Originally Posted by SackAttack
Agreed, but more specifically, the whole point behind trying to 'kill' used games was that publishers felt like they were only getting a fraction of the sold copies they felt 'entitled' to. They'd sell a million new copies, say, but that same game might get resold 3-4x as a 'used' copy, so they felt like they were only getting 20% of actual sales. If the '10 family members' thing had happened, think about the potential impact on single-player games. Titles like Call of Duty, which have a primarily multiplayer draw, would still sell however many copies, because you wouldn't be able to have 11 people use it at the same time.
A single-player game, though? Mass Effect 4: The Next Generation comes out, you can share that game with 10 'family members,' and suddenly there's a game that 11 people don't feel as if they have to buy. One person buys it, or maybe they all chip in, and then they just kind of take turns playing it. If it's not a crucial I HAVE TO PLAY THIS NOW game, you have this feature that sounds really cool for consumers but ends up being a colossal pain in the ass for publishers; how long does it continue to get supported? Surely, if used games restrictions were going to be 'up to the publisher,' the same would be true of library sharing.
I think if Microsoft really feels strongly about that feature, they can still implement it for digital libraries. I mean, look - you already have a setup on Xbox 360 where if the digital game is being played on the original console, you can play it online, offline, whatever. If you're playing it on a console other than the one you bought it on, you have to be signed in to Live to play it. What's so hard about carrying that setup forward to digital libraries? Okay, you have sharing, but if you're not the 'owner' of the game, you have to be logged in to access that shared library. That way whoever's playing Mass Effect 4, that license is spoken for and the other 9 people with shared access have to wait for that individual to stop playing.
If Microsoft really feels that it's critical to have the game owner be connected in order to enable the shared library, then what you do is create a scenario where the owner can opt-in to sharing his or her titles. If you choose to share Halo 5, by opting in you've flipped a switch whereby you have to be online in order to play that game. If you choose not to share your games, you can play online, offline, whatever. This didn't have to be an either/or situation where either solo/offline gamers fuck off or online gamers don't get the cool features they're looking forward to.
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