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Console Makers Pushing For More Network Reliance
There's a story on Joystiq about the convergence of games consoles and network play, suggesting that the industry is slowly moving away from physical media, preferring the control and simplicity of online distribution. The article points out that Microsoft's Games for Windows Live, despite being relatively unpopular, has seen continued development with an eye toward interacting with Xbox Live. Quoting:
"While it's unlikely that the next generation of consoles will completely forgo disc-based media, downloads are quickly becoming a much bigger part of the experience. Some games, such as Rock Band 2 and Gears of War 2, are now shipping with codes for free downloads. This isn't because the publishers like you and want to give you free stuff. It's part of a larger strategy to increase the importance of the online presence, where content can be tightly controlled and decrease the importance of physical media, and thus, used-game sales and rentals."
Plus, any online connection forces you to have a legal purchased copy. But that's not part of it at all :)
the control and simplicity of online distribution.
control and simplicity of online distribution.
control and simplicity
control
Let's have a look at the current broadband availability here and everywhere. Now let's compare that to the people who have these consoles. My guess is that there will be plenty of people that will be left out in all of this. This move obviously presumes nearly 100% broadband availability. That can't be smart.
I've bought a couple of games on the PSN recently and now that I'm done with them, what can I do? Here are my choices:
1. Leave it to fester on the HDD
2. Delete it
Great. What's worse is that a couple of the games I bought turned out to be shit so I can't even trade them for something different.
Make a subscription service instead if you're going to do this. Here's one way it could work:
You pay a certain amount each year and the amount you pay determines how many games you can have downloaded at a time and each game have a number of points allocated to it, so you could for example have Braid (1 point) and Bionic Commando (1 point) and Geometry Wars (1 point) or just BioShock (3 points).
When you're done with the games you can delete them to refund the points.
Good idea? Bad idea?
Summation 2
Just like the activation servers for PC games will disappear in the future, and thereby rendering your game useless, DLC will disappear in the future, and thereby render your console game crippled.
Requiring online activation/DLC actually means you rent the game, rather than buying it. If you want to replay an old game in the future you probably have to rent the remake of it.
It's not the physical waste, it's power.
When you sell directly to the customer, you don't have to deal with Walmart/Target/etc who will take a cut of the action, and bend you over when they feel like it. Of course, in this case "you" being Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft who set up the central gateways - it's they who won't have to deal with Walmart/Target as much. The developer still will have to deal with those three. Reminds me of the high cost of cartridges, especially with Nintendo being the only one making them for their console.
ATM, only PCs and Flash games put the power in the developer's hands.
TRANSLATION:
Blocking me from my two favorite activities: (1) Buying a game, playing it, and then selling to someone else to recoup my money. And (2) Buying a game, loving it, and keeping it for the next 10-20 years (classic gaming).
If things devolve to the point where I have to pay full price (versus my current average of only paying $2-3 per game), or where I have to keep buying/downloading Super Mario 64 every five years, instead of simply buying it once and keeping it forever... ...then I will simply stop gaming.
This is what the music industry is trying to do with perpetual renting of music rather than letting us OWN the record, cd, whatever. The game industry should not follow that same path.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
They want internet connected and online distribution for two main reasons.
1 - it instantly KILLS the secondhand game market. you can no longer buy used games, this drives the price of old games back up to retail levels. no more buying Gears of War for $12.99 used at the local EB or on ebay.
2 - it eliminates 60% of the cost of a game. Packaging and distribution.
Game prices will stay the same or go up, your Quality of gaming will go down, and you can no longer buy used games or rent games to try them out.
That is their goal, everything else is pure BS to make the consumer have buy-in to their plans to screw you over.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree with everything you've said, but I have a slight pedantic nitpick.
Nintendo of America was the only one to produce cartridges for the North American market (not counting unlicensed games). In Japan, several development houses made their own cartridges, and the Famicom Disk System required only a special floppy drive to publish games. NoA adopted this business strategy because they wanted control over what cartridges were published while still encouraging third-party development houses. They felt that uncontrolled development and publication of sub-par third-party games was a major cause of the Video Game Crash of 1983, and wanted to avoid having a second video game crash.
This hit Konami hard - Nintendo of America's guidelines were to only allow five releases per developer in a calendar year, so in order to publish all of the games that they wanted to market in America, they had to start up an American subsidiary called Ultra Games.
It has long been the dream of the media studios to kill the secondary (used) market for media (music, movies, software, etc.). Now they've finally stumbled upon the perfect solution (ironic that they actually *fought* the idea tooth-and-nail back in the Napster days).
A sad thing for me, too. I buy most of my console games used at a huge discount online. All you have to do is wait a few months after release and you can get most used games for a fraction of their retail price.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.