Decline PS4 wins the console war against XboxONE, yet it is a hollow victory as Consolesdämmerung is upon us

[Darklife]

I really doubt if even Microsoft has enough cash to bring about such sweeping trends and create multi billion dollar industries with profiligate spending. If it truly was the omnipotent overlord you portray it as, we'd all be playing games on our Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phone would be the dominant force in the mobile world.

Shit like this doesn't happen overnight and is much larger than any single company. If MS hadn't done it, somebody else would have. They were right to do it too, considering how much money they made off consoles.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens of millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

 

[DeepOcean]

Man, PS 2 games while having alot of weaboo shit are fucking incline compared to Xbone 360 games, it wasn't that PS 1 and 2 were full of popamole games. The popamole games as we know today are Microsoft doing, before Xbone 1 and Xbone 360, the Dew and Doritos audience wasn't in mass on the gamming market as gamming was still a very nerdy stuff. Microsoft started a massive marketing push to rally the Doritos audience, Activision and other publishers were more than happy to exploit this new audience, it was an audience that didn't cared about gamming at all and could be only be attracted by cinematic and easy as fuck gameplay because they treated video games as just another cheap form of entertainment as television and sports. If you see PS 1 and 2 library, it is full of weaboo and Sony kinda treated the occidental market as a second rate japan, Microsoft exploited this weakness and took hold on the Dudebro audience in the west, Sony tried to catch up afterwards with its own cinematic games and actually managed to not be beaten out of the marketing, you can see in the marketing of Xbone One, totally orientated to dudebros that are Microsoft audience.

 

[Dexter]

You don't just get it, without Sony and their Playstations Microsoft would've probably never entered console busines if it'd been just Nintendo and Sega competing with their weaboo crap, as I said earlier Sony got much more mainstream publicity and publishers started to slowly shift toward making games for PSX and PS2 with the detriment of PC market, just watch Fargo's interviews in Matt Chat and how Interplay got fucked over due ever increasing console busines.

You could as well say it is Ataris fault for causing the game crash of 1983, which gave Nintendo the chance to reboot "gaming" and become as big as it did.


Or you could put the fault entirely on Nintendo for popularizing video games to the point of being high on top of the "best selling video games franchises" (and also single games) ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Nintendo



Which in turn got other Japanese companíes like SEGA and Sony interested in the market (which as I said largely published games from Japanese publishers and the likes and had its own franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo etc. with the only major Western brand being Tomb Raider).

Or you know... you could put the fault on Microsoft who deliberately stripped, dismantled and paid off high-profile PC developers and did all the damage after the launch of their Xbox.

Btw. Sony upped their PlayStation 4 sales forecast after E3: http://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/sony-demand-may-well-outstrip-supply-for-playstation-4/

 

[Darklife]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens on millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

My first computer was an AT 80286 in 1990. The same year, I got an master system, and played a lot of mega drive. I remember that my feelings were that I was from "PC gaming master race" even in that year, subconciously of course, even with a monochrome CGA monitor. even though I played console games, the PC aways felt where the inovation was.

I can't forget showing indiana jones and the last crusade to some friends who were exclusive megadrive/SNES players. They were unimpressed. then they were looking a videogame magazine with pictures of fate of atlantis and they said: "A thousand times better than the PC game", which I immediatelly replied: "this is a PC game."

Even in 1990 in brasil there was this pcgaming trend starting to gain momentum.

But even MSX, amiga and apple computers were "PC" gaming, as in different than consoles and with differed concepts concerning gameplay and input.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Ah, so you have problems with metaphors. Get some perspective for fuck's sake.

 

[Darklife]

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Ah, so you have problems with metaphors. Get some perspective for fuck's sake.

More of a hyperbole really. I just think it really diminishes the word and the concept, when it's applied so damn liberally to everything from used game blocking to seat belts.

 

[Jarpie]

You don't just get it, without Sony and their Playstations Microsoft would've probably never entered console busines if it'd been just Nintendo and Sega competing with their weaboo crap, as I said earlier Sony got much more mainstream publicity and publishers started to slowly shift toward making games for PSX and PS2 with the detriment of PC market, just watch Fargo's interviews in Matt Chat and how Interplay got fucked over due ever increasing console busines.

You could as well say it is Ataris fault for causing the game crash of 1983, which gave Nintendo the chance to reboot "gaming" and become as big as it did.


Or you could put the fault entirely on Nintendo for popularizing video games to the point of being high on top of the "best selling video games franchises" (and also single games) ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Nintendo



Which in turn got other Japanese companíes like SEGA and Sony interested in the market (which as I said largely published games from Japanese publishers and the likes and had its own franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo etc. with the only major Western brand being Tomb Raider).

Or you know... you could put the fault on Microsoft who deliberately stripped, dismantled and paid off high-profile PC developers and did all the damage after the launch of their Xbox.

Btw. Sony upped their PlayStation 4 sales forecast after E3: http://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/sony-demand-may-well-outstrip-supply-for-playstation-4/

Hmh, maybe you have a point, but I still think Sony's the mainly in blame for bringing the decline, along with Microsoft...although we probably can agree on that consoles should be wiped off with globe-wide EMP bomb what would affect only the consoles.

Current AAA trend will sooner or later collapse one way or another as it's not sustainable especially since the budgets are ever-increasing, if not yet at least soon gaming and game industry are in the crossroads as social gaming has collapsed and I think mobile/tablet gaming will too along with the AAA titles - IMO we have interesting times ahead for this decade in one way or another as it's completely open what happens when AAA titles will finally collapse, and as Nintendo found out, casual gaming is not the answer either.

Traditional consoles are in the dead end with this upcoming generation unless there's some huge technological advancement, same with PC-gaming to an extent because graphical fidelity will reach the limit of current technology. The upcoming generation doesn't really look that much better than the current one. There's talk of the 4K televisions/projectors and the successor of blu-ray but blu-ray is already good enough for vast majority of the consumers so I think we're stuck with the current display technology for a long time.

I do hope the medium sized budgets would return as it would mean that the diversity of the genres would again come back.

 

[Average Manatee]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens on millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Microsoft is banning private ownership of property within their sphere of influence. What would you call it if a government did that?

 

[Darklife]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens on millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Microsoft is banning private ownership of property within their sphere of influence. What would you call it if a government did that?

But the government isn't doing that. You're not forced to buy MS's products. The One doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but I think this particular issue is being blown out of proportion. How many games do you loan anyways? I used to own a console and I never did it. On a PC it's not even a subject of discussion. Does anybody weep at the lack of game rentals on the platform?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Does anybody weep at the lack of game rentals on the platform?

Not at the platform in general, because you can't target that, but at retarded DRM that's pretty much the same as with the XBOX (you actually only get a license to play the game) there's quite a lot of outrage.

Not that it matters in the end. There are enough retards to take it up the ass for this to get standard practice everywhere. Hey, can't miss the great opportunity to play the latest billion dollar game and be all cool and hip.

 

[Average Manatee]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens on millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Microsoft is banning private ownership of property within their sphere of influence. What would you call it if a government did that?

But the government isn't doing that.

No shit. That's why I asked "what would you call it if a government did that?

You're not forced to buy MS's products.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. You didn't have to live in Nazi Germany either. Doesn't mean they weren't fascist now does it?

The One doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but I think this particular issue is being blown out of proportion. How many games do you loan anyways? I used to own a console and I never did it. On a PC it's not even a subject of discussion. Does anybody weep at the lack of game rentals on the platform?

Being able to own what you buy doesn't matter. Right.

Guess what? None of my PC/console games can be lost unless I specifically sell them or destroy them. XBone? Lost as soon as your console dies. Lost as soon as microsoft bans your console because they don't like you. Lost as soon as XBtwo is released and microsoft shuts down XBone servers because they aren't profitable to keep up.

 

[IDtenT]

IDtenT You need to realize that "But it's just like Steam!" isn't a very persuasive argument in favor of the XBox One, just like it's not a good argument in favor of EA's Origin.

Yes, it's kind of like Steam. But it's not Steam. It doesn't have Steam's volume. It doesn't have Steam's sales. It doesn't have Steam's level of trust. They need to show people more than that if they want to impress.

When people are talking about DRM, I will bring up Steam. When people talk about a digital platform, I will bring up Steam. It's not an argument in favour of XBO. It's an argument in favour of the viability of a digital platform.

We cannot talk about sales until such time as the console has time to mature, as Steam has. It will have almost as great a selection as Steam does. Steam's wasn't trusted at the start. They have a lot left that they have to show, but I can't help it when people need to be spoon fed about the future.

- Steam got an Offline Mode

Which never worked when people had online issues in the 2000s.

- Steam doesn't cost anything (no monthly fees)

That's got nothing to do with the digital platform. The monthly fee will allow dedicated servers and more cloud support than Steam can offer.

- Valve isn't a publicly traded company

Well shit. Neither is Zenimax.

- Valve hasn't tried to buttrape PC gamers like Microsoft did in the past several times yet

You really missed the 2000s didn't you? Maybe you don't live in third-worldia where literally everyone complained about Steam.

I’ve written this before but almost ALL the decline in both the PC and console market can be traced back to those assholes, Xbawks came out in 2001 and the glorious Codex was founded in 2003 because games started to majorly decline around that point.

Oh Lord. So Herve never happened? WoW never happened? F2P never happened? Microsoft wasn't to blame for the formation of the Codex. The decline was driven by the consumers - the platform irrelevant. The broshooters would just have had success on the PS3.

Deus Ex --> Deus Ex: Invisible War
Baldur’s Gate 2 --> Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
Black & White --> Fable

Good thing those are all shit or disappointing games.

It was the new Microsoft console market taking over. Consoles were popular before, but neither Nintendo nor SONY gave much of a fuck about PC gaming and left it alone, in fact they still don't and largely have their own games and studios.

While that may be true, because of geographical reasons, studios would still have created third party games for the PS3 and ported them to the PC. If anything it's the PS2 that ruined everything with its worldwide success. I have no problems with Nintendo, as they've always filled a niche.

Microsoft came rushing into the market, stopped internal companies like Ensemble, Aces, FASA etc. from producing worthwhile titles over time and ended up closing them while buying up others like Bungie, Lionhead and Digital Anvil (including some console devs like Rare) to have games ready for their gaming platform.

So they're basically EA? Wouldn't it be better then to complain about EA being the harbinger of decline? I mean EA had absolutely great studios and it all went to shit - long before XBox was released.

For instance before Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo was supposed to be a PC/Mac-focused Shooter

In my personal definition of decline, FPS games have always been a part of the decline. So it wouldn't have mattered.

They also paid off Third Parties like Epic, Remedy, BioWare and Double Fine etc. for Exclusives and are still doing it even to Indie studios today.

Sony has never done this!

They turned DLC practices into what they are today, they were the first to charge for it with "Mech Assault" in 2003:

I don't agree with the DLC hate train. DLC is a great model for developers.

Microsoft popularized games like Call of Doody: Modern Whorefare and Gears of Brown and helped establish the “gaming industry” as it is today.

So this is why CoD is exclusive to XBox?

They are generally known for repeatedly fucking or trying to fuck over Independent developers.

I really couldn't care less about indies. They mostly push out shit. MS have however done a few things wrong. The paid patches should never have become part of policy. Steam only recently became super friendly to indies, with the greenlight thing. There's noting that says MS won't steal that idea. What MS is doing is not allowing anybody to place their game on XBO and so is Valve.

And they popularized paid-for Multiplayer and are still trying to push through these practices that SONY/Nintendo hadn't jumped on earlier (but now apparently have, if anyone wants to thank somebody for having to pay for Multiplayer on the PS4 thank Microsoft). PC gamers luckily didn't adopt it, partially because Steam was already a thing at that point and Games for Windows Live with paid Multiplayer fell flat on its face: http://www.1up.com/news/games-windows-live-multiplayer-free

Popularised? MMOs were popular long before XBox. Paying for matchmaking was a shit move, but it wasn't expensive and it added an incentive to making multi-player as good as possible. Remember that the original XBox was the first networked console, and online multi-player was a new thing. PC gamers wouldn't adapt (it being an open platform and all) unless they got dedicated servers and the cloud, which is what MS is pushing out now. Don't be surprised when EA (or even Valve) starts trailing a paid dedicated-server/cloud service for games before the end of the decade on the PC.

They have shit like licensing/royalty fees for the amount of discs of a game: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/01/carmack-rage-to-look-worse-on-360-if-limited-to-two-dvds/

They have stupid “Certification processes” that cost most devs lots of money and time but as a bureaucratic step doesn’t make much sense other than in making Microsoft more money: http://the-witness.net/news/2012/07/thoughts-on-consoles-and-certification-processes/

They've made mistakes in policy. It happens with all big corporations.

And they're absolutely trying to pull their bull crap on the PC too with the likes of Windows 8 and the Windows Store.

They're trying to ape Apple. We'll see if it works or not. They have not disabled their OS from being an open platform where you can install shit from other sources.

They tried influencing the PC market with arbitrary shit like “DX 10 and Halo 2 Exclusive for Windows Vista” to push their new OS, it didn't work that time either: http://www.geek.com/games/halo-2-pc-to-be-vista-exclusive-561727/

They will do the same with Windows 8, certain games (like possibly even "Titanfall") will only be available for Windows 8 and possibly only through the "Windows Store".

No shit. They've done marketing? Sony doesn't release first party games on Windows at all. They also didn't release PS3 games for the PS2.

The only thing holding them back so far is that they haven’t managed to establish a foothold in the PC Gaming market to the same extent they did on consoles and their budget is respectively small for more PC fuckery. On top of all of that they seem to be thinking of the PC market as a “tablet market” now as can be seen by developments with their new OS and the choice of “Windows 8 Exclusive” games.

More marketing.

I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if Microsoft didn't manage to also kind of monopolize gaming on the PC with their development and use of DirectX and certain programs like Photoshop and similar were available for it. This is also why I find the Steam push for Linux intriguing and am hoping for success of their "SteamBox" and more and more games being available for Linux.

Good luck with that. Getting people to actually invest in an open OS that's not made for any gaming.

The only thing so far keeping Windows "relatively" safe from overnight becoming a closed-off platform are a lot of business interests involved (Microsoft is making the most money by selling their software to offices and big business around the world, which run a lot of third-party programs etc. and even develop software themselves that rely on Windows being an "Open platform") which wouldn't be too pleased and would similarly show them the middle finger.
But they are absolutely greedily eyeing Apple and all the money they are making by selling all software and content directly over their store and are taking it a step at a time.

They're eyeing Apple, but they'll never drop the PC. It's still their main business.

They are one of the most poisonous fucking things in the industry and single-handedly helped decline both PC and console gaming at the same time over a span of a decade.

I hope you didn't run a MS OS back before the decline.

I'm enjoying your butthurt tremendously.

 

[FeelTheRads]

They also didn't release PS3 games for the PS2.

Good one, bro.

 

[Infinitron]

We cannot talk about sales until such time as the console has time to mature, as Steam has.

And I'm telling you that there's a good chance that people won't be willing to wait. Once a mature product already exists, any new product must achieve feature parity ASAP. It's like WoW and TOR.

Also, console gaming isn't in the same state that PC gaming was when Steam became dominant. Console retail isn't booming but it's not dying either. And of course, piracy piracy piracy.

I say, if Microsoft want to impress people, they need to declare weekly sales on XBox Live starting now. Let the existing XBox 360 user base get a taste of them, and they'll run to buy the XBox One when it's released.

 

[Telengard]

Seriously get some perspective for fuck's sake.

What's the perspective? I should cry for that Cliff guy because he "has" to make games costing dozens on millions? Or what's the perspective exactly?

The perspective is, that not being able to lend games to your cheapo friends doesn't exactly constitute fascism. I don't remember that being on Mussolini's platform.

Microsoft is banning private ownership of property within their sphere of influence. What would you call it if a government did that?

But the government isn't doing that. You're not forced to buy MS's products. The One doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but I think this particular issue is being blown out of proportion. How many games do you loan anyways? I used to own a console and I never did it. On a PC it's not even a subject of discussion. Does anybody weep at the lack of game rentals on the platform?

There used to be PC rental stores, but they got sued into oblivion. And there was an outcry when it happened. But times change.

When I was a kid and owned consoles, I would finish a game and hand it off to cousins or friends. And the practice continued when I switched to PC. I personally lent/gave away several hundred games over the years. It's sad that companies are trying to block such things now.

 

[Dexter]

But the government isn't doing that. You're not forced to buy MS's products. The One doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but I think this particular issue is being blown out of proportion. How many games do you loan anyways? I used to own a console and I never did it. On a PC it's not even a subject of discussion. Does anybody weep at the lack of game rentals on the platform?

I remember renting a lot of PC games, in fact I think Baldur's Gate was one of them back in the day. And there are still PC game rentals around parts of the world, for instance: http://www.videoworld.de/neuheiten-PC--/index.html

Valve/Steam has recently being sued over game ownership and rights of resale: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/game/3423715/valve-sued-in-germany-over-game-ownership/

This was based on a recent ECJ ruling about the resale of "game licenses": http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf

An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet

It might end up back at the ECJ in its last instance. Ownership rights of stuff you buy isn't some shit you should waive away because "big company wants you to" (it doesn't matter if it's Microsoft or Steam claiming that "you don't own something") and console gamers are well within their rights to stir the shit in regards to this, although I wouldn't expect a consumer-friendly ruling from the US Supreme court in such a case. This is also new to consoles, since companies haven't tried to buttfuck them quite in this way before and might raise even more similar cases, Steam is irrelevant to this market.

Hmh, maybe you have a point, but I still think Sony's the mainly in blame for bringing the decline, along with Microsoft...although we probably can agree on that consoles should be wiped off with globe-wide EMP bomb what would affect only the consoles.

Personally I liked consoles back in the day of SNES/Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) and GBA. They offered an entirely different gaming experience from what you used to get on the PC. Nowadays Microsoft and Sony are aping to be low-powered PCs with lots of restrictions.

- snip -

True to form.

 

[Black_Willow]

You're not forced to buy MS's products.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. You didn't have to live in Nazi Germany either. Doesn't mean they weren't fascist now does it?

Dumbfuck Average Manatee plz

 

[IDtenT]

Some people are having trouble understanding why digital media is shifting towards a service-based industry. It's really fucking simple. As a product digital media is worthless as it's easier to copy than a traced stick-man. People know this and this is why pirating exists. You have to be competitive. The only way you can be competitive is when you're offering a better service than the pirates, because the products you are selling are fucking worthless. DRM makes up part of the service.

Guess what? None of my PC/console games can be lost unless I specifically sell them or destroy them.

You don't use Steam?

XBone? Lost as soon as your console dies.

False. Your account and games are on their authentication servers. It's the entire point of a digital console.

Lost as soon as microsoft bans your console because they don't like you.

Rumoured to be true, but this is no different what the other digital download services offer - until the EU started nudging them.

Lost as soon as XBtwo is released and microsoft shuts down XBone servers because they aren't profitable to keep up.

Unlikely. They'll likely run off of the same servers and the XBO will be less intensive (by an order of magnitude if not more) - so there'd be no reason to shut them down. They should make this clear in their PR. Their whole cloud shutting down is the same risk as with Valve.

 

[Declinator]

Hmh, maybe you have a point, but I still think Sony's the mainly in blame for bringing the decline, along with Microsoft...although we probably can agree on that consoles should be wiped off with globe-wide EMP bomb what would affect only the consoles.

Current AAA trend will sooner or later collapse one way or another as it's not sustainable especially since the budgets are ever-increasing, if not yet at least soon gaming and game industry are in the crossroads as social gaming has collapsed and I think mobile/tablet gaming will too along with the AAA titles - IMO we have interesting times ahead for this decade in one way or another as it's completely open what happens when AAA titles will finally collapse, and as Nintendo found out, casual gaming is not the answer either.

Traditional consoles are in the dead end with this upcoming generation unless there's some huge technological advancement, same with PC-gaming to an extent because graphical fidelity will reach the limit of current technology. The upcoming generation doesn't really look that much better than the current one. There's talk of the 4K televisions/projectors and the successor of blu-ray but blu-ray is already good enough for vast majority of the consumers so I think we're stuck with the current display technology for a long time.

I do hope the medium sized budgets would return as it would mean that the diversity of the genres would again come back.

Xbox introduced us to Halo and Gears of War/THE popamole game. Aren't these considered some of the worst bringers of decline ever? And it was probably always inevitable, CoD is after all something that began on PC though truthfully speaking I blame Halo for what CoD eventually became.

Of course the budgets can't increase forever but they will probably find a happy medium where the budget is still massive but they get enough buyers. Sort of how the biggest Hollywood movies always seem to have a budget of about 200-300 million dollars.

Resolution is not the bottleneck slowing down the improvement in graphics. It's probably more closely related to the diminishing returns of adding more polygons but this doesn't mean that the graphics won't improve, the improvements will simply be more subtle.

4k monitors and projectors already exist by the way but I think they will have to be very large monitors indeed for the 2k to 4k jump to even be noticable. I mean most digital movie theater projectors are 2k as far as I know...

 

[Darklife]

No shit. That's why I asked "what would you call it if a government did that?

You're not forced to buy MS's products.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. You didn't have to live in Nazi Germany either. Doesn't mean they weren't fascist now does it?

This is a case of a private company providing a certain product, under certain conditions, for a certain price. If you don't like the product, the conditions or the price you don't buy it. Nobody is forcing this upon you. There are other products to choose from. Sure it may be bad, as is the case with cable companies bundling channels, but it isn't forced upon you in any way. There are products on the market that are shit. You don't buy them. I don't see people terming mobile contracts in the USA as fascist. They're just terrible.

Being able to own what you buy doesn't matter. Right.

Guess what? None of my PC/console games can be lost unless I specifically sell them or destroy them. XBone? Lost as soon as your console dies. Lost as soon as microsoft bans your console because they don't like you. Lost as soon as XBtwo is released and microsoft shuts down XBone servers because they aren't profitable to keep up.

So I am to understand, that you have not purchased any games on Steam? Well then, all the power to you. Personally I think that in this case the minor loss of freedom is vastly overshadowed by the convenience. Worst case scenario you'll lose a bunch of games that you're likelly to have forgotten about a long time ago anyways. It's not like you're leasing out your house to them or something.

They're not taking away your freedom, they're just changing the purchasing model. Plus, I doubt if they could just take away access to everybody's games in some sort of power play. They outrage would be spectacular.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're not forced to buy MS's products.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. You didn't have to live in Nazi Germany either. Doesn't mean they weren't fascist now does it?

Dumbfuck Average Manatee plz

No shit. That's why I asked "what would you call it if a government did that?

You're not forced to buy MS's products.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. You didn't have to live in Nazi Germany either. Doesn't mean they weren't fascist now does it?

This is a case of a private company providing a certain product, under certain conditions, for a certain price. If you don't like the product, the conditions or the price you don't buy it. Nobody is forcing this upon you. There are other products to choose from. Sure it may be bad, as is the case with cable companies bundling channels, but it isn't forced upon you in any way. There are products on the market that are shit. You don't buy them. I don't see people terming mobile contracts in the USA as fascist. They're just terrible.

Except that microsoft isn't offering a product. That would imply you own something

No one is saying they are forcing you to buy it. Just as I said no one forced you to live within Nazi Germany.

The point is that within their realm they are fascist. No one else is dissolving property rights. Even steam lets you play offline.

Being able to own what you buy doesn't matter. Right.

Guess what? None of my PC/console games can be lost unless I specifically sell them or destroy them. XBone? Lost as soon as your console dies. Lost as soon as microsoft bans your console because they don't like you. Lost as soon as XBtwo is released and microsoft shuts down XBone servers because they aren't profitable to keep up.

So I am to understand, that you have not purchased any games on Steam? Well then, all the power to you. Personally I think that in this case the minor loss of freedom is vastly overshadowed by the convenience. Worst case scenario you'll lose a bunch of games that you're likelly to have forgotten about a long time ago anyways. It's not like you're leasing out your house to them or something.

They're not taking away your freedom, they're just changing the purchasing model. Plus, I doubt if they could just take away access to everybody's games in some sort of power play. They outrage would be spectacular.

That's funny, they already announced they would. But sure, keep your head in the sand.

 

[DragoFireheart]

They're not taking away your freedom, they're just changing the purchasing model.

- Which causes other companies to copy.
- Game industry becomes shit.
- Industry crashes.
- Rise of the indies/better companies.

 

[Darklife]

Some people are having trouble understanding why digital media is shifting towards a service-based industry. It's really fucking simple. As a product digital media is worthless as it's easier to copy than a traced stick-man. People know this and this is why pirating exists. You have to be competitive. The only way you can be competitive is when you're offering a better service than the pirates, because the products you are selling are fucking worthless. DRM makes up part of the service.

This. It's just simple economics.The same thing is happening with music and films. You pay a silly fee and gain practically unlimited access to a vast library of content at the tip of your fingers. I haven't downloaded a single album since Spotify graced my country with its presence. I'd jump on Netflix the same way if it was possible.

They're not taking away your freedom, they're just changing the purchasing model.

- Which causes other companies to copy.
- Game industry becomes shit.
- Industry crashes.
- Rise of the indies/better companies.

Maybe, but wasn't the last crash more a case of a bubble? This is about the purchasing model.

That's funny, they already announced they would. But sure, keep your head in the sand.

Which is precisely why I'm not planning on buying an Xbox One. Microsoft isn't your dad, you aren't forced to be subject to its whims and demands. Don't like it? Don't buy it.