Marketplace Border Controls: It's all for legal reasons, like... |
Guess 92.3% of doppelganger accounts have officially hit the roof after the announcement that cross-border Marketplace downloading would be a thing of the past. Like we said: the corporate line is that "protect quality of Xbox Live downloads" line used in the past, again used with elaborations by Michael Newey, Group Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Europe in a talk with AceyBongos. The issue here is that when we add new gaming and entertainment content to Xbox LIVE we sign a contract with the content provider. In that contract it tells us which country or countries the content is licensed in. It then becomes a legal requirement for us to ensure that the content is only available for to people in the countries in which it is licensed. If we donÂ’t do this it makes it really difficult for us to get new content providers to put content on Xbox Live, which in turn means Xbox Live members donÂ’t get the content they want.
Sometimes it's not even the content provider that's throwing up the walls: Michael makes the pointed example of laws in Germany which has "restrictions which regulate the distribution of certain content" in the country (five GamerPoints for guessing what kind of content).
So like we asked (okay, suggested backhandedly) at the end of the last article, would Live know where your Xbox 360 lives? Michael gives a rather interesting answer that suggests it's more than that:
We will know from the location of the Xbox. ItÂ’s important to note that it is the location of the console itself in conjunction with your Xbox Live account that will dictate which content you can download. Therefore if you have a US Xbox Live account and live in the US, but take your console on holiday to Europe, while you are in Europe you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live Marketplace. But, conversely, if you have a UK Xbox Live account and take your Xbox to the US, you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live.
Suddenly the Live-tahrnetz are clamoring for open skies cyberspace.
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Comments [refresh]
This just sucks
This just sucks
Why is this bad news?
This means more content might be up for grabs in the near future instead of publishers turning down Microsoft for releasing content that isn't Licensed for a certain company. Cry to the publisher if it isn't released in your region. Sorry. :-/
"Microsoft for releasing content that isn\'t Licensed for a certain company"
Not Company, Country or region.
Brain slipped for a second.
Does the PS3 or Wii get the same treatment?
microsoft + *****!
I live in Iceland and so far MS haven't bothered to set up a Marketplace here. So my question is, will we have any content here in Iceland at all? All the xbox live user base here has account in other countries and I know that we are not the only country in europe that MS has not bothered with setting up a marketplace in. My problem is that MS hasn't really said what content they are talking about... I can live without the tv shows and movies... but if we are talking about LiveArcade and other updates and demos then they have lost me as a xbox user.
well i think its just stupid in general, why restrict the content to a certain country? i mean i can understand if they want to keep movies back so they are avail in the USA then 6 months later in Europe (like usual) but its the fact that only the USA seems to get any content anyway. They have TV/movies/more demo's etc etc etc and europe yet again gets shafted and left with a few demo's and robbie 'the b*stard' williams' ***** music videos for 250 points each (wow cos i really wanna watch robbie williams music vids... oh no wait... i dont!)
come on xbox live sort your freakin act out and give europe some content before sony does it first and takes away more of your userbase!