These people have learned nothing.

 

[floppylobster]

Directly from the rant pasted above:

"First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn't have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they're placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. We were toying around with a limit on the number of times members could access the shared game (as to discourage gamers from simply beating the game by doing multiple playthroughs). but we had not settled on an appropriate way of handling it. One thing we knew is that we wanted the experience to be seamless for both the person sharing and the family member benefiting. There weren't many models of this system already in the wild other than Sony's horrendous game sharing implementation, ASSHOLE ALERT! but it was clear their approach (if one could call it that) was not the way to go. Developers complained about the lost sales THEY'VE LOST MORE SALES NOW HAVEN'T THEY? THIS HAS BEEN GONE OVER COUNTLESS TIMES, SECOND HAND SALES DO NOT IMPACT OVERALL SALES AND IN MANY CASES INCREASE THEMand gamers complained about overbearing DRM SO YOU THOUGHT YOU'D IMPLEMENT IT AS STANDARD POLICY? that punished those who didn't share that implemented by publishers to quell gamers from taking advantage of a poorly thought out system. We wanted our family sharing plan to be something that was talked about and genuinely enjoyed by the masses as a way of inciting gamers to try new games HOW IS LENDING PHYSICAL COPIES ANY DIFFERENT IF NOT BETTER?."

Voting "Glad to see that the system is gone now if this is what it would be." Secretly thinking, they've learned nothing and this won't be the end of it.

 

[Soopy]

I must say, when I read that this morning. It struck me as a fairly poorly concocted corporate sob story. Doesn't seem legitimate at all.

Automotive manufactures have the same used market to contend with, it works the same way. Yet their answer is innovation and development. Not a war on used car salesman.

 

[Naeras]

This feature wasn't close to what it was hyped up to be, and it was in no way what people were willing to defend the XBOne for before the changes in the policies.

It's still a neat feature, mind, but I'd take the ability to borrow games from people over a glorified demo system in a heartbeat.

 

[Above]

This feature sounded 100% more awesome before the employee explained it, yeah I can actually see why M$ didn't bother to explain it properly "family Library" makes it sound like 100% full game sharing not a demo mode I could see the rage of people a month after launch when they found out that "library" bit of pr they'd bought into was nothing of the sort.

I will not mourn it's loss, because it's not been lost it's still there just like it always was only with it's more accurate name of game demo's.

Agreed, me and 10 other hardcore gamer friends were planning on buying the XB1 and just taking turns to buy games (everyone buys 1 out of 10) and uploading all the games to our shared library, pretty much conning the system Mwahaha, until i read this, i've explained that family sharing is nothing more than Demo streaming and already 4 have cancelled their pre-orders, it seem's MS are digging their graves even deeper.

 

[Smiley Face]

Oh phew. I mean, initially I hated the Xbone's guts, because, you know, no sharing games and 24-hour check-ins and whatnot. Eventually, when they explained that there was going to be this family thing, I felt kind of bad that I had hated it so unreservedly - while it doesn't manage to justify the ridiculous policies, at least there's a reason for them besides 'Fuck you, consumer'. But no, if the family thing was just going to be a glorified demo service instituted by people who believe that a company's right to have you give them all your money is more important than your rights to a product that you purchased, then I feel much better about having reacted at that level. Bloody hell...

Hahaha, I can't help but imagine the reaction if Microsoft hadn't backpedalled and these details came out. I mean... we were all hooked with morbid fascination, waiting for each new announcement so we could tear it to pieces... This would've gotten QUITE a reaction. Looks like Microsoft actually managed to think for once, slamming on the brakes and avoiding this little beauty.

 

[likalaruku]

Percentage of families that have more than 1 person who plays video games = small.
Percentage of gamer families/roommates who have the same taste in games = small.

Families share software. Trying to make two or more purchases for the same thing in a household will never ever fly with consumers. It would be like Microsoft charging full price per install per computer.

 

[Charli]

Even if this isn't an employee, just some bent out of shape fanboy or paid publicity stunt, I can't see myself or anyone I know EVER using that feature. I mean my god, the internet alone... all of us are on crappy 4mbps download unstable jitter nightmares and you expect us to get excited about a feature that maybe only a privileged few could use conveniently and without frustration...for a demo?

...Hahahano.

Yes Microsoft I am a dirty neanderthal and am aware you have a console already for my primitive micro brain. BUT I DON'T LIVE IN YOUR WORLD.



Captcha: ermahgerd, capcher!

Okay, you made me smile KIND OF.