Nintendo Announce Virtual Game Cards (Digital Game Sharing)
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
Its still missing physical object's killer app: permanent license transferability.
With physical objects I can buy them from others, give them to friends, etc and that transfer can be permanent.
All of this lend and automatically return is just a mechanism to block permanent license transfer.
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
I don't get why they needed a 14 day limit. Sounds half baked to me. Steam, although with its own limitations, still does a better job at game sharing.
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you should be able to use games within your family completely unlimited anyway.
I would understand the local connection requirement if that was for sharing with people outside your family. that would make it similar to sharing a game with a friend you know in person. without that the floodgates would be open to sharing games with literally anyone online.
How would you make it so you can only share games with your family? As in what technical definition of "family" would you use that can't include your friends?
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I don't get why they needed a 14 day limit. Sounds half baked to me. Steam, although with its own limitations, still does a better job at game sharing.
Because if they don't then you can essentially just give a game away, and that means less sales
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
I think that is a good thing. There are many reasons to dislike Nintendo, but they had no pressure to do this due to the lack of competition on their platform from other stores and manufacturers. 14 days is more than enough to finish most games or at least give them a try before buying.
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
Its a strategic time for this regime to be implemented. With a sequel console on the horizon a lot of households are going to become 2 switch families soon. Anything to make customers more comfortable spending money will speed the uptake.
For PlayStation I liked they way they let each user nominate 1 primary PS4 and 1 primary PS5. They both could play the PS4 library without restriction so the old console was a perfect hand-me-down.
In comparison for Xbox they have maintained that the whole platform is homogeneous with each account only allowed one home console at a time be it One or Series.
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
So it's the overly complicated version of a system that's on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
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This was way more confusing than it had to be.
TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this...(?)
You can't play digital games you've lent out during this time. I guess the point is making it similar to giving your friend a physical game cartridge.
Let me sell my digital licenses before we talk about them like they‘re comparable to physical media.
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So it's the overly complicated version of a system that's on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
You can lend games on steam ???
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You can lend games on steam ???
Family sharing I presume. I'm not entirely familiar with the scope of the service myself as I've only just set up family sharing with my child. But when I did, they had a huge catalog of games in their own steam account as a result.
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So it's the overly complicated version of a system that's on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
Only recently has steam gotten better at this. I've got my account, my kids account, and a 3rd account that owns games we may want to play, so that it doesn't tie up either of our main accounts or if we want to have a guest use it. (all are shared to each other). Until last year, it was not super easy sharing them all, lots of logins, authorizations, etc.
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You can lend games on steam ???
Yup! Not all, but most. Some with high levels of cheaters block family sharing, like RUST
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Its a strategic time for this regime to be implemented. With a sequel console on the horizon a lot of households are going to become 2 switch families soon. Anything to make customers more comfortable spending money will speed the uptake.
For PlayStation I liked they way they let each user nominate 1 primary PS4 and 1 primary PS5. They both could play the PS4 library without restriction so the old console was a perfect hand-me-down.
In comparison for Xbox they have maintained that the whole platform is homogeneous with each account only allowed one home console at a time be it One or Series.
This household will be migrating to steamdeck or equivalent. We've invested too much into PC games and moving our main desktops to Linux, it only seems right. I'm tired of supporting companies that don't care about us, only our money, and even then slap you when you're not looking.
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So it's the overly complicated version of a system that's on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
Exactly ! Steam families are now dead simple, whereas this new oh-so-Nintendo method seems as janky as it gets.
It does have one standout feature that Steam families do not though: ability to play shared games even when offline.
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How would you make it so you can only share games with your family? As in what technical definition of "family" would you use that can't include your friends?
i assume similar to how apple does it - everyone you add to your "family" must share the same payment method. so naturally you will limit that to only people you highly trust.
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i assume similar to how apple does it - everyone you add to your "family" must share the same payment method. so naturally you will limit that to only people you highly trust.
For child accounts the trust might extend to blocking purchases in the general case and having the kids send purchase requests to the parent for approval.
Of course this leaves the child account restricted is such a manner it would be unappealing if there wasn't an actual parent-child relationship IRL.
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i assume similar to how apple does it - everyone you add to your "family" must share the same payment method. so naturally you will limit that to only people you highly trust.
Interesting, does that mean there is just one primary account and to be part of a family group with it you essentially can't have your own account or purchases?
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Interesting, does that mean there is just one primary account and to be part of a family group with it you essentially can't have your own account or purchases?
For Google Play the requirements are:
- the family manager is over 18 and has a payment method on file (they manage the family wallet).
- the family members are in the family managers family, (and if under 13 the account is created by the manager).
I only have direct experience with managing a kid under 13, in that case I have created the account for him and never entered a payment method on his account. For any purchases he wants to make via the "family wallet" it needs my direct approval, which can be granted by using an app on my device or directly entering my password onto his. After either of us has made a purchase we have a "share with family library" toggle that can share the title with the other family member. Not that it only applies to direct title purchases from the store, if a feature is locked behind IAP it can't be shared. We have his a could locked so he needs my approval for any purchases (including free apps) but this is not required by the platform.
For child accounts the family manager can choose between requires approval for each of th feollowing on each child account:
- All content
- All purchases using the family payment method
- Only in-app purchases
- No approval required
I presume the family manage ornly has control of the Family Wallet for adult family members but I don't have direct experience to confirm..
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