14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier during the week, Microsoft announced that it was eliminating all Digital Rights Management measures from its upcoming Xbox One console, a move that caught the entire gaming world by surprise after the company’s tough previous stance on the matter.
Gamers can now lend and trade games as usual as long as they download a day-one patch for their device.
But Microsoft says that ditching DRM will also mean that family library sharing will be unavailable on launch, although it might be added later, and that cloud-based features for some titles might be disabled at times.
Gamers celebrated the Microsoft 180 on the matter of DRM, but I’m not sure that we should celebrate.
The eco-system that the company envisioned for the Xbox One was a big step forward for digital distribution, which has made limited inroads in this area of gaming so far.
The price that users had to pay, including the every 24 hour Internet check, seemed like it was too much for what was offered but the solution was not to force Microsoft to abandon its entire plan.
It would have made much more sense to either relax the restrictions until they became acceptable to a wide majority of the fan base or to just offer two versions of the series and deal with two groups for the foreseeable future.
Home consoles need to become more digitally focused, Sony and Microsoft will work to reduce the importance of physical disks and that might require some more stringent DRM.
After all, Steam is similarly set up on the PC and gamers have learned to love its positive aspects even if the system also limits or eliminates trading and works best when connected to the Internet.
Progress, even in the video game space, cannot exist without some trade-offs and maintaining the status quo should not be a reason to celebrate.