1605

I don’t have a huge problem with the cutting of used games. However, I do consider my “right to resell” as part of the value of a game, and not being able to re-sell a game lowers the value of a game, making me less likely to buy it, especially if it’s something I feel unsure about.

My issues with XBone have more to do with the thing not being worth its price, especially when you factor in the XBL junk fees, then used game bricking.

I’ll go so far as to say this: I think if Sony didn’t have free online this gen, they would have been in much worse shape, maybe as bad a shape as the Wii U is in right now. That was the only area they had a real advantage over the 360- as the 360 was a stronger machine both soft and hardwarewise early on, and would have been cheaper.

The PS3 would have been an enthusiasts machine for Japanese games- and Japan didn’t do so well this gen.

1606

They have, they just never said with who. Their audience? Their investors? Their accountants?

Regarding the disk as a distribution medium for a license, isn’t this analogous to buying an iTunes voucher or an XBox Live Gold subscription? You’re free to do what you like with the piece of card you now own, but the code on it can’t be resold once it’s been used. Until you use it, of course, go nuts. Mind you, it’s obvious to the consumer of vouchers exactly what the deal is. With games, what you’re actually buying is less clear (and can differ between products).

1607

From the article;

“many players didn’t respond to the format,” Reseburg said. “We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.””

1608

Take digital content of any kind: book, movie, TV show, music, game, whatever. It’s 100% digital no physical artifact whatsoever. You bought it, it’s yours to do with whatever you want, yes?

I think what would be fair is the right for the original owner to:

A) Transfer ownership of their digital copy to another user – once, ever, for the whole life of the item. For whatever reason they want. Donate, sell, who cares. Ownership transfers. The item can never be resold again to anyone else though. You can’t pass down your single digital copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to 50 generations of your progeny.

B) Lend their digital copy to one other person for a fixed period of time. Once the lending period is over it could be re-lended, but there might need to be a cool off period (you can’t have an item lent sequentially to every citizen of the USA) otherwise… exploits. Obviously there would have to be some kind of exception for libraries.

Why isn’t this happening… at all? You can sort of lend some Kindle ebooks which is awesome, but just try to do anything like A) or B) above with digital ANYTHING and fuggedaboudit. Can anyone give me serious, widespread, common examples of ANY digital content, other than some very limited Kindle lending, that you can do the above with?

First, the industry(ies) aren’t that enlightened. After having no control with analog stuff, now they have FULL control with digital content and they are basking in their newfound power. Given that as I said above, these changes work to put more money in the pockets of more creators, and not middlemen who create exactly jack and shit, I am mostly OK with that.

Second, even if the industry(ies) were enlightened enough to want what’s morally right for the user, this shit is complicated. Very. Just the technical infrastructure to make what I described above happen is … far from trivial and implies some seriously powerful centralized mechanisms for tracking everything, that work universally all the time with no serious exploits.

So yeah, good luck with that, guys. The upside is, more money goes to creators and not middlemen. The downside is, the plethora of cheap used physical crap is going away. Forever. It’s starting in our lifetimes, and it’ll be a stone cold fact of life in our children’s lifetimes.

1609

Some folks have just connected the dots here and decided EA’s PR whitewash prior to Microsoft’s press conference was a bit of a red herring since the Xbox will have a suitable replacement for the Online Pass program. You didn’t really think EA cares if something is unpopular with gamers, did you?

1610

That’s one interpretation. Another would be, especially with any multiplayer-focused game, that that community drops precipitously a few weeks after release, which makes the game less valuable.

1611

What you say would be true if the rights owners had all the power, in a world where piracy didn’t exist.

But piracy does exist and is quite easy on open platforms. Oh, and backwards compatibility is no problem. I can play every PC game released for the past 30 years on the desktop I’m sitting at right now.

All those exclusive console releases are dead forever. Maybe we’ll have PS3 and x360 emulators in 2020, if we’re lucky. But until then, if you want to play titles like Halo3, crackdown, forza, infamous, ratchet&clank, uncharted, or MGS4, you will need to maintain an increasingly antique box. It’s quite sad, really.

With the move to standardized hardware in next-gen consoles, there’s some hope that backwards compatibility will be maintained from now onwards. But we won’t know until the xbox…two and ps5. And that’ll be around 2020 too.

1612

It would be nice to move the discussion of digital rights to another thread and make this one more on the XBox One (what games are coming out, interface, etc.) again. Cause the whole digital rights argument probable deserves its one thread.

Just my opinion. ;)

1613

There won’t be any news on the xbone until E3, most likely.

1614

First, I agree that the idea of the creators getting more of the pie is a pleasant one. One reply to that in this thread is “but why should I care about that as a consumer?” Well, if the creators are getting more, then presumably the industry portion with the creators in it is healthier. So from a purely selfish point of view, if the creators of the games I like are doing better, then I’m more likely to get more games that I like. Right?

But the real counter-argument to that is that the middleman that is Gamestop isn’t just gobbling up part of the money by being the middle man. They’re providing a valuable eco-system that is helping the industry thrive. By being a retail presence in nearly every city in America, in almost every strip mall, they are a physical presence that helps get the games to the hands of the consumer. And they would argue that by providing the used game sales that they do, they help fuel the sales of new games. So theoretically, if this transition that you’re talking about is too abrupt, or is handled poorly, the loss of this eco-system and used games in general will be bad for the industry, and therefore, (again from a purely selfish consumer POV) bad for me because companies will make less of the games I like.

The PC has been an interesting test-bed for what will happen when we transition to a digital marketplace. First there was Steam. There were no big sales, just the convenience of owning a game digitally, not needing to keep track of the CD/DVD, and just being able to download your library to a new computer from Steam. Many found this very compelling and enough people switched to digital that physical retailers like GoGamer.com started doing poorly even before the start of massive Steam sales. And then when the sales did start (first small, and then bigger and bigger), Steam already had a sizeable base which grew and grew because of the sales. And so then there were even more sales.

The console’s transition has been pretty similar. The nice thing about it is that consoles were even more user-friendly than Steam in this regard. Any XBLA or PSN purchase I made could be played by anyone on the console I downloaded it on, as well as any console as long as I was logged in under my profile. So I was able to share some games with my friends and family by purchasing it on their console and then playing it on mine only when I was online. So my XBLA library, in particular, grew and grew. And then came the sales. Both PSN and XBLA started having sales periodically, and that led to even more purchases. This Christmas I bought El Shaddai, which isn’t that old of a game, which came out at $60 at retail, for $5 on XBLA during their sale. And this week I bought Dark Souls again on XBLA at $10, which is the same price I paid for the PC version two months ago. The idea I’ve seen bandied about in this thread that Sony and Microsoft won’t have sales like Steam does seems a little far-fetched to me, since evidence I’ve seen on PSN and XBLA seems to indicate otherwise. The only evidence people seem to present that Microsoft and Sony won’t have sales as big as Steam is “Well, because Microsoft isn’t smart enough to do it”.

Shrug. I don’t know if I buy that argument, but there might be some validity to it, perhaps.

1615

For me it’s simple. It’s not a used game issue, or loaning out games to friends issue. Physical-based media should never involve restrictions beyond those that I have direct control over. I can control whether I have hardware that can still play the media, that the media is in good shape, even in the old days I could keep up with code-wheels, typing in words from a manual, etc. For this I accept some drawbacks – I must have the disc to play, potentially, for instance. Even the 90s keys for PC games went to far, I think – provided that the authentication of the keys had to be done by another party (i.e., one not in my control).

That’s not to say that I’m a total luddite. I have 100s of Steam games, 100s of XBLA games, etc. But they are all relatively cheap, cheap enough that I considered it a fair trade-off for giving up the above. I’m aware they could go away at any time, though. I generally prefer GoG on the PC as a result, as well, and will pay a bit more for games on that service vs. Steam. However, if the industry thinks that a disc-based game that doesn’t meet the criteria in my first paragraph will be worth more than $20 to me they’ll be unpleasantly surprised. DLC, season passes, etc. has already lowered my appetite for $60 games (from hundreds of dollars a month to hundreds of dollars a year), the above will outright kill it.

1616

Indirectly. New games are vital to the GameStop economy. Why? Because new games drive TRADES. Gamers want the shiny, the latest and greatest means of putting virtual bullets into their enemies. Many of them don’t have 60 bucks to drop on that game every few weeks. So, they trade in the games they bought a few weeks ago so they can afford the new one. If the used market disappears or the value of used product shrinks dramatically, and prices on new product remain the same, it will have a negative impact on new game sales.

i have argued for years that the path to a healthy industry isn’t through shutting down the used game market, but lies in capturing a little bit of that money for the developer/publisher each time a used copy is sold. Since there is no increase in physical cost of goods, even a little bit would go a long way. This can be via DLC, online passes, license, whatever. But let GameStop churn that copy of the disc over and over for years.

1617

That’s always going to be the case. Some people are willing to give more, some people are willing to give less. It’s the job of the seller to try to get money from each group. Ideally, a lot more from the people willing to give a lot more, and then less and less from each tier. That’s the way it works voluntarily with the humble bundles and Kickstarter with it’s different tiers. For new retail games, they do via a factor of time, that’s all. Offer up the game for a higher price up front, and then slowly do bigger and bigger sales as time goes on.

Certain publishers are more aggressive than others in their sales. Like Microsoft (on both PC and XBLA with their own published games) and Square Enix (on Steam, XBLA and PSN). Other publishers seem very reluctant to do sales. Like Activision.

Surely there must still be some games you’re willing to pay $60 for, right? Maybe GTA V? Maybe Watch Dogs? Perhaps the next big Bethesda RPG with its 100s of hours of gameplay? Even if you’re not, plenty of people are, and they will still lower the price of those games so that they cross into your threshold eventually.

1618

I’m inclined to agree with this, even though I don’t have any hard numbers. For example, I bet the big budget AAA titles sell a lot more new copies for full price on 360 and PS3 than they do on Steam/Amazon/GMG/Gamefly/random PC retailer combined. But none of the digital PC retailers share their numbers, so I can’t be sure. I think if the used market shrinks a little because of whatever new schemes Microsoft and Sony are putting in place, we’ll likely see the same effect on price and willingness to buy at full price for the consoles that we likely already see on the PC. And more pressure on publishers to do bigger sales sooner on the consoles, just like we see on Steam and GMG and Amazon.

I personally think that sounds like a win for the consumer. But I’m not sure how it will effect PC development studios and publishers. Will we see even less big gamble big budget triple A titles? Will the middle tier games come back more? I’m not sure. Perhaps the publishers getting a piece of the used-game pie will offset less sales of newer games.

1619

Just like how the price of games went down with digital distribution due to sellers passing on the cost savings to consumers?

I can’t see how this is anything but negative for consumers. Less Competition, higher used game costs. Oh but that is ok now because instead of going to gamestop which didn’t make the game, it goes to Microsoft and publishers, whom didn’t make the game.

My prediction is that this will be business as usual. Just because revenue goes up, does not mean the price of the product will go down. What will happen is Microsoft and big publishers will just make more money, probably investing it in to more Maddens, halos and call of duties.

Perhaps they just need to realize that at least one person (me) is not willing to spend $60 for a 5 hour game in almost any realistic circumstance. But instead of the carrot, they choose the stick. They can either make it so I can’t get half way through their game in my lunch break, or deal with me not paying full price for their game.

1620

It didn’t when Digital Distribution first started, but it did eventually. That’s why you see massive sales at Steam, Amazon, GMG and other PC DD retailers. Same with XBLA and PSN. When they first started, prices were what they were. But we eventually saw weekly sales, and special event sales, yearly sales, etc. And again, certain publishers are more willing to cut the price sooner than others.

If there’s more people like you, prices will come down faster. If there’s more people willing to pay the full price for longer, then it won’t. Of course, it depends entirely on the game itself, not just the publisher. Call of Duty’s price will probably stay high as long as it does now if that series maintains its multiplayer base. If it starts losing a lot of its base to the Battlefield series though, maybe we’ll start to see earlier sales.

1621

The core of the Xbone’s discussion is the anti-consumer issues surrounding the system right now.

1622

One thing I didn’t like about the xbone reveal: how the games portion of the keynote was entirely focused on sweaty, male, teen gramers. At least Sony showed a bit more variety. I don’t think I can stand another console generation of ‘safe’ franchises that cater to a segment of the gaming audience I no longer relate to.

1623

If you want to believe this is why it was abandoned and not because the console makers are implementing their own used game system that does the work for publishers like EA you are seriously naive dude.

1624

And this is the same mealy-mouthed bullshit redefining of terms to get around laws that I was talking about. “here, we’re going to sell you this product that is in all ways exactly like a book, movie, or CD (that are all under first sale doctrine), but we’re calling it a license now instead of a product. There’s no real change or difference, but calling it that means we can ignore laws and consumers’ rights”.

Err. no. I’m calling them on their BS.