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.
DRM poop.
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Hooray, new DRM?
Sounds like it's no more DRM than the limits of a physical cartridge, right?
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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.
Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
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Sounds like it's no more DRM than the limits of a physical cartridge, right?
You have to authenticate online on both ends, and it maxes out at two weeks, so no.
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You have to authenticate online on both ends, and it maxes out at two weeks, so no.
The two weeks are only for sharing across accounts in a family, if you're using the same account across two devices there isn't a time limit. You could already play your games on both but before the secondary device needed to connect to the Internet every time you launched the game, and now it's just when loading.
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The two weeks are only for sharing across accounts in a family, if you're using the same account across two devices there isn't a time limit. You could already play your games on both but before the secondary device needed to connect to the Internet every time you launched the game, and now it's just when loading.
Hey, I'm sure it solves a problem for people, but the easier solution is still just the absence of DRM, as much as Nintendo would not like to do it, and it introduces exactly the kind of complexity that Sony mocked 12 years ago.
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Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
I think it's going to be mostly school kids sharing games with their friends, like their parents before them but digitally.
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Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
It depends on how it works, 14 days and then the friend has to buy it or renewed every 14 days. If it is the latter and if it eventually goes online (which I think it will with the online subscription) it is a way, not the best way but a way, to stop scammers from building up massive stolen libraries because, unlike piracy, these games would actually be getting stolen from whoever lent it out since they can't play them. If it is 14 days and then the friend has to buy the game, it's a stupid limit.
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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 think you can share with friends? Only if you have a Family account and all the Switches are signed into the same Family.
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Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
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.
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Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
I do like the innovation attempted here
How is this innovation, though?
It's a specific type of DRM/sharing scheme, but it's not really innovative.
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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 ???
