Xbox 720 to use always-on DRM?
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Does anyone else think the author is being a tad bit naive here?
http://www.joystiq.com/2005/11/08/playstation-3-wont-play-us...
But over time people will just get used to it and accept it much like they go along with almost everything else. I remember a time in the PC gaming world that if a game didn't work once installed then all hell would break out in the company's forums and in the gaming news. These days? Several games that require always-on connections such as MMOs have had outages the first week of release and most have just shrugged their shoulders. That kind of thing is almost expected these days and not many care. Sure, there's a vocal few that complain about it but once the problems are sorted out then people tend to forget they couldn't play their game for the first two or three days after paying for it.
My thought on why this is likely not true is because even today it would be quite a stretch to expect enough of the market to be able to provide an always-on connection. Take the US for instance, how many people who currently have a 360 couldn't get the next console simply because they don't the proper connection to support it?
Plus, why is always-on DRM necessary for consoles when we've heard from the industry for years that the reason they focus on consoles is because piracy is almost non-existent on those platforms?
Is it to prevent used game sales? I understand the thinking since not only do publishers not get a piece of the used game sales transaction but the console manufacturer doesn't get a piece of it either like they do from new games through licensing fees. But they might as well hold up a sign that says, "Hey customers! Please sue us!" Plus Gamestop, and others, would likely get involved since it would hit their bottom line quite severely. It's great for the publishers that somehow they've convinced enough of the courts that a EULA allows them to cancel out people's first sale doctrine rights but if they prevent used game sales on such a scale then I guarantee that people will buy less and rent more. I expect publishers to go after rental companies next.
Or they'll partner with rental outlets, and we'll see digital game rentals similar to digital movie rentals. We already see pseudo-rental DLC in free-to-play games.
On the same thought, if a publisher somehow gets around the console manufacturer's wall and offer rentals themselves, somehow, then why would they share with a third party?
That said, this pretty much rules out using the XBox at the beautiful camp in the middle of nowhere.
And I didn't pirate it, either. I've never really got into any of the Diablo games, but there was so much hype around 3 and so many people looking forward to it that I figured I'd give it a shot. But then even two weeks after the release there were still problems with it and I just sort of lost interest.
There are so many good games on so many platforms these days that to buy something you can't play because of artificial limitations just seems colossally stupid. Yeah, so I missed out on Diablo 3. No big deal.
Has anyone ever really done a proper study into lost sales via DRM? It seems like half the industry has just accepted it as something they have to do, and they don't want to know or even care if it affects their bottom line positively or negatively.
I have a feeling I won't be playing the new Simcity either. In the past, I may have tried to pirate it. Now? I'll just ignore it.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-intern...
This all seems like linkbaity rumor to me, Microsoft doesn't really have a business case to go to always on DRM and risk turning off a segment of their customers (some customers won't care and would buy regardless). I don't think Blizzard or Ubisoft would consider not building for the XBox platform if Microsoft refused to support always on DRM so Microsoft isn't beholden to the game studios.
Remember that time, way back in the 90s/00s, when you said you wouldn't want a device that could track you anywhere? Using iCloud's Find my iPhone?
That's a rather disturbing trend. I'd be rather upset if I couldn't play any console games at my remote cabin for example, or in an RV while traveling, or to kill time while my comcast connection is down.
This is just a typical "DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!@#$" reaction. In 5 years we most likely won't care, and the vocal minority will continue to talk about how gaming is ruined.
Admittedly, it can be a little temperamental about it unless you've got it set up just right, but that's its intent nonetheless.
Steam itself can work without a connection.
Lots of people saying "I would never buy the system if they support that", but in all likely hood any gamer would probably give in for the latest shiny consoles regardless of the used game restrictions. Maybe it wouldn't be a day-one purchase, but Sony and Microsoft don't care about that in the long term.
For the former, always-on DRM is already being used to severely curtail the avenues for redress available to purchasers. For example, one of the major consumer protections available today is to dispute fraudulent charges on your credit card if the merchant is uncooperative. However, try this with Steam, and you may find your entire account locked out, including completely unrelated, legitimate purchases. You essentially lose your right to third-party arbitration of disputes.
The latter is more vague, but it seems likely that emulating bygone titles from today is going to be a lot harder than emulating bygone titles of the 80s is.
Some of these articles have combined these two rumors to form a new rumor:
It will require a permanent internet connection to play games.
At least the original reasons given for always on were not DRM related.
The DRM/used game blocking was going to be implemented by one-time-use codes for every game that served no purpose but to activate the game.
Sadly I'm not so sure about that.
I would definitely skip it though, but not that many people really care.
Blizzard is one of the few companies who cares about that sort of thing.
For example, the idea that you don't own the software you paid for, but are in fact licensing it, is fairly standard these days. Once it was crazy to think that you couldn't buy software, use it for a while, and then sell it to someone else when you no longer wanted it. These days it's quite standard to think that kind of thing a quaint notion. How has that made things better for the consumer?
From that simple idea that you don't own software but are licensing its use from the company has led us to the notion that you no longer have first-sale doctrine of the product you paid for. What's the next possible step? Whatever it is, I expect it will not be of benefit to consumers.
The big games companies will then all make these contracts but include clauses that prevent them from making similar deals with smaller distributors.
Probably not great for the consumer in the long run either if it leads to an effective monopoly in online games.
Making games bigger does not have to be that much more expensive , especially if you start adding stuff like 1080p video.
Yes, a lot of people have gotten so cynical they haven't noticed, no sarcasm, but many consumer internet connections over the past few years have simply gotten better, without much fanfare. I believe right now my mid-grade Comcast connection is now primarily speed limited by my wireless router, rather than the Internet connection itself. This was not true when I signed up for it four years ago. I still have a 250GB/month cap (which I still only come about 33% of the way to using) but I wouldn't be surprised that grows sometime before the XBox720 gets out there.
It seems like games have been shipping less video as the in-game engines become more and more capable. Game companies were already straining to fill the disk in this generation, I think in the next generation it is very likely to be game company resources that are the limiting factor rather than bandwidth concerns.
I suspect you're just chanting the Standard DRM Cant. It does not apply here. The Standard DRM Cant has a prerequisite, which is that all the content is local. DRM on movies doesn't work, because the act of consuming a movie requires that it be in front of you, in its totality. That is not true of a program; arbitrary amounts of it may live in the cloud. It is true that they can't stop you from recording your playthrough of the game, or recording the results of whatever algorithms they left in the cloud, but they darned well can stop you from having a full, real copy of the code in the cloud, and by the nature of it being in the cloud, they will control access to it. You may briefly fool their auth systems, but the balance of power is actually on their side, not yours. Just as DRM doesn't work on movies because the content in question must somehow be in your hands, your "crack" isn't going to work because the content is still in their hands.
We have things like always on DRM to block used game sales, various softwares that phone home, dongles, and lets not forget of the infamous lawsuit of Autodesk against a guy that sold some copies of their software that he had legally obtained.
Of course, this is one of the main reasons behind the cloud push, making software become a service instead of a product.
But I don't trust it, I prefer a world where software, is a product, not necessarily tangible, download only is fine, but you should be allowed to truly own it, otherwise you are vulnerable to it being yanked from you, like Amazon yanked books from Kindles.
When you give somebody is a paperback book it is fundamentally a "move" operation. When you give somebody a software program it is fundamentally a "copy" operation so the original owner still has it.
The only way to simulate a move operation is to follow the copy operation very shortly with a delete operation on the original media. Of course if you are copying data from a device that you own then the manufacturer or media owner has no way of knowing if that delete operation really happened.
So they try and work around this with increasingly sophisticated methods to force a delete operation. However these are usually not effective against a determined attacker, so the easiest thing to do is simply to disallow the move operation altogether.