...snip...

The proposed system was for you to have a circle of friends, and any of your friends could play games from your shared library. There was no mention of limited use apart from hourly checkins to make sure multiple friends weren't all playing at the same time. You didn't have to lend games to friends, they automatically had access to your full shared library. On top of that, your friends playing your games didn't prevent you from playing your games which opens up the possibility of playing multiplayer with a friend who doesn't own the game. Much like you can do now with a physical copy if you play split screen, except this would have been full screen and you didn't have to be in the same place.

see, my problem is. I never seen microsoft say that's how this system was supposed to work. I mean it's most probable in the pr disaster that fell onto them, that it got lost in translation, but had they brought this concept to the front, it'd probably appeased more people. Of course then the question becomes what size of circle of friends? isn't this system worse for developers in terms of game trading?(see my previous point about single player games, and hell, even multiplayer games.) As you've said, the problem was their pr, but i'd like some official links to back-up these claims before i 100% take your word that this was their intention.

And this is why FUD is bad people. Alpha is talking about what he thinks possible outcomes could have been, and slicer4ever believe that's what Microsoft was actually proposing, so he's off to spread the same FUD in other locations based on hearsay.

Edit: THANK YOU Alpha! Hopefully slice gets that last message.

I knew alpha was only proposing hypothetical, but the fact that he could come up with simply ideas that microsoft could use to further restrict trading is worrying enough.

still, if this was all set in stone, i find it hard that microsoft had such a horrible PR disaster, it should have been made clear during the first announcment. someone had to of dropped the ball pretty damn hard to screw-up so badly.

also, the 24 hour check in was still crap, and i have no remorse that they took it out.

they could still make both systems work though, i woudn't see the benefit of the game sharing, since i coudn't dl the games on my connection, but they could have made it work if you had the physical media in the xbox for the game(basically to supersede the 24h check-ins.)

All of these games could be significantly better if they could rely on cloud computation, but that requires a stable internet connection.

See, and that's why most people were upset by the once-a-day-check in; not everyone (even in America) has a reliable connection for such a feature. I can see it being an amazing and REALLY cool thing in the future to have, but really, the infrastructure for such a thing just isn't quite there yet.

I was against the once a day online check-in. And I was against the always-on Kinect.

However, I'm not against the features that tstrimple mentioned. I think they're pretty cool.

However, what I have been mentioning to you isn't anything Microsoft has said it would do. I've only been giving scenarios of what they could do with their online DRMs.

Out of curiosity, why are you against the once a day checkin? Is it principle or are you regularly in an environment that doesn't have internet for more than 24 hours?

Well....

1. It is principle. It's one thing for PCs, but I don't believe that consoles should have to do such a thing.
2. I don't think it was necessary for them to have that "feature". They could have found a way to do what they wanted to do without that.
3. I'm not a fan of wireless connection for my console. I prefer it wired. With that said, I don't want to be wiring consoles all across my house. (Yes, I realize this is the weakest of the 3 arguments.)

As far as the Kinect goes, it will never be a viable tool for game developers to use unless they can rely on gamers having access to it. You can disable the sensor in the settings to turn off features like the Kinect listening for "Xbox On" when the console is turned off.

The conspiracist in me just says, "NO!". It's why I put tape over the built-in webcam of my laptop. Granted I'm a special case, so I'm not going to apply that issue to the general populace. It might be unique to only me :D

South Africa gaming market is less than 100 million for a country of 50 million.

This is a very confusing sentence....

edit: wrong thread.