http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/main
So yeah, on the XO, or X1, or whatever you want to call it, games install to the HDD. If you buy a game, up to 10 family members can also play that game if they're on your system and you choose to allow that game to be shared. You can also play your games on someone elses' X1 if you log in to your account there. You cannot borrow games from friends, and cannot rent games fromstores, of course. The system has to check in once every 24 hours, as reported, or you can't do anything on it.
As for used games, used games are only allowed if publishers decide to allow resale of their games. So yes, they will have a choice. I expect some to choose not to allow it. And even if it is allowed, games can only be sold to licensed stores that Microsoft has approved. Private sales, yard sales, ebay, Amazon marketplace, flea markets... sorry, no X1 game resale allowed at places like that (unless Amazon sets up something themselves, for that case?). Only approved stores, which would disable the games and then give them a new key which the new purchaser would then get.
Also, and MS didn't mention this, but yeah, don't expect prices to go down any to compensate people at least partially for the restricted rights. There's absolutely no way that'll happen, of course.
Now we only await details of what Sony has planned.
I'm not going to use that term myself, but I understand why it's popular.
Pretty good video... after watching their MS press conference video I wasn't convinced that the Giant Bomb people cared much about these issues, but going by this video, they clearly do. They spend a while exploring many of the possible issues that come from MS's DRM restrictions.
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I've made my case at the Penny Arcade Report over the past week or so as to why losing consumer rights, being chipped away slowly until the law can clearly define exactly what consumers can actually expect when they "buy" digital goods, is not a good thing. Ya know, if they just changed the term on their online stores from "buy" to "license", maybe we wouldn't all be complaining as much, but as it stands, they're calling it a "purchase", so let's treat it like one.
The supporters, like Ben over at Penny Arcade Report, claim "we didn't complain with Steam". Well, we all know that ABF for one DOES complain about Steam, regularly. GR and I have put up with it for now as the least onerous of all possible DRM schemes, but now, I think the moment of trial is fast approaching. We're going to have to start figuring out exactly what it means to own digital goods, and to that end I'll happily hold Valve to task.
For my part, I still think Valve's long lost attempt to digitally sign every single download and disk with a unique identifier may be the best way to go. The unique identifier would be used not as DRM but to simply track who purchased a download if someone should find it being hosted on a web site. In other words, it would allow companies to go after the distributers of pirated games far more easily, and hence put some fear into future distributers that maybe if they upload a game, the original uploader could be tracked and prosecuted. It seems like the most effective way to tackle piracy that I've heard of, and it has the massive upside of leaving legitimate consumers entirely out of the process. Not a single legitimate buyer will be negatively affected by such digital tagging as it isn't being used for "activation" or any other sort of DRM methods, and privacy won't be an issue as the "tagged" data would exist wholly on the user's own copy and hard drives, UNLESS they upload it online themselves.
Perhaps the number one thing that gaming needs right now, as far as rights are concerned, is a way to sell digital games. There are a lot of other important issues, and I'll cover some below, but seriously, this one comes first both because it's realistic -- systems to allow this could be put into place -- and because it's necessary and should exist. I understand why companies don't allow it, but this NEEDS to happen. It is not okay that I can't sell even my "DRM-free" GOG games. So, if I bought packs of stuff and ended up with duplicate games (say I have something on disc, and in Steam, and maybe elsewhere as well), why can't I sell the extras, and just keep my disc copy? It's ridiculous that this is not allowed.
Yes, I understand, you could just install a game and then sell it, etc. But PC games used to be like that. Plenty of games let you install them and then run off the HDD, without even a disc check, or on floppy of course with no disk check once installed. There was no way for them to keep people from reselling games after installing them. Companies are just greedy and don't want to allow resale of digital games because they think they'll make more money this way, than they would if they were nicer and people had more of their rights -- once you own something you own it, period. Of course finding pirates in that case would be hard... but honestly, oh well. Piracy is going to happen, no matter what DRM companies use. I can understand using some mechanism to try to block out pirates when a game first releases, since that's when most of the money is made, but after that... there's not much benefit, and a lot of harm to the consumer.
Anyway, as far as law is concerned, digital games should be considered to be the same as physical ones. It is not okay that digital has no resale. And on something like the X1, setting up a resale shop for digital games would actually be quite easy, since all games are locked to your account and have keys and such. Sure, MS has this hard to understand "you can permanantly give a game to someone who's been on your friends list for at least 30 days, but then they can't ever give the game to anyone after that" system, but a simple buyback system wouldn't be hard, and really would be a great feature. The same is true for Steam as well; sure, they couldn't keep people from keeping "backups" of the games, particularly those that don't have Steamworks DRM, but people have their rights, and you can't take away everybody's rights just because some people are going to exploit the system. As I said, you'll have pirates regardless. All adding in all that DRM does is makes people angrier at you, and people have a right to sell things they have bought.
I mean, look at GOG. You can't resell GOG games either (this is bad!), but GOG gets nearly a completely free pass and people call their games "DRM-free", just because they don't have keys or internet checks or stuff like that.
As for changing wording from "buy" to "license", that of course is going in the exactly wrong direction. Once you've bought a game, you've bought it. That "license" excuse is awful, and in a better world wouldn't hold up.
Oh, and yes, I own some duplicate Steam games that I wish I could sell off. I don't need Steam copies of older games I own on physical discs.)
One other interesting thing about Steam is that I have some games that require Steam to install, but don't actually have Steamworks DRM, so even though I bought the [physical] games used, and they are Steam-required games, they install and play just fine. This is basically exactly what I'm talking about'; there's no way to guarantee that whoever sold those games didn't keep them on their computer too, maybe with a disc-check cracker for games that require the disc in... but the companies weren't being completely evil, so resale was simple. And this really is a big issue. I mean, as I said in the OP, MS's scheme here basically kills flea markets, EBay, Amazon marketplace sales, private sales, etc etc. Digital-only stuff hurts those people as well, of course, but physical restrictions are worse. Now you might say "oh well, the world is going all digital", but why should we surrender our rights just because some people want to get rid of physical everything? That's not okay!
And yes, I love that I was able to buy extremely cheap copies of some games. I think I like Alone in the Dark (the modern remake) more at the $1 I paid for it than I would had I paid full price or something, for example. Puzzle Quest Galactrix for $1 was a pretty good deal as well, and Fallout 3 for $3. Digital only makes distribution easy, but killing the natural price shifting of the open marketplace in favor of one where the publisher has full control at all times is TERRIBLE.
And that, of course, raises the issue that this means that piracy aside, in this future games die when they stop being sold. So yeah, thank all of those pirates working hard to make sure everything gets backed up, and hope that they can crack any future DRM -- otherwise there's no future for anything in this industry. As someone who buys huge numbers of used console games, and who loves history (videogame and other), this matters to me, obviously.
ABF, I think tacking "obviously" after things is your catch phrase. Sort of like when anime does that because they confuse quirks for actual personality traits.
Don't have much else to add there. I care a bit more about piracy as an issue, and wish there were better ways to handle it. My position is simply that the current efforts to stem piracy are completely wrong. Further, I have zero sympathy for their desire to "curb used game sales". That's just the market at work.