Xbox One DRM backdown was impressive, but we’ll get there eventually, says Sims creator

Microsoft may have backed down from its plans to make the Xbox One a digital driven device, but The Sims creator Will Wright believes the industry is heading that way regardless.

“We’re coming at this with the mentality that when I buy media I own the disk or whatever for the rest of my life,” Wright told CNN. “I can put that DVD in my machine and watch it and share it with friends and trade it in.

“We’re slowly moving to this idea that everything is on the cloud and I’m actually buying rights, and I don’t physically own the actual product.”

Wright says he completely gets why there are such strong views on DRM.

“From the consumers’ point of view, I can really understand a lot of the backlash to DRM. The fact that if something’s required on the Internet that means they can’t play it on the aeroplane or if their Internet connection goes down,” said Wright.

In that regard, Wright says “it was very impressive how responsive Microsoft was” with its Xbox One DRM policy change.

The change won’t come overnight, with all involved parties having their say until an agreement is reached.

“DRM is going to be an ongoing negotiation because there are features to the DRM, or at least Internet connectivity, that is a very attractive solution to the piracy issue,” said Wright. “Gaming has had a long history of piracy, but you can’t use DRM at the expense of the customers. I’m not really sure I have a clear answer to this except that it’s going to be something that we slowly acclimate the player base towards.”

The move away from game ownership will happen, and we suspect both Microsoft and Sony will slowly move in this direction with each passing year. The problem Microsoft had was it attempted to make a massive overnight change, to which consumers said No.

Source: CNN