I fucking knew it.
I'm presuming that most of you, either through a previous post of mine or some other method on the Net, know that Microsoft took off all the DRM and online checks that the Xbox One was set to have.
Most gamers were happy about this, but there's also quite a few that were excited about many of the features the XB1 would support that it now doesn't/can't. Some are rather benign like not needing to put in a disk for games (buy the digital version: problem solved), but one rather substantial feature the upcoming console would no longer support is Family Sharing.
As most gamers understood it, this feature allowed you to have ten different people on a special list and everyone on that list would have access to all the games you'd buy via a shared games library. Anyone could play it at any time and when they were done someone else could have a go.
XB1 gamers were already assembling their ten players and planning who was going to buy what game so that all of them would be able to play everything, but I had serious doubts about this feature. There was simply no way in hell publishers would go for it; I knew there just had to be a caveat.
There was. A Microsoft employee laid it out via a blog entry in which he bemoaned the fact that this wouldn't get to happen. I'll quote the relevant section for you below:
"First is family sharing, this feature is near and dear to me and I truly felt it would have helped the industry grow and make both gamers and developers happy. The premise is simple and elegant, when you buy your games for Xbox One, you can set any of them to be part of your shared library. Anyone who you deem to be family had access to these games regardless of where they are in the world. There was never any catch to that, they didn't have to share the same billing address or physical address it could be anyone. When your family member accesses any of your games, they're placed into a special demo mode. This demo mode in most cases would be the full game with a 15-45 minute timer and in some cases an hour. This allowed the person to play the game, get familiar with it then make a purchase if they wanted to. *When the time limit was up they would automatically be prompted to the Marketplace so that they may order it if liked the game."
Did you get that? Family Sharing was nothing more than a glorified demo, like the full game trials that PlayStation Plus does all the time. Ten of your friends wouldn't just be able to play the full game from across the country - they'd get at best an hour of game time before having to buy it for themselves. Just like the PS+ Full Game trials, your progress would be saved along the way and if you chose to buy the game you'd pick up from where you left off - that's the only benefit this had over a regular demo.
I know some of you were looking forward to the features of the XB1, but I'm happy they went ahead and made the changes now. Can you imagine the shitstorm had the details of Family Sharing come to light when that feature was still on the table and people were using it as a selling point for the console? Or worse yet - no one found out about the details until after the launch? It would have been an unmitigated disaster! So just sit back and relax knowing that you didn't miss out on some game changing feature; it worked out better this way, Xbox gamers.
Question time: Are you going to get a next-gen console this year? If so, which and why? Hit up them comments and let me know!
