How do you figure? Look at Microsoft's messaging over the past several weeks. Look at how contradictory and shrouded it's been. Consider that they did not mention this *any 10 people* plan until after the backlash, despite the fact that, if it had been their plan all along, it would have been extremely significant to have mentioned it up front to promote a much more positive consumer response.
I chalk this up to Microsoft having institutional marketing incompetence. What was the last successful Microsoft product push? The 360 didn't even look like a success at launch. I'm honestly still surprised that it took off so well midway through its life. Zune HD was a terrific product--horribly marketed, failed. Windows 8 is by all means the best OS they've released in several generations--horribly marketed, in the process of failing. The Surface is the best tablet/ultrabook on the market--horribly marketed, flirting with failure. Windows Phone is a legitimately great phone OS--horribly marketed, in the process of failing. Remember the Kin? Horribly marketed, horrible product, failed. Remember the Surface Table? Barely marketed, decent product, failed. They can't get it right when they have a good product and they can't get it right when they have a bad one. The success of the 360 was a fluke. So when people ask why they didn't explain the benefits of DRM, or why they didn't yell to high heaven about Family Sharing, the answer is pretty simple:
Microsoft sucks at marketing and advertising.
The two things they consistently get right are Office and Halo. They market and sell the shit out of those products.
How hard is it to find a group of people with common interests, among friends or on the internet? Game interests wouldn't be completely uniform, but they'd overlap a great deal and impact sales significantly. By all accounts this system would be quite straight-forward and "engineer ways around paying for products" is just prejudicing language.
Hard enough. I can think of six people in my personal life that I would add to a Family Sharing plan. The other four slots...would probably just sit around. Do I really want to coordinate the use of my games with someone on CAG or GAF? Am I going to act as an intermediary between them and my actual friends when they want to play simultaneously? Is that something you would do? In all honesty, I would continue to buy games as I do now. I would have the opportunity to give games outside of my wheelhouse more of a chance, because a few of my friends have different taste than me. I probably wouldn't buy those games unless they were really, really cheap. Immediate example: I bought The Last Remnant because it was on sale at GMG and a friend convinced me that it was good. I general don't like JRPGs, but I figured that it was cheap enough that I could give it a chance.
That's the Family Sharing program. "Hey, try this game." If I like it, I probably won't buy it unless it's cheap...but I might buy a sequel. And I won't be buying it used, because, uh, I can't.
I don't think the average person would band together with random people and set up Google Docs spreadsheets to maximize the Family Sharing plan. I think the average person would be exposed to a few more games a year and maybe form a connection with those franchises. And maybe they would end up buying more games as a consequence. Grow the industry a bit. Give games a longer sales tail. Expose niche releases to a wider audience. There are drawbacks, and there are people who would exploit it, but there are benefits for consumers and developers, too. Benefits for the industry as a whole.
Not really. I don't think there would be much of a trade off. Surely you know how pirates work. If they can't pirate the games, they don't buy the console* and they certainly don't start paying full price for the games that they otherwise would have pirated. It's as simple as that. They'll just avoid the XBone altogether. If Microsoft had killed piracy, the pirates would (mostly) just go elsewhere.
* Adding to that, spending the hundreds of dollars on a console (and then modifying it) is often the price they're willing to pay to then have access to all games for free.
If DRM and Family Sharing worked on XBox One I can guarantee that publishers would be banging on Sony's door demanding that they implement similar features. Guarantee it. That should have been the fear gamers had--that people would actually like Microsofts features and slowly forget about DRM. Or that increased profitability would make lower sales negligible. One console being digital only was never a problem. The problem (if you think it's a problem) is that if Microsoft was successful spreading their policies was inevitable. Pirates would have nowhere to go. Maybe they would stop playing games altogether, or maybe they would move to PC. But if the One found any traction at all it's clear that PS4 was going down the same road whether Sony wanted to or not.
I'd be more upset about this, but it just means I'll hold off on a new console longer than I planned to. Will probably increase my Rome 2 playtime by 30% so that instead of taking up most of my freetime, it will take up all of it. And I might upgrade my 670 sooner than I wanted. Also, tough to be made during a week with Yeezus and Voynov resigning.
