More details here as to what is expected to be dropped. Not sure that I expected Microsoft to drop any of it but the one I definitely didnt expect was the region lock seeing as people were more concerned with the other aspects of the X1's DRM. http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/microsoft-to-pull-complete-reversal-on-xbox-one-dr/1100-4673/
Update: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360. Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360. -- Thanks Microsoft for "giving us back" the liberties we've enjoyed for well over 2 millenia - the freedom to do what we want with our own property. Too little too late you draconian money whores.
Got to say well done even if some of the policies were over the top in the 1st place, not many large corps have the balls to backtrack like this.
you'll find that they got a nagging from the EU and some other trade consortiums around the world where they said "you can't sell your product in our region with those restrictions". I honestly doubt microsoft would backtrack on public opinion alone, but i'm a cynical *******.
Not surprised personally. I feel like they had to make some major changes after their terrible press recently. The next few months up until release will be spent trying to win back everyone who is now leaning towards PS4.
While I do agree in some sense, it wouldnt surprise me if public opinion was the main factor in this If the EU had an opinion we'd know about it after all, the EU bosses seem to spend most of their time spouting their mouths off trying to get noticed.
Hilarious, I must now go and rewatch all the lies and justification they came up with when they announced this in the first place.
Anyone else annoyed that this breaks the diskless play and ability to login elsewhere and play all your games elsewhere?
Now you just need to take the disc with you. Saves logging in and downloading it if you want to play it somewhere else .
The only benefit I could see from the DRM would have been the impossibility to fence stolen games... ...and that's about the only positive!
I recall some people saying that Sony only used the DRM issues that MS had announced as a PR stunt and that it was really no big deal as Sony would probably introduce some DRM of their own in the future, but MS obviously seem to have been very rattled by it all to do such a turn around. I still find it rather strange that Sony managed to get such a drop on MS, Sony may well have been going to implement DRM themselves with the PS4 but were obviously well prepared to drop it and turn the tables on MS if they announced DRM which is what Sony did. I wonder if Sony had initially announced DRM and experienced the same back lash that MS has if MS would have done the same as Sony and announced they were not using any DRM, I don't think MS would have done that because they really had the DRM all sorted but in their infinite wisdom they completely underestimated the back lash
It still wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft is stage managing all of this to a greater or lesser extent. As has been suggested elsewhere, no publicity is bad publicity, and if MS are seen to have taken a U-turn on all of their most unpopular policies they will suddenly be lauded as a great choice after all. Unlikely but not impossible. Remember, don't believe the hype. I'm sure half of the "facts" floating around the web originated on Reddit and 4chan.
Quite simply MS misjudged the whole situation. I think they must have been confident that either Sony were going to announce similar restrictions or that they thought the hype of their console would overshadow them. Either way they got it wrong and in the meantime showed a lot of arrogance. Although I would be tempted to applaud them for the u-turn, I suspect that their execs thought that some serious damage had been done to potential sales and hence this reaction. Like Gunsmith I detest their arrogance over the last few weeks and I remain sceptical of their future motives and will probably be less likely to own an XBO. I haven't read the links to be honest, so don't know if they are going to address the pricing as well.
Some very large companies that weren't going to be included in the approved resellers list may have been on the phone. Or Microsoft looked at the pre-order numbers and realised what a loser they were onto. Either way, the console war is back on for another year!
It will of course also affect the game sharing side of things, either way it dosnt bother me as the games that I want are on the X1 so I wouldve bought it regardless but I know that there will be a lot of happy people now.
The consoles world of sticking your foot in the bathwater and realising it's too hot. I suspect the damage has been done though, a bit like sticking the same foot in to test the water after you've run the cold tap for a while. That will be alright. Net result, you burn your bum.
Yeah, I think they just saw Steam's total dominance of the PC platform, with its always-online requirement, its game downloads and its login-based PC-independent cloud storage system and thought, "let's do that, but for consoles". They failed to factor in that for PC gamers, Steam was a relief because it came after ten years of horrible DRM, endless bugs, glitches, patches, crashes to desktop, incompatibilities, scratched discs and CD keys. After the gauntlet of shite the PC platform had been dragged through, Steam was a huge relief (and we didn't care about the always-online requirement because, if you had a PC, you usually had a good internet connection too). By contrast, consoles have always been an easy, instant insert-medium-and-play platform, often for people without a decent internet connection or on a lower budget. Going to always-online, login-based, download-based methods from that would be a huge step backwards for console gamers, and to implement it would be to miss the point of why people buy consoles in the first place - to avoid all this invasive, complicated crap and just have a platform that's simple and ready-to-go. Microsoft seem to have a knack lately for reinventing wheels that nobody wanted reinventing, responding to imaginary customer demands that weren't being made by any customers. Nobody wanted an always-online console (except Microsoft, who gain money and control) just as nobody wanted a touch-optimized desktop OS (except Microsoft, who want in on that future market). In both cases, you could see it as Microsoft placing their own interests above those of their customers - behaving like a typical large business, in other words.
Steam does NOT have an always online requirement. I wish people would stop spreading that tripe around. As for Microsoft changing their policy, it doesn't surprise me. They already backed off a bit earlier when they first proclaimed that it would require a constant connection to play and then switched their story to once a day authentication. Too little too late I think. I really doubt many people will cancel their PS4 pre-orders in order to go back to M$.
