The other day, unable to take it anymore, we sucked it up and ordered HBO. We needed our Game of Thrones fix immediately. When the order went through and we were ready to binge-watch, it wasn't our cable box we turned on, but our Xbox.
This news, I am sure, would be music to Microsoft's ears. It may have launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 as a gaming machine filled with games for gamers, but somewhere in the middle of that long lifecycle it decided to focus what seemed to be the majority of its efforts on making Xbox your all-in-one entertainment box. Today, in announcing the Xbox One, Microsoft takes the next big step in introducing a console designed from the ground up to do far more than just games.
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Behind the Scenes of Xbox One's DevelopmentWired editor Peter Rubin spent multiple days at Microsoft's Redmond campus learning all about Xbox One in advance of the announcement, and most of what the Microsoft execs wanted to talk about was entertainment as a whole, not just games. "The decision wasn't 'we need a gamebox,'" Xbox executive Marc Whitten told Wired.
So in the grand scheme of things, Microsoft isn't any more interested in hardcore gamers than it is any other potential consumer. But that doesn't go both ways: Gamers are very, very interested in what Microsoft is doing. Because how Xbox One's gaming ecosystem works will likely play a big part in laying down the new rules for how games are made, bought, and sold.
Always Online?
There's one feature of Xbox One from which we can infer quite a few conclusions: You can install any game from the disc to the console's hard drive, and then play that game whenever you like without having to put the disc in.
Wired asked Microsoft if installation would be mandatory. "On the new Xbox, all game discs are installed to the HDD to play," the company responded in an emailed statement. Sounds mandatory to us.
What follows naturally from this is that each disc would have to be tied to a unique Xbox Live account, else you could take a single disc and pass it between everyone you know and copy the game over and over. Since this is clearly not going to happen, each disc must then only install for a single owner.
Microsoft did say that if a disc was used with a second account, that owner would be given the option to pay a fee and install the game from the disc, which would then mean that the new account would also own the game and could play it without the disc.
But what if a second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our traditional concept of a "used game"? This is a question for which Microsoft did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.)
And what of the persistent rumors that Xbox One games will be "always online" – that is, that single-player games would require a constant online connection to function? As it turns out, those rumors were not unfounded, but the reality is not so draconian. Xbox One will give game developers the ability to create games that use Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service, which means that they might be able to offload certain computing tasks to the cloud rather than process them on the Xbox One hardware itself. This would necessitate the game requiring a connection.
Are developers forced to create games that have these online features, and are thus not playable offline? They are not, Xbox exec Whitten said to Wired — but "I hope they do." So the always-online future may come in incremental steps.
Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4
In presenting the PlayStation 4 (not that it showed the actual PlayStation 4) in February, Sony attempted to position itself as the anti-Microsoft, and it seems to have hit the nail right on the head with that: If Microsoft was pushing gaming to the back burner with its Xbox One announcement and potentially alienating the core audience that it's strung along for the last decade, Sony could boost its flagging image by making PS4 sound like a home for gamers who want their egos stroked. "If you're not a gamer, I don't think you get it," said Sony's top U.S. exec Jack Tretton to a Wired reporter about PS4. Sony and Microsoft might seem like they are offering similar products, but as far as messaging, they're 180 degrees apart.
But PlayStation 4, for all we know, might function just like the Xbox One does when it comes to your game discs. Nobody wants to say yet because they believe that the response will focus too hard on what game buyers are losing – the unfettered ability to rent, lend, and resell discs. What Microsoft and Sony need to sell is the idea that restrictions on used games are a byproduct of efforts to improve the gaming experience, either with online connections or disc-free installs.
And there's one area in which Sony and Microsoft are in perfect harmony: Neither of their new machines are backward compatible with their current ones. That means your seven years' worth of digital game purchases made over the Xbox Live Marketplace won't function on the new machine. (Microsoft says your licenses for purchased movies, music and the like will transfer over.)
Does Sony have an advantage, selling PlayStation 4 as a purely gamer-centric box? If the mainstream consumer doesn't buy in to Microsoft's vision of a grand unified set-top box that pulls your live TV feed in and does witchcraft to it, then maybe Sony's grand overtures towards those who identify as gamers will have been worth it.
But gaming-only machines have all met with struggle in the post-iPhone age. Nintendo's 3DS struggled out of the gate. Sony's Vita makes 3DS look like Wii. And the new Wii U is tanking so bad that Electronic Arts, which makes games for everything, isn't making games for it. Is this all a coincidence? Sony prays it is so, else whither PlayStation 4?
Meanwhile, perhaps Microsoft has read which way the wind is blowing and realizes that a gaming-only box just isn't going to cut it anymore. Maybe even gamers want more than games. Last I checked, we care about Game of Thrones, too.
