On The Xbox One DRM 180

So...I originally wasn't even going to make a post about this because I would vastly prefer to make posts about positive things, but I really feel like I just need to get my thoughts out. They stir within me! So I think I'll just try to make it a short and to-the-point post. Then tomorrow I am hoping to post a short story that I have been thinking of for a little while that will hopefully be kinda funny. I think it's funny, anyway!

Anyway, so yesterday (I think? Or was it the day before...maybe it was Tuesday) Microsoft announced that they would be removing the twenty four hour check-in, and the DRM on games. This means you won't be registering disc-based games to your account, and can trade and share them all you want. Just like this generation.

And that's the thing that really rustles my jimmies. I really just don't get how people don't understand that Microsoft was trying to move consoles forward with their former policies. Why the heck do people want things to remain the same as in this generation? Do we really want to spend four hundred bucks on a new machine that just makes our games look prettier? I guess that would be cool but Microsoft was trying to do so much more, and now it seems like that progress is in jeopardy.

As a bunch of articles posted yesterday pointed out, we're going to be losing some features with this change that were actually pretty cool. Registering your disc-based games to your account meant that you could play them without the disc being in the machine. You could play them on any Xbox One just by logging in to your account. Those things will still work with digital games of course, but as a person who likes to buy physical things (especially as a sucker for collector's editions), that's kind of disappointing to me.

It just really really bothers me that the whiny vocal majority won out. And even worse, it seems like this majority wasn't even well informed. Was the twenty four hour check-in thing really that bad? I feel like most people just cried about it without actually thinking about WHY they were crying about it. Like, they were against it on principle, when in practice it would have been completely fine. And as has been pointed out many times, the DRM thing was basically like Steam. There is no problem with that. It could even have been good! Steam-like sales on Xbox? Come on, that would be awesome.

So, it's kind of disappointing to me that Microsoft are changing their policies and removing some neat features. But I think the thing to remember for everyone, on both sides, is that Microsoft has been very adamant in saying that the Xbox One platform has been designed to be flexible. So, depending on how Microsoft handles things in the coming months and even after release, we could end up with the best of both worlds. I don't think that is impossible.