A 'glitch' linking COD: Elite DLC to Gamertag not Xbox 360 has us wondering whether a PC style game ownership model is on the way.
Those of us in the office today were earlier sitting around discussing a story that appeared on Joystiq about the recently released Xbox 360 DLC for Call of Duty. Specifically, that it appeared copies of the DLC made available to COD: Elite members appeared to be locked to gametag and not available to anyone signing in on the console it was downloaded on.
It appears that this was an error, and that Activision is working on getting the restriction lifted. But it brought up quite a few issues that we see becoming a point of contention in the future. This largely stemmed from the heavy PC gamers in the office wondering why there was a fuss at all. COD: Elite is a service tied to gamertag, and so our natural expectations are that any content would also be tied to gamertag. The easiest touchpoint is Steam, where you can only be logged in and online on a single PC at any one time. Even if you are on a mates machine, you only have access to the installed games that you actually own, and the simple act of logging in at a remote location logs you out of your primary PC. There are some loopholes with this to do with offline mode, but content is tied to your account, not your PC. Like everything to do with Steam, it is a compromise. It lets you always be able to play your games wherever you are, but it means that you only ever have one ‘copy’ of the game available. The Xbox 360 DLC model is different - you have this ability to play the content you are own at your current location, but those back at home are also able to access said content in a virtualised form of double dipping. What is really interesting, is that the tieing of one game, one account is the easiest solution to killing the used game market. You can bet that those boffins working on the next generation of Xbox (I refuse to say 720 or Loop or any other contrived name that's floating about) are looking at ways to stop used game sales. You can also bet that they’ll be looking long and hard at how things work on PC. And the way things work on PC is that a game is tied to an account of some sort. The used PC game market doesn't exist in any meaningful way, which is clearly what the big game publishers want to do in the console space. What really interests me is going to be how such a move is seen by console gamers. PC gamers have, by and large, made peace with the model. But console gamers are used to a whole other way of acquiring games. But the problem is that I’m just not a console gamer. I’ve experienced everything from Steam Sale remorse hangovers to warily buying CD Keys on sites that look like they are going to sell my credit card details to the Russian mob, but the last time I bought a console game is a distant memory. So what do you guys and gals reckon, is it even going to be possible to make the move to account bound gaming on the console, or will manufacturers stay away for fear of lost sales?
Issue: 134 | March, 2012