The last two days or so the interwebs have been exploding with “Xbox 720” rumors, and today brings a whole new set to the table.
Kotaku is the latest to join the fray claiming that game industry sources have given them some insight to what the next generation of Xbox may hold. According to their sources, it’s rumored that the “Xbox 720” will be upgrading from DVD disc formats for their games to Blu-ray – a move Sony made from the get-go. They are also stating the the new console with ship with Kinect 2, which will be an upgrade from its predecessor containing an on-board prcessor allowing for better movement detection. Also on the rumored list is that Microsoft is looking into developing smaller controllers for this new system as well.
The biggest rumor to come from all of this though is that Microsoft may be implementing some sort of mechanism that would prevent users from playing pre-owned games.
It’s not clear if that means that the system wouldn’t play used games or how such a set-up would work. Obvious approaches—I’m theorizing here—like linking a copy of a game to a specific Xbox Live account could seemingly be foiled by used-game owners who would keep their system offline. My source wasn’t sure how Microsoft intended to implement any anti-used game system in the new machine.
A push in any way by Microsoft against used games would likely be cheered from publishers sick of seeing retailers like GameStop crow about their revenues from the sale of used games. But it could potentially anger consumers who rely on buying cheaply-sold used games or even pass games to relatives or friends.
Honestly, I’m not even sure how Microsoft would be able to implement something like this succesfully, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see gaming companies try this in the future – Microsoft or others. Obviously the industry would rather see you have to drop $60 on a new copy of the game instead of buying it used at a cheaper price in a scenario where they would get less money, if any at all. However this would burden the long-standing traditions we gamers have had of loaning games to each other; while the industry may see this as a negative I’d imagine a fair share of games have been purchased because someone borrowed a game from a friend and thought, “Hey, this is an awesome game, but I need to give it back to my buddy. I’ll go buy my own copy!”
It’s important to keep in mind that at this point, no matter who is saying they’ve heard “this and that” from “sources”, that this is all just rumor until Microsoft unveils their new console. So while the idea of their new system preventing us from playing pre-owned games somehow sounds pretty awful, the fact is no one knows for sure what the “Xbox 720” will have in store for consumers.