Today"s reveal of the upcoming Xbox One game console by Microsoft certainly answered some questions about the long-rumored product - but one question that was not answered was the company"s plans to support used games on the new console.
The company, in a Q&A on its Xbox Wire site, does acknowledge the issue but says simply, "We are designing Xbox One to enable customers to trade in and resell games. We’ll have more details to share later." However, a Wired article states that, according to Microsoft, all Xbox One games will have to be installed on the console"s hard drive, which ties in each game disc to the owner"s Xbox Live account.
If an Xbox One game tied into one account is used on another one, Wired claimed that the owner of the second account will have to pay a fee to install the game on their Xbox One console. Microsoft"s Xbox Support account on Twitter has since said that the article is wrong; responding to a customer query asking them to confirm that there would be no fee, Xbox Support said: "No fee, correct - and they just got that information wrong. As soon as we saw, we contacted them to correct it."
Playing used console games in the same way people can buy and play used DVDs or CDs may yet become a thing of the past when it comes to Xbox One, but unfortunately Microsoft doesn"t yet appear to be ready to tackle that issue publicly.
A few months ago, GameStop spokesperson Matt Hodges said that their customers have told them that "the desire to purchase a next-generation console would be significantly diminished if new consoles were to prohibit playing pre-owned games." Let"s hope Microsoft can come up with a way that can make all parties on this issue (gamers, retailers and game developers) happy.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft