Datel suing Microsoft over Max Memory card lockout

[Richard Hammond]

I fail to see how this is a underhanded tactic of M$?

Datel have not paid M$ or what ever they are meant to do, so they can produce 3rd party equipment for the 360.

Im sure everyone knows they have to pay Datel choose not to and as a result have failed equipment.

Its like saying you know your not meant to drive down a 30mph road at 50mph, but just because there is no sign you should not get a ticket for it if you get court. (i think i made sense with that :laugh: )

Its underhanded because Microsoft has waited 4 years before blocking unauthorised hardware, now they have Datel by the balls. They can either pay up for licencing (possibly backdated back to the first peripheral Datel released for the xbox which could be 4 years of royalties) or their business goes bust, i dont know about you but i find that very wrong, pay millions or your business goes bust.

[Deacon Brown]

Its underhanded because Microsoft has waited 4 years before blocking unauthorised hardware, now they have Datel by the balls. They can either pay up for licencing (possibly backdated back to the first peripheral Datel released for the xbox which could be 4 years of royalties) or their business goes bust, i dont know about you but i find that very wrong, pay millions or your business goes bust.

Ok so your argument is that M$ should have done this sooner, But the fact is its still illegal.

So Datel have been providing an illegal product so to speak and have its finally court up with them.

It?s like a robber stealing from the same house for 4 years and then gets court and has to pay the price for the 4 years of theft.

It?s still illegal no matter how long they had been allowed to get away with it for.

[what]

Ok so your argument is that M$ should have done this sooner, But the fact is its still illegal.

So Datel have been providing an illegal product so to speak and have its finally court up with them.

It?s like a robber stealing from the same house for 4 years and then gets court and has to pay the price for the 4 years of theft.

It?s still illegal no matter how long they had been allowed to get away with it for.

I think we know that, but just because something is legal, doesn't make it morally correct. It's an underhanded tactic no matter what the little book of law says.

[Death Proof]

From what i can make out , Microsoft is being greedy & is going after all that royalty money. Poor Datel is gonna end up in a soup.

[Subject Delta]

Ok so your argument is that M$ should have done this sooner, But the fact is its still illegal.

So Datel have been providing an illegal product so to speak and have its finally court up with them.

It’s like a robber stealing from the same house for 4 years and then gets court and has to pay the price for the 4 years of theft.

It’s still illegal no matter how long they had been allowed to get away with it for.

Firstly, putting m$ makes you look stupid, it isn't clever.

Secondly, there is nothing illegal about their product, it is no different to producing a USB storage device for a PC, Microsoft are just getting shirty about it because it cuts into the high margins because of the ridiculous prices of their own "official" devices.

[Richard Hammond]

Ok so your argument is that M$ should have done this sooner, But the fact is its still illegal.

So Datel have been providing an illegal product so to speak and have its finally court up with them.

It?s like a robber stealing from the same house for 4 years and then gets court and has to pay the price for the 4 years of theft.

It?s still illegal no matter how long they had been allowed to get away with it for.

Its not illegal at all, Microsoft doesnt make the law they are unauthorised which means Microsoft doesnt authorise their use on the Xbox. Unauthorised and illegal are two completely different words and couldnt be further apart on the spectrum.

If Microsoft had issues with allowing unauthorised hardware to work with their console system they should have done something about it day one, not wait 4 years then block them and then say you either pay up to become an authorised vendor which means paying millions in back royalties or you can no longer produce hardware that will work on the Xbox.

That is pretty underhanded tactics whatever way you look at it.

[Draken]

:( just imagine all that poor Chinese workers, they'll loose their jobs!! bad bad bad MS

[cork1958]

imo Microsoft can lock out any hardware they want to. It's their platform, and if they don't want people making money out of it, that's up to them. However, it's a stupid move to block these things four years into the 360s life cycle when a lot of customers have already bought one of these and now find its useless. They should get recompensed at least.

also quoting deaconbrown here:

Im lost here

Why would datel win this battle?

If M$ want you to only use there licences equipment with thier own 360, how can a company come a long and sue because M$ has stopped thier equipment from working on it?

Im not saying its good for M$ to do this but i don't get why they will win a case when its M$ own machine?

Have to go along with these comments at least. It's Microsofts stuff, they can do what they want with it. You other people are probably major pirates at everything else also, which is basically along these lines here too. IMO

[M_Lyons10]

From what I understand of this situation their memory cards didn't meet required specifications of official 3rd party peripherals... I don't see this as being Microsoft's fault. Had they made their memory cards right they would work... Also, the company does have a rather shady past with stuff like this as well. I don't know. I think this is more of a Datel issue...

[Richard Hammond]

Have to go along with these comments at least. It's Microsofts stuff, they can do what they want with it. You other people are probably major pirates at everything else also, which is basically along these lines here too. IMO

Uh?

Im against companies waiting 4 years then blocking all access and saying you either pay me royalties including 4 years of backdated royalties to become an authorised vendor or you cant ever make anything for the xbox again then im suddenly a pirate because im against this?

Nice reasoning. The whole point of this card isnt to do with piracy, its to do with paying a fraction of what it costs to buy an official Microsoft memory card and getting 4x the amount of space to store things on said memory card.

From what I understand of this situation their memory cards didn't meet required specifications of official 3rd party peripherals... I don't see this as being Microsoft's fault. Had they made their memory cards right they would work... Also, the company does have a rather shady past with stuff like this as well. I don't know. I think this is more of a Datel issue...

No one is saying Datel is in the right, but Microsoft has had 4 years to block unauthorised peripherals, you dont wait 4 years just so you can screw a company out of 4 years of royalties.

[M_Lyons10]

Uh?

Im against companies waiting 4 years then blocking all access and saying you either pay me royalties including 4 years of backdated royalties to become an authorised vendor or you cant ever make anything for the xbox again then im suddenly a pirate because im against this?

Nice reasoning. The whole point of this card isnt to do with piracy, its to do with paying a fraction of what it costs to buy an official Microsoft memory card and getting 4x the amount of space to store things on said memory card.

No one is saying Datel is in the right, but Microsoft has had 4 years to block unauthorised peripherals, you dont wait 4 years just so you can screw a company out of 4 years of royalties.

Well, I don't agree with a company circumventing something like that so that they don't have to pay royalties... I don't care who it is, but when you have a technology like the XBox, you're due royalties, and I think that any attempt to circumvent that should be handled harshly (Otherwise everyone would do that). Should they have waited 4 years? I would say no. But they may not have even realized. OR the way in which Datel developed these memory cards (Which from what I understand went against the requirements Microsoft put in place) may have been easily exploitable or used to mod or otherwise change the console or it's functionality. Such an exploit may have been recently discovered.

[Richard Hammond]

Interestingly enough, Datel admits to violating the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act, the EU Copyright Directive, and the WIPO Copyright Treaty with no valid, legal claim for doing so. More over, Datel claims that Microsoft harmed it because circumventing Microsoft's copyprotection and security schemes cost Datel a lot of money to achieve, rather than simply licensing it's products through Microsoft's Offical Xbox 360 Products program.

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Well thats changed everything, Datel doesnt have the right to diddly squat then and i hope they go bust.

[bob_c_b]

I totally disagree with you, 3rd parties are not creating anything like Natal/Sony Mote, what are you smoking?

No one said that, but if you don't see the effort that goes into branding and pushing 'official' accessories and how that impacts the consumer mindset (and sale of all related accessories), that is your issue. Once again you pointed out nothing that shows why either Sony, MS or Nintendo would open up the accessory market.

I think you live is some oddly utopian place where you think Sony and Microsoft expect and want a multi-console household with hot swappable accessories and everyone just hopping between platforms with complete inter-operabilty. Reality is pretty far from that, but keep spinning.

[iamwhoiam]

How is it legal for them to do that, computer OEMs can't do it? :/

PCs = open platform.

Xbox != open platform.

IMO, Microsoft are well within their rights to lock out unlicensed peripherals. If Datel are going to make money off of Microsoft R&D then they should pay the license fee required to make licensed components.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

No one said that, but if you don't see the effort that goes into branding and pushing 'official' accessories and how that impacts the consumer mindset (and sale of all related accessories), that is your issue. Once again you pointed out nothing that shows why either Sony, MS or Nintendo would open up the accessory market.

I think you live is some oddly utopian place where you think Sony and Microsoft expect and want a multi-console household with hot swappable accessories and everyone just hopping between platforms with complete inter-operabilty. Reality is pretty far from that, but keep spinning.

Is there something wrong with your ability to read? Not once have I ever veered off to expecting Natal/PS3 Mote/Xbox and PS3 accessories working on each other. YOU'RE the one who keeps rabbiting on about Natal/PS3 mote when I don't have one single thing to say about them.

All I've been talking about is being open about bog standard industry components. Licensing fee's for storage nowadays is retarded, this isn't 90's where memory cards were all proprietary goods.

Nowadays consoles use standard OEM hard drives, of which there is a multitude of manufactures, and standard OEM SD/flash memory, of which there is a multitude of manufactures, for game saves/storing content/etc.

Seeing as the providers themselves (MS/Sony/Nintendo) are shipping using OEM goods, it's only natural to let the home owners use OEM goods as well - Meaning the ability to use your own hard drive/pop in your own SD card/USB stick/etc. These connections already exist on the consoles, to actually block them from their standard use you have to either build a proprietary shell around something that is naturally open, or start blocking access through software (firmware) to anything that doesn't have your "seal".

Those parts of our technology world are ridiculously open nowadays, yeah you still get the likes of Apple not including an SD slot on the iphone so they can rip everyone off with 32GB of flash vs 16GB, but most other devices all have some sort of industry standard method of using your own storage - Of which there is NO blocked manufacturers.

Seeing as nearly every other device is going with that trend nowadays, that's why I say it's going to be near impossible for MS to be anal about the next Xbox and rape everyone on storage components again. The 360 came out first, it might not of been 100% certain what Sony/Nintendo were planning with all their specs, but next time around everyone knows how open Sony/Nintendo have been about OEM goods on their consoles so MS have no excuse not to follow in their steps - They'll most certainly get more flak than they do right now if they don't.

[bob_c_b]

So wait, now we are only talking about storage (because your other post was on and on about keyboards and headsets)? And what does Apple have to do with this? And if we are talking proprietray storage standards being bad what does this say about Blu Ray? Is Blu Ray and open standard now? Sorry, just because you plug any thumb drive into the PS3 doens't make it an open platform. Tell me more how Sony has no proprietary standards, I'll go read your post from my Linux install on my PS3... oh wait, I don't have one since the GPU is closed to outside development. Stop acting like MS is the only one who locks out parts of their platform.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

So wait, now we are only talking about storage (because your other post was on and on about keyboards and headsets)? And what does Apple have to do with this? And if we are talking proprietray storage standards being bad what does this say about Blu Ray? Is Blu Ray and open standard now? Sorry, just because you plug any thumb drive into the PS3 doens't make it an open platform. Tell me more how Sony has no proprietary standards, I'll go read your post from my Linux install on my PS3... oh wait, I don't have one since the GPU is closed to outside development. Stop acting like MS is the only one who locks out parts of their platform.

Storage is the main one (costs customers the most), but yeah it's worth mentioning keyboards and headsets as well. Why? Well because MS just use standard IR, but they tweak it to be proprietary, again, so they can gain licensing fee's.

lol @ you going after Blu Ray. That doesn't cost the consumer anything, it reads all optical discs on the market, you don't need to shell out for addons or do anything different to read any disc you put in it. Blu Ray is now an industry standard, it's not a proprietary standard. It's used for games/movies and backup purposes, just like DVDs.

And yes, no console is completely open, but this topic is about one aspect of MS locking down their system, storage, and valid comparisons have been made to how competitors treat storage on their consoles. If that gets you angry you probably shouldn't take part in the conversations.

[M_Lyons10]

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Well thats changed everything, Datel doesnt have the right to diddly squat then and i hope they go bust.

Oh jeez... That's rather hilarious... So now they're claiming damages because Microsoft didn't make it easy for them to circumvent the protections that were in place and it cost them money?

Though I suspected before that they didn't have a case, I was still trying to be a bit impartial as I had nothing against the company. Now they've officially annoyed me (And in record time it would appear). LOL

Now they need to just go away...

[_neutrino Veteran]

as far as i am concirned Microsoft is well within their rights to prevent any unofficial accessories working on its system.

[ahhell]

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Well thats changed everything, Datel doesnt have the right to diddly squat then and i hope they go bust.

Datel appears to be an even shadier version of Madcats.

Both make junk but at least one attempts to do it legally.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

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Well thats changed everything, Datel doesnt have the right to diddly squat then and i hope they go bust.

Agreed.

But it would've been interesting to see if MS would even have licensed a product that offers far more storage than their official devices, and is expandable. The only thing Datel have to go on now is MS waited 4 years, which screams of how companies tend to act towards Sony/MS/Nintendo - Wait a few years till a product gains popularity, then dig up some patent from the 1980's and try to sue them.

[bob_c_b]

And yes, no console is completely open, but this topic is about one aspect of MS locking down their system, storage, and valid comparisons have been made to how competitors treat storage on their consoles. If that gets you angry you probably shouldn't take part in the conversations.

First, I 'd hardly say Blu Ray didn't cost consumers anything, let alone what it has cost Sony to "win" this round. And is still costing them. Great, I can use high capacity media and have the winning format, it only cost me an extra $200 to do so.

And I'm certainly not angry, don't see where you could assume I was. I see your arguments, but they are based on nothing more than your personal desires, I fully expect more proprietary storage from MS and very like Sony next gen (seeing as how being "open" has bought them nothing this gen"). I'm not saying it's right or that I like it, but I see the business reason behind it and in the battle for your living room the company with the cash can afford to dig in and wait out the one losing money. I think you have blinders on if you have missed that licensed accessories are a huge source of profit for MS this generation, something Sony is dearly in need of right now. I think MS has clearly taken the leadership role in console features and this generation Sony is still playing catch up. But since it's Sony you will debate to the bitter end, so rock on.

[Subject Delta]

I agree that the 360 is the better of the 2 consoles, but personally I would say that the appalling failure rate of the 360 has taken the shine off it a touch, as it will probably weaken consumer trust a touch. Sony are in the mire in the console sector though that's for sure, I feel their attempt to go for brute power (which was largely unnecessary) rather than get the fundamentals of the PS3 right has been their undoing.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

First, I 'd hardly say Blu Ray didn't cost consumers anything, let alone what it has cost Sony to "win" this round. And is still costing them. Great, I can use high capacity media and have the winning format, it only cost me an extra $200 to do so.

And I'm certainly not angry, don't see where you could assume I was. I see your arguments, but they are based on nothing more than your personal desires, I fully expect more proprietary storage from MS and very like Sony next gen (seeing as how being "open" has bought them nothing this gen"). I'm not saying it's right or that I like it, but I see the business reason behind it and in the battle for your living room the company with the cash can afford to dig in and wait out the one losing money. I think you have blinders on if you have missed that licensed accessories are a huge source of profit for MS this generation, something Sony is dearly in need of right now. I think MS has clearly taken the leadership role in console features and this generation Sony is still playing catch up. But since it's Sony you will debate to the bitter end, so rock on.

Hey bud if you like rocking the proprietary hardware just because it fills MS pockets with money, power to you.

I'll keep supporting normal standards, standards most other people are now following and I fully expect to follow next generation. Allowing users to use their own storage = more sales off your store, I think that's more important as these consoles become all in one devices under your TV. You cripple people with expensive choices and a lot of them are just going to say fine you're not getting any more of my money for now, my storage is full.

Again, I'll say it once more, I don't really blame MS for the route taken, they were first to market, what I do look down on them now for is still selling a 120GB drive at $150, that's inexcusable. My point was as they were first this time around without any next gen competition, so they could run freewill with the proprietary addons, but now that both competitors have entered and aren't rocking that boat good luck pulling it again next-gen MS without a ruckus from consumers and journalists alike. There is no real way for them to go back on their initial choice and let you user replace the hard drive, it's built into a shell, I know that, but they could certainly stop raping you with a 3 figure sum for the drive 4 years after the 360 launched.

As for your comment about the cost of the PS3, it's now $299, it's not changed since it was $599 in terms of Blu Ray functionality, so today's customers won't give a damn about 2007's customers, which is why the device is now selling well. Pricing is only relevant for the timeframe it exists in, the price today is what people can buy at, the price of 2007, well, it's in 2007. You build something that is fairly future proof and it only offers you more bang for buck the cheaper it becomes. That's the pressure MS face, when a 120GB hard drive is half the price of a PS3, your pricing scaling on your hardware addons clearly doesn't look as attractive as when the PS3 was $599.

[Subject Delta]

now for is still selling a 120GB drive at $150, that's inexcusable.

And I guess Sony selling a HDMI cable for $99 just because the plugs where gold plated is 100% fair?