Friday, March 22, 2024

Xbox 720 always-on necessity & no second-hand discs buzz verified by Ian Livingstone

The Xbox 720, or the Durango as some like to address it, seems sure to be a bane for those who prowl on pre-owned game copies, as strict measures to shun the practice have been taken care of by Microsoft, we can reveal. During an interview we had with Eidos’ Ian Livingstone, he was quite comfortable to disclose that the next-gen console will need always-on Internet and will watermark discs so they’re unusable on other machines.

Xbox 720 No Used Games

This unexpected Xbox 720 remark corroborates recent rumors that have been hovering around these very facts. Livingstone is in India currently promoting Tomb Raider, and apart from quizzing him about the game’s various aspects, we even put forth a discussion about next-gen consoles. When asked about his say on this upcoming generation of consoles, he asserted that it is perhaps the last time we’ll be getting to see physical media being affixed onto gaming systems.

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But the comment that followed had him spilling the actual beans to us. His exact words were “On the 720 it requires the user to have a constant Internet connection. And the optical disc, when it’s put into the console is effectively watermarked; it won’t play on any other console.” This comes exactly at a point when fan backlash on this purported upcoming feature is on an all-time high.

Further on, we pushed him a little, trying to confirm if the PS4 too will have similar trait, to which he responded by saying that he doesn’t know for sure, but presumes it’s going to be something similar. Livingstone has argued that hardware manufacturers and publishers have ‘not really been very happy’ with the amount of pre-owned sales as well as piracy issues that are rife right now.

Ian Livingstone’s comments surely do seem like enough evidence for disclosing that the Xbox 720 is being crafted with extreme fortification against used games. Whether this will even be true for the PS4 or no, we might be able to find out on February 20, 2013 when the big PlayStation event is slated to go on floors. No such launch date information about Durango is out at the moment. Stay tuned for a full version of this interview in which Livingstone talks about the upcoming Tomb Raider, as it should be going up on the website soon.

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