The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

From a legal standpoint, though, there are significant differences between purchasing a game through Steam and buying one on a disc, as explained by US attorney Thomas Leaf. "Steam is very different in that you initially agree to a subscriber agreement," he says. "The subscriber agreement states that you agree to certain terms and limitations. So when you purchase a game on Steam you are really purchasing a service for your subscription. Steam refers to its service as access to a terminable non-exclusive license, which means you have been warned that your license to play the game can terminate at any time and the license is not exclusive to you."

A similar agreement is likely to be integrated into the new Xbox Live terms of service, now that an Xbox Live account will be mandatory for Xbox One users. Like Steam users, Xbox One gamers won't be purchasing actual games anymore, either on a disc or digitally: they will be purchasing the right to use that game under the terms of their subscription.

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Steam differs greatly from what Microsoft is proposing in other ways, too. Most obviously, there's the pricing. Steam offers cheap games, and plenty of them. It has cut-price sales, and both new games and old are attractively priced. Anybody who's ever taken a cursory glance at Xbox 360's games on demand service will know that this does not apply to console digital downloads. And as long as Microsoft still has a crucial relationship with retailers, that's not going to change.

The reason that full games on both PSN and Xbox Live are so pricy - full RRP, usually - is that neither Microsoft nor Sony can afford to undercut places like GameStop and GAME, shops that they rely upon to stock and sell Xbox and PlayStation games. Given that bricks-and-mortar retailers aren't going anywhere, at least not yet, it's unlikely that digital versions of games on Xbox One or PlayStation 4 will be any cheaper than full retail price. Steam, meanwhile, has no such relationship with retailers to maintain, as the sale of physical PC games on a disc is practically dead.

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"With Steam, you at least never had the disc to start with. With the Xbox One, you have this object, but your rights over it are starkly taken from you," offers Walker. "It's the physical copies that are making people so angry, and I think a huge part of that is because this isn't an exchange for convenience, but rather, boldly obvious previous rights being taken away.

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The question becomes, do you trust Microsoft as the curator of your gaming life? Do you trust that particular corporation with control over your games, and when and how you play them? It's easier for many people to trust a company like Valve, which has a very different relationship with its customers, than one like Microsoft (or indeed Sony, which hardly has a spotless record in protecting its customers' data).

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