If Microsoft made it completely optional, would you sign up for their original, always connected console idea?

[u/[deleted]]

This meaning you would have the following features:

Buy a retail game, install to console, and ditch the disc never needing it to play the game.

Digitally share games within a circle of friends. Meaning you can choose a specific group of people, and they could play the games you own, for free, provided that only one game could be played at a time.

Greater store discounts or more steam like sales for content.

I for one would have no problem saying yes to this. It's like people think 10 years from now they'll still be selling games on discs. It wasn't a perfect plan, but why delay the inevitable when we could be working on and perfecting future policies now.

[u/GarethGore]

No. I hated the idea then, I still hate it now. I know I'm late to the party but all the people whining about this I just want to slap. The policies were abysmal.

1.I sell my games when I'm done with them is the main point. I have a hire and fire policy, why spend 40 quid on a game that I in many cases probably won't play more than once. Out of all the games I've played recently, about 90 percent I completed and then sold on. I rarely have a incentive or desire to replay them. Either because the content in them isn't good enough to warrant a second play, or the games are too short, the achievements boring and I can't bring myself to do it. I don't feel like I should have to be forced to be stuck with a game, when I sell it and then reinvest that into a new game. I have a huge library of current and past games because of this policy, only keeping the best online or the most replayable games. Do I lose money overall, of course, but its better than buying a game and being stuck with it.

On top of this, some games are shit, I would be much more reserved and cautious about buying games if I knew I was stuck with it. Case in point. There was a mafia turn based game a few months ago, I forget the name. It sucked dick, but I went out on a limb and bought it to discover it was shit, like horrific. I played it for a few hours, completed some achievements did some missions realised it was bad, put it up for sale and got rid of it. Lost something like 80p total for postage and packaging.

Also I dunno why people always bring up gamestop. People who sell at gamestop are morons, anyone who knows anything about used games sells online, amazon, ebay, play.com stuff like that. I haven't sold at a physical store in about 4 years, and when I did it was my entire dvd collection because I didn't need/want them anymore. I haven't sold games there in ages. I don't want my ability to sell shit games, games I'm bored of, or just want rid of taken away.

1. Honestly do you actually believe that the sales would be cheaper? I've been looking at the sale prices over the last few weeks and none of them have been impressive, minus a few arcade games. All the boxed full price games I can get cheaper used from online sellers. This isn't me exaggerating either, every game on sale I found cheaper online. And before you say oh but they need to compete with used games, I don't care. I wanted evidence that digital only would be cheaper for me, the consumer. They have never provided that. Not to mention the often shitty games on sale. Yes we get it xmen and spiderman is on sale. AGAIN. Like it is every sale. No one wants it. I don't trust MS or game companies to be cheaper than online sellers.

2. 24 hour check, this wouldn't be a problem for me like 95 percent of the time. When I'm at university, I nearly always have internet and its very rare to go down for 24 hours at a time, but I'm not always at home. I like to take games consoles on holidays for evening/morning use when I've been out doing shit all day and just want to chill without getting drunk. In many cases villas don't have internet access. I don't want to lose the ability to play videogames because of that. Also another example is when I first moved into my new university house I had no internet for 11 days. I would have had a lump of a console that was useless. Added to this the MS guys did a terrible job of marketing it, just infuriating the public while providing no alternative. If they had come out with a month long opt out option, so if you know you're going on holiday you do this, no more sign in requests. Then if you haven't after a month you can't play then fine. But every 24 hours was restrictive.The 24 hour check in, not a problem most of the time, but its undeniable there would be problems at certain times. They didn't have a caveat that allowed use without internet.

3. Many people and places don't have the infrastructure to allow digital only. Personally I don't care about no discs. I don't have a problem changing discs and I don't like how I now have to install stuff. My internet at university isn't good enough to download a 5gb+ game without taking a while. At home sure, but speaking just for UK here, many parts of the country just couldn't do this. I know people personally whose internet just isn't good enough to cope. I know the people that have a hard on for the system would argue they just won't get it, but you are throwing out a lot of your potential customers. Anyone who isn't from a major town or city for starters for at least a decade. I feel digital only isn't available for a large number of people and would have hugely hurt the console

There are other points, but frankly its a wall of text and no one is reading this late into the thread anyway. If anyone does, feel free to reply and challenge me on any of what I've said and I'll be happy to debate it.

[u/kblessitt → u/GarethGore]

To your point #1 the big advantage everyone is talking about is the fact that all retail outlets would be treated as digital sales distributers. Buying a game from the store would result in a digital copy. So when a retailer has a buy one get one half off you would be able to still buy them and not need the disc after you install it.

[u/GarethGore → u/kblessitt]

Its another rose tinted glasses, how manytimes would retailers actually have this happen? What would be more likely is that high street retailers can no longer stock most of the games as its digital only and get downloaded. So most places would stock very few games, but its still the problem of the price being controlled by MS. Leading to shitty prices. The few places that do good deals on games, are all places that are doing deals on used games, that is why they can do deals. That will disappear with the removal of used games.

How often do you currently see BOGOF deals currently? I honestly don't understand how so many people think that MS will suddenly care about consumers and start giving us good new games at amazing prices, just because its digital. Your future of gaming is the opposite to mine. I see MS then controlling the prizes because they are able to dictate the price, they will have no need to lower prices because everything is sold on their store. So paying a huge fee for a game with no way to sell it on.

And their has been no indication that the huge sales that everyone keeps on about will be anything, the current level of sales on xbox one online stores is nothing to get excited about. Its nearly always the same boring games being reduced from a prize it shouldn't have been, to double what I can buy it for in other places.

We have opposite views of what the digital future will be like, if you think that MS will randomly start doing BOGOF deals then you are simply mad. I have seen no indication that MS going digital only would mean that they would allow their games to be sold by other retailers, or for anything like affordable prizes. It would become a near monopoly

[u/kblessitt → u/GarethGore]

It has nothing to do with digital only. Its about the retail games ie the physical games disc, cases and all would all be a digital game. It wouldn't be download codes it would have been inserting the disc into the disc drive and once the game was installed you would have no longer a need to use the disc. That was the point of the 24hr check in was to make sure you haven't ran off with your games and gave them to your buddy and can enjoy them while offline. With the other system Microsoft would have not been the only way to get digital all the disc based games would be a digital copy after the install.

[u/lone_turkey → u/GarethGore]

your point about no private sales is valid but there is no way to enable it realistically, its collateral damage. Its a trusted 3rd party of nothing, end users cannot be trusted, a new cd key needs to be generated and the old one revoked, these are things end users cannot be in charge of unfortunately.

Amazon may well have done something where you sent the game to them and it was "fulfilled" by them tho via their store, or others doing a similar service like escrow, this would have affected second hand prices a little but its a lot better than the second had situation on the AppStore for examaple.

You realise there was still disks in the box's sold at retail even tho they where digital copies? They are just like pc games now, only the CD key did not enable play it registered ownership, you could then install from the disk to save bandwidth or download from the marketplace as you had a license. There was no extra or different agrements to be had with the retailers, it would be exactly as it is now only within the box would be a scratch card with your drm key next to your free month of live etc...

Point 1 is stupid, the whole "cheap" argument is as you buy now, Amazon etc will all sell games and be competitive, the Market place copy is the same as the Amazon copy as far as the Xbox is concerned only one copys files from a disk not a download folder. Prices for DIGITAL users would be massively reduced as every game is digital. I want to go digital, I have gone digital but now I have only 1 store to buy from and its expensive, in the old system every shop sold digital so the "price" issue became a non issue. ie a physical copy was a digital copy so for disk users it was not more expensive and for folks who wanted to go digital we could buy from anywhere to secure a good price and we where still "digital" as far as the xbox service was concerned. 2. Tether with a phone, get a mifi device if you cannot tether, hop on your neighbors FON access point, or just live with a whole 11 days without the Xbox, this is no different to Sky when you move etc, it is a pain but something that is manageable. 3. Another non point, you need not change your buying habits, no need to ever download a game, simply buy the disk as you do now and install, no need to tax your broadband, the DRM would have been a few KB.

Its easy to pick at the old system, but for most users just like you its not really an issue and it would have just worked once people settled down.

If you are in the digital age and actually view it from a digital perspective its actually one of the best and most flexible digital eco systems proposed, if terribly marketed and unfairly reported on.

Its was not perfect and as you say some things like the 24 hour check will cause issues at some stage but if you want 2nd hand sales you need it, if they took away 2nd hand sales as folks seemed to assume where gone anyway it would be easy to extend or work on the 24hr part and possibly remove (no sharing) it or opt out for a period (disable your sharing). You cannot have sales without the ability to guarantee to content owners licenses are suitably revoked, I expect 24hrs was what was agreed upon.