DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to the latest edition of the WNR, filled with the copyright, high def and gaming goodness that you know and love. Nothing much new to update from my end. I ordered a Chromecast a few weeks back from Amazon (to ship it to Australia via one of those relay shippers), but alas, the lack of stock is becoming a bit frustrating. I’ve received numerous notices from Amazon about the shipping date, giving me all sorts of different information, so who know when I’ll get one. Not that it’s of that much use to me in Australia, since the built-in Netflix support appears to used hard-wired DNS settings, which rules out geo-unblocker services until the device can be hacked or an easy workaround found (which I’ll definitely write about on streambly if/when it is found). Anyway, the news.

Not this again. I guess the Obama administration has run out of things to do, now that it’s commerce department is again trying to revive one of the most controversial parts of the very controversial SOPA bill – to make unauthorized streaming a felony.

Getting your video removed by YouTube could be the least of your worries, under new plans that could make the offense a felony

If all of this sounds familiar, then it’s because it is. Check out this WNR from November 2011, in which the same issue was discussed due to an independent piece of legislation urging for the same (which was then rolled up into the mega monstrosity that was SOPA and PIPA). The obsession that the creative industries, via their political lackeys, have with the whole streaming/felony thing comes down to the fact that unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works is counted as a felony, whereas public performances (such as streaming) is only counted as a misdemeanor. This is the discrepancy that all these various proposals attempt to address, to uniformize (I’ve been assured that this is an actual word) and to unify the differences . I guess it must be an OCD thing.

While I do agree that many of the people posting soul destroying covers of what was once a great song should indeed be locked up, I’m not sure that copyright infringement should be the main reason for doing so. I will also note that this is the same administration that is defending the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and streaming of every conversation that everyone has ever had (where’s my damn copyright protection?), and that these changes may see YouTubers get harsher sentences than the people who destroyed the global financial system.

Technological solutions to piracy don’t usually work well, but when they are capable of causing collateral damage, they become dangerous. That’s what copyright news website TorrentFreak found out this week when their website was blocked by Sky UK’s court mandated piracy filter using a flaw that can allow virtually any website to be blocked.

Apparently, when an already blocked website, such as TV torrent indexer EZTV, changes their DNS settings to point to another IP address (regardless of whether the IP address actually belongs to the website or not), Sky’s system automatically adds the new IP address to the list of blocked addresses. This means that EZTV could in fact add Google’s IP addresses to their DNS, and Sky’s system will block access to Google for its four million customers.

This is what happens when you replace due process with an automated system, a badly programmed one at that. Even the full legal system with its due process is by no means infallible to unjust outcomes, but one where there is zero accountability and legal recourse was always bound to fail, with or without a serious flaw like this one. Technology can improve efficiency if used correctly, but taking legal short cuts is not making the process more efficient, just more flawed.

Blu-ray and digital revenue is helping to offset the decline in DVD sales and rental revenue, according to new data released by the DEG. While packaged media sales declined by an alarming 13% in the second quarter of 2013, compared to the same quarter a year ago, overall revenue remained relatively steady.

Netflix’s streaming business is booming, while its disc rental business is in a steady decline

This is largely due to Blu-ray sales again showing double digit growth, 15% in the first six months of 2013 compared to the first half of 2012; and also digital revenue rising by an impressive 24% in the same period (with electronic sellthroughs up an amazing 50%). Subscription based Internet streaming was a particular highlight within the digital umbrella, with spending up 32.13%.

For Blu-ray, sales of new releases was up 19%, compared to only 8% for catalog/classic releases.

Rental revenue continues to decline, by 5.5% for the first half of 2013. So while Netflix streaming was growing by 30%+, its disc rental business was most likely in a relatively steep decline, as subscription rental revenue for the whole industry declined by 21%.

The same data also showed that 5 million new Blu-ray players were sold in the first half of 2013, bringing the total number households with at least one Blu-ray players in the U.S. to 61 million.

In short, Blu-ray, digital good; DVD, rental bad.

The Xbox One received a much needed boost, literally, this week as Microsoft officially revealed that the Xbox One’s GPU speed has been upped from 800MHz to 853MHz. This 6.6% performance boost gets the Xbox One’s performance a little bit closer to the PS4, but the PS4 still looks set to easily be the more powerful machine.

Pure GPU shader throughput on the PS4 is still expected to be nearly 40% greater than that of the Xbox One, even after this latest GPU speed bump. And this is despite the Xbox One being $100 dearer than the PS4 at launch, but most of that is due to the inclusion of Kinect 2.0 with every console.

Xbox One’s GPU speed increased to close the gap on the PS4

On paper, this seems to give the PS4 a huge advantage when it comes to the game’s visual quality; but in reality, developers of multi-platform games tend to go with the lowest common denominator, as opposed to doing extra work (which costs extra $$$) on one particular platform to leverage its hardware advantage. But as developers become more accustomed to working on both consoles, they might begin to find less resource consuming ways to get the best out of the PS4, and so expect later stage PS4 games to look better than their Xbox One counterparts. And of course, PS4 exclusives will be able to take advantage much earlier on.

I’m 80% certain at this point that I probably won’t buy an Xbox One, not until it’s a bit cheaper at the very least. At the same time, I’m maybe 80% certain that I will own a PS4 before I own an Xbox One. Microsoft’s DRM snafu; the price difference; and the hardware superiority, the latter two being in favor of the PS4, is what is largely responsible for my stance.

That’s it for the week. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next week.

A pretty quiet week this one. Not sure why, not that I mind too much. We can get through this one pretty quick, I think.

Well it’s about time! Netflix has finally come through with one of the most demanded features – the ability to have individual user accounts. From now on, subscribers will be able to create up to 5 profiles, one for each person that shares the same Netflix account. Each profile will have its own suggestions based on that user’s viewing habits, as well as a separate instant queue and recently watched list. So no more Fireman Sam cartoons in your most excellent instant queue featuring only ultra violent martial arts films.

Netflix profiles is exactly what users have been demanding

You can also connect each profile to your Facebook account, and then the Facebook profile picture will be used to identify the account, but then your friends will all think you’re some kind of weirdo because you’ve managed to watch  72 episodes of Dexter in the span of about 5 days.

As for which apps will support profiles, pretty much all of them will except for the Android and Wii apps (updates for both are coming soon). Although it might take a week or two for the feature to finish rolling out to all the currently supported devices. You can only create profiles on the PS3 app or via the Netflix website at the moment, but the other apps will be able to access any created profiles.

While streaming definitely seems like the way things are headed, the good old optical discs might still have a place if bandwidth hogging applications like 4K become mainstream. And then there’s always the world of archival storage, which might very well be where old storage formats go to die (and where magnetic tape is still king, at least for high capacity storage). So this is why Sony and Panasonic announced this week that they’re joining forces again to develop the next generation optical disc for the long-term storage market, a disc that will hold 300GB of data.

Both companies made it very clear that the format is only intended for the archival storage market, possibly a deliberate effort to not make Blu-ray seem obsolete. But if 4K does take off, and the Internet as a delivery platform can’t do the job even with more advanced codecs, then I wouldn’t bet against this so far unnamed format stepping in and carrying the load, all 300GB of it.

I’m feeling a bit sorry for Nintendo at the moment. The Wii U is a pretty nice console with a good dose of innovation, but a poor games line-up (always a killer when it comes to a new console), and now intense competition from the yet unreleased PS4 and Xbox One means it’s going to be a major uphill struggle for Nintendo’s flagship console. I knew Wii U sales weren’t that good, but without readily available NPD data, all I could do was to guess how bad they really were. But while it’s easy to hide sales data from journalists and bloggers, the financial reporting world is a bit harder to fool, and Nintendo has had to come clean with its Wii U sales figures. Only 160,000 units sold in three month, worldwide, is more than just bad though. As a comparison, the nearly 8 year-old Xbox 360 managed to sell 140,000 units in June alone, and that was only just US sales.

Only Zelda (and Mario) can save the Wii U now

Nintendo blames the poor results on the lack of first-party titles, the likes of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and Pikmin, all of which have new Wii U version arriving during the next quarter or two. The problem is that both the PS4 and Xbox One will be launching right in the middle of this release schedule, and I’m not sure even a Mario and Zelda game can save the Wii U at this point. Even if it does, it doesn’t really solve any problems for Nintendo, whose Wii console suffered because it relied too much on first-party releases. The whole point of Nintendo going “hardcore” with the updated Wii U hardware was to get new kinds of gamers on board, along with third-party developers that are good at reaching this particular demographic. But without hardware sales, developers won’t dare to invest in Wii U development. And the longer this goes on, the more outdated and limited the Wii U hardware will be, and you can bet developers will be even less keen to focus on what is essentially last-gen tech.

A huge price cut seems to be the only way to save the Wii U at the moment, to position itself as the budget console against, not the PS4 and Xbox One, but the PS3 and Xbox 360 (which is still very hard, as both of these platforms have a huge library of games that the Wii U does not).

Is the Wii U this generation’s Dreamcast? No idea, but let’s hope Nintendo can ride out the storm better than Sega couldn’t.

And believe it or not, that’s it for the week. Hoping for more next week. Until then, have a great one!

Well here’s a badly kept secret: introducing Digital Digest’s new sister site, streambly. streambly is an Australian based website dedicated to all things streaming. It features the latest news on the world of video, audio and game streaming, and also features how-to guides on how to get the best out of legal streaming options. I say it’s not a well kept secret because I’ve already linked to it here a couple of times, but only just remembered that I haven’t actually bothered to introduce it. Well, consider it introduced!

Which is just as well, as there are quite a few streaming related news in this week’s WNR.

Here’s an idea: instead of getting lobbyists to write copyright laws, why not let the people that will be most affected by the laws to write them? That’s exactly what’s happening in Finland, with the country’s first crowdsourced copyright bill now submitted for review, and a potential vote in their parliament in early 2014.

More than a thousand people have helped to write and vote on the various provisions in this draft bill, and volunteer lawyers have gone over every inch of the document to ensure it complies with existing Finnish and EU regulations. And with 50,000 people publicly backing the proposed legislation, under Finnish law, the parliament will now have to vote on it.

While Finland isn’t exactly the center of the world when it comes to copyright law, those that have been reading this feature might remember a story involving a 9 year-old girl and her Winnie the Pooh laptop, seized during a police search of her home. Yep, that was in Finland, in the country where downloading a MP3 is felony in the same category as manslaughter and violent rioting. No surprise then that the current copyright laws introduced in 2006 were written with the “help” of the copyright lobby.

But these new proposed laws, dubbed the Common Sense in Copyright Act, will help to restore the balance by finally giving the people a say in the matter, not just industry interests. Of course, the new laws have to be voted in first, which will probably take place in early 2014. At that time, we’ll find out just how many Finnish politicians are in the pockets of the copyright lobby.

iPredator becoming the prey of financial providers, including PayPal, who suspended iPredator’s account last week

Lobbying politicians is only part of the copyright lobby’s job description – lobbying private businesses is the other, including the financial providers that help piracy websites to pay their bills. And these providers may be launching their own war against piracy, with iPredator the latest victim. Only weeks after one of their main payment providers ceased support for the Pirate Bay linked VPN provider, this week, PayPal suspended iPredator’s account and froze its funds.

While no explanation has been given, the VPN service’s links to The Pirate Bay may have played a part in the banning; iPredator was launched by the same people that founded The Pirate Bay. iPredator allows people in countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked to continue accessing the site, and to download torrents anonymously.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, co-founder of The Pirate Bay and iPredator Peter Sunde says that a secret blacklist may exist, and that iPredator may have been put on it, according to one payment processor that Sunde talked to. If true, this may be further proof of the existence of a secret war against piracy, waged by commercial interests outside of the purview of the legal system.

A trio of Netflix related news this week, two of them having to do with Android. You’ve probably heard of Google’s Chromecast device by now, the $35 device dubbed “Netflix on a stick” by some, even though it actually does a lot more (or a lot less, depending on how you look at it). Our sister site Streambly covers the story in more detail, but think of Chromecast as an easy way to get videos that stream on your Android tablet or smartphone (or in your Chrome browser) to stream on your TV.

This little $35 device might make a big splash, as Google gets into the media streamer business (sort of)

It does a lot more than being “Netflix on a stick” because it also supports YouTube, Google Play and mirrors whatever your Chrome browser (even the desktop/PC/Mac version) displays on your TV. And that’s just for now, and as soon as more developers add Chromecast support to their apps, the $35 device will seem even better value.

It does a lot less than being “Netflix on a stick” because, unlike other media streamers, you’ll still need a compatible Android device or a computer running Chrome in order to actually get Netflix to run. You can simply plug and play with a Roku, for example, but you’ll need to do a bit more work to get Netflix running via Chromecast.

While it’s not available in Australia, I’m eager to get my hands on one. For one, this could be the cheapest way yet to get Netflix up and working in Australia – with Chrome and the free Hola unblocker extension, you save money by not having to pay for a geo-unblocker, or a media streamer if you don’t have one already.

Chromecast definitely got most of the spotlight last week, but it wasn’t the only Android/Netflix announcement. For those wondering why Netflix quality sucks on tablets and to a lesser extent, on smartphones, it’s because the resolution is limited to a sucky 480p. The culprit, unsurprisingly, is DRM and the lack of support for it on these portable devices. But with the rollout of Android 4.3, 1080p Netflix playback is finally coming to Android.

The new Nexus 7 device will be the first tablet to support Netflix 1080p, but only because it’s the first and only 1080p Nexus tablet, and only Nexus devices will have access to 4.3 in the short term. As 4.3 rolls out to more 1080p tablets (and smartphones), more and more devices will start to support 1080p too.

Breaking Bad is breaking onto Netflix UK and Ireland, with the final episodes available on a next-day basis

It doesn’t really surprise me that DRM has been what’s holding back HD Netflix playback, even the 720p kind, and the DRM requirement will have been one that’s been placed on Netflix by Hollywood. It’s the kind of shortsighted and paranoid thinking Hollywood is famous for, as if somehow enabling 720p Netflix playback on tablets will somehow cause a piracy pandemic. Somehow.

And lastly, UK viewers will be happy to learn that the final season of Breaking Bad will be coming to Netflix UK and Ireland within a day of the shows original airing in the US. It’s quite a coup for Netflix, considering how eagerly awaited the final few episodes of Breaking Bad is. No luck for Netflix users elsewhere though, not unless you get yourself a Netflix region selector service like Unblock-Us (hint, hint). Australian BB fans can of course head over to streambly where you can find helpful guides on how to sign up and use Netflix (and also get access to Netflix UK/Ireland), just in time for the August 12/13 debut of the final season.

OK, that’s enough cross promotion for this week. See you in seven.

I spent most of this last week watching Dexter on Netflix. I do worry though that binge watching a show about a serial killer might have a bigger impact on my psyche than your typical binge watching choice. Binge watching is great for killing a bit of time now and then, but if it cuts too much into your life schedule, then it can become harmful.

But it’s okay, I’m far too lazy to ever become a serial killer. Or a serial anything.

Onto the news.

The randomness of DMCA takedown submissions to Google has once again reared its ugly head, with HBO asking a page containing a download for the popular open-source VLC media player to be delisted from Google’s results.

With more than 14 million links being removed from Google’s results just in the last month alone, and with little or no consequence for submitting incorrect takedown requests, mistakes are going to happen. It’s likely that HBO outsourced the collation of these links to a third party, which then probably used an automated keyword based algorithm to locate suspicious links. If that third party failed to do some basic verification of the automatically gathered links, then this is what happens.

While Google probably has their own method to detect and ignore incorrect takedown requests, but mistakes still do happen. If it’s a popular domain or page, then the site owner might file a counter claim which will be successful and will get the URL reinstated. But on a page like this one, where it’s a legal download on a torrent site, it’s unlikely the site’s owner, or the people who make VLC, will make the effort to file a counter claim, and so once the mistake happens, it’s permanent. Just how many permanent mistakes have happened via Google’s DMCA process, nobody knows.

As for HBO, at least they didn’t try to remove their own webpages like they did last time.

The MPAA supports getting money out of piracy, but not if it has to do any of the work

Opening up another front in the war against piracy, Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo and other major web advertisers) this week announced new plans to stop the flow of money to websites suspected of providing infringing content. The new plan was brokered by the Internet Advertising Bureau with help from the White House, and will allow rightsholders to alert ad networks of potentially infringing sites and get them booted off the network.

With the MPAA harping on about getting money out of piracy, you’d think they would be the first to offer support to this new initiative. But surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the MPAA wasn’t impressed at all, calling the new initiative too narrow, and saying that too much of the anti-piracy burden is being placed on rightsholders.

The “everyone else should do the work, not us” stance isn’t a new one from the film industry, but having just months ago praised industry-led efforts like this one, the MPAA’s dissatisfaction is a bit hard to understand. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, it would almost as if the MPAA preferred the likes of Google and Microsoft to do nothing. This way, the tech industry can continue to be the scapegoats in all of this, the straw men in their bid to get continue the government subsidization of this billion dollar industry.

Whatever the reason is for the entertainment industry’s single-minded pursuit of a technologically-led solution, the technology sector is actually coming up with real and working entertainment-led solutions to the same problem. A newly published report from Norway shows that music piracy rates are now only a sixth of what they were in 2008, and it’s largely thanks to legal alternatives such as Spotify.

The report found that illegal music downloads topped 1.2 billion in 2008 in Norway, but is now down to only 210 million (as of 2012). Further proving that Spotify and platforms like it are solving the piracy problem, the report found that 47% of those surveyed used Spotify, with an amazing half of these people also choosing to pay for the premium version of the music streaming service. Just goes to show that people are willing to pay for music, as long as you give them a product that’s worth paying for.

Spotify helping to kill music piracy at least in Norway

Film and TV piracy in Norway also declined, but not by as much as music piracy. With Netflix only available in Norway from October 2012, we’ll probably see bigger declines when the 2013 figures are out.

But not everyone is happy with Spotify though. Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich of Radiohead last week pulled their music from Spotify, criticizing the music streaming platform of being “bad for new music”. The musicians criticized Spotify’s royalty payment system, which they say ensures new musicians will never make it, while Spotify “shareholders will shortly being rolling in it”.

Spotify responded to the criticism by saying that $500 million in royalty payments have already been paid out to rightsholders, and that this figure is likely to reach $1 billion by the end of 2013, and that much of this money “is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music”.

Note that payments to rightsholders does not always equal payment to artists. Music labels talk about artist rights, but the reality is that only a small slice of revenue actually goes to the artists. In the age of record stores and CDs, where labels did all the promotional work, this may have made sense. But in the age of self-publishing, perhaps it’s time for artists to take control of their own destinies, and get a bigger slice of the pie as a result.

The June NPD stats are out looking at US video game sales in that month, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was again the top selling home-based console with 140,000 unit sales. This is the 30th month in a row that the 360 has been the best selling console.

Sony was their usual quiet self, despite the critically acclaimed The Last of Us being the top selling title of the month, the third highest selling game in June since 1995.

Nintendo did put out a PR statement, but it was exclusively focused on the 3DS, which did sell 225,000 units. No mention of the Wii U at all, which doesn’t bode well for the much-maligned console.

It’s definitely the calm before the storm at the moment, what with only a few more months left until the release of the PS4 and Xbox One. I just hope that with a new generation, the NPD and the gaming companies involved will be more generous when it comes to releasing sales figures. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

All right, that’s it for the week. Not too long, not too short. Just right. See you next week.

Hi there. I hope you’ve had a good week. I have all the usual goodness for you in this week’s WNR, which is not too long, but not too short. Just right!

Let’s get started.

As promised earlier, the French government has redrafted the country’s controversial copyright laws, and the Hadopi experiment is now officially dead. The government announced changes that will mean an end to the threat of Internet disconnections – instead, an escalating series of fines will now be used to deter users from downloading pirated stuff. The French government also called for greater focus on commercial piracy and websites that supply pirated content.

Hadopi is dead – French government kills of controversial three-strikes program

In the nearly four years since the introduction of Hadopi, there has only been one disconnections which also resulted in a “massive” 150 euros fine. And as reported here before, even that single disconnection was fraught with controversy, as the 40-year old artisan from rural France at the center of the case denied ever making the download in question.

What we do know is that during the reign of Hadopi, piracy rates have not decreased noticeably, and even if it has, the fortunes of the creative industries have not improved as a result. Hadopi has cost the French government millions of euros in maintenance costs instead.

Just goes to show that giving the entertainment industry exactly what they want is often not to the advantage of anyone involved, not even the entertainment industry.

Speaking of getting what they want, the RIAA now wants “notorious” music piracy Jammie Thomas-Rasset to publicly speak out against piracy, in exchange for a reduction from the $222,000 she owes the billion dollar music industry for downloading 24 songs. But the single mother says she will not submit to the RIAA’s demands.

The $222,000 she has been ordered to pay is already a reduction from the $1.92 million that a jury originally awarded against her, a figure that even the judge in the case found excessive. Through appeals and new trials, the damages now stand at the $222,000 (a nonsensical $9,250 per song), and Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers have only recently failed in their bid to have their day in the US supreme court to make the argument that the excessive damages are unconstitutional.

The next step, according to her lawyers, may be to file for bankruptcy, although the RIAA has hinted that other non-monetary settlement options may be available, as the industry’s copyright lobby tries to find a PR-friendly way to end the matter once and for all.

When the RIAA isn’t busy suing single mothers and college students, it appears they’re working day and night submitting DMCA takedown requests to Google it seems, as the RIAA has just passed 25 million URL takedowns mark. And the RIAA isn’t slowing down, if anything, it appears they’re accelerating their efforts to clean up the Interwebs.

I do wonder though in the time it has taken the RIAA to remove 25 million URLs, how many new URLs with the same content has sprung up in its place. Probably more than 25 million, my guess.

——

If reading your Dickens, Austen, or heavens forbid, Brown, suddenly seems like an inferior literary experience, then you may be the victim of a new e-book DRM that randomly changes the words in the text every time a copy of the e-book is made.

New e-book DRM could change the text of your favourite novels

The new DRM called SiDiM, developed with funding from the German government, makes small variations in punctuation and replaces some words with synonyms in copies that also allows these modified copies to be traced back to its original owner. The idea is that copies, while still readable, would not contain the original experience, and that since copies are traceable, original owners will be less keen to share or upload the e-book online.

An interesting, but definitely not new idea, that can also be easily defeated. A simple comparison with an original will allow these variations to be “corrected”, and even just comparing and merging two different modified copies will in most cases allow you to recreate the original (assuming the random variations are spread evenly throughout the book – two modified copies will be unlikely to have the same modifications).

And while the threat of having a Pirate Bay copy traced back to you is real, legally, there may still be nothing that publishers can do to the original leaker. Because they would have to first proof the intent to distribute, as there are many reasons why the original ended up being copied (perhaps in an unauthorized manner by friends or family, if the e-book reader or storage device was lost or stolen, or discarded intentionally). And real hardcore pirates would simply set up fake disposable accounts to buy one copy to share with the world anyway.

Sony seems to have a very refined strategy for promoting the PS4: by owning up to all the PS3’s problems and mistakes and promising not to do it again. First it was the admission that the PS3 launch price was indeed too high, something that Sony has addressed with the $399 priced PS4. Now, it’s the final admission that the PS3 was indeed less developer friendly that it should have been.

PS3 was made too difficult to develop for, says PS4’s lead architect

The PS4’s lead architect Mark Cerny explained that the PS3 was designed to suit developers of triple-A titles, those that had the resources to fully take advantage of the console. So for smaller developers, it wasn’t as easy to simply take an idea and then letting it happen on the PS3. Rather, it meant working within the PS3’s framework and then coming up with an idea that would fit into the framework (time and budget and difficulty, all constraining factors). It’s this that drove smaller developers and those that had great gaming ideas away from the PS3, and this meant less games with the “fun factor”, games that were key to the success of the original PlayStation.

And of course, Cerny says that this will no longer be a problem with the PS4, which based on at least Sony’s marketing, is a much more indie-friendly console.

So be on the look out for more PS3 bashing, from Sony of all people, in the lead up to the PS4’s release.

While Sony’s strategy may be clear, Microsoft’s strategy of pretending the Xbox One DRM fiasco never happened is being hampered by their most loyal fans, who have put up a petition to get Microsoft to reinstate the controversial DRM.

The pro-DRM gamers’ petition argues that not everything about Microsoft’s original plan was bad, and that features like the ability to share games within a family, to play games without discs, to access game libraries across different consoles, and to be able to sell and trade digital purchases, should be reinstated.

Others on the Internet are not so convinced that this group’s intentions are genuine, some have even said that this is nothing but a guerrilla PR campaign by Sony to keep the Xbox One DRM controversy fresh in gamer’s minds in the lead up to the launch of both consoles.

But I think Microsoft’s problems go beyond just the DRM clusterf**k. They have a console that’s more expense due to the built-in motion gaming device that gamers don’t really want, a device which Microsoft have failed so far to convince anyone that it’s worth the extra $100 over the PS4’s base price. And a console that, by all technical previews I’ve seen, appears to be less powerful than the PS4. All the while, Microsoft is busy touting the media capabilities of the Xbox One, despite it not doing anything that the PS4 cannot do, other than some fancy OSD overlays that won’t even be available outside of the US – at least that’s what most people are thinking.

If Microsoft don’t want to lose this upcoming generation’s console war, then they need to get the word out fast about why they think the Xbox One is $100 superior to the PS4, whether it’s Kinect 2.0, or fancy overlays, or whatever. Keep selling this message, and if you’re successful, then nobody will be talking about the DRM thing anymore.

I will probably still talk about it though, but it’s what I do for a living (sort of).

And we come to the end of another WNR. Hope you’ve enjoyed this issue. See you next week.