Quadraphonic
Member
I'm still waiting for someone to shoot a hole in my discovery, because as far as I can tell, we already know what we need to know.
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Xbone PR: the 60 Minute Family Plan Revelation
- Thread starter koryuken
- Start date
I'm still waiting for someone to shoot a hole in my discovery, because as far as I can tell, we already know what we need to know.
Viable with its own set of heavy restrictions, I guess. As much as people here hate gies, and I don't really care for him either, I don't think he would say they were in talks with publishers about the feature for full games without there being truth to it. 10 people having full access I would not see happening, but the more pessimistic takes on it(before hearing this) was something like everyone else being locked out of the entire game share list if one person is accessing it. Which would still be useful.
I really want to find out why they would decide to lie/use super deceptive language on this one facet when they were fairly up front about the rest of the ways they were screwing us in that pre E3 detail dump. And they then went on to double down on this deception in interviews with various outlets. It just doesn't make sense from a profitability standpoint to blatantly lie about this six months ahead of time only to have it assuredly explode in their face way before launch.
I mean yes, their PR messaging and presentation has been absolutely awful this entire time, but this pretty much involved multiple executives essentially lying to news outlets straight up. That's a different kind of thing entirely than on message but badly worded stuff like "we have the 360 for them" etc etc.
Your post seems to be referencing the one hour check in time for someone playing their games while on not their primary console. I don't really see how that is at all related to family sharing except for being the same as the rumored time limit.
I mean yes, their PR messaging and presentation has been absolutely awful this entire time, but this pretty much involved multiple executives essentially lying to news outlets straight up. That's a different kind of thing entirely than on message but badly worded stuff like "we have the 360 for them" etc etc.
Your post seems to be referencing the one hour check in time for someone playing their games while on not their primary console. I don't really see how that is at all related to family sharing except for being the same as the rumored time limit.
Yeah, you look at the response in the Twitter feed and it's clear he would rip them to pieces, but he wants to be absolutely sure before he does so. Better to stay silent on something they never officially said than to go apeshit on something they were actually innocent of.
He DOES protect his anonymity through obfuscation, while we generally get what he means he literally only said "60sigh" and that's kind of a stretch to run with in an official teardown. MAYBE a neutral news story making note of it, but even then that seems to be drawing more attention to him than he intended.
Less you know more you can be manipulated.
R_thanatos
Member
1 hour ...
So if i understand this well ...this familly sharing was basicly abetter inferior version of the "complete game tests " from PS+ ?
Well we didn't lost much then.
So if i understand this well ...this familly sharing was basicly a
Well we didn't lost much then.
Marty Chinn
Member
Your discovery is reaching. The wording says it would need to check every hour. It does not say you get a maximum of one hour of playtime before you can't play anymore.
FunkyPajamas
Member
How was that better? It's open for everybody on PS+. Xbox One was going to limit that to you having bought the game and 10 people on your friends list being able to demo it for 1 hour.
Quadraphonic
Member
How was it better? Instead of having access to all the game with game trials on PS+, you NEED to have someone in your gaming library own it to do it.
FunkyPajamas
Member
My man.
R_thanatos
Member
But there has to be some goal or profit for that manipulation if a company is going to torch any remaining good will they have by lying so blatantly in a manner that would have one hundred percent come out in the open eventually. They arent some evil villain that just has to lie constantly for no reason.
And it would have almost assuredly been found out months before launch, so it certainly wouldn't have gained them a bunch of sales or anything.
I mean I would totally accept that they are somehow so incompetent that they thought it would be okay. But I'm fascinated in trying to figure out some logic behind their actions, even if it is really awful logic.
FunkyPajamas
Member
jamesinclair
Banned
Then arrange a meeting in a garage.
FunkyPajamas
Member
RRoD. Microsoft knowingly skipped proper quality assurance controls when delivering the previous console. They lied about why it was breaking (or played the "things break, you know?" card), they saw that people kept buying it even though the issue was widely reported, and finally "backpedaled" (i.e. assumed responsibility for the issue and implemented the 3-year warranty plan). And still the console sold like hotcakes. I think they were pretty confident that they could still play the same tune and that consumers would willingly dance.
(This conspiracy theory brought to you by: it's a bit late and I've had too many beers tonight)
call_kotaku
Member
MS doesn't seem to even know what their policies are going to be, so there's a chance that they were deliberately vague because they were still throwing ideas around internally (see the post-reveal interviews about their DRM). Allowing 10 of your friends to play your games with no restriction is too far-fetched to be their actual plan, though, since it makes no sense to implement disc DRM to curb second-hand sales only to introduce something 100x more damaging. The only thing they were certain about was having a DRM scheme, and the'yve been very ambiguous on stuff like the cloud and DD pricing as well because they probably don't know what they're going to do with it.
Since I am not M$, I will presume these :
Their goal was to sell a dream with the family plan, just take a lot of this picture of how fans though about this. This plan will have helped a lot M$ to concince people to come with them in the "new age".
DRM plan was to block used games market, less sharing so costumers will be bound to buy games so more money into publishers pocket. The 24h check was to prevent piracy since you install your game on your HDD (the disc become useless), then you activated online at launch. So every 24 hours you kinda tell M$ : "hi, please activate again my game, please."
But now, the DRM check will be removed by needing costumers to apply an online patch when they will start for the first time the Xbox 1. Why did this in the end ? We will never know the real reason, was it the pressure of internet, pre-sales which were bad or third parties ? Etc... But now, they gained back a % of "old" constumers and maybe some new ones too.
M$ maybe really though that costumers will stay clueless. Dunno.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Neither does going it alone on DRM, yet they did.
60 minute check to verify that the original owner hadn't sold his/her rights, or that they don't have another family member accessing the same game? Makes sense. I don't see anywhere that says you can ONLY play 60 minutes, i just see that you have to be online every 60 minutes to continue play (please reply with link to prove me wrong, one with explicit wording... not this assumption crap)
Cboat is in such a position that he can talk about hardware issues, then pull a 180 and talk about Xbox online policies for new features with confidence?
Cboat is in such a position that he can talk about hardware issues, then pull a 180 and talk about Xbox online policies for new features with confidence?
In that case though it makes sense to lie from a "make the most money" approach. The console was on shelves then and if they admitted it was breaking from a design flaw people would possibly stop buying it. So they shut their mouths and waited to see if the problem went away. This was a shitty thing to do but you can at least suss out their motivation for doing it.
In this case they are six months out from launch and apparently just decided to lie about this for shits and giggles in that policy document and then continued to do so in interviews. There isn't a reasonable motivation for the deception, since even if they by some miracle made it six months wihtout sharing any details someone will discover it on launch day and they'll have another gigantic PR shitstorm on their hands at a time that matters waaaaay more than six months before launch. Even if the lie was projected to really juice pre order numbers they can't possibly be that shortsighted to set their consoles entire future on fire.
I just want to know what insane logic made them think this was a good idea. At least with Always Online and the DRM you could figure out why they would do it.
Teletraan1
Banned
Scummy move. Sadly not a surprise. Will not be supporting MS with a dime of my money this generation.
FunkyPajamas
Member
I guess the same logic that made Sony talk about 4D, 120fps, two HDMI outputs, etc at the beginning of this gen: non-informed consumers may get wind of a initial announcements "HOLY SHIT THE PS3 CONNECTS DIRECTLY TO THE MATRIX" "OH EM GEE THE XBOX ONE ALLOWS ME TO SHARE GAMES WITH FRIENDS" and then miss when then actual shitstorm comes (i.e. the cat's out of the bag).
Eh, who am I kidding. I got nothing. I honestly have no idea why they would lie (if they did).
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
For what it's worth, Aaron Greenberg just completely denied this rumor on twitter. NOT SHARING JUST A DEMO. NOT LIMITED TO 60 MINUTES.
https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/statuses/347911202057379840
https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/statuses/347911202057379840
immortal-joe
Member
Goddamn this was even worse?!
Fuckers outright LIED about this. They mentioned this featureally too many times, and emphasized how great it was that people can access your games "at any given time", all without bringing up the fucking time limit.
Fuckers outright LIED about this. They mentioned this featureally too many times, and emphasized how great it was that people can access your games "at any given time", all without bringing up the fucking time limit.
I bought alot of my games digitally cheaper than what they go for on retail
You just have to be smart
call_kotaku
Member
They probably had a bunch of possible features being considered, and their inability to properly articulate their overall vision, nevermind the actual details, for their digital always-on console shows to me that they don't have a concrete plan for their online offerings. MS probably didn't want the DRM issue to be the ongoing narrative with the xbone and it seems like they panicked when their reveal was so poorly-received and their DRM clarification press release was universally derided, so they started just throwing half-finished ideas out there to see what sticks, without saying anything that might contradict whatever the final service might provide.
This does seem like a likely explanation given how poorly planned every other aspect apparently was. The only other explanation than gross incompetence is that they are staffed by cartoon super villains.
Yup. That would also explain why Major Nelson, who said he was taking questions and writing a blog post how it worked, said "down the road". It wouldn't take time to clarify what it was unless it was not yet set in stone.
FunkyPajamas
Member
We're discussing it because if it turns out the whole "Family Share" had a 1-hour time limit then Microsoft decided to keep a very important piece of information when announcing their plans.
Either way, you're right: we do not have *any* type of confirmation on this issue. Though Greenberg just jumped in. I guess that counts for something.
In my interpretation of this, technically they would be giving the full game. That is unless they limited how many times the game was able to be accessed. Seems to me this would have been like a 30-60 minute mandatory commercial-like setting. You play for a bit, have to take a break and see some advertising, then you can start it up again. I guess not too bad of a system really, as long as they didn't limit how many times a person could access the game, say in a day, or altogether.
I think that for most gamers it would have ended up being more of a demo-like experience though, because not many would tolerate being interrupted all the time in their playing. Most would see if they like the game, then ultimately buy it to stop the forced breaking, which I am sure that is the whole point of this in the first place.
TBH Microsoft did it first with Halo 2 Vista which let you play the game while installation.
Not sure why they didn't make it to other games.
HL2 did it at launch, but too many games like to have everything ready at launch so less dev work headaches occur.
TwistedMind
Neo Member
With the amount of hand-holding in games today , long boring tutorials and cinematic cut scenes is one hour even enough to get the hang of the game let alone 15-45 minutes...seems like useless feature to me .
I really don't think it could be anything other than a demo/trial system. If it really was just straight up game sharing, pubs would be up in arms.
He straight up denied the rumor.
Although I guess he could be lying or misleading. He also says the share plan might make a return in the future.
https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/statuses/347929645527728128
Marty Chinn
Member
These things need to be formally written and approved through legal. You just can't throw it out there without risking causing more issues. Policies internally can be discussed and more or less laid out but that doesn't mean they can immediately list them without them being worded properly and gone through legal.
At this point I'm more inclined to believe CBOAT.
call_kotaku
Member
It's a bit of both, I think. If the rest of Microsoft and its recent endeavors is in any way reflective of its current corporate philosophy, then their operating procedure is basically "come in stumbling and confused with a half-assed product 5 years too late into a market and then act indignant and angry when customers don't buy it". I don't doubt that their intention was to build a closed digital marketplace that can't be undercut by users or retailers (basically combining the worst aspects of Steam and Apple's various offerings), but they had no idea how to actually accomplish it and didn't have enough laid out to properly message it before everything got pushed into the spotlight.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Family Sharing was ever properly explained or even particularly central to everything they've released about their online platform, it just became a big deal because it was the only thing that (on paper) wasn't purely a restriction on users and therefore people latched onto it like it was introducing a new feature. If anything "the cloud" was the actual thing they wanted to push, because Family Sharing just seemed like a placeholder to acknowledge that they understand multiple people live in the same household and it's problematic to sell them licenses tied to individuals.