And Nintendo, and Sega, and Microsoft, and every music distributor on the planet,and every movie distributor on the planet. You're kidding yourself if you think Sony is the only one to do this.Originally Posted by black orb
>>> What next? gotta buy special coins to play my games like in the arcade machines? lol..
smurf sony..
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
Completely agree with telling all of those companies to smurf off, though.
You don't have to buy their stuff. Entertainment isn't a right.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
Telling people to smurf off when they annoy you is always fun, though.
Now smurf off.
...Sorry, I couldn't resist. xD
You won't be able to buy used games anymore? Boo-smurfing-hoo. You know what a customer who buys used games is worth to a console or games developer? Nothing. Not a damned penny. They make absolutely nothing on used games. You may as well be pirating the game, because the only company making any money off of it is GameStop, and we could all do with less of that parasite in the industry.
Sony and Microsoft stand to lose next to nothing from crusading against used games. Some may argue sales will drop off due to the people who only pay the $60 price tag because they expect to beat it and sell it back to mitigate that cost, but that effect is likely to be negligible. Also, I doubt it causes people to stop playing games entirely. Instead, we will see a rise in the number of consumers who will wait six months for the price of new copies to drop. This will be a win for developers who will actually see profits from a game outside its launch window.
Even if Nintendo never implements such a restriction, both Sony and Microsoft have been tied to rumors. They're the big boys in the industry. The Wii U is very obviously not the second coming of the Wii, and Sony and Microsoft together will dictate the direction of the industry.
The only bummer about this is being able to share games with friends. Given that the games are tied to an account, features such as game sharing allow this to continue unhindered. It might not be as easy as just handing your friend a disk, but temporarily transferring the license from your account to your friend's isn't exactly a big deal.
Further, it doesn't even mean that used gaming is dead, it just means that the developers now have the tools to get a cut. I sincerely doubt that we're going to see a megalith like GameStop disappear overnight. What's more likely is that if you buy a used copy, your console is going to recognize it as a used copy and demand that you pay a fee (probably pro-rated based on the game's age) to reassign that copy's ID to your console. [Insert game developer of choice here] will be a lot less bummed that you bought their game used if you have to pay a $10 fee to play it.
Those developers might care when the people trading in games so they can buy new titles near launch, aka when the majority of a games lifetime sales take place, can't afford to buy as many games at launch anymore because they can't trade them in. They'll never make those new sales to the gamers looking for a deal unless they actually lower their prices (and considering the industry likes to continue to sell 2+ year old games at $30 or more, I have little faith in their ability to do that), but they will lose sales from those who actually want to get the game on day one.
You can't argue that the people buying used games are no better than pirates when the people who traded those games in in the first place play a pretty big role in supporting sales of brand new games through trading.
But most game publishers and developers never bother to think past the fact that a sale happens that they make no money off of and look at every aspect of the economic transaction taking place when someone trades in a game. They prefer to focus people's attention on the simple idea of a lost sale so they can play the victim and not only justify practices which are very much anti-consumer, but convince their own customers to justify it for them.
Not that I have a terrible problem with not being able to sell my games. I never have and I frequently use Steam. But Steam also likes to make up for it by having sales that are actually good deals so I end up picking up games I might not have and the developer gets their cut. Most of the industry hasn't quite caught onto the fact that that's a good idea now and then.
I love Ouch's "too poor to afford games at full price? Then you're a" mentality. Very enjoyable to read.
The distributors and the publishers both need to stop being arseholes. A deal allowing a publisher to earn money from used sales would be easy to set up if they weren't all wankers.
Those who want to quote that sentence when ranting about any industry ever are more than welcome.
People still use consoles?
Gamestop isn't any more of a parasite than a second hand bookstore. Most other sorts of entertainment you can physically buy can easily be sold or given away to other people when you're done with it, but you don't exactly hear anyone calling this parasitic or have it brought up as something that damages the book industry. Why should consumers excuse game devs if they want to end this?
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
I cannot see sales drop-offs being significant. I'll give you all a few minutes to go and check Gamestop.com to see that most used games only sell for $5-10 cheaper than the new copy.
Honestly, this may end up being better for the consumer. Companies might be more willing to have frequent sales in order to extract value from every price level the customer is willing to pay.
I also think the increase in game prices may have a direct correlation with the rise of Gamestop. Game prices hit an all time low with the advent of the PlayStation. The new optical format was cheap to produce. We're still using optical formats, but the price went up to $50 on the next generation and then $60 with the current one (despite Microsoft using the same optical format as last generation). I don't think it's a coincidence that these years coincide with Babbages and EB Games coming about and eventually consolidating under one roof with Funcoland into what we now call Gamestop.
I'm confident that the big 3's pricing models would adapt with this change. I'm not sure if they need to, as one year old games are already selling for $20 and less New.
I really don't have a problem with services such as Steam limiting a game to one PC account or console. It makes, especially if you're dealing with a digital download.
But this is just ridiculous. Say I have ten games, and then my Playstation decides to crap out on me. That means I need to buy a new one, right? Do I need to buy all those ten games again? Insane.
If something like this is implemented, consumers will notice. I wouldn't be surprised if any consoles that utilize this die off very quickly.
Also, can someone change the topic of this thread? It's inaccurate and misleading.
Right now, if you have 10 PSN games, and your console dies, you can just redownload them on a new console. Right now, you can even give your PSN ID to your friends so they can download your game library, and Sony lets you do this with a few machines.
I know that.
But I was talking about games bought through retail that come on a disc, which is what the article was about
The article says it links the disk to your PSN account, not the PlayStation itself.
They cut the number of machines down to two recently actually. If you want to use it on another you have to go through some convoluted de-authorization process to take your account off of a machine. It was much better when the number was 7 machines and I'm not sure why they'd ever bother to change it.
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