Here’s a thought folks and hear me out….

With Microsoft’s reversal on the DRM policy for the XBOX One, what if they considered making anything that isn’t CAMPAIGN in their exclusive titles DLC?

For instance, imagine the next Halo game being campaign only. Then to play multiplayer you have to BUY that separately as DLC.

I can see this as a way for developers (not just MS, but Sony and 3rd parties) making more money. Want to buy the game, sure, you get CAMPAIGN ONLY. Want those multiplayer experiences though, you have to pay EXTRA for it. And of course don’t expect games to become cheaper due to that. Both MS and Sony know we consumers are now used to the $60 per game pricepoint, so that will stay.

So what would this mean? Well, those who buy games only for campaign would still have that. But those of us (and I’d say it’s the majority of gamers) who buy for multiplayer/matchmaking) we’d have to shell out more money. Since this can ONLY be sold as new, places like Gamestop wouldn’t be able to undercut the developers. Gamestop would still get money from initial sales of games and a little bit from resale, but the larger portion would go to the developers. Even if Gamestop were to sell CODES for multiplayer in games, it’s still that initial sale in a sense. So again, the devs would get more money.

Would this piss we gamers off? You bet. However if the big guns like MS and Sony both adopted this business model together, then we’d have no choice on consoles (yes PC, but I’m not talking about that…).

To take this a step further, let’s say multiplayer becomes a one-time DLC fee, say $30. What would stop MS and Sony eventually going to a pay PER play for multiplayer? Nothing super expensive, say 25 cents US per hour. Doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider the MANY hours people put into multiplayer that would really add up over time.

Whew, maybe I shouldn’t have thought out loud on this. I hope MS/Sony doesn’t read this article…

-Sal

Okay, I think you all know how I felt about this. However, given that I did a podcast with Podtacular last night to discuss this, I agreed that there could be a compromise to allowing DRM on the XBOX One.

Having said that one of the features that the host “Dust Storm” and the other guest “Drax” were excited about and let me know what it meant turns out to be something of a farce. Not that those fellows were lying, but rather their interpretation of what “Family Sharing” was to be.

In a blog post from a Microsoft employee, the employee explains how Family Sharing was going to work. From having talked with several friends over XBOX Live about this, those friends thought it was a way to share your whole game library with up to 10 people. While that is true…it is only to a point. Most of my friends thought this meant you could share those games “forever.” That is NOT the case.

The following is the statement in which the Microsoft employee talks about what Family Sharing was going to be. I’ve underlined the KEY sentences so you can see where this was going to go wrong. In the case of other color text, that’s me making a comment within the following paragraph)

First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn’t have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they’re placed into a special demo mode This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a . This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game. (See folks, this was NEVER going to be about completely sharing games with your family for good, essentially sharing purchases…Your family was going to have to BUY the game past the demo mode!!!)

HFFL: See, Microsoft was STILL trying to sell you on something without giving the full details. Now this employee who is heartbroken has let slip another detail that was MISLEADING the general public. You want evidence of that? Go listne to the podcast I did last night. You’ll hear both Dust Storm and Drax talk about sharing their games via Family Sharing. Drax in particular about buying a game and sharing it with a friend to play multiplayer. At no point did he think this was going to be on a limited basis. Now I do not make that comment to call him out. Rather, it’s to show the underpinning of Microsoft’s PR nightmare and show how they were hiding facts. By only sharing HALF the story, they had hoped to get gamers excited about the new DRM policy. By the time the truth would have been leaked, I’m pretty sure MS was banking on many of those who pre-ordered would simply continue on since they had already gone through the motion of pre-ordering.

The employee goes on to talk about another feature not talked about. Social Media within the XBOX One. No, I’m not talking Facebook or Twitter, though the employee states those options were still within the XBOX One. Rather a social media aspect that was being built right into the XBOX. See, THIS is the kind of thing I and I’m sure many other gamers would have liked to have known. Is it that it wasn’t ready to show at the reveal or E3? Fine, you can still talk about the feature. Is it that it wasn’t going to be ready for the XBOX One day one launch? No worries, let us know that it will be available after launch and a relative time as to when it would have been implemented. Personally, I don’t see a reason why THIS still can’t be instituted into the XBOX. If they don’t have that available, to me it shows that in a way, this is MS “punishing” the community by voting down it’s DRM policy.

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Do I feel sorry for Microsoft? No. They make MAJOR scratch, money dinero, bank, greenbacks. Am I concerned for the small time developer? In part yes. But I’m never going to go back on believing that being able to buy and sell used games is a benefit to the gamer.

This said, I definitely see a rise in DLC/Season passes and the like being instituted into more games. In fact, I can almost see where multiplayer portions of games become additional DLC that you have to pay for instead of being included. Yes, you’ll get the campaign of the game, but if you want that continued experience in the form of multiplayer, you’ll have to pay for that. In this way, the developer would make the money they are losing. Now, that said, are campaign only games worth $60? Some yes, most NO. Would we see the price come down for games then? Hell no. You know the gamign industry and hell any industry for that matter isn’t going to LOWER prices. Especially when they know the consumer is used to paying a certain amount for a product (even if that product becomes LESS than what was sold previously).

-Sal