14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Microsoft working on the upcoming Xbox One says that there are at the moment no scenarios that could see the restrictive Digital Rights Management solutions initially announced for the device make a return after the console is out.
Albert Penello, who leads planning for the next-gen console, is quoted by The Official Xbox Magazine as saying that “I don’t see that ever happening with content you’re buying today either on disc and digitally. All of that DRM stuff was in place because there was no physical security on the disc itself, so all the licensing was done digitally.”
Initially, Microsoft announced the Xbox One would require players to connect it to the Internet every 24 hour in order to make sure that all content on the device was genuine.
At the same time, gamers would have been banned from lending or from re-selling their owned games.
The company tried to introduce an ambitious new set of features linked to the DRM, which included the ability to share content with family and store information in the cloud.
The ideas were dropped after potential customers reacted strongly to the announcement and demanded a return to the policies seen on the Xbox 360.
Penello adds, “You can imagine a world where we have both types of models at the same time. Again, big IF, but the bottom line is I wouldn’t worry about us making those policies ‘retroactive’ which seems to be the issue I hear people worry about.”
Microsoft has executed a number of big changes to the core ideas of the Xbox One since it was announced.
The device is expected to launch at some point in November of this year.
We already know that the PlayStation 4 will be available on November 15 in the United States and two weeks later in Europe.