Heartbroken Xbox One employee lets rip (Re: the DRM 180)

[Ethnod]

Source:
http://www.heyuguysgaming.com/news/12507/heartbroken-xbox-one-employee-lets-rip-must-read

 

I have to agree, as the article says, you can only feel for this person. I cant imagine what it would be like to spend years working on a project, have numerous work colleagues and friends all working together only to have the entire project scrapped completely.

However, I feel he is wrong in a lot of what he is saying.

 

 

We have 48 million Xbox 360 users connected online nearly 24 hours a day. That is much more than any of our closet competitors and vastly more than Steam.

 

This is not an accurate number. Accounts (best info I have been able to find) says:

Xbox live has 46,000,000 Active Accounts.

Steam has 40,000,000+ Active Accounts.

PSN ????

Although another one says:

PlayStation Network: 100 million accounts

Steam: 54 million accounts

Xbox Live: 40 million accounts

 

Regardless of the numbers they all talk about accounts but thats total number of accounts. Steam has a much smaller sales number and yet it has a very large number of concurrent users (peaks at 6+ million). Unfortunately that statement of his is uninformed and incorrect and unfortunately there is not enough information from Sony or MS to see a larger picture.

 

 

 

I feel that if we spent less time on them and more time explaining the great features we had lined up and the ones in the pipes gamers and media alike would have aligned to our vision.....Microsoft might be a big company, but we at the Xbox division have always been for the gamer.

 

While the guys at Xbox might feel that way they are not the ones who are guiding the DRM and DRM is not the solution to the current problem. Plus there is no need for any of the features to be disabled just because 24 hour check ins are gone.

 

 

 

The used gaming industry is slowly killing them and every attempt to slow down the bleeding was met with much resistance from the gaming community. I will admit that online passes were not well received nor were they well implemented, but I felt given time to mature it could have turned into something worth having as a gamer much like DLC (we went from pointless horse armor to amazing season passes like Borderlands 2!). Videogame development is a loss leader by definition and unlike other forms of media videogames only have one revenue stream and that is selling to you the gamer. So when you buy a game used you’re hurting developers much more than say a movie studio. Many gamers fail to realize this when they purchase these preowned games. It is impossible to continue to deliver movie like experiences at the current costs without giving up something in return.

 

Whats funny here is that they had the opportunity to capitalise on Digital sales, and if MS's concern was the dying games industry they could have reinvigorated it by creating a market place where players could sell their own digital games back to other gamers and then a % of that goes to MS and another % back to the publishers and Developers. This move would have allowed players to keep investing their cash into other games but they did not, they chose to go down the Publishers selfish route and screw over the gamers which then back fired.

Oh and dont even get me started on DLC. No one should pay for DLC unless its financially worth it. DLC should be an expansion, paying $15 for a small area or some mission when in reality it is only 20 mins of game play and it was originally designed with the game and could have just as well been included is total crap. If a studio releases a game and then works on more content then yes, you should pay for that added content but they should charge what its worth to the gamer not how much they want to make.

 

 

Going back to Xbox One’s feature set, one of the features I was most proud of was Family Sharing. I’ve browsed many gaming forums and saw that many people were excited about it as well!

 

And to be honest its a great system, but I can imagine no scenario where it can still not be implemented. My issue is that now I am wondering why MS pulled all these features, and are they some how going to try and sneak them back in some how along with this crap DRM :/

 

 

 

Another feature that we didn’t speak out about was the fact we were building a natural social network with Xbox One in itself that didn’t require gamers to open their laptops/tablets to post to their other friends nor did they need to wrestle with keyboard add-ons. Each Xbox Live account would have a full “home space” in which they could post their highest scores, show off their best Game DVR moments, what they’ve watched via Xbox TV and leave messages for others to read and respond to.

 

As above I have no idea why this cant be implemented. My PC has similar features on it with the various software packages I have installed and yet if I go offline for a few days my PC keeps on working. So why was there a need to scrap these? Like I said, I am concerned.

 

 

 

We at Microsoft have amazing plans for Xbox One that will make it an amazing experience for both gamers and entertainment consumers alike. I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2, while Xbox One is trying to revolutionize entertainment consumption. For people who don’t want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it’s called Xbox 360.

 

Personally I dont feel that PS4 is Xbox 360 Part 2 at all and yet Xbox talks about Xbox One being this revolutionary thing that no one has ever had in their living room but its clear then that none of them have ever had a decent media PC in their living room, or any of the 3rd party products that do the same or similar. 
Its arrogant to say if you want your console to work offline go buy the old one we are going to over charge you for especially when their competitors are not doing that. And I have not seen a single feature (or rumour of a feature for that matter) that I can conclusively see needing always online for it to work

[Vitalius]

I agree. Either Microsoft is out of touch, or they don't care and are greedy little conniving business men. Or both.

[SSOB]

That last Quote was just plain stupidity , i hope the xbox division will get closed or something because this kind of nonsense is just idiotic imo.

[Xorbot]

Warning, incoming "prick sounding" reply.

 

I don't feel for this guy at all.  Within his/her own frame of reference, it does seem like all that hard work is now wasted.  Well--welcome to the game industry.  There are many projects that are led down the path of disaster because the people in charge in management about video games.  His project wasn't specifically a video game, but rather a software engineering project.  This is why I am equating the two.

 

Now, on the topic of the console; I am glad that part had failed.  I come from the perspective that the gaming device created in question is the most powerful it can be.  Rewind to the launch of the Super NES.  This gaming device was far more powerful for gaming than its PC counterparts.  Was the SNES powerful in computation? No.  But all of the Super NES's support for the (lack of a better term) hardware accelerated sprites and tilemap layers, it allowed the creation of games including 4 parallax background layers and several sprites--not to mention that the can also be rotated without processing penalty.  The best side-scrolling game at the time of launch would have been Jazz Jackrabbit with a single BG layer and just a handful of sprites.

 

Indeed, there was a time when consoles were awesome because they were better than PC's.  That time is LONG over.  The Xbox One is *purely* inferior.  There is no way that this device should manipulate the industry and redirect money to Microsoft.  Going back to the original point--he moans about the hard work being wasted.  Well there are likely many game projects that had to be watered down for the weak Xbox 360 console, costing game titles a richness that can only be driven by an ever-evolving PC hardware industry.

 

As far as I am concerned, due to Xbox One's weak hardware, the device itself is much like a "tax" for exclusive games.  I would entirely love to play Halo or Gears of War (all releases) on my PC.  The way to truly play those games, however, is to pay a "tax" which itself is the console.  I ask you this, would you like buying different stereos for each band you listen to?  For example, your Pink Floyd collection must be played on a specific stereo, and the Beatles requires another entirely different stereo?  That would certainly be absurd, and so are consoles.

 

I hope the console is crushed in the free market, and I want the team to be shut-down.

[LAwLz]

Maybe I am stupid, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't implement all of those "great features" their new DRM would bring even with all the drawbacks removed.
To me this whole thing sounds like this:
 

Hey guys! We are going to lock the Xbox One down a lot. You won't be able to lend games, you won't be able to use the console except in a few countries, you won't be able to play on the console unless you access the Internet once every 24 hours, or if you're at a friends place you need to access the Internet every single hour. Hope you're alright with that. Cheers

What? No we are not OK with this. Sony doesn't have any of these restrictions so why would we have to deal with it? We are going to buy the PS 4 instead.

W-w-what? You're going to buy from the competitor just because we F*** you in the a**? Wow we never expected that. OK how about this, we will let you share your game library with your family members. You won't need the disc in the console either. How does that sound? The other restrictions will still be there though, because they are very hard to remove.

Well that sounds nice but that doesn't fix the huge amount of other crap you are trying to push onto us.

Okay we will remove it. We were just joking about it being hard to remove lol. Oh, but since you dared to rebel against us we will also remove a lot of the benefits. Why not keep them? Because we want to turn the anti-Xbox One people into the bad guys, so that the community will attack each other, instead of attacking us. Moahaha

 

Oh well, I don't really see why you'd need the family share plan now anyway. It's as if Microsoft put a bandaid on the wound they caused, but now that the wound is healed people are whining about the bandaid being removed as well. Maybe I am missing something, but didn't the family share thing just let you share your games with your family members? Well now you can share games by giving the discs to each other.

[IPCharger]

They were trying to hide their DRM by making some new features that didn't even need DRM in the first place. There was no reason to apply all the used games policies. The best way to stop people from buying retail games is to offer good prices and sales for digital downloads. Just look at Steam.

[That Norwegian Guy]

Just let the third Xbox pass in silence, don't buy it etc. tired as all f*** of hearing about this little plastic piece of evil shit right now and the scum who work at Microsoft.

[Nicktrance]

Well now you can share games by giving the discs to each other.

 

It did have some interesting ideas for example you could have another member of the family living somewhere else (so long as it's in the same country) who could then download a game which you bought and play it at any time (as long as you're not playing it too) without you having to meet to trade disks. probably not a very common scenario though. Either way Microsoft and the devs could have made slightly more money with the DRM and used games fee and such, since this income is now gone they now instead make the money of multiple purchases from the same family.

[dyent10]

lol...

[gjrud]

It did have some interesting ideas for example you could have another member of the family living somewhere else (so long as it's in the same country) who could then download a game which you bought and play it at any time (as long as you're not playing it too) without you having to meet to trade disks. probably not a very common scenario though. Either way Microsoft and the devs could have made slightly more money with the DRM and used games fee and such, since this income is now gone they now instead make the money of multiple purchases from the same family.

it wasn't exactly like this, this is a quote from the same blog linked in this news:

 

First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn’t have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to.

[Nicktrance]

it wasn't exactly like this, this is a quote from the same blog linked in this news:

 

Wow, I guess Major Nelson lied about that too... what a surprise...

[LAwLz]

it wasn't exactly like this, this is a quote from the same blog linked in this news:

Wait, so it was just a demo? Oh wow then this is a lot better, because now you can share games with other family members for real, as in letting your brother play the game on his account if he wants. A demo for 15-45 minutes? That might not even be enough to finish the first stage on a game, especially not when you take into consideration all the intro cinema and such.

 

This whole "let's be as vague as possible about everything, they can't hate on things they don't know" attitude Microsoft have had with the Xbox One really pisses me off. That's not how a proper company should act. Be upfront with all the info please.

[EChondo]

it wasn't exactly like this, this is a quote from the same blog linked in this news:

Not to be rude, but you should cite your sources.

 

Wow, I guess Major Nelson lied about that too... what a surprise...

 

 

Wait, so it was just a demo? Oh wow then this is a lot better, because now you can share games with other family members for real, as in letting your brother play the game on his account if he wants. A demo for 15-45 minutes? That might not even be enough to finish the first stage on a game, especially not when you take into consideration all the intro cinema and such.

 

This whole "let's be as vague as possible about everything, they can't hate on things they don't know" attitude Microsoft have had with the Xbox One really pisses me off. That's not how a proper company should act. Be upfront with all the info please.

gjrud got that response from an anonymous Pastebin post. It's not official and anybody could have made it up, but that doesn't entirely dismiss it of not being true. I believe it personally, but it could be a lie.

 

Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/TE1MWES2

[Lukiose]

 

We at Microsoft have amazing plans for Xbox One that will make it an amazing experience for both gamers and entertainment consumers alike. I stand by the belief that Playstation 4 is Xbox 360 part 2, while Xbox One is trying to revolutionize entertainment consumption. For people who don’t want these amazing additions, like Don said we have a console for that and it’s called Xbox 360.

Stop right there microsoft, you don't have plans for shit that is anywhere near 'an amazing experience for gamers', a gaming console and a lame already-existing TV box are two different things, don't try to superimpose your TV box as a gaming console.

[Bleedman0xx]

Wait... This whole time, shared games were just gonna act as time limited demos?!

 

@All the gamers in the world who stood up to MS -- You done good... You done good...

[gill2k]

I don't get why there's all of a sudden a vocal number of gamers and "journalists" / bloggers that are up in arms about this digital sharing thing?  Where were these people when Microsoft needed them.

 

I understand some form of DRM needs to make sure only one copy of the digital game is being played at a time.  I don't know... base it off a unique game ID that only one can be on XBL at a time, if the game is a shared copy and you're offline you can't play it... I don't know... all I'm saying is there's ways around it without having the draconian DRM they were going to implement.  I don't claim to know a lot about game programming - that's for the fine folks at Microsoft to figure out - but just apply common sense to it and they'll get some ideas on how to do it.

 

So to those (not the people here) pointing the fingers at other gamers for standing against Microsoft and in turn took away their precious "family sharing plan", they should point it a Microsoft... again!   Don't buy for a second they can't implement this... actually... just stop believing what Microsoft says in this generation when they defend their choices with the Xbone.

[silencerbob]

Thank god someone feels the pain. Not us.

[felixbearpig]

The Xbox one was about to become E.T. The video game part 2 if they don't get their act together real quick

[Bleedman0xx]

I don't get why there's all of a sudden a vocal number of gamers and "journalists" / bloggers that are up in arms about this digital sharing thing?  Where were these people when Microsoft needed them.

Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar corporation that has been making money off of software licensing and patents. They make money off of every android-based phone. And android is property of google, ffs.

 

They don't need us consumers to thrive. Not anymore.

[Snickerzz]

The Xbox one was about to become E.T. The video game part 2 if they don't get their act together real quick

time to go to the desert and bury all the consoles

[gjrud]

Not to be rude, but you should cite your sources.

I'm sorry, I read the link posted in this news and it didn't say anywhere that it was just a rumour. I didn't notice that at the end of the article the source linked was pastebin.com, I'm sorry if anything I've said based on this rumor may have mislead someone, my bad.

[EChondo]

I'm sorry, I read the link posted in this news and it didn't say anywhere that it was just a rumour. I didn't notice that at the end of the article the source linked was pastebin.com, I'm sorry if anything I've said based on this rumor may have mislead someone, my bad.

It's not a problem, just a heads up :)

 

I follow this very closely on Reddit because I have consoles and friends who play on consoles, they usually come to me if something is up so I stay on top of it. Most of Reddit isn't believing the Pastebin, which is weird. lol

[gjrud]

It's not a problem, just a heads up :)

I follow this very closely on Reddit because I have consoles and friends who play on consoles, they usually come to me if something is up so I stay on top of it. Most of Reddit isn't believing the Pastebin, which is weird. lol

as far as I saw on /r/games (or /r/gaming? the serious one :D) many seems to think it's true because CBOAT "confirmed" it, maybe the results changes depending of subreddit.

apparently CboaT is a leaker over neogaf (sitem known for banning users posting untrue news/leaks) and he has been doing so for almost ten year, which gave him a very big reputation considered that he never "failed" so far.

[rashdanml]

The used gaming industry is slowly killing them and every attempt to slow down the bleeding was met with much resistance from the gaming community.

I can't even begin to recall how long I've had this view. Unfortunately, their attempts to prevent the used game industry from thriving hasn't been perfect.

Then again, Steam has done it, and it works.

 

Game sharing among friends is fine. Selling it back to retailers needs to be stopped. Selling it back to Microsoft could work for digital games; disc-based games might be trickier to handle. Either way, balancing the ability to share games with friends and preventing resale to retailers isn't easy.

[Night]

Just dont buy one.