PlayStation 4, Xbox One Game Sharing To Follow Steam Family Sharing?
Will PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game sharing follow the lead of Steam Family Sharing?
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Microsoft is marketing the Xbox One with Major Nelson hitting the road.
Marketing for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 has had the two consoles duking it out all summer. Some people have taken to calling the Xbox One the Xbone, something that Microsoft is not too keen on. So Microsoft has to do something to please the people.
Steam Family Sharing is just the feature that would brighten the day of any Xbox One fan. Steam is a video games digital distribution platform for the PC so of course it uses Digital Rights Management (DRM), which has been very unpopular with console gamers. Next week, Steam Family Family Sharing will allow you to share your entire game library with up to 10 other friends or family. The new Steam feature is free of charge and allows all games, DLC, and even saved games to be shared.
But Valve is putting some understandable limitations in Steam Family Sharing. Shared games can’t be played by everyone at once and the game library is given priority over other users. If a friend is currently playing a game the owner wants to play the friend will be notified to exit the game or purchase the game so they can continue on.
Xbox One game sharing was originally part of the Xbox One announcements made this summer. But the Xbox One game sharing hinged on games being tied to user accounts controlled by DRM, an idea that was extremely unpopular and thus scrapped by Microsoft.
In the long term, both Sony and Microsoft would want DRM and digital purchases to be the only way to purchase video games since it’s financially in their best interest. The cost of distributing games would be dramatically less, reducing their overhead. Video game publishers and developers also barely make any money off the sales of used games, which amounts for almost half of all game sales. Because of these realities, Forbes is already predicting that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game sharing will eventually make a comeback. After all, it’s a feature everyone loves and would make the transition to digital purchases easier.
Would you accept a completely digital game purchase system and DRM if PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game sharing similar to Steam Family Sharing was part of the package?
