Gates….Never Satisfied??

Microsoft against Second Hand Video Games

The software giant is ready to declare war on the used games industry – recent leak confirmed that Microsoft’s new Xbox won’t allow them to run. Actually, the rumors of an anti used game system for the company’s next-generation “Durango” Xbox console leaked a few months ago. However, there’s evidence that Microsoft is pressing ahead with the moves.

The source of the leak has a very good deepthroat in the software giant and came up with accurate specifications for Durango earlier. Now it has published screenshots of an Xbox Development Kit for the company’s next-generation console, which confirm previous rumors that each next console will feature a hard drive of enough capacity to hold numerous games. It is claimed that all games are installable to the drive, while play from the optical drive won’t be allowed. This sounds bad for backwards compatibility.

In other words, gamers will have to install Durango game, while now Xbox 360 games can be installed to HDD, but they require the disk to run. Then, Durango titles can’t directly access information on discs after they are installed, which means that the next-generation console may not need the disk to play games after installation. So, Microsoft is developing an anti-used games system which will require activation codes for 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs. The references are made to an “always on, always connected” console, so the machine might have to phone home and make sure the software is legitimate and not second-hand. Unfortunately, this is exactly the same sort of DRM that made SimCity unplayable and cost the EA Games CEO his job a few days ago.

According to the leak, there will also be a new high-fidelity Kinect sensor lacking a tilt motor, being sold with each console. The software giant recently demonstrated a next-generation Kinect sensor without tilt motors, so the new device is believed to be much smaller and compact. In the meantime, the new Xbox is scheduled to be released in time for the Christmas rush.