We’ve been talking/warning about it for a long time – usually in the context of game preservation – but the recent Xbox game outage has certainly justified our concerns. Online DRM, the need to have an active internet connection to verify that you’re permitted to play the games you own, has been a hot topic for some time now. There’ll come a point in the (hopefully) far-flung future that authentication servers won’t be available, making today’s games unplayable. What we didn’t quite expect was a gaming black-out in the here and now.
That’s the first discussion point in this week’s DF Direct Weekly, where John Linneman and I have quite different perspectives to the online DRM debate. John’s looking at Xbox discs with no Series X/S data on them, pondering a time in the future where the vast majority of ‘smart delivery’ titles won’t be accessible. Me? I just can’t quite get my head around the concept of consumers spending hundreds of pounds on a console, and a lot more money on the games themselves a 100 percent guarantee that you can always play them, certainly the single-player ones! Something needs to change but ultimately the solution is surely fairly straightforward, at least in theory: some kind of flexibility on online check-in?
00:00:00 Introductions00:01:04 News 01: Microsoft says it will solve Xbox Live blackouts00:10:51 News 02: Microsoft patents digital licensing of disc games00:15:16 News 03: Nintendo concerned about next-gen transition? 00:23:28 News 04: Gotham Knights gameplay reveal + last-gen versions cancelled 00:33:57 News 05: Duke Nukem Forever 2001 build leaked! 00:42:44 DF Content Discussion: FSR 2.0 impressions + Intel Arc delay00:49:09 DF Content Discussion: DF Retro on 1080p PS3 games 00:56:41 DF Supporter Q1: Thoughts on current-gen being dominated by UE5?01:03:18 DF Supporter Q2: Upgrade to 3600MHz RAM on Ryzen 3600 worth it? 01:04:32 DF Supporter Q3: Will CPU strength become more relevant at 4K in the future? 01:07:57 DF Supporter Q4: Could there be a market for standalone RT cards?01:11:07 DF Supporter Q5: Could PS5 VRR become as good as Xbox VRR? 01:13:14 DF Supporter Q6: After the DNF 2001 leak, what other unreleased games should see the light of day?
We also spend some time talking about an intriguing patent that sees Xbox Series S users able to play their back catalogue of Xbox One games by using their legacy consoles. It’s a necessity because – of course – Series S has not disc drive, which effectively means that right now at least, anyone upgrading from One S to Series S can’t take their games with them. It’s worth stressing that any time you see a patent online, you’re getting no guarantee that the idea contained therein will actually become reality – but this particular patent, while unwieldy and cumbersome, could actually work.