Quote:
Originally Posted by ganthc
But I thought Sony was horrible with DRM and a nazi about that stuff. 
Does the 360 let you do what you describe? |
I'm not satisfied with either the PS3's or 360's solution.
The 360 allows you to play your arcade games on an unlimited amount of machines instead of just 5 maximum. The trick is you need to be signed in to XBOX Live.
With the PS3 solution, if you have a few breakdowns or upgrade to PS4, PS5, etc, eventually your downloads will no longer work. I don't like the idea of paying for something that I eventually will no longer be able to download; I want to be able to re-download/play whatever I buy an unlimited amount of times and on an unlimited amount of machines. If I had a limit (like 5 times), I definitely would not buy the game in the first place. This is the same DRM solution that is used on Microsoft's Zune Marketplace and MTV's URGE, and as a result I have bought less than 5 songs on either; through a few computer upgrades and breakages I have nearly blew threw all my 5 re-downloads in less than a year. Don't get me wrong, Apple's is bad too as you can only download the songs one time (though you can swap them around an unlimited amount of machines, 5 at once). Amazon has the best solution - redownload the song as many times as you want as long as it is available... MP3 format too so NO drm!
Now, the 360 solution would be a great solution if the DRM actually worked properly with all the games. The problem with MS's solution is that a few of the developers have failed to implement it properly - examples are games which revert to trial if your net connection goes out and lose your session progress, games that erase your saved game when they revert to trial, and games that have game-stopping glitches when they revert to trial in the middle of a session. Now, while there are only a handful of games that have these issues, all of the games should work perfectly in this respect. The problem lies both with the devs and Microsoft, moreso Microsoft as it is their DRM, their download service, and their QA team which failed to catch these bugs.
Another problems with the 360 solution is that on a 2nd machine profiles are rendered useless. If you use the Live signin method, only the person with the Live account can play the full game and get achievements, etc. This is a result of poor design of the profile system and DRM interaction; they were probably designed by two different teams. There is no reason why the Live account can't be signed-in in the background while the other profile is playing.
Personally, I would also like more control in dictating which console is the offline "home base" similar to how we see with Apple iTunes. Maybe something you can change once every 6mos.
Anyway, Microsoft is apparently working on these issues (I and many others have done plenty of complaining) and hopefully they will work out some of the issues. If some of my above suggestions can be fixed, I feel the 360 DRM solution would be more than satisfactory and far superior to a limited re-download solution. Microsoft now has a license-transfer program with customer support so you can switch all your games to another machine if you wish, though it would be better if you could do this process yourself.