Heavy words to say before the system comes out, but if IGN isn’t lying and really verified the information they just published, Microsoft could be starting knee deep in their own shit.
In their video and article released tonight, IGN has revealed that a site called VGLeaks has released screens from the Durango Xbox Development kit and that they have verified the source and that these really are what the site claims it is. And while the screens show some nice features have been applied, the big news is very very bad for gamers who wanted to keep their gamer score.
Documentation within the screens point to the new machine requiring games to be installed onto the hard drive to play and using the disc only as a means to transfer the game to the hard drive. Playing from the disc is not going to be a choice you have.
I'm not the first to suggest this, but what I see in this is DRM, limiting your game to either your console or your XBL account… in essence, the END OF USED XBOX GAMES. And for console gaming, neither we, nor the common console gamer who buys used to save cash, can begin to approve of this. Our disapproval ultimately doesn’t matter, since it is based on the lowering of prices in a closed market combined with the ability to preserve games for others to play years later. BUT the gamers who want used games will leave in droves should this be true.
All I can say is Microsoft better hope their gamerscore addicts are as addicted as they believe… otherwise, they could well have just handed the living room to Nintendo and Sony and made room for Valve to get in easily.
Although it doesn't specifically give any details about anti-used-game technology, it would seem a reasonably safe bet that they're heading in that direction with mandatory installs and always-online connections (hence DRM most likely); combine this with the way Sony danced around the question when directly asked whether the PS4 will do anything to curb used games, and you start to get a pretty grim picture of the next console generation.
ReplyDeleteI do not consider myself a 'gamer', but rather a Video Game Hobbyist. I play and enjoy nearly all genres of video game from all periods of video game history, from the Atari games of the late 70s to the modern blockbuster releases. I am not by any means the only one of my kind, to this day the Nintendo Entertainment System from 1985 is going strong amongst people that actually care about video games as an entertainment medium with a history.
Nearly 30 years after its original retail release, the NES is still going strong in the second-hand market, with hardware and software still retaining substantial value if they're in good shape.
If the next console generation takes steps to eliminate or even just reduce the value of second-hand games, it will be the death of the console video game market. It will be the video game crash of the early 80s all over again, an industry destroyed by its own greed and hubris.
The average person these days doesn't consider most games to be worth the $60 asking price. That's why the second-hand market is so huge. New releases no longer give me anything I can't get in a used release, in terms of packaging or manuals or neat includes -- they've tried to replicate that simply by taking the game they have and chopping off parts of it if you didn't buy new. Video games used to be about ADDED value for the new buyer, not DIMINISHED value for the second-hand buyer.
Even beyond the implications of the current market, cutting off used games also cuts off historical preservation of your platform. If I can't find and play copies of a system's games 15 years on, I won't care about that system. People remember and cherish these old systems because they can still play those games on that hardware today. By eliminating that possibility, this will become the Lost Generation of consoles.