So ever since Microsoft announced the new XBox One, its been a downward spiral for them. From being made fun of memes, to getting lambasted by international private law authorities, to being out pre ordered by the PS4; nothing has been working for them. At E3, they had a solid, if not an amazing conference. The show had some great exclusives like Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive and Ryse. Battlefield 4 and Call Of Duty: Ghosts were on display too. The main stories coming out of that E3 show were these:
- Halo is coming to XBox One.
- Battlefield will also have timed exclusive to XBox One, just like Call Of Duty.
- TitanFall, another XBox exclusive basically came in and swept everyone of their feet.
- All XBox Live Gold membership members will have 2 free games to download per month from July to November (games include Assassin’s Creed and Halo 3)
- Xbox friend limit of 100 has been lifted. Also an concept of 10 family members (people who have been friends for more than 30 days), who would enjoy more flexible rights than most.
You can check out the various trailers across E3, over at Major Nelson’s blog, neatly tied into video packages day wise.
Now we come to the sticky part, the DRM policies. DRM or Digital Rights Management policies were explained at length by Microsoft after the conference and throughout the E3 afterwards. The salient points of those features were:
1. Once you buy a disc, it can only be used by you. You cannot share the physical disc and let your friends play it. You can however, share your game library with 10 of your X-Box Live friends (known as Family members). This share can happen over the cloud, and the physical disc is not required once you have bought it.
2. If you decide to lend the game to a friend, who is not your family member, you would loose all rights to that game. It is unclear if the new owner can lend the game back to you or forward it to another. However, he cannot sell it to a media outlet.
3. All the games will install, and you would not require the disc after the first time. Also each title would be available for digital download on day 1. There is also doubts whether the disc can only be installed once, hence impeding used/lend games even more.
4. There would be a 24 hour interval check in required, in which you would have to connect your X-1 to the internet. If this is not done every 24 hours, you will not be able to play single player either. Continuous connectivity is not required, only a mandatory authentication every 24 hours.
5. Kinect will be always on. It will be StandBy mode until it hears “XBox On” or something like that. Also it would be a mandatory accessory to every X-1 from now on. Still unclear if the Kinect can be completely turned off or not, which is putting off quite a bit of “Privacy Protectors”
6. Consoles will be region locked (means a console bought in America will not work in Russia), and is initially available in 21 countries.
As you might have guessed, these are more like restrictions, than empowering, and the gaming community did not take it lightly. It didnt help when Sony announced that their PS4 will be used game friendly. What followed was a PR beating worthy of a case study. The X-1 got its head racked like Dolph Ziggler against Alberto; and after a point it just became painful to see. It seemed like Microsoft had lost the console wars before it even began.
That’s when Microsoft did an about turn. Caving into public feedback, including Angry Joe’s rant (See above) and a very emotional letter by a Navy Seal (and more importantly dismal pre order numbers). Microsoft did away with most of their afore mentioned policies. The 24 hr check in was revoked, so was the used game restriction. The concept of sharing a library has also been revoked, though if family members will still exist remains to be seen. The internet has been mostly rejoicing over the fact, that they have made Microsoft cave in. You can find the full official report here. The Kinect thingy remains however. There is a certain number however though who think that X-Box One was actually a step in the forward direction. ChamChong makes a strong case below.
How exactly, those features were supposed to take GAMING to the next level, I am not sure. He says that X-Box One haters haven’t done their research, mentioning that used games sales don’t actually make money for the developer/publisher. But what he fails to mention is that most people actually trade those used games in for new games, and where do you think that money goes…..exactly. Missing some research are we mister Chong.
An article over at GamesBlend, shows you the view of the overjoyed inter netters. I am not sure if I believe everything that Microsoft says, since all that DRM code is already there, and it just takes an update to switch them ON. One thing that I am pretty sure of, is games making better use of KINECT.
By all accounts, Microsoft had great games, but they just stumbled and then fell from people opinion, and the way back is hard, very very hard. Oh yes X-Box One is priced at $499, a full 100$ more than the PS-4.