| Legend11 said:
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You've completely missed the point. Buying a console for $300+ is a barrier for entry. Selling your console is hassle. Sending it back for a refund is hassle. Both cost the customer in time.
Downloading Steam is free: Don't like it? Delete it or just ignore it. Even better, choose from multiple rival services. No hassle, no significant loss of time for the customer, more options.
And a PC's is capable of multiple tasks, not just gaming so most people already have one. But even if you did buy a PC for gaming, you have multiple rival services all on the same platform that a console doesn't have by nature of being a closed system.
People compare Steam and Xbox One's DRM but fail to acknowledge the fundamental differences between PC and console gaming. I've copied a post from a previous thread but the points are the same:
1. There is no cost of entry with Steam. You already have PC or Mac hardware and you can download Steam for free. The actual puchases cost money but the service is free at the point of entry (and can remain free in its entirety if you only play F2P titles). Xbox One is a console where you have to pay in excess of $300 before you can access any content.
2. Related to 1, on PC, Steam isn't the only service available. Off the top of my head there's also gog.com, GMG, Origin and GFWL. All are free at point of entry and competing for the same consumers. This drives the different services to provide sales and lower prices.
3. On PC there are plenty of workarounds for people who don't want to use Steam. You can purchase a game on Steam and download a crack to play fully offline whilst having all the advantages of keeping the game tied to your account. Or you can use a different service altogether that has less restrictive DRM.
4. On Steam, I can play games I've purchased from many years in the past. I have Half-Life 2 from release on there as well as older games from earlier generations. With XBone, when the next generation ends, what happens if the hardware is no longer compatible (e.g. due to another change in chip architecture)? The XBone can't play 360 games, so games that are tied to an account are not going to translate across generations as they do with Steam/PC. The next part of this is what happens when MS turn off the XBone based servers? Are those games going to be accessible at all?
5. PC and console markets are quite different and have diverged a fair bit. Digital took off on PC because normal retailers greatly reduced the amount of PC games on their shelves. There was a gap in the market that digital services fulfilled so players are/were more forgiving. However, it's not like people don't still complain about this, but as I said in point 3, workarounds and competitors exist due to the open nature of PC.
Plus, second-hand sales have never been a big element of PC games and the sharing of games has gradually reduced since the late 90s (well, legitimate sharing). On consoles, second-hand sales and game sharing have been a big part of the consumer ecosystem for the last 20+ years that MS are suddenly saying will completely change on XBone. It's a forced consumer change rather than a natural one.
Essentially, this DRM system in Xbox One is taking the very worst aspects of PC gaming with very few of the benefits.
