Since everyone is up in arms about DRM around here, I am curious how you guys thing PS4 and Xbox One should go about in implementing security features for gaming without DRM?

Both consoles are X86 architectures that require game installs, so playing off Blurays is not a viable option, not that you would want to anyways due to slow load times...

Having a game bluray in the drive after install while you play is an option, but would you really sacrifice the ability of being able to play any game anywhere anytime without carrying your entire gaming library with you at all times? What about swapping disks? these consoles are supposed to be able to multitask blazingly fast and do things like resume playing a game from a save you reached 2 days ago...How would it look if you resume this save, only for the console to say "Insert disk to continue!"? Not very pretty in my opinion...

What other ideas do we got?

5 installs per copy and then disk implodes?

Stopping all cloud computing and innovation and sticking to physical medium for gaming?

Any other ideas?

With MS's current plans people can install a game on their system using the disk, play the game, uninstall it from their X1 and sell the disk to another person. The other person can then, for a fee install the game on their X1.

We want the fee to be $0. It's as simple as that.

We also want the system to work offline. The online requirement is too strict.

The problem is not that games need to be installed, nor is it that only 1 person can 'own' the game at a time. 

The plain fact of that matter is, they put in a bunch of rules that restrict legitimate owners, and 6 months after launch someone will hack the system so it thinks it is online and talking to MS servers, meanign that those who hack their X1s will not have to deal with the always online shit. The only people who will be hurt by this are legitimate users and publishers.

PS4 doesn'r requires mandatory full game installs that we now of.

Is disc swapping really that much of problem that you would give up your consumers rights for it?

Maybe have some architectures that aren't easy as slicing bread to hack.

Seriously in order to appease 3rd parties Sony and MS made it too simple. Easy for programmer=easy for hackers and pirates. Which means anti-piracy measures are needed, but DRM? Hell no.

The solution is simple, MS has to come clean and say:

"if you want hot swapping of your retail games then you have to install them in the hard drive and have an always online connection sorry but is the only way for hot swapping, if you want to sell your games or lend them to a friend you go to the games menu and hit 'desactive game for this machine' and you can do it yourselves nobody else involved you can desactive them yourselves then you can do with the disc whatever you want and if you want to 'activate' the bits installed on your machine and you don't have the disc then you pay the current digital store price"

"if you don't care about hot swapping then don't install, don't activate the game just put the disc in the console and you can play this way offline too"

With a bit of ingenuity, it should be easy to solve.

How about having each game come with a small dongle that holds ongoing permission to play the associated game. Made very small (think a proprietary variant of Micro-SD), the system could come with a bank of slots for these dongles - 20 should be plenty. The dongle would only hold permission information.

Then, used games would merely require that the permission dongle travel with the game. If you want to play the game at a friend's house, you take the dongle as well as the disc (just the dongle, if you've taken it there before and installed the game already). While the dongle is there, the game will play.

Being proprietary, it wouldn't be trivial to copy the dongle. And with a bank of 20 slots, you'd be able to ensure that pretty much all of your oft-played games are playable immediately. A mechanism for adding further slots could then be set up, so people who want 60 such slots would be able to do it.

This isn't the most streamlined system. But it's a demonstration that it can be done without real DRM.


Another option would be to transition away from ROM-type discs (CD/DVD/BluRay/etc), to something that is at least partially writeable. SD card technology has come a long way. Even "regular" SD cards are able to have a 10MB/s minimum read/write speed (which puts it in a similar speed range to the BluRay drive in the PS3), and UHS SDHC and SDXC cards go over 50 MB/s (as high as 300 MB/s with the newest standard) - and these are "standards", not maximums. And such cards wouldn't be limited by reader tech in the way that BluRay, etc, are. BluRay maxes out at 128 GB for four-layer discs, with current maximum read speeds being around 54 MB/s (That's on a 12x reader).

And with a proprietary card, you could easily have a small writeable portion enabling the system to mark the game as "installed" or "not installed" using a cryptographical method to ensure it's not easily faked. And the cards currently go as high as 2TB.

My point? There are plenty of possible solutions that are not anti-consumer. But they aren't interested in such solutions, because the anti-consumer results are what they care about - limiting used games, limiting the ability to borrow games, getting as much money as they can per copy, etc. It's not about game security, it's about gouging the customer.

I like what you're attempting here, but the reality is that there is no solution that people won't tear apart. Gamers are selfish. Gamers want more freedom and stuff for free. There's no pretty way to do this, no elegant solution. Like birth, it's going to be painful and inevitable, but we'll get through it.

Both of these ideas are quite good...but there are limiting scenarios with both.

For example, if a writable medium was used which tracks install and not installed states, you would need to uninstall the game every time youre going to play it at friends place, or have the card inserted in your machine at all times...back to medium swapping.

With a dongle, youd have to have a unique dongle per game, otherwise you wouldnt be able to resell the game and have the game deactivate on your console...so instead of game swapping, we are dongle swapping.

All in all I think the PC DRM approach works to an extent and if the console guys figure out how to incorporate game trading and resale which by the sound of things is what they are doing, we can hardly call them anti consumer. We will see thoug...whomknows how this will play out.

Heh...maybe this is why Microsoft are presenting to a tv audience. Its like..."you guys buy your hardware, pay monthly subscription for programming and endure 5 minutes of ads every 10minutes. We want to be in business with you fine folk...not those gamig bastards that blast us when we ask them to authenticate a game to ensure its not stolen"

Just implement a tax over trophies, if a gamer buys an used game and he cares about online-trophies, he just has to pay some tax to be able to win trophies or/and play online.

Quantic dream said they had noticed a bigger number of trophies than sold games in Heavy Rain, with this system of online pass applied to trophies, they could have won some extra money with used.