Xbox One's DRM puportedly explained by "Xbox engineer"

http://www.neowin.net/news/anonymous-xbox-engineer-explains-drm-and-microsofts-xbox-one-intentions

>It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm rubbish as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted rubbish.
>Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.

 

[dirtyvu]

It also pisses me off that my collection of XBL arcade titles aren't compatible with the Xbox One. Basically I just lost everything I bought and even though there are more XBLA games I want, there is no way I'm buying them now.

you plan on throwing away your 360?

 

[pparks1]

It's a bit of a pain to have to have two consoles hooked up. I would want to remove my 360 if I were to get an Xbox one.

 

[vram]

It also pisses me off that my collection of XBL arcade titles aren't compatible with the Xbox One. Basically I just lost everything I bought and even though there are more XBLA games I want, there is no way I'm buying them now.

you plan on throwing away your 360?

Who wants to have an old system hooked up when you buy its successor?? I don't think it would've killed them to include the 360's SOC to facilitate backwards compatibility. What it comes down to is they're lazy and cheaped out. They pretty much confirmed my predictions about digital only purchases when they decided those weren't going to be carried over.

The era of owning games/collecting games is officially over.

 

[dirtyvu]

okay, now there's kind of a double talk going on. you talk about the era of owning/collecting games. and then you want a successor that doesn't require the old system. and you want to replace the old system.

backwards compatibility is not something that is common in the console arena. some old systems had backwards compatibility through peripherals. the PS3 temporarily had backwards compatibility. the Wii temporarily had backwards compatibility. both systems had it removed later in their lifetimes. the 360 had "backwards compatibility" but it was through emulation and we know emulation is never that great. people kept saying that the 360 had backwards compatibility but no one actually used it. well, Halo 2. but really, people moved on.

a collector keeps his systems. I still have my Atari Lynx. I still have my Atari Jaguar. I still have my original Xbox, my PS2, and my origianl Playstation.

I plan to keep my 360 hooked up. heck, I still have the Jaguar hooked up on an old CRT (best NBA Jam: TE of any console of that gen).

It also pisses me off that my collection of XBL arcade titles aren't compatible with the Xbox One. Basically I just lost everything I bought and even though there are more XBLA games I want, there is no way I'm buying them now.

you plan on throwing away your 360?

Who wants to have an old system hooked up when you buy its successor?? I don't think it would've killed them to include the 360's SOC to facilitate backwards compatibility. What it comes down to is they're lazy and cheaped out. They pretty much confirmed my predictions about digital only purchases when they decided those weren't going to be carried over.

The era of owning games/collecting games is officially over.

 

[dirtyvu]

It's a bit of a pain to have to have two consoles hooked up. I would want to remove my 360 if I were to get an Xbox one.

yeah, it is... maybe they can use the HDMI in of the Xbox One to output the 360 through the One. wishful thinking, I know...

I have to keep the 360 up and running. I have too much of a backlog of games I haven't even touched (games I picked up on sale over the years but never got around to because new games kept popping up). Heck, I still have games for the original Xbox that I haven't touch (though some of those were pirated and some were bought cheap when the first Xbox was replaced by the 360 and put all the games on a 320GB HDD modded Xbox as well as a 160GB Xbox and a 80 GB Xbox). plus, I have a lot of friends on 360 that won't make the jump to any next-gen system for awhile.

luckily, they will still be able to communicate with One users. but according to recent documents, that only applies to messages. not live chat.

 

[Coke Robot]

Not all of us have a mobile data plan to tether a phone in with, but granted, satellite internet in itself is terrible anyways. I've known people to pick dialup before satellite if they live out in the middle of nowhere and can't get a -real- connection. With satellite you're dealing with massive latency, extremely steep bandwidth monthly limits, and every little raindrop interfering with your connection. It's basically not even a usable connection type for websurfing let alone gaming.

Fortunately, I have a very stable cable connection where I live so this would not be a worry for me. I don't own any xbox consoles-- mostly because I can't use an xbox as an HD movie player (the PS3 can play blurays, I can't stand playing DVDs or other low res media on a 1080p HDTV) and you have to pay a monthly fee to play any game online. That's stupid, considering you already have to pay for your internet connection, now you have to pay for another internet connection on top of that to play a game with a buddy? Nevermind if you have an MMO subscription or something on top of all that. It's crazy.

Anyways, Microsoft only gave me even less reason now to own one of their consoles with the xbox one, because often times I get hand-me-down games from my sister for PS3 to save money and still get my game on and if you can't do that on xbox then you know there goes the source of much of my games right there. Steam works on PC because PC is so flexible and adaptable and Steam isn't nearly as restrictive, either. Also, because of sales, you can actually afford to buy and own many games instead of having to borrow most from a family member or friend to save money. Also, with Steam, you always knew that once you bought a game, it's yours to keep as long as you don't lose your account. You knew you weren't trading them from the start, so part of it is a 'what was it like before?' vs 'what is it like now?'. Xbox users are used to having a disc they can share.

No, you're STILL allowed to play used games, that was never cut out or taxed.

 

[Coke Robot]

I just can't get past the idea that I'd be essentially renting my games from here on out. Games that require internet connections, call home capability and patches are not games I'd be dragging out to play again years in the future. They might as well go download only at this point cause the media has no value anymore. It also pisses me off that my collection of XBL arcade titles aren't compatible with the Xbox One. Basically I just lost everything I bought and even though there are more XBLA games I want, there is no way I'm buying them now.

You're not renting your games out or anything. The Xbox One works EXACTLY the same to an extent as the 360, you still can play disk games except you have to install it onto the hard drive first. That is a performance benefit.

Third party developers can use the Azure cloud from Microsoft to offload CPU cycles from the console to something three times more powerful for........FREE. This is your gaming experience getting a dose of steroids and potentially meeting PC gaming hardware up to par. That is rare for a console to EVER do, especially for the price. Third party developers can choose to DRM disks if they so please, but I doubt that will happen in mass effect. The 24 hour ping doesn't make sense.

The lack of backwards compatibility if a two fold thing. One, last gen hardware sucks donkey genitals compared to what's out there now. The PS4 and Xbox both have x86 based AMD APUs, those can't process like the PowerPC CPU did on the 360. It's like if one tried to get Desktop software to run on Windows RT tablets. It can happen, but with great difficulty and ultimately a poor experience on newer modern hardware in which the old software was never designed for. They could have put in some 360 hardware into the One, but that would had increased the cost about 150-200 dollars for a new console, to play old games, that your current 360 can be used just fine for. It would be pointless to buy a new console that has new and old hardware, you'd basically be buying two Xbox 360s when all is said and done.

 

[Coke Robot]

See, I wonder about something. The new Xbox is almost like a HTPC. This 24 hour pinging can be a problem for certain people. That can open up a whole route of modding with it. I was thinking about if the USB 3 port on it can be used to plug in a USB drive that can emulate the phone home pinging. So for example, some code can be ran on the USB drive and have it be recognized as maybe a wifi receiver, so the system uses that over the built in wifi receiver. But on that drive, some code runs to trick the Xbox into thinking it phoned home but in reality, it didn't since it's offline...

Sounds complicated.

 

[Coke Robot]

It still surprises me however how TOTALLY misinformed people are about the Xbox. The internet seems to think the opposite of what Microsoft has stated...it's quite absurd really. The internet is there to search for information, but yet it's better used to complain about things we heard about that aren't true....

Sounds familiar.

 

[vram]

okay, now there's kind of a double talk going on. you talk about the era of owning/collecting games. and then you want a successor that doesn't require the old system. and you want to replace the old system.

backwards compatibility is not something that is common in the console arena. some old systems had backwards compatibility through peripherals. the PS3 temporarily had backwards compatibility. the Wii temporarily had backwards compatibility. both systems had it removed later in their lifetimes. the 360 had "backwards compatibility" but it was through emulation and we know emulation is never that great. people kept saying that the 360 had backwards compatibility but no one actually used it. well, Halo 2. but really, people moved on.

a collector keeps his systems. I still have my Atari Lynx. I still have my Atari Jaguar. I still have my original Xbox, my PS2, and my origianl Playstation.

I plan to keep my 360 hooked up. heck, I still have the Jaguar hooked up on an old CRT (best NBA Jam: TE of any console of that gen).

you plan on throwing away your 360?

Who wants to have an old system hooked up when you buy its successor?? I don't think it would've killed them to include the 360's SOC to facilitate backwards compatibility. What it comes down to is they're lazy and cheaped out. They pretty much confirmed my predictions about digital only purchases when they decided those weren't going to be carried over.

The era of owning games/collecting games is officially over.

I care about the games, not the hardware. If there was the option to play them on the new system, that's my preferred method. No one wants to have a bunch of crap cluttering up the entertainment center. Even if I wanted to, whats the future of all my purchased XBLA games, since they'll never be supported on the One? Microsoft isn't going to support the 360 forever. Eventually, my system will take a dump. Yes, I can find another 360, but will I still be able to pull down my XBLA games from MS?? They should've recompiled all the games to work on x86 or stuck with PPC cpus.

There was a time when I had every system/game from childhood, starting with the Atari 2600 up to now, but I came to the realization that the hardware/software isn't going to work forever. Although I still have a Saturn, PS2 and Xbox, I never hook them up because they look like ass on an LCD. Emulation works great if done right. Look at MAME, BSNES, Kega Fusion, Nestopia as great examples. A good controller and the experience is better than the real thing. Sure having the actual hardware is nice for nostalgia, but again, the games are what I continue to enjoy.

 

[pparks1]

You're not renting your games out or anything. The Xbox One works EXACTLY the same to an extent as the 360, you still can play disk games except you have to install it onto the hard drive first. That is a performance benefit.

Gotta think a bit outside of the box Cokie. Let's say that you buy a game, and for 2-3 years you play that game like crazy. Now, lets say 15 years goes by. You are now in college and you have nostalgia for your old games, so you dig out your old Xbox One and turn it on to show your college friends this really cool game you played 15 years ago. Except, when you turn on your console and it cannot perform the 24 hour internet check (because MS turned off the check in feature years ago when Xbox One had been replaced by Xbox Three). Now you cannot play this SINGLE PLAYER game. It won't launch with the 24 hour internet check in. So, unlike all other consoles you bought before, there is a very strong potential that you won't be able to play these games on this console forever. Therefore, the concept that you don't OWN the games, but are rather renting them for as long as it's decided that Xbox One's should work.

That is what people are complaining about. For some, that is very much a legitimate concern.

Reminds me greatly of a terrible concept called Divx created by Circuit City that was out to compete with DVD's. Movies were cheap allowing you to amass a huge library at low cost, but you had to pay rental fees when you watched said movie. But if the mothership gets turned off (which it did), your collection is useless. I campaigned HARD against Divx, and it's gone, never really made it and only screwed over a few people. And the lies being told by salespeople to customers was crazy...things like Disney movies would ONLY be avilable on Divx and not DVD, Divx looked better, sounded better, etc. You had to buy a special Divx player (that cost $100 more), but would also play regular DVD's...so they told you it was a better buy (of course, they were making more money because they were a 1/3 owner of the technology). It was disgusting.

 

[Coke Robot]

You're not renting your games out or anything. The Xbox One works EXACTLY the same to an extent as the 360, you still can play disk games except you have to install it onto the hard drive first. That is a performance benefit.

Gotta think a bit outside of the box Cokie. Let's say that you buy a game, and for 2-3 years you play that game like crazy. Now, lets say 15 years goes by. You are now in college and you have nostalgia for your old games, so you dig out your old Xbox One and turn it on to show your college friends this really cool game you played 15 years ago. Except, when you turn on your console and it cannot perform the 24 hour internet check (because MS turned off the check in feature years ago when Xbox One had been replaced by Xbox Three). Now you cannot play this SINGLE PLAYER game. It won't launch with the 24 hour internet check in. So, unlike all other consoles you bought before, there is a very strong potential that you won't be able to play these games on this console forever. Therefore, the concept that you don't OWN the games, but are rather renting them for as long as it's decided that Xbox One's should work.

That is what people are complaining about. For some, that is very much a legitimate concern.

Reminds me greatly of a terrible concept called Divx created by Circuit City that was out to compete with DVD's. Movies were cheap allowing you to amass a huge library at low cost, but you had to pay rental fees when you watched said movie. But if the mothership gets turned off (which it did), your collection is useless. I campaigned HARD against Divx, and it's gone, never really made it and only screwed over a few people. And the lies being told by salespeople to customers was crazy...things like Disney movies would ONLY be avilable on Divx and not DVD, Divx looked better, sounded better, etc. You had to buy a special Divx player (that cost $100 more), but would also play regular DVD's...so they told you it was a better buy (of course, they were making more money because they were a 1/3 owner of the technology). It was disgusting.

Very true (already thought of that by the way ) about that. But in all honestly, is there something that is feasibly there to suggest that? I mean, if the Xbox Three did the 24 hour ping just like the One, wouldn't it make sense for Microsoft to use the SAME servers as they did for the One?

That will have to depend on how they rig up that connection, if it's something that will continue to be used for over a decade with new Xboxes, not a worry. They have in the recent past taken down Halo 2 PC multiplayer servers because like three people at one time were doing that...

 

[pparks1]

You're not renting your games out or anything. The Xbox One works EXACTLY the same to an extent as the 360, you still can play disk games except you have to install it onto the hard drive first. That is a performance benefit.

Gotta think a bit outside of the box Cokie. Let's say that you buy a game, and for 2-3 years you play that game like crazy. Now, lets say 15 years goes by. You are now in college and you have nostalgia for your old games, so you dig out your old Xbox One and turn it on to show your college friends this really cool game you played 15 years ago. Except, when you turn on your console and it cannot perform the 24 hour internet check (because MS turned off the check in feature years ago when Xbox One had been replaced by Xbox Three). Now you cannot play this SINGLE PLAYER game. It won't launch with the 24 hour internet check in. So, unlike all other consoles you bought before, there is a very strong potential that you won't be able to play these games on this console forever. Therefore, the concept that you don't OWN the games, but are rather renting them for as long as it's decided that Xbox One's should work.

That is what people are complaining about. For some, that is very much a legitimate concern.

Reminds me greatly of a terrible concept called Divx created by Circuit City that was out to compete with DVD's. Movies were cheap allowing you to amass a huge library at low cost, but you had to pay rental fees when you watched said movie. But if the mothership gets turned off (which it did), your collection is useless. I campaigned HARD against Divx, and it's gone, never really made it and only screwed over a few people. And the lies being told by salespeople to customers was crazy...things like Disney movies would ONLY be avilable on Divx and not DVD, Divx looked better, sounded better, etc. You had to buy a special Divx player (that cost $100 more), but would also play regular DVD's...so they told you it was a better buy (of course, they were making more money because they were a 1/3 owner of the technology). It was disgusting.

Very true (already thought of that by the way ) about that. But in all honestly, is there something that is feasibly there to suggest that? I mean, if the Xbox Three did the 24 hour ping just like the One, wouldn't it make sense for Microsoft to use the SAME servers as they did for the One?

That will have to depend on how they rig up that connection, if it's something that will continue to be used for over a decade with new Xboxes, not a worry. They have in the recent past taken down Halo 2 PC multiplayer servers because like three people at one time were doing that...

They could use same server, but that is a risk that you would have to accept. What if the video game market dried up for Microsoft and they decided to end the gaming division and shut down all of the servers. It's unlikely, but not impossible.

The whole check in thing just seems unnecessarily heavy handed.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

Very true.

What happens also if the whole infrastructure becomes "Abandonware" and even the whole mechanism of the Internet is totally changed 15 years hence -- who knows what might happen - especially as countries are getting more and more paranoid and restricting freedoms like crazy due to "State Security Issues".

If I buy something that is essentially a single user piece of kit or software - then provided I keep some mechanism around like Virtual machines then if I want to run something on Windows 3.11 for example then why shouldn't I be able to do it. I'm of course not expecting Ms for example to support obsolete gear for ever and ever - but there's no reason why I shouldn't keep my own gear running.

What about some of those beautiful old Steam Railways / old Tramways etc that are kept working by volunteers -- the world would be an infinitely worse place if all our old heritage was simply thrown into the nearest tip.

Even the good citizens of San Francisco nearly caused a mini revolution in the US when at one time there was even a possibility of shutting down the cable car system for good -- I'll bet most visitors to that city are hugely thankful that they were kept running. !!

Although I'm against Piracy I've always supported people finding ways to remove the DRM from Movies, music or even e-books. If I buy something I want to be able to use it WHEN and WHERE I want -- would you buy a car if it said you could only use SHELL GAS for example.

The Ms model actually isn't sustainable --somebody will crack it sooner or later via something like "Pseudo KMS servers" or Ms itself will realize this is NOT a good business model and drop it.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Hopachi]

The Xbox One is a obviously a huge shift for console gaming.

Yes it is. The shift is, as the article said it... rubbish (look/search it in the article, they repeat the word... is that engineer language?).

I don't buy gaming consoles anymore. Still, they have enough customers anyway.

Even if i do like 8, that doesn't mean I like the XBOX, on the contrary!
You can do changes, but it seems too much changes are bad.

Good,
I leave the rest to the fans.

 

[dirtyvu]

Gotta think a bit outside of the box Cokie. Let's say that you buy a game, and for 2-3 years you play that game like crazy. Now, lets say 15 years goes by. You are now in college and you have nostalgia for your old games, so you dig out your old Xbox One and turn it on to show your college friends this really cool game you played 15 years ago. Except, when you turn on your console and it cannot perform the 24 hour internet check (because MS turned off the check in feature years ago when Xbox One had been replaced by Xbox Three). Now you cannot play this SINGLE PLAYER game. It won't launch with the 24 hour internet check in. So, unlike all other consoles you bought before, there is a very strong potential that you won't be able to play these games on this console forever. Therefore, the concept that you don't OWN the games, but are rather renting them for as long as it's decided that Xbox One's should work.

it's a legitimate concern. but it's something that hasn't happened yet and until it does, it's just a concern. To this day, after 13 years, you can still download the few DLC that were made available for the original Xbox. Sure, there are no multiplayer servers and the original Xbox Live infrastructure is gone, but that DLC you paid for is still available. So I don't know where this talk is exactly coming from. People are equating the loss of multiplayer servers with the loss of authentication servers and that hasn't been the case.

Azure is a huge part of Xbox Live now. Xbox Live is expanding from 15,000 on the 360 to 300,000 servers on the One. I'm sure there will be authentication servers for the One 15 years down the road if past history is anything to go by.

 

[dirtyvu]

The Ms model actually isn't sustainable --somebody will crack it sooner or later via something like "Pseudo KMS servers" or Ms itself will realize this is NOT a good business model and drop it.

Cheers
jimbo

I'm sure someone will find a way to crack MS's DRM scheme just like there are workarounds for Steam games. But it'll still be better than the heavily cracked system on the 360. My Youtube channel is pretty much all sports and gaming. And I get a ton of hits from an xbox pirate site in Europe. That site actually linked my gameplay videos so that people could see what the game was like before downloading the ISO.

 

[vram]

The lack of backwards compatibility if a two fold thing. One, last gen hardware sucks donkey genitals compared to what's out there now. The PS4 and Xbox both have x86 based AMD APUs, those can't process like the PowerPC CPU did on the 360. It's like if one tried to get Desktop software to run on Windows RT tablets. It can happen, but with great difficulty and ultimately a poor experience on newer modern hardware in which the old software was never designed for. They could have put in some 360 hardware into the One, but that would had increased the cost about 150-200 dollars for a new console, to play old games, that your current 360 can be used just fine for. It would be pointless to buy a new console that has new and old hardware, you'd basically be buying two Xbox 360s when all is said and done.

That's pure speculation and I would wager to be way off. Chips drop in price alot when made in mass. The volume that MS cranks out the 360 SoC has to drop the cost significantly. Couple that with on-going die shrinks and the chip becomes even cheaper and more energy efficient. They could've even used the 360 SoC to do something else when playing One games, maybe process sound for example. I'm not an engineer, but all we're talking about here is designing the board with the SoC included, and OS changes to facilitate its use. The system will already include a Blu-Ray/DVD drive. None of this should be hard for Microsoft. They went cheap, plain and simple.

 

[dirtyvu]

you overestimate "the volume". like I said, over the course of 8 years, a grand total of 260 million 360, Wii, and PS3 systems were sold. that's less than the 330 million of PCs sold in a single year. for the 360 count, you have, what, 78 million systems? it's not a high volume product in the grand scheme of things. it's considered a halo product (no pun intended) for Microsoft but it's not a money mover like other Microsoft products. don't get me wrong. the 360 has moved a lot more devices than say Apple TV.

and there are strong hints that you will be able to plug the 360 into the HDMI In of the One. Marc Witten from Microsoft was asked that and gave a sly smile and said no comment.

 

[vram]

you overestimate "the volume". like I said, over the course of 8 years, a grand total of 260 million 360, Wii, and PS3 systems were sold. that's less than the 330 million of PCs sold in a single year. for the 360 count, you have, what, 78 million systems? it's not a high volume product in the grand scheme of things. it's considered a halo product (no pun intended) for Microsoft but it's not a money mover like other Microsoft products. don't get me wrong. the 360 has moved a lot more devices than say Apple TV.

and there are strong hints that you will be able to plug the 360 into the HDMI In of the One. Marc Witten from Microsoft was asked that and gave a sly smile and said no comment.

We're also talking about a very outdated, old CPU. Besides, what do you think Intel and AMD are fabbing those chips for? A lot less than whats being charged consumer level, I bet. I still say the cost of the SoC would be minimal, but we're going to have to agree to disagree

What am I going to gain by plugging the 360 into the One vs. just plugging it into the TV?