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MS Seeks Entrance Fee to XBox Accessory Market
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 10, 2005 05:00 PM
from the hey-they-build-the-playground dept.
from the hey-they-build-the-playground dept.
pwnage writes "According to CNET, Microsoft's newest licensing model for the next-generation XBox will effectively lock out 3rd-party accessory manufacturers who don't enroll in Microsoft's licensing and royalty program. The new console will employ hardware security mechanisms to ensure that only products created by developers willing to fork over cash to Microsoft can connect to and work with the console. Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by making traditional 'approved product' licensing mandatory for 3rd-party developers? Or will companies line up by the dozens to tithe to King Bill? Finally, will Sony follow a similar strategy to eke additional revenues out of its PlayStation 3?"
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Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Lexmark Did This (Score:4, Informative)
yes, they did! [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I don't know what I ever saw in the ability to choose products based on their merits. Having a big brother to help me make these choices will really enhance my life. It's double-plus good.
TW
Parent
Re:Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
No no, you don't understand. It's OK for Apple to behave this way because OSX is BSD, and (despite that its dying!) BSD is free and open source and full of wholesome goodness.
(It's only evil if Micro$oft does it!)
Parent
Quality Control or Absolute Control? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, there are way more poor people than rich. World-wide, there are way more poor people than middle class. Most of those poor people are buying soap, clothes and food. Many of them are buying entertainment too.
Cash strapped people can and do buy gaming consoles and w
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, why is anyone surprised at the 'high' prices of 'next generation' consoles? For electronics companies the formula is pretty well-established:
- Invest serious $$$ into R&D and make a 'next generation' product
- Spend big on marketing/advertising
- Give it a price tag that may be a bit high, but one that early adopters will happily swallow
- Over time lower prices to capture a larger market share
That's what you see with virtually every electronic toy out there.Parent
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good point, but it is slightly off base. Note, I am not saying that your point is not valid, only that it plays out a little differently than the saying.
This Excellent Book [amazon.com] goes into great detail as to who the rich actually are, and what they actually wear, and what they really buy. I would actually be surprised to find a rich person shopping at high end stores after having read that book. In fact, I would guess you would more likely find them at Wal-Mart doing their shopping. High income earners such as Doctors, Laywers and Accountants generally shop at the "luxury" shops and buy the Ferrari's and Handmade Gucci's. The rich got to be rich by shopping at places like Wal-Mart.
Now, as to your point, you are entirely correct on the selling... Selling to the masses rather. The economics of scale will benifit you. If you can sell millions of products that retail for $2.50 you are going to make more money than selling a few items that retail for $10,000. Provided you can survive Wal-Marts "supplier squeezing techniqes" you can make a good deal of money selling volumes to them.
Parent
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes MS makes more, but its paid by the customer. And when the customer sees the expense of the whole system its just going to put a sour taste in their mouth.
I find it always odd why companies don't seem to realize other companies do the same things they do.
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:I'll take hidden answer #4 (Score:3, Interesting)
The phrase "tactile feedback" made my mind go crazy. And here I thought it was going to be some sort of successor to the Power Glove.
THIS will be Nintendo's contribution to the gaming industry. As microsoft just prevents wang-chung-foo from making ad-hock pieces with security dongles inside their parts, Nintendo actua
Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I really can't think of any accessories that have ever influenced anyone's decision whether or not to buy a console. GBA attaching to a Gamecube, maybe? Gameshark? Eh.
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's a bad move on MS's part. 3rd party accessories have always been awful. It's especially frustrating when you want to go buy an xbox live headset and all the 1st party versions are sold out and the only thing left is a really horrible speakerphone made by Bob's Bargain XBox Stuff.
Crappy 3rd party accessories reflect badly on the console as a whole. A little bit of quality assurance is a good thing.
Parent
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I am considering buying an xbox 360. The decision hinges on the ability to use it with my unused 19" CRT monitor. It's in excellent condition, but a laptop means I don't use it anymore.
The 360 is supposed to have VGA out, so that's that.
But of course, I'm a PC gamer. I was hoping that I'd be able to use a mouse and keyboard to control FPS games on the 360. After all, the 360 has USB ports, so it's theoretically possible if there are standard k
Hopefully including some sort of quality control.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Logitech is more likely to pay the fee than a get-rich-quick company making "2x the MEMORY!!" memory cards, hopefully the market will see a big step forwards in the average quality of third party peripherals.
Re:Hopefully including some sort of quality contro (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not too concerned though, it's going to be the same type of situation as it was with the chips in pinter ink cartridges.
1)DRM-like scheme locks out competitor
2)competitor reverse engineers said scheme
3)???
4)Profit!!
MS would be best off not suing under the DMCA, seeing as the SCOTUS was pretty firm in the Lexmark case about the DMCA not extending to interaction between components.
Parent
Re:Hopefully including some sort of quality contro (Score:3, Interesting)
Companies will pay (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Companies will pay (Score:3, Interesting)
If it increases the quality of peripherals, I'm all for it. My only question is: When can I pre-order a Xbox 360?
Bad move, MS (Score:3, Insightful)
With this in effect, suddenly hardware is going to be more expensive with less competition. With the PS3 and Xbox having basically the same game lineup, this could be part of keeps Sony at the top (assuming they don't do anything stupid like this).
Yes, they will pay the crack dealer... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, because the potential pay-off to the 3rd party people is just way to big. They will pay up. But I suspect whatever scheme MS comes up with will be cracked within 72 hours anyway...
Missing an option... (Score:5, Interesting)
More likely... Manufacturers will circumvent the protections and make compatible items anyway like with the original NES. There's even prior case law from the original NES days, and even the Lexmark case that will help them get away with it.
Re:Missing an option... (Score:4, Insightful)
That was pre-DMCA however; laws have changed now. If the new xbox was some sort of "trusted computing" device, they could argue that the entire system used the same protection and this was breaking it. Might not be a credible case legally or technically, but the threat can be enough to make some manufacturers back out of the market. It's all risk assesment.
If they were to sue for some of these more recent laws, it may backfire and have some of the laws repealed/modified when everyone realises how sneaky it is. Which would be nice.
Parent
Think Tengen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Think Tengen (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
If console manufacturers could legally lock out third party accessories, wouldn't they have done it long ago? Nintendo sued Game Genie over patent violations but still couldn't keep them out of the market.
How is this any different from Lexmark's ink cartridge fiasco (a case they lost)? "We'll keep doing it in the face of all of this legal precedent that says we can't" doesn't seem like a sound long-term legal strategy.
Re:I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
You've not come across this Microsoft company of which you speak before, have you.
The same company that sucks up $1m/day fines for monopolistic practices, loses its case in the U.S. and just buys the Bush administration in order to have the government decide, "Pursuing any damages isn't worthwhile, even though we've already won."
Microsoft knows that with a five year generati
Long Term Effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Nintendo had something similar (Score:5, Informative)
Patent 1 [164.195.100.11]
Patent 2 [164.195.100.11]
Disabling the chip [iodized.net]
Oh yeah, that's a great idea. (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how much it will be? $2? $10? The problem with this kind of deal is that it almost always hurts the little guy more. Logitech isn't going to have to pay nearly as much per-unit as one of the smaller players, so we end up with fewer choices. I would be one thing if we could somehow be guaranteed that MS will make the best controllers out there, but it's not like their track record has been that good.
So if a developer wants to sell a driving game with a wheel or we want to get the HD version of Dance Dance Revolution (yay) then it's going to cost even more than before.
Really though, I doubt this is about controllers. More likely it concerns other types of accessories...like mod chips. If they can prove that "unlicensed" mod chip makers are avoiding a standard license fee, they can sue them for those fees to either put them out of business or make it too expensive to make a product. If it's not illegal yet, I'm sure there's a lobbyist somewhere working on it.
It's just supply and demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Moves like these are based solely on the expected demand from consumers for these consoles. If consumers are frothing at the mouth to get their hands on the new xbox 360, then peripheral manufacturers are going to be frothing at the mouth to supply them with whiz-bang accessories. MS wins: a good business decision.
However, the opposite was true of Nintendo after their fatal decision to stick with cartriges for N64. For years, Nintendo dominated the console market, and for that, they required that all games were authorized by them and I believe even manufactured at one of their own sites. They could do this solely because there was incredible demand for their consoles. When Sony entered the market and support for Nintendo waned, all of a sudden they needed to offer game producers incentives to keep making games for Nintendo consoles.
The only thing that this sort of decision by Microsoft is saying is that they believe very strongly that their next gaming platform is going to be massively successful. And to me, that isn't really such a bad thing.
Given Sony's History... (Score:5, Informative)
Am I bitter? Oh, a tad.
I've since moved to Guildwars. It's possibly the best RPG game I've ever played.
Just. Don't. Buy. One. (or, do) (Score:5, Interesting)
Or not. But the point is, it's a wildly competitive product space. It they can't attract the right 3rd party stuff at a good price, and assure their users that 3rd party stuff is going to be something other than a rip-off, then they'll lose. Let them, or support them. It's a choice - and the choice is X or not X. S or not. N or not.
If it was my product, I suppose I'd probably also have an interest in not seeing its reputation tainted by someone's experience with a cheesy, ill-behaved, flaky third-party add-on. Because some 10 year old is going to come back from his friend's house talking Dad into buying him a Sony box since the Xbox kept hanging up when they were using the Acme Kick Boxing Motion Sensor Gloves that only cost $10 on eBay.
No hobbyists? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I'll sit that one out. Not because I want to do it but because amateur hackers thinking up new uses for stuff is a great source of new ideas and gadgets... the more Microsoft locks up their systems, the less they'll have a part in the next generation of inventors.
Re:No hobbyists? (Score:3, Insightful)
This tactic not only provides them with more money, but it has a neat side-effect where it creates another hurdle for hobbyists and pirates to have to jump over (or perhaps its the other way around).
They do not want anyone hacking their console for any reason.
Tune in next week! (Score:5, Funny)
For some reason this brought Batman to mind. "Will the Caped Crusader be able to free himself or will he be fried, roasted and "bat"tered? Why has the joker broken in to jail? Who is this new stranger? Can Batman's utility belt run Linux?
Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.
Either pwnage or I watch too much Batman.
Should be a warning to game devs. (Score:3, Insightful)
looks like they found another way to lose money (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kinda strange that they are doing this considering for the life of Windows CE, they've been willing to lose ~$1 billion per year and haven't resorted to this kind of extortion from its WinCE cohorts. Then again, WinCE is a software product and Xbox 180 is hardware. And expensive hardware at that.
I just loved how they are not only requiring accessory vendors to pay MSFT, but they also must sign an agreement to NOT develope certain accessories. For instance, nobody but MSFT can build wireless accessories. Good luck with that.
LoB
Re:Four words... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Nintendo Seal Of Approval means that that part is tested to work. However, I can buy a noname Gamecube/N64/SNES/NES controller without the NSoA, and it'll probably work.
However, this will mean that if it isn't an MS certified device (and the DRM isn't cracked), it simply won't work.
Re:Four words... (Score:3, Informative)
The Seal of Approval was because the courts ruled that it was legal for third parties to make compatable NES cartridges for the original NES even though the third party cartridges circumvented the protections against such a thing. Afterwards Nintendo fought back with marketing claiming anything witout the seal was inferior. Really it just meant that the developer had paid the fees.
What he's saying is that the protections will be broken and MS will have wasted their effort.
Re:Making the PC world a better place... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? This is nonsense. Third party makers will pay up, and proliferate. There is no shortage of people willing to pay, and they aren't interested in PC games, they want consoles. If you can't afford one you're probably not the market MS is targeting anyway, and will have to wait for second hand equipment on eBay.
Parent
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
This will force MadCatz to start putting out quality accessories, and not crappy controllers that break 2 weeks after you buy them.
It won't force MadCatz to do anything except pay money to Microsoft and charge more for their products. If you know their stuff is crap, don't buy it in any case. A MS hologram isn't going to make it any better. If you think otherwise, I suggest you go look at all the dead Compaqs and Emachines with a MS sticker on them.
Re:the "car" analogy (Score:4, Informative)
it's not. Auto makers tried to this very thing, so did printer manufactures, and a hos of other companies.
All of which failed in court. So as soon as someone make an item that gets around the security(and they will) it won't matter any more.
Or someone will sue as anti competitive, and they will win.
Parent
Re:I bought it i own it (Score:3, Insightful)
where the big monied 'holes can do anything they want at the expense of the customers.
what? you had a foolish notion that you owned the hardware you paid money for?
silly capitalist, ownership is for corporations.