Your Feedback Matters – Update on Xbox One

This takes care of the used games issue but it doesn&#x27;t take care of:<p>- $100 more expensive than PS4.<p>- Kinect always included, always connected and always on. Cannot be removed, disabled or turned off.<p>- Netflix behind Xbox Live Gold paywall, available for free on PS4.<p>Plus other numerous functionality complaints such as it&#x27;s supposed to be the way you watch TV but it isn&#x27;t a DVR, you still need a separate DVR. And it&#x27;s supposed to be the center of your home theater but only has a single HDMI input.

I&#x27;m pretty sure short-sighted consumers&#x2F;gamers shot themselves in the foot on this one, big time. I would have liked to have seen if Microsoft&#x27;s move would have led to cheaper per game pricing like we see on PC. I guess we&#x27;ll never know. I actually respected them for making a ballsy change like this that may have brought the console gaming industry into the Steam era.<p>Also, it now looks like you can no longer share&#x2F;lend&#x2F;give away your games digitally to friends and family, you have to lug a stupid disc around. High fives everyone, hooray!

Someone on HN suggested the theory that Microsoft was only announcing all of the digital restrictions because they were hoping Sony would do the same in this generation (since they aren&#x27;t allowed to collude directly, and it seems a reasonable bet that <i>Sony</i> would up the ante on DRM, as they have historically). But, the theory was that if Sony didn&#x27;t go that direction, they could always back out before the device goes on sale, since it only matters what the policy ends up being, not what it would have been.<p>If that was indeed Microsofts strategy, you can look at this press release as saying &quot;OK, well Sony didn&#x27;t go the way we thought, so we&#x27;re backing off. No harm, no foul&quot;.<p>As evidence that they at least had this route as a contingency plan, you have to think this kind of massive about face in the tech would only be possible if they had built in a &quot;TURN_OFF_CRAZY_DRM&quot; flag or something, just in case.

The reason Microsoft is doing this is not what you think it is. The Xbox is a subscription business. $50&#x2F;year * 46 million subscribers. Microsoft can&#x27;t afford to lose those subscribers.<p>The box, the DRM, media integration, etc. means nothing if they lose those subscribers to the Wii U or PS4. So, don&#x27;t piss off your core customers.<p>Anecdotally, a lot of my friends and family who are longtime Xbox gamers have no intention of buying a $500 DRM laden Xbox 360. Removing a lot of the DRM restrictions still doesn&#x27;t fix the price and now Microsoft already looks a bit foolish for not being very customer friendly in the first place.<p>The &quot;console war&quot; is a long game, but Xbox One didn&#x27;t start out on the right foot for sure.

The quick summary:<p>+ No more needing to connect in every 24 hours to validate your game. It connects once the first time you run it.<p>+ You can now lend, share and sell disc-based games exactly as you can with PS3 and Xbox 360 discs<p>- All other advanced sharing features have been dropped (share with 10 friends&#x2F;family, virtually lend to a friend, etc)<p>- Discs will need to be in the tray to play

Doesn&#x27;t matter to me in the slightest. I was a 360 owner this current gen (coming off of the PS2) but I will leave Microsoft come end of year.<p>I don&#x27;t want or need the vast majority of features they are offering. I live in Bolivia - I don&#x27;t care about the NFL, can&#x27;t watch Netflix or even stream Pandora. The PS4 has more features that I can use and want, is cheaper and doesn&#x27;t come with bullshit DRM.<p>Where&#x27;s the choice?

I&#x27;m a bit disappointed at this change - on one hand, it&#x27;s nice to know that I can share my disc games if I want to. On the other hand though, this effectively means they&#x27;re killing off their disk-less approach to owning&#x2F;installing games. This means that instead of having all my games tied to my account on any device I own, I have to lug my games around with my everywhere I go. This also means picking my vegetative self up off the couch when I want to switch what I&#x27;m playing.

It doesn&#x27;t matter they already showed me what kind of company they are over and over again. The fact that they would try this in the first place says something about them. After all these decades, nothing&#x27;s changed about Microsoft.<p>And don&#x27;t even try to feed me that BS about &quot;companies exist to make money&quot;. No. They. Do. Not. A company exists to create a solution to a problem or fulfill a need. In exchange for providing that to a consumer or user they are rewarded with money. Money is not the goal, it&#x27;s the result of achieving a goal. People don&#x27;t start companies thinking &quot;I&#x27;m going to start a company to make money&quot; . They do however start them by saying &quot;I&#x27;m going to start a company that makes ______ for money&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m just glad this whole thing backfired and I hope they feel the wrath of the gaming community for years. Their entire plan was to kiss the asses of publishers who would in turn make more exclusives for Xbone and the players would have no choice but to get an Xbone. Now that is a dick move.

I guess the massive cheering at the E3 press conference when Sony announced their policy on this scared them pretty good. For me, it was one of the saddest gaming related moments I witnessed. This should be expected, not applauded.

So:<p>1) You still have to have the Kinect, and so long as the console is on it, too, will always be on. (And apparently even when the console is off it will still be listening for the &quot;turn on&quot; command. This has implications I&#x27;m not comfortable with.)<p>2) Independent developers will still be prohibited from participating in the Marketplace.<p>3) It will still be $100 more than the PS4.<p>I&#x27;ve been a 360 owner for several years now. At this time it doesn&#x27;t look like I&#x27;ll be getting the next generation model.

Finally! Let&#x27;s hope that there is no firmware or update that will reverse this policy. The only issue that now remains is that the console is limited to 21 countries.<p>This region-lock limitation prevents me from giving money to Microsoft, which is something they should want actually, and from developing for the console.

The page is loading really slowly, so here&#x27;s the text:<p>Last week at E3, the excitement, creativity and future of our industry was on display for a global audience.<p>For us, the future comes in the form of Xbox One, a system designed to be the best place to play games this year and for many years to come. As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games. We believe in the benefits of a connected, digital future.<p>Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback. I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One.<p>You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world.<p>So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means:<p>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.<p>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.<p>In addition to buying a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions.<p>These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.<p>We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds.<p>Thank you again for your candid feedback. Our team remains committed to listening, taking feedback and delivering a great product for you later this year.

Hopefully the gaming &quot;journalism&quot; industry will stop jerking off the PS4 after this. Any pragmatic-minded individual saw this coming after their E3 fiasco. Not doing so would have been akin to pouring money down the drain.

Personally I think Microsoft will have to drop the price of the xbox one to match the PS4. I think people will look at the Kinect and ask if it&#x27;s really worth paying an extra $100 for. The answer will be a resounding no.

It&#x27;ll be interesting to see how this plays out given the immense amount of damage done already by their out-of-touch policies. It&#x27;s like the SimCity debacle was just somehow ignored over there. Guessing the numerous PS4 pre-orders and the telling Amazon poll finally convinced someone &quot;Hey guys, turns out that DRM policy is killing us, can we please disable it?&quot;<p>An entity that only does the right thing after being publicly ousted is not an entity deserving of the public&#x27;s trust or business.

It&#x27;s interesting to see how the massive backlash elicited such a fast response. I&#x27;m curious as to how such a task is being undertaken at MS headquarters, with developers working overnights, dropping current work to support this pivot, etc. Personally I think it&#x27;s very encouraging and a step in the right direction.

&gt; Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold.<p>They’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater. This sort of flexible licensing doesn’t make sense for disc-based games, but would have worked very well for downloads.

Nice try Microsoft, but you&#x27;re still not getting my money. Not until you do something about your Xbox live ripoff(s).

I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if this flip-flop was planned for some time ago. Same with the iOS7 icons.

Your feedback matters so much we have disabled comments on this page.

I see a Kickstarter opp here - the Xbox Kinect sleep mask.

Weren&#x27;t games supposed to run partly on the cloud ?

Our money matters.

Reposting my earlier comment on the other thread that went off front page:<p>They should rename the Xbox One to the Xbox 180, it would be a perfect name!<p>On a more serious note, I don&#x27;t like this rollback. It only goes to show how the witchhunt and echo chamber on Reddit worked. Even before the reveal, Microsoft was falsely accused of trying to game Reddit and everyone flew off the handle over someone pretty much lying to be a troll. Say the word &quot;DRM&quot; and you get bucketloads of Reddit karma and posts pointing out the facts(forget about posts taking the opposing view or opinion) were downvoted into oblivion by the angry mob.<p>And then there was the bad timing on the NSA leaks, which didn&#x27;t help at all. Everyone has smartphones, laptops and tablets with cameras and mics which could be watching and listening and Apple&#x2F;Google were part of the leak, but it was Microsoft that was singled out for proposing a device that could turn on itself, and had numerous safeguards to configure privacy if you wanted to.<p>All this doesn&#x27;t excuse the fact that Microsoft utterly and totally failed in communicating their message in a proper manner in E3 and handed Sony an easy victory on a silver platter. For example, they failed to highlight how it fixes the problem of scratched and lost discs and how inconvenient it is to change discs to switch between games. I know a lot of people with huge DVD collections who watch the same movie on Netflix because they can&#x27;t be bothered to put in a disc into the player.<p>They were touting the ability to play another game while waiting for people to join another multiplayer game, now that will be inconvenient with having to switch disks.<p>I guess it was easy to roll this back because it was not Microsoft but publishers and game developers that were going to reap the benefits of diskless gaming because Gamestop etc. skim off the value of older games and leave publishers with not much value. Once the public failed to see the advantages and blamed Microsoft for a power grab that was not going to really benefit them all that much, it was game over.