Microsoft’s Xbox One: Owning Your Video Games Is So 1994

　　Anyone who did the bulk of their gaming in the Super Nintendo era would find much of today’s console market a bit tough to comprehend. Remember four kids sitting on a living room floor passing around two controllers? Those days are long gone, replaced by cinematic extravaganzas designed to be played alone, or against online adversaries. Mario Kart they are not.
　　But here’s a more subtle change coming up in Microsoft‘s next-generation console, the Xbox One: No longer will video games be like books or old-fashioned music CDs, self-contained content that works anywhere, anytime, and can be resold or lent to any of your friends. Xbox One games are part physical disc, part online service, and tightly controlled both my Microsoft and the game publisher.
　　Here’s an explainer from the company on how the console and its games will work. A few highlights:
　　- Games will not work, full stop, if the console has not connected to the internet in the last 24 hours.
　　“With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies.”
　　So bad luck if your internet gets cut – after a day, you can’t even entertain yourself with your Xbox games.
　　- You can’t sell your second-hand games to any store that might want to buy them from you:
　　“Today, some gamers choose to sell their old disc-based games back for cash and credit. We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers. Microsoft does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games.”
　　Not only will games only be able to be sold to “participating retailers” — those retailers will only be able to buy games if the publisher has “enabled” them to be bought and sold second hand. And as Microsoft says, those publishers “may set up business terms or transfer fees with retailers” that will regulate the conditions of such sales on a game-by-game basis.
　　- You can’t just pass games around among your friends:
　　“Xbox One is designed so game publishers can enable you to give your disc-based games to your friends. There are no fees charged as part of these transfers. There are two requirements: you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and each game can only be given once.”
　　Again, game discs can’t just be handed around — first the publisher needs to “enable” the game to be given to a friend. And even then it can only change hands once. “Loaning or renting games won’t be available at launch, but we are exploring the possibilities with our partners,” Microsoft says.
　　All these terms are a big change from what has come before, and Microsoft seems to be aware that consumers might have something to say about the new deal:
　　“As we move into this new generation of games and entertainment, from time to time, Microsoft may change its policies, terms, products and services to reflect modifications and improvements to our services, feedback from customers and our business partners or changes in our business priorities and business models or for other reasons. We may also cease to offer certain services or products for similar reasons.
　　In the months ahead, we will continue to listen to your feedback as we meet with our partners in the ecosystem to bring additional detail about our policies.”
　　Worth watching in the months ahead: not just how consumers react, but how gaming studios and rival console maker Sony play the situation. Will the next Playstation come with a similar set of restrictions? And will be big game companies seek to cash in and charge fees for reselling second-hand games?
　　“This new generation of games,” as Microsoft describes it, is worth putting into context: It’s the final stage in the transition of video games from goods, sold as a physical object that you own, to services, delivered online in tandem with a disc you buy in a store.
　　You own an object, but you merely access a service.