Speaking to us at the big event in Redmond today, Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison clarified a couple of details about the system's used game policy and explained that there will be a solution for people who want to trade games with their friends.
Here's how the system works: when you buy an Xbox One game, you'll get a unique code that you enter when you install that game. You'll have to connect to the Internet in order to authorize that code, and the code can only be used once. Once you use it, that game will then be linked to your Xbox Live account. "
It sits on your harddrive and you have permission to play that game as long as you’d like," Harrison said.
Other users on the console will be able to play that game as well, Harrison said. So you don't need to buy multiple games per family. "With the built-in parental controls of the system it is shared amog the users of the device," he said.
But what if you want to bring a game disc to a friend's house and play there?
You'll have to pay a fee—and not just some sort of activation fee, but the actual price of that game—in order to use a game's code on a friend's account. Think of it like a new game, Harrison says.
"The bits that are on that disc, you can give it to your friend and they can install it on an Xbox One," he said. "They would then have to purchase the right to play that game through Xbox Live."
"They would be paying the same price we paid, or less?" we asked.
"Let’s assume it’s a new game, so the answer is yes, it will be the same price," Harrison said.
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