Although they didn’t mention anything from their show stage, several reports are emerging that the old used game blockage story about Microsoft’s next gen console might be true enough, after all.
Wired was the first place we spotted it, then CVG and MCV (that one’s a “more to follow” at time of writing) have backed it up.
The Xbox One requires all games to be installed onto the system’s hard disc before playing. After which, you can seemingly remove the disc (so that 500GB hdd might need fattening up a bit fairly soon, too). The game is tied to the Xbox Live account that installed it and if it’s put into someone else’s machine and installed, it will require an additional fee before it can be played.
While this isn’t the worst-nightmare “Always on” scenario many feared, it isn’t far from it. This would severely restrict pre-owned sales and goes some way to explaining why EA might have dropped their online pass system a few days ago.
3shirts
So you also can’t rent games and, surely, this is essentially the always-on thing anyway. If it’s attached to your live account you must need to be online when you fire up the game for it to check that you are the valid user for that copy of the game?
Torquemada
Ive a 120K gamerscore, so Im a bit of an Xbox fanboy. I warned you Microsoft. If this is true you can say goodbye to me, and pretty much everyone on my friends list.
TSBonyman
Oh dear, they should have just kept it so that you need the disk inserted, that way they could ensure only one person can play from one disk and it would still allow for pre-owned. Bad move, let’s hope it doesn’t become an industry-wide thing.
I read that they will also charge a fee in order to be able to play a game on a second account on the same console…strewth..
Did EA and Microsoft just do a ‘lover’s leap’ together…? :O
DarthSharkey
What about renting games and how this will affect businesses such as LoveFilm!
cam the man
Bad news for rental and second hand stores.
gazzagb
This is a deal breaker for me, and many other students I know. I’ll wait for official confirmation, but it doesn’t sound good.
JR.
Can you hear the retailers screaming?
Nope, that’s the sound of Sony executives laughing their asses off. Bad move MS.
BULLofDOOM
I like to buy my games new out of principle and to give the Devs the money they rightly earned.
My personal opinions aside though – this would be a really bad move as many people enjoy savings offered by pre-owned software and often trade a game in after completion for money off a new release. Microsoft are after cornering the market in a very obvious and disappointing way. I may just buy two PS4 consoles now!
LycanGav
Yeah, they just killed rentals. Amazon are going to be pissed. Also, no more taking a game over to your mates house. If it’s account specific, then you even have the spectre of a family owning a game but being unable to play it on separate accounts on the same machine (my kid has his own account on my Xbox 360 for instance).
hazelam
i expected to be angry when this anti preowned thing was confirmed, but actually, i’m not.
the xbox brand just died today as far as i’m concerned.
for all ms’s crap, i’ve had some good times with their consoles.
it’s a shame, but what can you do.
i’ve still got my 360, that should still give me a few more years of fun.
here’s hoping.
KeRaSh
Sony just won next gen.