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fordy on 20 June 2013
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badgenome said:
fordy said:

As I mention before, they started off with a vision for a next generation, most likely one not so reliant on physical media, and they tried their best to stick with it, even though as time went on, they probably started to come more and more to the realisation that it couldn't work, but still tried to stick with it, and that's where I think they crossed the line. Was it arrogant? It could be seen that way. Probably not as clear as other cases (though the "No internet? Buy a 360" WAS definately an arrogant "dig your heels in" statement).

Do I think it's wrong to think that Microsoft went the direct "fuck you" route? Absolutely. I'd put it more of them thinking too much on one side without enough thought put into the other side (their idea would have been that developers are happy with the DRM and consumers would be happy with the convenience of not constantly requiring the physical media that the game came one, so everybody's happy, right?)

I guess we're maybe agreeing in the main while disagreeing on the finer points. You just attribute it to incompetence or a vision that got away from them somehow while I attribute it to not giving consideration to anything other than what's good for Microsoft. I don't think Microsoft intended to fuck people over, or felt like they were fucking people over, or that they're a bunch of evil sorcerers conspiring in their dark tower to enslave mankind with their shitty DRM. I just think they simply don't care about consumers at all, as evidenced by the fact that they didn't manage to articulate one single benefit to the consumers that resulted from any one of their new policies. Not a one.

Basically, they thought about what they'd like to do and then half-assedly tried to slap together a PR message to sell it to people, but fortunately everyone (or most everyone) saw it for the glitter-covered turd that it was.

No longer requiring the disc once the medium is installed on the system? I'd call that a fair middleground from reliance of the physical disk and going full-digital. Hell, even my first Steam entries were physical titles that I had purchased and registered through Steam, before I started moving towards the cheaper, digital option, so I can see it as Microsoft's attempt to move in a direction, but not burn it's bridges by going all-out (not to mention the loss of retail advertising in-store).

The family sharing thing is still an area that needs thought, because there's too many factors to take into consideration on both sides. Will it affect sales of games that have a short amount of gameplay? Will people be forming informal family trees just for the benefit of playing games they didn't buy? the problem is, both sides are trying to gain ground in digital distribution compared to physical media. The problem stems from the platform being finite (ie. A push for developers equals a loss for consumers, and vice versa). It was an interesting idea, but once again, shortsighted in the many different situations with ownership already established in gaming.