GET YER E3 BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE

[MrHat]

If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions.

Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.

Exactly as it should be.  Maybe creep in -$5 discount on the digital downloads and watch Gamestop die.

[sickrubik]

If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions.

Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.

Exactly as it should be.  Maybe creep in -$5 discount on the digital downloads and watch Gamestop die.

I miss the idea of not having to have the disc in the tray. Minor point maybe.

[Bzalthek]

If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions.

Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.

Exactly as it should be.  Maybe creep in -$5 discount on the digital downloads and watch Gamestop die.

I miss the idea of not having to have the disc in the tray. Minor point maybe.

I never really thought about it but I think that's the biggest reason I play pc over m ps3.  While both are just as easy to use from my super comfy chair, i don't need to fuck with discs since most of my games are Steam downloaded.  My CD drive is almost passe at this point.

[sickrubik]

I never really thought about it but I think that's the biggest reason I play pc over m ps3.  While both are just as easy to use from my super comfy chair, i don't need to fuck with discs since most of my games are Steam downloaded.  My CD drive is almost passe at this point.

Day one digital downloads are a go for both systems, if that's the path you want to take on consoles as well.

[Bzalthek]

That's a pretty nice incentive.  Though I'll never purchase anything these days on day 1, it's nice to know it's there.

[Fabricated]

Day one patch for a console, owned.

[Ingmar]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

I found myself nodding along with a lot of this.

[schild]

I don't agree with that. Microsoft didn't have to take what few good ideas it had and throw them out the window when they took away all the downright shitty ones. It's not our fault. It's Microsoft's fault for being hilariously both short-sighted and long-sighted when it comes to the gaming world. All they said was "FINE, WE'RE TAKING OUR BALL AND GOING HOME." Console always sucked and it certainly doesn't suck more today.

ALSO:

The DRM Boogey Man Is So Last Decade

Regardless of the context in the paragraph below it, that sentence is bullshit and shouldn't head up any pile of paragraphs. Also, if he wanted to make a point he should've spelled bogeyman correctly. He had 4 possible choices on how to spell it and chose incorrectly.

[HaemishM]

I have to object to this bullshit.

Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others' rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.

New games COULD BE cheaper. But they fucking won't and anyone who knows shit about the video games market (or any business in general) knows this. Publishers won't drop the prices, they will just suck up the profits.

[sickrubik]

A lot of the issues came about from how Microsoft handled the reaction over legitimate concerns about region locking and lack of good internet access. This stretches far back before the announcement of the consoles. It also sucks that this has been reduced (largely by Microsoft) as an all or nothing approach. I think there are some stuff that got thrown out that would have made stuff neat.

[Rokal]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

I found myself nodding along with a lot of this.

How can the author praise limitations on used games as a way to ensure that developers are getting paid for second hand sales, and then praise the 10-person family sharing plan in the same article? Does the author live in a world where this would not have impacted game sales? I was already seeing groups of barely-affiliated internet friends form "family groups" to ensure that only 1 person in any given group of 10 had to buy a game.

Xbox One still has these winning qualities:

-$100 more expensive than the competition
-requires Kinect (you can say that it is optional to use but you would be ignoring situations in the past, like on Wii, where motion controls were required for even traditional games)
-Gold subscription is still awful compared to PS+
-Dashboard for a service you pay for is still full of Doritos, The Hangover, and Little Wayne ads.

Today's announcement doesn't change much.

[jakonovski]

I have to object to this bullshit.

Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others' rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.

New games COULD BE cheaper. But they fucking won't and anyone who knows shit about the video games market (or any business in general) knows this. Publishers won't drop the prices, they will just suck up the profits.

Totally. Digital could've been cheaper for most of the current generation but it never happened.

[Paelos]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

I found myself nodding along with a lot of this.

That author couldn't represent my viewpoint less.

[jakonovski]

Total Biscuit keeping it classy:

[Venkman]

Me neither Paelos. Very many false equivalencies in there, wrapped in some niavete about how businesses think. He'd only need to look as far as Kindle to see that digital sales don't radically reduce prices when you control most points in the value chain.

I am surprised MS caved though, and in such a broad way. The way they were pitching this, I thought this was core to deal terms they worked through with publishers. But for them to pull this apart so quickly after E3 means either there wasn't a lot of buy in from publishers, or they've already staffed up the extra 10 lawyers needed to unravel those contracts that had some type of stipulation

Xbox One still has these winning qualities:

<snip>
-requires Kinect (you can say that it is optional to use but you would be ignoring situations in the past, like on Wii, where motion controls were required for even traditional games)

The main difference is that there was no other way to play Wii games by default whereas the main X1 controller is still the standard game controller. Developers will design for that until there's a killer app for the Kinect. The only change X1 brings is that there'll be a 100% installed base of Kinects this time, possibly lowering the barrier of a killer app being developed. But I doubt it unless MS does it themselves. And even then, that's just pulling a Nintendo, with no guarantee the third parties will follow, because they still mostly need to port between PS4 and PC too in order to manage costs and ROI.

[UnSub]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault-514411905

I found myself nodding along with a lot of this.

I was also interested to see how the game sharing plan rolled out in reality.

For all the cries of wanting innovation, gamers can yell very loudly in support of the status quo.

[Merusk]

10 Year old can't play Bro-Shooter #3000? Why not? When I was 10 I was playing Bro Shooter 1 & 2 (Wolfenstein and Doom).

I won't let my kids play shooters because the graphics are too realistic these days.  Am I just being a Dad or is that a valid reason?  A headshot at 1080p is a lot different than a pixelated Nazi killing.

You're kind of being a bitch, yes.

Oh look, the childless single guy has an opinion on other people's kids. 

[Ingmar]

10 Year old can't play Bro-Shooter #3000? Why not? When I was 10 I was playing Bro Shooter 1 & 2 (Wolfenstein and Doom).

I won't let my kids play shooters because the graphics are too realistic these days.  Am I just being a Dad or is that a valid reason?  A headshot at 1080p is a lot different than a pixelated Nazi killing.

You're kind of being a bitch, yes.

Oh look, the childless single guy has an opinion on other people's kids. 

It's at least as valid as an architect's opinion on how a console should work.

[Paelos]

Oh good, this hotbutton. 

[schild]

10 Year old can't play Bro-Shooter #3000? Why not? When I was 10 I was playing Bro Shooter 1 & 2 (Wolfenstein and Doom).

I won't let my kids play shooters because the graphics are too realistic these days.  Am I just being a Dad or is that a valid reason?  A headshot at 1080p is a lot different than a pixelated Nazi killing.

You're kind of being a bitch, yes.

Oh look, the childless single guy has an opinion on other people's kids.  

I'm engaged, butthead.

Besides, I don't have an opinion on anyone's kids. I have an opinion on the behavior and hypocrisy of parents.

[rk47]

don't forget wimin trafficking and drugs in saints row, yo.

[Venkman]

Eh, I'm on the fence. Playing Wolfenstein on the PC XT is a lot different than playing MW3 on a PS3. The former was just low res graphics that could kinda be any generic bad guys whereas the latter are rendered so well they could be your neighbor. Smart well-raised kids are savvy enough to separate the game from the reality. But I'd still rather mine play Minecraft and the fantasy stuff than taking headshots on my 1080p projector.

I don't block them from that per se. It's more of setting up different incentives.

For now. Because soon they'll be teenagers and will have more freedom to get that shit from their friends and whatnot  

[schild]

Swastikas on swastikas.

[calapine]

10 Year old can't play Bro-Shooter #3000? Why not? When I was 10 I was playing Bro Shooter 1 & 2 (Wolfenstein and Doom).

I won't let my kids play shooters because the graphics are too realistic these days.  Am I just being a Dad or is that a valid reason?  A headshot at 1080p is a lot different than a pixelated Nazi killing.

You're kind of being a bitch, yes.

Oh look, the childless single guy has an opinion on other people's kids.  

I'm engaged, butthead.

Besides, I don't have an opinion on anyone's kids. I have an opinion on the behavior and hypocrisy of parents.

Our parents didn't allow us to have toy weapons at that age and I am going to keep it the same with mine (when I have them). And no shooters for 10 year olds, no. Later sure.

[Azazel]

I have to object to this bullshit.

Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others' rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.

New games COULD BE cheaper. But they fucking won't and anyone who knows shit about the video games market (or any business in general) knows this. Publishers won't drop the prices, they will just suck up the profits.

Just like digital downloads tied to a single account on XBL/Steam/PSN are never more expensive than buying a new disc at retail already, amirite? 

No, that guy is a fuckwit.

[Falconeer]

I think society pushes towards desensitizing people, but I feel parents play an IMMENSE role into preventing that. And not by averting their eyes but instead by contextualizing all the shit that their spongy brains will inevitably get exposed to anyway.

My son is 18 now and I haven't censored one thing for him, I only and always spent the time to explain everything profusely. Granted, there's no formula for parenting, there's no perfect recipe that will guarantee your children will be happy and stable if you follow it. But after sixteen messy and painful years (for reasons absolutely unrelated to media exposure, mostly his fucking absent mom), he's now blossoming into an extremely open minded, sensitive, informed and critical thinking young man, in a way that I am not afraid to say surpassed all my best hopes and dreams.

I am not claiming that this miracle is happening because I let him play Blood and Silent Hill when he was 6 years old, or because I talked to him freely about everything ranging from sex to politics and everything else in between, and instead of trying to keep his eyes closed I made sure to know what he was seeing anyway (out of the house) could find a context and a rich and honest explanation. But I certainly think it helps our children more to dedicate a lot of time to support and talk to them, than omitting or censoring anything. Our society is very aggressive, and protection means NOTHING without the right kind of information for them to build their own defenses. The best way to protect them in my very humble opinion is not taking the toy gun out of their hands, it's talking to them more and more meaningfully than society does when we are at work.

Sorry about the derail.

[Jeff Kelly]

I can get a pristine shrink-wrapped copy of nearly any 360 or PS3 game that is more than 6 months old for less than $20 if I go bargain hunting or as a used copy off of ebay or craigslist for probably less than ten. Alternatively I could download the game from microsoft game on demand or the PSN store for $50.

One can be lent or resold, doesn't require an online connection to play and is cheaper, the other is tied to my account, requires online authentication to play, cannot be lent or resold and probably will stop working if MS ever decides to turn of Xbox Live for the 360 a few years down the line. (The "they won't do that" line doesn't hold, because they already did that once with the original Xbox)

Switching to download games won't make games cheaper. Why should it? By moving to a 'license-only' business model MS basically manages to kill off any competition it has in the retail sector. Can you buy iPhone or iPad apps from Amazon or Best Buy? Then why do you assume to be able to buy game licenses from Gamestop or Amazon in a few years? No you'll only be able to buy games from the MS download store and the simple fact that MS and the publishers no longer have to compete with retail will make prices go up across the board. Why should they lower prices across the board when there is no alternative to buying it at the download store (except to not buy it at all obviously)?

MS already has a minimum retail price that it enforces for games on demand and live arcade games so you won't even have to fear your competing game publishers undercutting you on price and running away with your business. It's win-win. MS gets a cut from the sale and saves on manufacturing, distribution and storage costs (they won't have to produce physical discs and store and distribute them), the publishers can establish higher base prices and can keep the prices higher for longer (can't go under the minimum retail price MS's platform enforces).

[Fabricated]

Also is anyone in the "Games Journalism" biz calling out the absolute bulllshit that was the cloud computing claims?

I 100% guarantee that absolutely no game from this generation, even under XBONE's previous always online model would have used cloud computing to do actual game-important calculation that improves performance or allows for experiences an individual hardware unit couldn't handle. It is going to be entirely used for matchmaking, server hosting, save storage, and social integration shit that will gain nothing from the cloud besides redundancy.

[Paelos]

Also is anyone in the "Games Journalism" biz calling out the absolute bulllshit that was the cloud computing claims?

I 100% guarantee that absolutely no game from this generation, even under XBONE's previous always online model would have used cloud computing to do actual game-important calculation that improves performance or allows for experiences an individual hardware unit couldn't handle. It is going to be entirely used for matchmaking, server hosting, save storage, and social integration shit that will gain nothing from the cloud besides redundancy.

We need a Woodward and Bernstein of gaming news.

[sickrubik]

Also is anyone in the "Games Journalism" biz calling out the absolute bulllshit that was the cloud computing claims?

I 100% guarantee that absolutely no game from this generation, even under XBONE's previous always online model would have used cloud computing to do actual game-important calculation that improves performance or allows for experiences an individual hardware unit couldn't handle. It is going to be entirely used for matchmaking, server hosting, save storage, and social integration shit that will gain nothing from the cloud besides redundancy.

Plenty of the games press people have brought it up. Mostly in "eyes rolling" manner, because it's not big enough of a story to be an EXPOSE. It's just another talking point from a PR mouthpiece.

[Khaldun]

If I were worried about desensitization, I'd keep kids away from texting, tweeting, and posting in online forums before I'd keep them away from first-person shooters.

[eldaec]

I have to object to this bullshit.

Here is how this makes sense for YOU: New games could then be cheaper. Why? Publishers KNOW that they will not make money on resold games, so they charge more to you, the first buyer. You are paying for others' rights to use your game in the future. If the old system had gone into place, you would likely have seen game prices drop.

New games COULD BE cheaper. But they fucking won't and anyone who knows shit about the video games market (or any business in general) knows this. Publishers won't drop the prices, they will just suck up the profits.

It's worse than that.

Used games compete with new game purchases and create a downward pressure on prices through competition and limiting the consumer's expectation of what a reasonable price is. Prices will rise if the used sales are eliminated.

In same vein, prices on a given gaming platform have generally been lower where piracy has been more common.

[koro]

Also is anyone in the "Games Journalism" biz calling out the absolute bulllshit that was the cloud computing claims?

As far as I'm aware, only Eurogamer has.

[Merusk]

If I were worried about desensitization, I'd keep kids away from texting, tweeting, and posting in online forums before I'd keep them away from first-person shooters.

This right here is a BIIIG pile of assumptions on your part.  The first being that the 10 year old has a phone.

10 Year old can't play Bro-Shooter #3000? Why not? When I was 10 I was playing Bro Shooter 1 & 2 (Wolfenstein and Doom).

I won't let my kids play shooters because the graphics are too realistic these days.  Am I just being a Dad or is that a valid reason?  A headshot at 1080p is a lot different than a pixelated Nazi killing.

You're kind of being a bitch, yes.

Oh look, the childless single guy has an opinion on other people's kids.  

I'm engaged, butthead.

Besides, I don't have an opinion on anyone's kids. I have an opinion on the behavior and hypocrisy of parents.

Our parents didn't allow us to have toy weapons at that age and I am going to keep it the same with mine (when I have them). And no shooters for 10 year olds, no. Later sure.

Yep.  Plus how is it hypocrisy to say, "Hey this child isn't developmentally able to handle this."

 So I'm a hypocrite because I don't let my 10 year old drink, too?

[Mithas]

I don't have much to add here other than I agree with Merusk. People without children can definitely have opinions, but I can tell you those opinions might change once you have children. Mine did.