I haven't tried any, so I wouldn't know exactly. :p I wonder what the rationalisation behind that online-once-every-24-hours is, relative to the Xbox.

Retail games don't need the disc once installed but the discs can still be traded as usual, so this implementation makes it inconvenient for multiple people to try to share a single copy. Some games may also be built around time-specific content (daily challenges or whatever) so this system would also ensure that content remains available.

Eurogamer article today... wow.

Did the gaming media give a shit when internet checks and corporate control came to PC? I don't remember them caring much at all, and in only a year or so everyone was told to love Steam or shut the fuck up. Now consoles do it and it's the worst thing ever.

I could be remembering wrong, though.

In any case maybe they all know what I know, which is that PC DRM is irrelevant while console DRM is certainly not.

Exactly. This hypocracy and double standards everywhere are absurd. I was writing a post on Eurogamer but decided it's a lost cause. Users would be hyperbolic and hysterical and EG journalists apply their favorite "see, speak, hear no evil" strategy again.

Pros of next-generation consoles: Console fanboys are about to get butt****** too but harder. Promise of better PC ports.
Negs of next-generation consoles: They are going to negatively affect the quality of PC games. Streamlined and underperforming. Again.

To be fair, we don't know much about PS4. My guess is that Sony had something similar to Xbox One in store (except Kinect) but seeng the strong negative reaction they are focusing on how they will market it.

Publishers are forcing most of this, I doubt PS4 will be much different. Best they could do is not have the internet check on the hardware.

I think at the time they just considered it to be a phase and when Steam started making in-roads, they didn't pay much heed to the idea that it was the start of a very slippery slope. Now they've realised that fostering acceptance of DRM on the PC has unleashed a severe problem after all that is less simple to contain. Back in 2004 through 2008, there was a lot of complaining that the media didn't address the issues of DRM.

At the same time though, it's fairly hypocritical to claim that PC (online, since you have a knack of arguing semantics) DRM is irrelevant while claiming that console (online) DRM is not. It's this argument that's really been pissing me off on the Eurogamer comments section.

They're the same from a principles argument, but the fact of the matter is if Origin or Steam ever shut down without issuing proper DRM removal patched the PC gaming community will make sure the games work. It will be a simple patch download, a crack if you want to call it that, and it will barely matter.

This on the other hand... it might end up possible down the road, but it would be a hell of a lot harder.

In principle, you're right, but I don't know if it'll really be that much harder. It's amazing how many people use modded Xbox 360s, and if the Xbox One is destined to have any sort of success, it's a guarantee that its ubiquity will ensure that cracking it will be easy.

Steam emboldened the hardcore pirates and cracking groups by providing them with a degree of moral legitimacy. That's always been one of my biggest problems with Steam - it gave piracy and crackers a reason to exist. The Xbox One is likely to do the same thing - suddenly, console modders won't be people who are helping pirates, but rather people who help legitimate buyers to play the games they actually paid for. Gaining public support for defensible anti-piracy efforts will become much harder.

I would be very glad to see Microsoft fail in the console market, the original Xbox was the worst thing to happen to gaming full stop, it ruined mainstream console gaming AND PC gaming by trying to make them into the same thing, the dreaded "multi-platform game". It would be better for everybody if only the Japanese were in the console manufacture market, they at least understand that console games are console games, and PC games are PC games, you can design for one and then port to another, but you NEVER design for the two.

I dunno, the Americans did a good job with the Atari 2600 in its day, and the Atari Jaguar and Lynx were both fine consoles, despite their technical shortcomings (the joypad with the Jaguar, and the battery use and weight of the Lynx) :-)

I was going to name some other good non-Japanese consoles, but you're right - they've all been shite.

The average Joe isn't into putting chips into a console. With the XBONE having the hardware need to contact their servers and whatnot it could require even more hoops to jump through. I'm not saying it's impossible, I am saying it's not a simple patch you download and hit "run" on.

Also I think the 24 hour internet check is the worst aspect of this shit. I spent a year overseas and had a laptop with Steam in offline mode for 6 months. It never gave me a problem. Six months is a hell of a lot longer than 24 hours.

Well, everything was different back then, the market was smaller and more niche. You even had Pools of Radiance and Bard's Tale ported to the NES (and SSI & Interplay had Japanese companies do it), for example, and even back in those days games were made for keyboard and/or mouse control primarily, and then ported to a controller with smaller buttons.

Why I mentioned Japan specifically is because it seems to be the last remnant of that traditional mentality of seeking out specific niches and designing for one platform, and then if it's successful port it elsewhere. The mainstream American industry is way too consolidated is ever go back to that kind of mentality, it's all about selling to as broad an audience as possible, even if in trying to sell to everybody they end up pleasing no-one.

I say mainstream because there's every chance that due to Kickstarter a new breed of mid-sized indie studios which focus on PC may develop, which looks to be happening.

Hence why I have my Wii U. As soon as Nintendo's first-party stuff starts flowing in, I suspect things will be a little better in the games department. Also, if Sony fucks up in the same way Microsoft have, I expect the Wii U will start receiving a great deal of support for its being DRM-free (before someone starts selectively going on about digital games - I'm talking about the physical type). It's actually a great console, and a great reminder of why console gaming used to be so much better.

The Xbox One differs in that you can play without the disc but are still able to transfer it to someone else, whereas with retail Steam games the disc is worthless without the single-use key. This was the only easy way for them to support both uses of the disc while preventing cases where a group of people share a single copy and play it simultaneously.

Console gamers are generally willing to accept the minor inconvenience of disc swapping for the ability to trade games (and those that did find this an issue could buy the digital version) so it could be argued that they wouldn't have minded needing discs for another generation.

Microsoft has made it clear that they only care about a certain demographic of users. It will be interesting to see whether Sony have the same sort of limitations for their retail games.