Nik Wood writes about the rumour of Microsoft moving to "one consumer games" and the widespread effect it would have,
Hanzla from eXputer inquires: "If Xbox can care about preserving its games and legacy, what exactly is wrong with Nintendo, trying to kill game preservation single-handedly?"
Ahh yes the good old game preservation of saving all your games to a removable hhd on the Xbox 360, taking it round your mates house, setting up multiple tvs to
Be met with “save data corrupted, please re download”
Or how about removing 360 games
From the store
, download them now or else, and, better hope to god that save data doesn’t corrupt, or it’s lost for ever
Nice one ☝️
This is just a scammy PR move to distract from the fact they are going digital only and trying to push streaming and subscriptions only.
No gaming company has pushed harder to remove ownership than Microsoft.
Without discs there is no preservation, preservation can't be done by the rights holders it can only be done by the consumers, anything else is a lie.
Nobody wants this. Sales or the lack of it in the case of XBOX is very telling. I wonder how the adorably all digital series X will fare. Adorably dismal perhaps?
Only time will tell, but for from someone like me suspecting that Xbox is trying to gracefully exit the console market, that "forward compatibility" team is trying to get Xbox games playing on Windows PCs. I mean, it's nice that they're not planning on exiting with a "enjoy your games while the hardware still works" message, so that's nice. They still have a brand to protect via Microsoft so probably feel obligated to have a better exit strategy.
Microsoft's future in the video game space is murky right now, so let's break it all down.
Not anytime soon. But they're on that path.
One thing not mentioned in the article is Microsoft's money bags. If Sega had Microsoft's money, they would have still been around as a hardware manufacturer. Xbox as a platform only survives because of the money bags. They can continue making consoles for the core and port to PC.
The multiplatform strategy is only the result of arrogance and misguided leadership that blew up in their face. They thought gamers would jump on Xbox in droves if they knew that many of their favorite games would be only on Xbox. But that's not happening at all. Sales didn't increase. They decreased. Why? Because the dumb asses thought giving away these expensively made games in a cheap service would also turn the tide.
Gamers on other platforms are willing to buy quality. They don't need to be handed nearly free games in a service that aren't even finished and sometimes average in their development. Gamers buy Nintendo games. They buy Sony games. Microsoft groomed their base to not buy games. Even the quality ones. It has always been their plan to go digital. But most gamers still like single player gaming. Still like physical releases.
Microsoft's problem has always been that they don't produce high quality games at the same output as Nintendo and Sony. Actually, they should be producing quite a lot more because they're worth over 2 TRILLION. How they don't have more is ridiculous and no excuse. Buying publishers to take away from competition only backfired. Because it still takes millions of dollars to continue to make those games from the publishers they snatched. Their only choice was to crawl back to their competitors to help sustain those developers because Nintendo and Sony platforms were the ones buying games.
Am I sorry for Microsoft? Hell no! They deserved last place for putting in the least effort. They deserved the fallout for buying up the industry and didn't make a single blip on the radar against their competitors where they now need those same gamers they took away games from to support them. Part of it may have been to cash in on their competition. But the result is the slow death of their platform. They may go 3rd party. They may keep making hardware. I don't give a shit about them to worry about it. I only give a shit about the destructive nature of their industry moves that only negatively affect gamers. They could sell and drop out of the industry and I wouldn't blink. Probably laugh. But not blink. They deserve whatever comes to them. At least Sega put in the effort when it came to games. They just had poor leadership. Microsoft has poor leadership and barely makes memorable games. That's a killer combination. And not in a good way.
Not sure about that. It's been two decades and I still think about Power Stone, Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Seaman and others, but I'm not sure I'll remember Xbox Series X/S games in a few years from now... Maybe I'll remember about the franchises that the Xbox brand spawned, but I don't believe that the Xbox Series lives up to the late Dreamcast or even to the Xbox name itself. I do have great memories about the 360 with Blue Dragon, Gears 2 and Lost Odyssey though
No, Dreamcast was ahead of it's time and most still have very fond memories of it that had one. It also had some good games on it even in it's short lifespan. Xbox has none of these qualities.
Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox will be discontinued in April and has confirmed that weekly streaks will also be coming to an end.
This guy doesn't seem to realize that the reason console hardware is so cheap, is because its sold at a loss, or nearly break-even, after the retail cut is factored in.
I'm not supporter of MS'es One Consumer strategy, but I can say that selling hardware is NOT one of the ways they make money. Nintendo is the ONLY company to manage such a feat in the past 8 years, because they sell aging tech for relatively high prices. The DS, Wii, 3DS, and likely the Wii U, all follow this model.
The X360, OTOH, is a bargain at $199.99, as is the PS3 at $249.99. The Wii is probably not worth more than about $99, but Nintendo retails it for $149.99 -- heck, they don't even pay DVD royalties, like the PS2 does.
Nintendo aside, NO hardware manufacturer makes money on selling hardware. They get *everything* from software and accessories. Hence, MS's business plan.
I still don't like it, but that's the truth of the matter.
This article uses the same, tired arguments, trying to compare the games industry to film and cars, without respecting the details of not having to, for example, by replacement parts for you game, or paying to get it serviced from another company who pays service licensing fees, and sometimes needs to buy OEM parts. It also doesn't consider that films come out, and make a huge portion of their income, 6+ months before they are allowed to be sold as used titles at all, or that hardcover books (which are out a good year before paperback) are incredibly difficult to pawn off as used items at reasonable prices, relative to paperbacks.
There are NO parallels to the bad-for-publishers-and-devs financial model of the games industry. I don't like MS'es brute force approach, but there DO need to be some regulations on used RETAILERs. If they can't return some % of the used sale to the publisher, then there should at least be an embargo on used sales for 6 months after a games release... or something. The %-cut wouldn't hurt consumers AT ALL. I don't know why people even complain about such a concept.
Ugh. More of this nonsense about used games making gaming affordable and comparisons between games and cars.
First of all, unless you're buying the dirt cheap under-$30 used games from GameStop, you have absolutely no business crying about used games making gaming affordable. Practically every game NEW aside from Call of Duty drops to $30 or less within eight to twelve months.
Second, vehicles deteriorate. Games don't. If I walk into GameStop and buy Call of Duty 2 for 360, it's guaranteed to work just as well in 2012 as it did in 2005. Unless someone can just as easily find me a car that's been used since 2005 that a dealer guarantees is in the exact same condition as it was when it was driven off the lot, the comparison between games and vehicles is nonsense. The condition of used cars helps drive new vehicle purchases. A dented DVD case and missing manual doesn't do the same to encourage new game sales in the same way a used vehicle's condition and life expectancy does for new car sales.
And third, MS isn't going to block used games flat out. They would be insane to do so. I'm sure GameStop would gladly sell a next-gen Xbox with the "feature", but selling customers a console that can play used games will be their priority to ensure their used business stays as big as possible. If Sony or Nintendo consoles could play used games, which console do you think GameStop would push harder?
At worst, it will be some kind of $10 activation fee to play a used game on a console that isn't already registered to an account with the rights to play it.
I think Microsoft might piss off the customer more than anything if they adopted the one game feature. That would be the worse feature on the next gen console Microsoft already has the history with the RROD this one time game feature. Would go down in Microsoft history as the worse thing ever making the RROD a thing of the past. They want people to buy the next gen console and with the rumor of the one time game feature floating around people are getting angry or scarred. Personally unless Microsoft announces the one time game feature I am not going to believe this rumor. I can see an online pass that Sony is doing and EA are doing it as well. But right now rumors about the next gen consoles are just rumors. Sony and Microsoft are keeping tight lips about their next projects because nothing ruins a secret more then when your competitors know your secrets.
Microsoft would have no problem with this considering they shove ads onto the consoles of people who actually pay for P2P multiplayer.
I hardly buy used games but if any console maker takes this rout, I will not buy the console until that feature is removed...
Don't like used game sales cause you don't get a cut? Then open your own damn stores and sell them to compete against g-stop and others.
I don't feel bad at all when I check games on demand and I see games like blood on the sand for 50 bucks and a bunch of other games that have no business being over $20.