Comment on End of an era?
Zink@programming.dev 1 day agoI specifically remember that their plan was essentially CD Keys. You’d buy a physical game and it would have a code inside, or the discs would have unique identifiers that force linked to your account, or whatever.
So yeah, essentially physical media with a digital license. If you were going to be able to resell your game it was going to have to go through microsoft, or maybe you could lend a friend your disc and that lets them buy their own license for a small discount to play it.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It was keys in a box, but they had a framework to allow physical retailers to remove licenses from Xbox accounts and refresh the license key for resale. They also had a system for you to loan your digital games out to your friends.
They abandoned it all after the ridiculous crashouts by people who couldn’t see where the future was heading, and now you get digital with no resale and no loaning.
Zink@programming.dev 1 day ago
Useful details, thanks.
I’ll just point out that they/we did not have a system like that, but just promises of it from a tech giant. (except of course for whatever they had designed internally up until that time) So even as somebody who doesn’t really sell games, I get why people weren’t thrilled with the idea of microsoft being the ever-present broker in the transactions.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
It was a new system, one never done before but not outlandish and easy to see how it would work. People just can’t understand and fear new things. Microsoft are, to their own detriment, too forward thinking. The Intended XB1 digital system was as close to a perfect one as you can get. benefits of both physical and digital wrapped in one.
Zink@programming.dev 15 hours ago
It sounds like a lot of good thought and design went into it.
The biggest problem was/is always going to be consumers wary of trusting a tech company not to mess it up because of greed.