Microsoft is Right(ish)
Xbox One licensing policies aren’t crazy, they’re the future.
Microsoft is taking a pummeling in the public sphere for their new game licensing scheme with the Xbox One.
What do you mean I can’t just loan a disc to a friend? No rentals? This is madness! Persistent internet connection required? FFFFUUUUUUU!
I’ve seen the rage, and it’s not 100% unjustified. The always-on requirement won’t be a problem until it’s a huge problem. We just have to look back a few months to the launch of Sim City to see why people are more than a little skeptical. Microsoft will need to have god-like uptime for Xbox Live, but they’re one of few companies that have the infrastructure knowledge to pull that off.
Let’s not talk about persistent connections, let’s talk about game licensing. Here Microsoft is actually making a brave and bold move that may do more to shape the future of gaming than anything else that is happening at E3.
Physical copies of software won’t exist in ten years. This trend is obvious and doesn't really need to be justified, but you only have to look at the rise of the App Store, Steam, or any of a hundred other signals to see that it’s the case. But there are huge problems with our current systems of digital distribution: there’s no resale, no “loaning to a friend,” no rental, none of the post-purchase activities that have existed throughout all of gaming’s history.
You might think that game publishers are thrilled with this (and perhaps some are, I can’t speak for them). Publishers don’t see a dime of used game sales, so eliminating that market can only mean more money for them, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
Many gamers finance their purchase of new games by trading in their old games. They don’t see the price of a game as $60, they see it as $20 plus a couple trade-ins. If you take away their ability to sell used games, you’ll see a kind of sticker rage completely unlike the $10 bump when we entered the last generation.
Microsoft is the first big company that I’ve seen actually try to tackle this problem. Sure, the Xbox One licensing scheme isn’t perfect and there will be growing pains, but look at what they are accomplishing:
- The ability to share digital purchases with close family and friends without having to have some kind of password-shared account.
- The ability for developers and publishers to get a piece of used game sales, making it a new market opportunity instead of a black hole.
- A console where if you lose your game disc, you still have the game.
There may be a number of these policies that don’t pan out or have to substantially change to work in a way that is friendly both to consumers and the game industry, but I for one at least appreciate that Microsoft was willing to take a risk and start thinking about some of the harder questions of our digital gaming future.
