Study Claims Point-of-Sale Activation Could Generate Billions In Revenue

Late last year we discussed news that the Entertainment Merchants Association was pondering a plan to develop technology that requires games and movies to be "activated" when they are sold at retail outlets, primarily to reduce theft and piracy. Now, the EMA claims a study they commissioned has indicated that employing such a system for video games, DVDs, and Blu-ray products would generate an additional $6 billion in revenues each year. Critics of the idea are skeptical about the numbers, pointing out that the majority of game piracy comes from downloading PC games, which this plan won't even affect. There are other problems as well: "In order for benefit denial to work, the EMA would presumably require the three major consoles to have some sort of activation verification function to ensure that games were legally purchased. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft agree to that. There is also a lucrative market for used video games to consider. After some gamers complete a title, they sell it back to the retailer. How will benefit denial handle that situation?"

Comments

Re:This solves nothing until ...

[zmnatz]

There's that term again. "Reason to buy." Why would a publisher want to do that? Isn't it better to make the game, then complain about being entitled to money without providing any reason. Clearly, treating all your customers as criminals is the answer.

Yes, instead of treating the people who legitimately buy things as what they are, Paying customers who as the saying goes, "are always right", let's just the assume the people who are buying the thing are the ones that are going to pirate it. That makes perfect sense.

Re:not about piracy

[MemoryDragon]

Problem is that the game prices are so high that preventing used sales, might effect new game sales hugely in a negative way!
Simply if you cannot sell the game anymore you think twice even buying it new. I am rather sure it will backfire big time!

Re:Big retailers won't stand for it

[hemp]

This is currently how pre-paid cell phone cards and lottery tickets are sold.

You buy the card, for example a $20 Virgin Mobile card at Target, and during the checkout process, the cashier takes your money and scans the card. The number from the card is sent to Virgin as "enabled". This allows Target and Virgin to not worry about anyone stealing a rack full of phone cards as only "enabled" cards are allowed to be used to add minutes to your cell phone.