Xbox one: It might not be *as* bad as you think.

[Madman123456]

Before you tar and feather my considerably large behind i just want to mention that we do not know how much that used games fee is going to be. If it's like 5$ microsoft execs might just earn their place in a well padded room.

But Microsoft wants to have this large accounts database with all the users having all their games pinned to their accounts so they wont have to search for the gamediscs all the time.
Which is the same as steam does, but you can't sell your old games on steam, fee or no.

If they'd come out and say that they wanted to make the gaming as convenient as it is on steam but with the ability to sell your old titles People would have cheered.

Then they could've said that re-arranging gametitles around from account to account while making sure that people don't get to play games that they've sold costs money and if you buy used games, you pay that money. Merely to keep that database running that allows for that convenience.

It would have been good to be able to download and sell direct download titles on a service run by microsoft; in which you could buy used licenses to download and play a game. Microsoft gives you digital money reimbursement for a digital game you sell and then someone else could buy that license to download that game for about double the price you sold it for. Still better then gamestop and Microsoft earns some dough as well.



I have not found anything to defend the other points i find disturbing about the xbox one; every console that tried to be a multimedia machine has failed spectacularly. If you try and have a machine with many function so that everyone has something he likes then everyone will have something that he doesn't like and doesn't want to pay for.
No one want's to *have* to be online every 24 hours. Wanna visit your parents and they don't have good Wlan in the room you'll be staying in? Well, sucks to be you then. Go buy a cheap feature phone and connect the xbox via the phone unless you want to pay the tethering fee for smartphones or something.


But i get the used games fee. Paying fees isn't one of my favorite past times but it's still better then steam.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

People keep saying "well steam doesn't let you sell your used games" but I think that's a stupid argument. See, the thing about steam is that it has tons of sales. Absolutely ridiculous sales, where new games are regularly priced at 35% to 75% off. Because of this, inevitably a large part of your library ends up being games that you got on sale, so for most steam users, they've actually only paid about 50% of what their library should actually cost (in some cases more, in some less).

Why does this matter? Well, when someone sells their game back to gamestop, or wherever, they usually don't get a ton of money back for it, maybe $15 on a $60 game. If you sell all your consoles games back to gamestop after playing them, the cost of your game library would be similar to the cost of your library had you bought all your games on steam (even if only 1/3 of the games were bought during steam sales) the difference being that with used games, once you have sold them back to gamestop you wouldn't have them anymore, whereas with steam you buy the games on sale and then you still have them.

So the argument that it's ok for the xbox to disallow used games, or to make you pay for the "privilege" to sell your games used all because steam doesn't let you sell your "used" games is stupid, because while it's true that you can't sell those games, the entire cost of building your steam library is less, so it more than balances out against the ability to sell your games used.

Now if the Xbox forces you to pay $5 or $10 or however much they decide on to allow you to play used games, that becomes a staggeringly worse deal than steam.

 

[Keoul]

I don't understand.

Steam deals with digital distribution, there is no hard copy to trade. Unless they actually implement a used game sale system then it would never be possible. Everyone knows this the moment they joined and started using steam, it's just logic.
Now with microsoft they're selling us physical copies of the game, something that can be traded and passed around. But they're treating it as a digital good and that's why all these problems are occurring.

While steam never had the service to begin with, microsoft is adding a price tag to a once free service. Personally I think you're just blinded by your hate for steam to see the real problem here, Steam isn't the perfect system and the savior of the gaming industry, however at least they're not constantly trying to screw us over and give reliable service.

An example of how steam is not trying to take all our money is the trade system that lets youtrade games that you've bought but haven't played, they didn't have to do that, people are bulk buying during sales and selling it for a little under the regular price when sales end. They're obviously going to lose money from this as the savvy customer who missed out on sales could still purchase their digital games for less than full price, so why did they add this feature?

 

[Dr.Panties]

Well, considering that the Xbox Live service doesn't exist in my current country of residence, I would be inclined to disagree with you. You know, because I wouldn't be able to register any purchased games, or even connect once every 24 hours to maintain console functionality. Pretty expensive, albeit shiny, paper weight right there,

But, hey..."Why would I live here?". Right?

 

[Daveman]

You choose to use Steam. You buy a PC and later install Steam. You could always try one of the dozens of other sites or still buy hard copies of games off amazon or from a shop. With the Xbone you will have their price or no games.

That should be their slogan... Xbox One: Choose to have no choice.

 

[Madman123456]

If you buy a game that runs on steam it wont matter much if you bought the hard copy or not. Anyone wanna buy my mafia 2? If someone else could put my mafia 2 dvd in his drive and pay a dollar or something and pay me 5$ for the game i'd be happy and he'd be happy. But as it is now, the game will just rot in my steam account for all eternity.

However, considering all the sales on steam and mafia 2 being featured in some of those the used value of that game would be about a dollar or something and if steam where to add 10% of the sale value as a fee for that sale i'd have a dollar and another guy would have paid 1.10 and have a game.

Good point about the steam sales though; i could've waited for the games to show up in a steam sale and then buy them. If steam would allow resale of games they'd have to make sure that people wouldn't be able to make money by buying all the games on Sales, then waiting until it's over and then resell the games.

Maybe steam could allow to either make my games into a gift, so i'm no longer able to play them but i can gift them to other steam users and/or disable games i don't want to play anymore and give me a small amount of digital credits that i can spend in the steam shop only.



We'll just have to see how Xbox live handles that; maybe there will tons of sales in the future and maybe the fee for installing used games will be half a cent or something.

And maybe i will find the fountain of youth.

We'll see. I'm just saying that this point might not be as horrible as we think it might be.

 

[xPixelatedx]

But Microsoft wants to have this large accounts database with all the users having all their games pinned to their accounts so they wont have to search for the gamediscs all the time.

Right, and the next time you are standing and talking to someone, and they fidget their arms around because they don't know what to do with them; cut those arms off with a chainsaw! That'll save them from their minor inconvenience!

If they'd come out and say that they wanted to make the gaming as convenient as it is on steam but with the ability to sell your old titles People would have cheered.

No, they wouldn't have. You see the entire point of a console is the one advantage it has over PCs, and that's the ability to do whatever the hell you want with your game after you buy it; loaning it to friends, trading it in, using it for a coaster like I use Marvel vs. Capcom 3. If you try and equate a console to a PC, the console fails on every level because you can always build a better PC then whatever console is out. It also doesn't cost an extra fee to play thoes PC games online (usually). Meaning if an Xbox one is really being equated to Steam, it is an inferior steam.. an inferior steam you have to pay extra to both have and use. So yeah, no, don't go that route... it's not good for anyone.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Actually yeah, while denouncing the Xbox I've been secretly thinking to myself "Aren't they just enabling digital game resale, which needs to be done eventually?" but my secret counterpoints to that are:

Microsoft is limiting retailer's profits so substantially that they're going to drive used game prices up. Microsoft will essentially be setting the resale value and trade-in value. Microsoft is promoting digital-only games as a gateway to games as services rather than products. Microsoft is eliminating sharing/loaning of games and making simple resale unnecessarily complicated. Microsoft does not give you an option to resell other than through their system.

Steam has ridiculous sales often enough that it would hardly be worth trading anything in, but admittedly, it'd be nice if they had a resale system.

EDIT:

Not only are you not allowed to play used games and if you do it costs a fee-

http://gizmodo.com/report-microsoft-wont-charge-a-used-game-fee-on-the-x-509808404

Although that hardly diminishes the other bullhit.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Steam is a great model, and MS should use it. Like steam, when people buy a game off Xboxlive, they dont moan that they cant lend it to a friend. Ever. People accept this is the case as its digital. When you are told you cant lend a physical disc that you bought and own - then thats just wrong.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I don't understand.

Steam deals with digital distribution, there is no hard copy to trade.

What if I did buy a hard copy? Steam is DRM; you have to have an account to play most physical PC games and you cannot trade these physical purchases.

Steam is a great model...

When you are told you cant lend a physical disc that you bought and own - then thats just wrong.

And also exactly what Steam does, I'm afraid.

 

[TehCookie]

How does comparing it to Steam make it better? All DRM is terrible, Steam included. I can't lend or sell games or play them offline (inb4 there's an offline mode, you have to go/be online to go offline). That's the main reason I switched to consoles from PC. Sure there's sales but used games cost the same and you get a physical disc you can do what you please with.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

How does comparing it to Steam make it better? All DRM is terrible, Steam included. I can't lend or sell games or play them offline (inb4 there's an offline mode, you have to go/be online to go offline). That's the main reason I switched to consoles from PC. Sure there's sales but used games cost the same and you get a physical disc you can do what you please with.

I'm going to insert the caveat first that this obviously doesn't apply to everybody (though I'm not sure why it doesn't), but here's how offline mode works for me. If I download a game, and then have launched it just once while online, I can then play that game with my ethernet cord removed 100% of the time. I don't have to switch to an offline "mode", it just lets me play it because it was launched once (and I suppose activated) while I was online. To make it simpler, if my modem exploded, I can play every game I've ever launched once before with no issue. Also, for quite a few games (mostly older ones), you can just go to your steamapps folder and launch the executable.

So every time I download a game on Steam, I launch it once and set the graphics/other options to what I want and then exit (unless I want to play it right away) so that it's available all the time no matter what.

 

[rob_simple]

Speaking as one of the seemingly few people who don't regularly sacrifice a virgin at the altar of Steam, comparing the Xbone's practices to theirs doesn't really sway me.

I see the point you're making OP, but my issue with it is the same reason I ditched my Windows phone: I don't like the idea of every facet of my digital life being tied to one Microsoft account. I hated it when Google integrated Youtube with the rest of their services, because now I can't be logged into Youtube and my Gmail account at the same time and it won't let me add my Gmail account as the address on my Youtube one, despite the fact the e-mail that is attached to Youtube is no longer in use.

These are the kind of headaches I can see myself encountering with consoles that focus on social media integration. Perhaps it's just weird paranoia on my part, but I don't like the idea of mass integration; I like to keep my tweets to Twitter, my overly long pseudo-political diatribe to Facebook and my sepia-toned photos of apples to Instagram.

When I put a game in my console I don't want Microsoft getting involved beyond them having provided me with a machine that can run it. I don't want them checking in to see I am who I say I am or what I'm doing with the game I've paid for; especially not through that creepy little camera.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to run through the streets shouting 'Soylent Green is people'.

 

[ecoho]

seeing as they keep back tracking what they are saying I say don't assume anything till E3 as they can change alot in that time. oh and anyone else woundering how long it'll be till dexter gets in this thread and bashes the hell out of the Xbone?

 

[SinisterGehe]

Issue is that on PC I can accept the fact that I have tied my games to a large database that keep track of them so I can download them whenever I want.
On consoles I have gotten used to the fact that I am able to borrow games from friends or take my console with me and play it remotely offline.

What is the point of buying a console if it is like a PC with severe limitations? Why not buy a PC then? I can play all games I want with controller with JoyKeys or similar program (if the game doesn't support a controller). Also the Steam Big screen is really good.

Also last time I checked I can have steam offline FOREVER if I have set my steam's and downloaded games' offline settings correct.

Also... Why have a Disc if all you do is going to read a code from it? Why not cut the middleman... Like steam did and just sell digitally. Of course I can still go and buy the disc from my local shop, but it costs 5-10? more due to fees and what not.

I remember back in time about 10 years ago when console used to be a hardware platform for games. Because PCs and internet connections weren't yet developed to create sustainable gaming environment that was financially stable. And carrying a PC around was just too inconvenient.
I remember in school talking with a friend that we would have sleepover and he would bring his XBOX and I had PS2 - we would play different games and have lots of fun - we both had PCs also but old CRT monitors and the computers were HUGE and heavy to carry.

Whats the point of a console if it just limited PC... When I have a PC.

 

[Jandau]

The argument "BUT STEAM DOES IT AS WELL!" is silly. Xbone is giving you all the downsides of Steam with none of the advantages of it (and of the PC in general).

To make a rough analogy: Imagine Steam as a hot girl you can have sex with, but she has a mild case of Gonorrhea. So a lot of people figure that the Gonorrhea is worth the sex with a beautiful woman. Now, Xbone is like some guy offering to inject you with a syringe full of Gonorrhea and when you say you don't want Gonorrhea, he points out that the girl you are having sex with also has it. Yes, but then I at least get laid and you're just a crazy person injecting people with STDs...

 

[elvor0]

Well, considering that the Xbox Live service doesn't exist in my current country of residence, I would be inclined to disagree with you. You know, because I wouldn't be able to register any purchased games, or even connect once every 24 hours to maintain console functionality. Pretty expensive, albeit shiny, paper weight right there,

But, hey..."Why would I live here?". Right?

Wow, where do you live? I didn't realise there were still places they hadn't sorted out yet. See this is the sort of shit I'm talking about MS, that effectively cuts off a whole country of sales. They're already having to deal with places like Germany stating the Kinect is a surveillance device, so that could be Europe out of the way, and Japan have similar sort of laws to them too, and they're already struggling against the PS3 there.

Even if you're a comically moustache twirling businessman, this is stupid. This isn't some master plan that while may screw the customer is AMAZING for business. This is just fucking stupid. It's bad for business, and even the most casual gamer isn't going to be suckered in by this.

 

[romxxii]

I don't understand.

Steam deals with digital distribution, there is no hard copy to trade.

I dunno what you're talking about. About a third of my Steam library was bought off retail, and I have actual physical disks. Here's my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Skyrim:

As you can see, both had to be activated on Steam. I can still install either disk to any other PC, but they will have to be tied to my Steam account, and cannot be run at the same time on multiple machines, unless I make the other Steam instances run in Offline Mode.

The inability to trade Steam games is something we accept because the discounts are ridiculous. Hell, these disks I got were a helluva lot cheaper than even buying the games digitally. IIRC, Skyrim cost me the equivalent of $30, while DXHR cost about $40, both at launch day.