Another Step Toward Losing Our Freedoms: Disc-less "Xbox One S All-Digital Edition"

[Zthun]

I went all digital PC Master Race a few years ago, so this is hardly dark news to me personally. If you are a console junky cause of the form factor, then I give you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzcrTmhOP2s&t=2886s.

At the end of the day, you will probably somehow always have access to your games. Currently, there always seems to be fear that the service gets shut off and all the money you spent will go kaput. From what I've seen, that only seems to ever happen to MMORPGS, and the only service that burned it's customers on the games was OnLive which was way ahead of the time and not truly ready. I don't think an all digital world will be as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.

[gbpxl]

I went all digital PC Master Race a few years ago, so this is hardly dark news to me personally. If you are a console junky cause of the form factor, then I give you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzcrTmhOP2s&t=2886s.

At the end of the day, you will probably somehow always have access to your games. Currently, there always seems to be fear that the service gets shut off and all the money you spent will go kaput. From what I've seen, that only seems to ever happen to MMORPGS, and the only service that burned it's customers on the games was OnLive which was way ahead of the time and not truly ready. I don't think an all digital world will be as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.

I downloaded several Xbox Live Arcade games back in the day that I no longer can play because they pulled them from the servers.

[Zthun]

I downloaded several Xbox Live Arcade games back in the day that I no longer can play because they pulled them from the servers.

According to Microsoft, they should still be available in your purchase history for redownload, even if they were pulled. If they completely wiped them, then yeah, you have to go through 'other means' to get them back. Emulators could work, but 360 and one emulators aren't really far along. A jailbreak may be your only option then.

[Nz17]

It's not only making people install "game clients" like Steam, and Ubisoft's Uplay, and Epic's Games Launcher, and EA's Origin, and Microsoft's Games for Windows / Windows Store to be permitted to run their games; or just DRM impairing the games either. It's that we are heading toward a future where you won't even get to download the DRM'd copies of the games!

Instead, you will stream your button presses, mouse movements, key presses, and mouse clicks to the companies' servers, and in turn their servers will stream the games' audio and video to you over the Internet. That's right, there will be no local files for people to try to crack the DRM and free the programs from the DRM. Everything will be kept server-side. And if it disappears, then there is nothing that any of us can do about it.

It is even already happening in the present with Microsoft's xCloud and Sony's Gaikai. Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot said that streamed games will replace consoles some time in the next ten years, and EA has announced its own cloud streaming service.

I won't be surprised if Google's announcement on Tuesday is of a "cloud game streaming service" too.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/1...ing-demo-video
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...dont-want-one/

[Gameguy]

There's already enough games to play in existence, more than anyone can play through in their whole life. If acquiring new games becomes a complete hassle I can easily do without them. I'll gladly stick to older games or even focus more on movies, music, and books.

Think of all the games that are set to come out later this year, next year, and beyond. Currently none of those games are playable or even exist. Are you currently able to live your life without misery? It's all just a hobby.

[Zthun]

There's already enough games to play in existence, more than anyone can play through in their whole life. If acquiring new games becomes a complete hassle I can easily do without them. I'll gladly stick to older games or even focus more on movies, music, and books.

Think of all the games that are set to come out later this year, next year, and beyond. Currently none of those games are playable or even exist. Are you currently able to live your life without misery? It's all just a hobby.

The funny thing is I looked at my steam library 2 days ago and came to the same conclusion. If I never bought another game for 30+ years I would be completely occupied with my current lineup.

[Aussie2B]

I probably already own enough games to last a lifetime, and I don't feel like my collection is lacking, but I'd rather enjoy the hobby to the fullest I can rather than restricting myself in some way. There may be tons of games in general, but when when you look at specific genres and styles, you can definitely run out. As it is, I'm bummed that I've beaten all the games in the Mega Man Legends and Little Tail Bronx franchises, and while those two franchises have similarities, there are few other games that give me the same kind of feel. If I ruled out modern gaming, I wouldn't even have Fuga in the Battlefield to look forward to. Otome is another genre I really love, and they were barely getting localized before 2012. If I stopped buying new releases in that genre, I would definitely run out of English otome games to play eventually, and visual novels aren't really the types of games you replay over and over. So while I predominantly play retro games and strongly prefer owning games physically, I will happily buy and play modern games, even digital-only ones, when they offer me experiences that retro and/or physical games can't or offer in limited quantities.