And almost ends immediately with Microsoft’s rather
spectacular misstep into the next console generation. There have been plenty of
rumours about Valve making a ‘Steam Box’, but Microsoft have beaten them too
it. The new Xbox One is so heavily DRM orientated; it’s practically the
physical incarnation of EA and Ubisoft’s dreams.
And E3 was supposed to be their opportunity to gain some
good PR for the Xbox One. Instead the details they finally had to release will
likely put off even some of their most hard-core fans. The list of ‘features’
is somewhat ridiculous if you intended on lending, trading or buying and
selling second hand games. The second hand restrictions have caused the most
uproar. Games can now only be bought and sold second hand at selected retailers
and require the publisher’s authority for this to happen.
It will be interesting to see how much this restriction is
actually used considering that both the Wii U and PS4 have no restrictions atall. It would be odd for any multiplatform title to be locked down on the Xbox
One whilst being freely tradable on the competition. Even the simple act of
trading a game with a friend has another hurdle to overcome. Now the intended recipient
of your used game has to have been on your Xbox friends list for at least 30
days and each game can only be traded once. This will likely be a minor inconvenience
when trading games with people you know, but practically cuts off any private
second hand buying a selling due to the nuisance of the waiting time.
Lending games might actually be the only feature users get
out of the Xbox One. You’re allowed to have a group of ten family and friends that
can access your game library via their own Xbox One. Only one person can use
the feature at a time, which isn’t really a limitation as you could only lend a
physical copy to one person at a time. However their Xbox One will start
phoning home at more frequent intervals to make sure everything is ok, because
you must be doing something suspicious if you start lending your games. And of
course this feature can also be blocked by the publisher, so it’s actually usefulness
can only be really gauged in the future.
The biggest worry is that even Microsoft won’t be capable of
maintaining a perfect service. Currently your Xbox One will want to connect to
Microsoft’s servers once every twenty-four hours. A task that a large cooperation
like Microsoft should be able to handle, although their history with Games for
Windows Live would suggest otherwise. If they get this wrong, there’ll be a lot
of useless boxes that refuse to play any games. And there’s always the
possibility of Microsoft’s servers being the target of a DDoS similar to that
suffered by the PS3.
Handicapping themselves further, the Xbox One is currently
limited to twenty-one countries. Notable omissions from the list include
Eastern Europe and Japan. Now Japan has never been a successful market for
Microsoft, but ignoring it entirely seems like a bad idea.
To make it a success, they’re going to need a very strong
library of exclusives which at the moment appears to more Madden games; not
great for the majority. There was also a distinct lack of anyone showing off
the potential of the improved Kinect. If the game library barely supports it, a
lot of consumers will wonder why it’s bundled in as it could easily be demoted
to a glorified voice activated on off switch.
So what did Sony and Nintendo do to attract gamers away from
Microsoft? Simply keep it business as usual. Nintendo didn’t even do a press
conference this year, instead choosing to focus entirely on game announcements
with a new Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country and Super Smash Bros.
Sony’s press conference finally revealed the look of the new
PS4 (another funny looking box); and added to Microsoft’s woes by revealing a
much more competitive launch price and lack of any used game policies. The only
real negative was their move away from the free online multiplayer of the PS3
to a subscription based model using PlayStation Plus.
Both Nintendo and Sony received positive commentary for
their inclusion of indie titles on the show floor. How much indie titles manage
to really impact this console generation remains to be seen. I highly suspect
that it will be a continuation of the last generation where a few select titles
get the press coverage needed to get serious sales. It’s also likely that the
console manufacturers will run into the same problem that Valve currently have
with Steam; how do you effectively content curate to ensure quality?
It appears that Microsoft is going to have a miserable
Christmas sales period. They could still surprise the market, but I’d expect
that to come from changing a lot of their policies to be more consumer friendly.
*UPDATE
Microsoft have done a serious policy change and have removed the restrictions of the console. The flip side of that is sharing feature has been removed. The press release can be found here.
*UPDATE
Microsoft have done a serious policy change and have removed the restrictions of the console. The flip side of that is sharing feature has been removed. The press release can be found here.
