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Here is Adam Orth: http://www.mcvuk.com/cimages/7...

I know TFS says market price, but the article states "The retailer can then sell the pre-owned game at whatever price they like, although as part of the system the publisher of the title in question will automatically receive a percentage cut of the sale. As will Microsoft. The retailer will pocket the rest." https://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/publishers-to-receive-cut-of-xbox-one-pre-owned-sales-at-retail/0116137

So using Ubi Soft's numbers of 95% piracy...

They got about 1.3 Billion dollars in sales last year.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ubisoft-profits-rise-to-30m-in-fy2012/096074

But that is ONLY 5% of the number of paying players.

So I expect when they figure it all out, and make it online only registration play DRM etc...
There sales should increase by 24.7 Billion to an astonishing 26 Billion dollars in sales annually!

Well done Ubi Soft, well done!

The list of closed stores can be found at MCV: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/store-closures-begin-at-game-and-gamestation/093365 Just looking through the list shows lots of store duplications within towns, I know that Hanley had two stores within one shopping center seperated by a ceiling and a Gamestation in the main high street. And that's the list of just the closed down stores.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/using-onlive-downloads-around-3gb-of-data-per-hour/085785

But look at this

Wii sales in 2011 were clearly far below sales in 2010 At least for the Chistmas season. They "crashed and burned" almost as low as Xbox and PS3 during the Christmas season. Clearly Nintendo is in trouble!

A lot of developers have been publicly complaining about Xbox Live, calling it too closed. Even Gabe Newell of Valve--who used to work at Microsoft--criticized Live for being too restrictive because Microsoft wouldn't allow Valve to use Steam. Meanwhile, Sony not only allows Steam but lets Valve offer a free copy of the PC and Mac version to buyers of the PS3 version of Portal 2.

Microsoft has ridden the success of Halo and Gears of War, and the 360 was easier to develop for when people were learning how to work with the PS3, but sales of the PS3 are surpassing the 360 this year, and PS3 developers have caught up. In addition, the poor reception to Microsoft's focus on motion gaming as well as a lack of an answer to mobile gaming signals a diminishing of the their position to third place.

Anyway, Auntie says that HMRC have siezed 165,000 of these things, that's a sizeable market. Hopefully pissing off that many ordinary consumers of Nintendo products (don't forget, all those people will have bought DSs) will hopefully hit them where it hurts.

Or not.

According to GfK-ChartTrack data for sales up to June 27th, 2009, DS enjoys the biggest installed base with 9.1 million, up 2.7 million from the same period a year before. In addition, 300,000 DSi consoles have been sold since launch. Wii follows on 5.4 million - up 2.3 million on its installed base in June 2008.
Elsewhere, Xbox 360 enjoys a 3.9 million installed base - up 1.7 million in the last 12 months.
PS3 sits on 2.2 million - up 900,000 units from June last year. UK console installed base tops 24m

That would put the market for HMRC at 2% of DS players in 2009 and probably more like 1% in 2010 - and it is a market that Nintendo has no interest in serving.

However, these tax breaks for the gaming industry were not only pre-election pledges, they were pre-election pledges for both parties.

O RLY?

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38468/No-game-tax-breaks-in-Tory-manifesto

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/apr/12/labour-manifesto-libel-legislation

Sony have stated they will not give out refunds.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38565/Sony-rules-out-OtherOS-refunds

"We do understand the frustration a small number of consumers may feel at SCE's decision to provide an upgrade to the firmware to disable the Linux operating system but we refute any suggestion that this action is in any way a contravention of the terms of Sale of Goods Act,” SCE UK’s David Wilson told ThinkQ.

“The console packaging and the in-box manual for the console do not refer to the use of Linux on the console. Rather, the console packaging states that the product's design and specifications are subject to change without notice and that the system software within the console is subject to a limited licence between SCE and the consumer, and this licence permits SCE to update the system software and services offered from time to time.

“The provision in the Sale of Goods Act which requires an item to be fit for a purpose made known by the consumer to the retailer prior to purchase and confirmed by the retailer applies only to the contract between the retailer and the consumer.

“The decision by Amazon to give a consumer a partial refund is clearly between Amazon and the consumer, but we do not expect the decision to have a legal basis and we have no plans to compensate retailers.”

And in the meanwhile, in Switzerland, politicians have passed the first step for making a law targeting all games that "require cruel acts of violence against humans and humanlike creatures for in-game success”. The objective of this law is to make it forbidden to produce, advertise, import, sell or distribute such games. It seems, however, that this is not the final vote, and there is a real possibility that public outrage, from gamers as well as games companies, could bring the politicians to back down on this, and simply make it forbidden in the law to sell 18-rated PEGI games to minors.

You can find more details from here. Plenty of other places are commenting on them but most sight mcvuk.com as their source. Google News Articles on Natal Details

Obama wants us to "turn off the video games" with regard to kids, so take what you will from that.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/30062/Barack-Obama-Parents-should-clamp-down-on-games

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/37855/Obama-Turn-off-the-video-games

Consoles are actually an excellent example of the fact that people who buy cheap systems will avoid paying for software unless they absolutely have to. If this wasn't the case, then they wouldn't have increasingly complex internal DRM systems, there wouldn't have been enough of a market for "mod chips" that bypass said DRM systems for them to exist, and the console manufacturers wouldn't have regarded those "mod chips" as enough of a threat to their licensing revenue to bother doing everything in their power to prevent them being manufactured, sold, or installed.

Here are some links which show (a) piracy flourishes when people can bypass a system's internal DRM, and (b) all three major console manufacturers take this threat very seriously indeed:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/28984/Piracy-drive-threatens-Nintendo-DS
http://www.thetanooki.com/2007/11/26/r4-chip-costing-nintendo-millions-in-ds-software-sales/
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1355-Nintendos-success-is-breeding-Piracy-Problems.html
http://www.gamersevolved.com/nintendo-ds-tries-to-put-stop-to-piracy.html
http://www.gamingbits.com/content/view/2884/2/
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39161307,00.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/sony-busts-down-mod-chip-retailer-with-9-mil-lawsuit/
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/07/31/sony-wins-australian-mod-chip-case
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4407.cfm
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13847/532/
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3401.cfm
http://www.news.com/2100-1040-962797.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6042
http://www.geek.com/three-people-facing-charges-for-xbox-piracy/

There are countless other similar links that prove how reluctant people are to pay for software on any low-cost platform if they can find a way of not doing so.

yeah, but how would another dev house undo the murder already done on the gameplay by SOE? there's a huge amount of inertia behind the direction an MMO takes, and it'll take a complete redesign or, more optimistically, a new game to fix that.

disclaimer: not responsible for rumors and false hope.

For some reason I couldn't access the GameSpot blog. In any case, Google Cache has it, and it's one of those blogs linking to another source.

In any case, the original source was this MCV article. The GameSpot article basically confirms the story but points out that it isn't a done deal yet - they're just considering new locations.

They seem to be suggesting that E3 will be moving to Las Vegas, although it's not final yet. (The article also seems to suggest that New York was suggested and then decided against, which makes sense, since the Big Three game companies in the US (Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sory) are all on the west coast.)

And that's exactly what they did do. Over a full year ago. Lik-Sang had over a year to cease and desist. It didn't.

BTW, any Brits care to tell us if a "Commercial Director" actually serves any legitimate business purpose ?

Anyway, it's entirely likely that neither Sony nor the publishers really care ( or more importantly, could do anything about ) the used game market. The publishers were just trying to deflect attention from the fact that other, very telling, important factors just might account for their declining revenues ( like crappy management and lack of compelling, original games, perhaps? ). It's a bit like the music industry pointing a finger at file-sharing and saying "that's where our profits are going!", except that the game publishers have even less of a reasonable argument here, as nobody is breaking copyright laws.

The arguments make no sense. Why, just because I might spend $10-15 on a used game, would someone infer that if that game wasn't there, I'd be buying a new $50 game instead ? No, I'd just be cursing my decision to buy a console with only very expensive games, and that would ( negatively ) impact my decision to buy another, or at the very least be bummed that I can't find that old game. Equally, nobody thinks of used games as being "as high quality" as new games- they're often scratched, and with very few unfortunate exceptions, even sequals are at least incrementally better in some ways than the earlier games.

To boot, what would they do about it ? Unfortunately TFA doesn't provide a link back to the "(MCV 9/12)" about publishers trying to do something about the used game market, but the used game market is like any used item market. It's not going away, and that's a good thing, or where would I buy that copy of Star Wars Starfighter ( or any other out-of-print game ) ?

Stupid asshat corporate whine. Not worth the words I just wrote, unless to hear someone ( like me ) smack these idiots around in public.

Wow a personal anecdote. What a stunningly perceptive analysis of human nature and market forces. NOT

Yes, a personal anecdote. Which holds about as much truth as your editorial opinion above. However, unlike your little rant, I can back up my anecdote with additional info. There's lots of easily located evidence that a lot of people prefer to buy used as well, cost being a major, if not the only factor. Can you think of another "market force" that would convince all those people to buy used except the price angle?

And digital distribution doesn't work. Yet. How many people in comparison to the general PC gaming public even use Steam? Or Xbox live subscribers vs the install base of the Xbox? How many households in the US even have broadband vs the number of households with PCs? Until those numbers are way on the other side of 50% it won't take off as the principal method.

Filthy bitches!
http://www.mcvuk.com/newsitem.php?id=454

Yeah, but according to this story at SPOnG the straight conversion was Dollars to Euros and the UK will be paying £209.99 and £279.99.

This is also confirmed by trade magazine MCV.

And actually, that's what the GI.b story says too.

In fact, here's the info!

Spong have had it in for GI.biz for ages (this 'report' apparently 'debunks' a GI.biz story, and actively attacks them). I wonder why this is? Perhaps it is because Spong's parent company, Eleventeenth have a rather cosy relationship with MCV, who are in direct competition with GI.biz in news reporting, advertising and job advertising.

Spong's headlines even appear on the MCV homepage, and they are hosted on the same IP.

Not that this matters much, Spong have limited credability anyhow. Expect one of thier astroturfing /. accounts to reply to this soon

Back that up with some sources. The only figures I've seen (magazines performing questionnaries etc) point to almost 50% of all Xboxes being chipped/flashed/softmodded etc.

60 per cent of hardcore Xbox gamers have had their machine chipped (but be sure to check this thread out in response to that)

I don't know a single person with an Xbox that's not chipped, and I know quite a lot of Xbox owners. I have three myself - one in each room, connected via network to the computers so I can stream movies/music to whatever projector/tv-set I happen to be near by.

I do happen to know a bit on how many modchips are sold world-wide, and, seriously. "Minority" isn't the word we're looking for.

And of course, another nice quote from the story posted on Blues News:

As for the link between Manhunt and the crime, the police are clear. Pooni said: "We haven't connected the game with the murder and we've already made that statement, but some sections of the media chose to ignore it...the motive was robbery."

This has already been debunked. Sources are reporting that NITRO (besides being the dumbest name ever) was/is being used as the internal name while Nintendo worked on the machine. Similar to how the code name for the GameCube was Dolphin.