I mainly rant on my blog, but if something I rant about gets fixed, I at least have to mention it.
I previously mentioned how horrible the DRM is on the Xbox 360. This week, Microsoft released the Xbox 360 License Transfer Tool. This tool doesn’t fix all of my complaints, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.
Once a year, a user can transfer their Xbox 360 licenses to another console. In the case of a user replacing their console or upgrading it, this is finally the fix. I must applaud them for not requiring the original console to have an internet connection to do this since there is a good chance it is dead and can’t connect to the net…
This is also really positive since it at least opens up the door to allow licenses to be moved to a future Xbox console. Original Xbox owners may remember them being unable to transfer over downloadable content to the Xbox 360 system (lame).
The PS3 still kills the Xbox 360 in terms of DRM generosity. The PS3 allows 5 concurrent consoles to be licensed for most games and allows for any console to easily remove it’s license. There is also no silly “once a year” transfer restriction. As someone said on a forum, “Welcome to 2006 Microsoft.”
