Stanislao Moulinsky said:
As a side note, if the Xbone fails/underperforms I can see Microsoft abandoning the console market. The OG XBox was a huge money sink and the X360 generated only a small profit for them.
Much as that would bring a smile to my face, I can't imagine that such an event would result in anything but a massive clusterfuck that would only serve to do MORE harm to console gaming. We'd no longer have to listen to people going on and on and on and on about how THEIR console is better than YOUR console, because people would only have the latest PlayStation and whateverthefuckNintendocallstheirs. But the lack of competition would only make things worse. Competition is what makes the PC gaming situation so much better. There is no ONE PC build, with only a handful of alternate version several years down the road. The number of different build possibilities are incalculable, because different parts from different companies makes for more options and lower prices. EVERY time someone gets a total monopoly, it always gets worse. The only thing keeping Valve from becoming the demon that people think it's incapable of is the preexisting built-in competition that butts heads with Steam. If Microsoft fell out of the console market, that wouldn't automatically usher in a replacement who would take the reigns in the wake of their departure, although that certainly COULD happen... But if Sony had nothing to compete with, given the track record of theirs in taking a wonderful product and bogging it down with worse and worse restrictions and stripping it OF the content that made it so wonderful.... I wouldn't hold any hopes of things getting "better".
As far as the whole absurd DRM issue is concerned... WHAT is so hard to understand about this simple process:
-If it's downloaded digitally on multiple systems (shared by the owner) you can place a limitation on whether ANYONE can play them simultaneously, or if it's free game. The PS3 used to allow up to 1 owner and 4 recipients to use digitally shared content (that is, like everything else, before they changed it for the worse) and it GENERATED increase profit for them! Players had more incentive to buy games from the online store because they could share games with friends, so even though the total copy on digital sales might not have been higher, the overall instances of purchases still went up. Not to mention this all being DIGITAL, there was no money lost to disc production, shipping, and everything else involved in that.
-If the game can be installed to the system from the disc, why not just require the disc to allow the game to be played? WHERE did this inconceivable sign-in-once-a-day idea spawn from that Microsoft forgot how PC games accomplished this for DECADES? Long before Blizzard became a gaming juggernaut, they kept their games locked to a system by requiring the CD when the game was booted up. This was a hassle-free method of ensuring that 1 copy of the game would be in use per CD. (Blizzard's infamous CD Keys were developed to combat game piracy, but of course, like ALL of this DRM, that didn't do much besides inconvenience the honest gamers and delay the pirates.) Why come up with this concept of purchasing the rights to play your game AFTER your purchased the actual, physical game? What's the point? So what if the original owner of your used copy installed the game to their system and never deleted it? They don't OWN the disc anymore!
There's just so damn many creative solutions to the "problems" associated with game production (which is, in reality, merely fear of the consumer, nothing more) that it really boggles my mind that of all the possibilities, we get the shit post above... It's unbelievable.
