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

not about piracy

[timpdx]

This is about stopping used games sales, nothing more, nothing less

Re:not about piracy

[eldavojohn]

This is about stopping used games sales, nothing more, nothing less

No, there's more to it than that. It's also about adding an extra level of complexity to your purchase and guaranteeing that yet another thing could go wrong with your already insanely expensive purchase. If the industry is looking to profit $6 billion dollars from this move, I can almost assure you that it's going to be about $6 billion in annoyance to the consumer. For some reason treating your customer like a criminal from square one is the latest rage these days.

Big retailers won't stand for it

[Animats]

The big retailers won't stand for the slowdown at checkout this would cause. Various schemes like this have been proposed before, and Wal-Mart isn't interested.

If everybody who wants activation at checkout, from cell phones to gift cards to videos, gets together and standardizes on a system, maybe.

No more right of first sale

[woboyle]

This is just another example how big media is trying to circumvent the right of first sale. They would prefer that you aren't purchasing the product, but rather a non-transferable license to use the product. This effort must be thwarted at all costs, or pretty soon we won't be able to "own" anything...