x360drm.jpgSo I wish now that I had blogged about this sooner, but I’ll just post it in retrospect. Fortunately, Gmail logs my chats, so I kind of have proof that I totally called this.

Exactly one week ago I was chatting with Tha R1gga about DRM, mostly with relation to the Xbox 360. He, for the most part, is against DRM, but I was able to get him to admit that without it, nobody would be buying XBLA games or DLC. They’d simply find a way to copy it and make it available on the internets. Anyway, here is an excerpt from that chat session:

me: i just think there has to be a happy medium
i think MS is getting there
i think eventually they’ll let you update your own license on xbox.com
you just plug in your serial number and take care if it yourself

Now, here is a quote from an interview with Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live that was posted five days ago:

Yes, this new tool will officially launch next month on Xbox.com and will allow you to be able to consolidate these licenses onto one box so you can access things like Xbox LIVE Arcade games and TV show you have downloaded even if you are not online. Because this involved allowing users to re-download licenses for content that belongs to our partners it has taken some time to work out the agreements with them to allow this, but we have heard the concerns from folks about DRM and are happy to announce that everything is nearly in place to roll this out in June.

I could be the next Michael Pachter.

Any way, I think with this upcoming tool, Microsoft is being pretty fair with their DRM. You can use your Premium DLC on any 360 as long as you’re signed into Xbox Live with the Gamertag you purchased the content with. And now you will be able to move your licenses to another 360. What are your thoughts on this issue? Sound off in the comments.