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The Evolution of Multiplayer Games and Online Play
Ranga14 writes "The recently announced Command & Conquer 4 seems to be following the same path of Blizzard's Starcraft 2 in having no LAN/offline multiplayer. They will require users to be logged in at all times to even be able to play any facet of the game. What will this mean for LAN parties, gaming events and those who don't play online? Is this a sound business decision, or do EA & Blizzard not get that this method of attempting to thwart piracy will fail like others have?"
If you can't play the game except through their online service, I assume they're not actually charging you for the game software itself?
No, of course not. They'd never double-charge people for a game, would they?
Super. Now, will it increase sales?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I only own one of the two, and it isn't the 360. However, from my limited experience with the system, it would seem you're wrong about piracy on the 360. There are quite a few chips for it, but for the most part, and this is mostly where my "experience" with the system comes from, it's mostly a firmware hack.
A mate of mine makes a nice profit off of buying new 360's, using some well-documented hole (like the Zelda hack for the Wii) loading some special firmware onto it then selling it at a higher price with the knowledge that the end costumer will be able to play, errr, backups .. *cough* *cough* Yeah, let's go with "backups".
He doesn't do any actual development, got all the training he needed from material on the web and trying it out on some 360s (which he later sold at a profit, so no loss whatsoever), and the special code is obtained on the web, if you know where to look. He doesn't actually mod anything physical, the warranty is left intact (though he does need to open the system for it to work -- but as long as the seal isn't broken, subsequent inspections wouldn't find anything) and he is yet to have people complaining about it.
Seriously, from what I understood, it's so easy anyone could do it. Microsoft tend to put a wrinkle on things whenever they release a new mandatory firmware update (which is few and far between) or when the newer models get upgraded parts (the disc drive is the crucial component here), but that only lasts a few days, couple of weeks at the most, then it's back to business as usual.
Oh, and there's no problem with XBL too, since there are no actual physical changes, and whatever "magic" is worked on the firmware serves only to allow non-original disks to play. Yeah, that thing with the hard drive is still locked, as far as I know, but pretty much the only thing that you can't do with this method is download a yet-to-be-released title and then try to go online with it. You _can_ play it before release date (he bragged about finishing a couple of major titles before they were even officially released -- Halo 3 comes to mind), but you must be careful to stay offline the whole time, else the XBL system will "see" what you're doing and you risk a ban.
As a PS3 owner, it _is_ a bit irritating that the competition is open to such exploitation -- you get to shell out your hard-earned cash for every single title worth its salt while your mate gets to play any title he likes for free.. But that usually means he's got so much (crap?) to choose from, he can't stick with any title long enough to finish them (bar a few notable exceptions).