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The Downsides to Digital Distribution
The gaming industry's ongoing shift from physical media to direct downloads has made buying new titles much more convenient, and in some cases cheaper. However, as this article in The Escapist notes, there are downsides as well, such as an increased dependence on console makers and the inability to sell your used games. Quoting:
"Microsoft and Sony might end up charging publishers an arm and a leg to enable game downloads, especially as they gain more and more control over distribution. Think about it: What if, 10 years from now, 50 percent of software sales for Microsoft's latest console come through Xbox Live? Or, in an even scarier scenario for consumers, what if there is no physical media drive at all, and everything goes through Xbox Live? Sony's marriage to the Blu-ray format ensures its continued support of game discs, but Microsoft has no such restrictions. They could cut console production costs and take control over the entire supply chain in one fell swoop. There would be zero room for publishers to negotiate anything in such a de facto monopoly. The perfect comparison is Wal-Mart. As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart is able to demand pretty much whatever it wants of suppliers because it grants access to such large numbers of consumers."
With Wal Mart prices are LOWER. Maybe not for companies, but as a consumer Wal Mart's monopoly is a good thing for me.
and simultaneously abandon all customers without high speed internet access. For the sake of a DVD/Bluray drive? It's not going to happen.
nerds complaining about the world they created.
THL phish sticks
I would say that this is a really big problem, but at the very least this is also very unavoidable. Although I've always liked the idea of being able to pick up games on the fly and not having to go to the store to buy them, when it comes to pricing, x box live already charges outrageous amounts for games that came out 10+ years ago. Should be interesting, it also would depend greatly on how big the downloads are going to be. With bandwidth seemingly limitless now, downloading a 10gig game doesn't seem as big of a deal as it did even 3 years ago. I guess it all depends on how large the games get, I can only see them getting bigger.
Or, in an even scarier scenario for consumers, what if there is no physical media drive at all, and everything goes through Xbox Live? Sony's marriage to the Blu-ray format ensures its continued support of game discs, but Microsoft has no such restrictions.
That "something" being the handheld market. Sony is going to do pretty much exactly as this describes with the PSP (despite their "marriage" to UMD), so there's no need to make hypothetical arguments; we can simply see what happens there in a few years.
microsoft and sony decide what games already are allowed to be produced. they can't charge too much because if they don't have enough good games, then no one will want the console.
I declare: 2015 will be the year of the Linux video game console!
With games like networked FreeCiv, custom content versions based on the open source Quake II engine, and Snake who needs the evil, proprietary XBox Live?
On the other hand... for anybody who didn't realize that Microsoft *invested* $4-8 Billion on the original Xbox to claim the $40-80 Billion "home entertainment market" in the future... shame on you.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
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As someone who bought two copies of Portal (one standalone, then as part of the Orange Box) and got pissed at the Steam for not letting me give one of the copies away, I sympathize with this. I've already decided that I won't buy stuff on Steam any more unless (like for Portal 2 and HL Episode 3) there's no other source.
They're already at the mercy of the holder of the key for signing games. Unless they want their release restricted to homebrew / modchipped consoles, there would be no difference.
... or, perhaps, digital distribution is good for consumers? Consoles that force low profit margins will see less games, and thus less players, and thus go out of business... consoles that move more digital distribution and use it to provide cheaper prices or increased convenience for end users become more popular. Voila, market results in a nice new efficient way of distributing games that customers and producers both like.
Don't game companies still need approval from Microsoft to distribute games in physical media? If so, how would moving to a downloads change that? You still need the same approval you did before.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
Of course people can say Marxist theory is insane, but the predominant economic theory is that everything is fine, markets correct themselves and all of that nonsense. So what is really more off-the-wall, the Marxists or the Panglossian head-in-the-sand economists of today who say everything is fine? This is from someone who has seen the US economy stagnating since 2000 (other than some slight growth in the mid-decade with the real estate bubble, which is currently popping).
This is already the case. The console game market has always been dominated by those who make the consoles. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo control the prices of their development kits and licensing and thus hold a carrot over the heads of the game developers and affect costs that way. As long as there is competition between the consoles (and between consoles and computers), there's no need to worry about escalating prices due to online content.
I agree. I wouldn't say I'm eager to give up the ability to sell my games when I'm done with them, but if your prices come down to make up for that loss of value, then we can probably reach a deal.
As a bit of an aside, the fact that game publishers/developers argue against selling used games has always seemed silly to me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of money that people get from selling old games gets put towards buying new games. The person who couldn't sell their old game wouldn't have as much money to spend on new stuff. And it's not like everyone who buys used games today would just shrug their shoulders and go buy a full-price copy instead.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Being in control of ones own supply chain isn't being monopolistic or sinister in any way its a natural evolution of business efficiency. Is it evil because middle-men can be cut out? Must we protect those jobs if demand for them is reduced? Lowering costs, we hope, will trickle down to savings for consumers but not necessarily so. In the case of Microsoft I take it many of you aren't optimistic. These poor publishers will need to evolve in the same way required of recording & news print industries.
x box live already charges outrageous amounts for games that came out 10+ years ago.
Some might claim that Disney charges outrageous amounts for films that came out 70 years ago. What makes you think the prices for rereleases on Xbox Live Marketplace and Wii Shop Channel are outrageous?
If Xbox3 is too annoying, people will just buy the PS4 or Wii2.
And if all three are annoying, what video game platform will people buy to connect to the SDTV in the other room?
Personally, I'm fine with digital download replacing media. It is better for the environment and more efficient.
Is downloading more efficient even in areas that are too far from the nearest DSLAM and not served by a cable TV company?
Microsoft commandeer a market, forcing developers to use their proprietary tools and to cater only to their platform?
Yeah, like that will ever happen...
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
...the game console in question will suffer from lack of attractiveness.
There is still the PC, with no such restrictions - anyone can program for it without paying huge license fees.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Unless they want their release restricted to homebrew / modchipped consoles, there would be no difference.
Every PC running Windows is a potential "homebrew / modchipped console". All it needs is a VGA cable to an HDTV or a $40 adapter to an SDTV.
Capitalism has a tendency towards monopoly. This was pointed out by Marx in the 19th century, and expanded upon by Lenin
Ah, pointed out by leading thinkers who advocated & implemented the government having a monopoly over EVERYTHING.
Power tends to acquire more power. Better capitalistic power which tends to self-limit by still leaving people choices*, than governmental power which tends to literally kill the competition.
(* - You don't HAVE to buy at Wal-Mart. You CAN get internet access from other sources. You DON'T have to buy health insurance. Etc. ...vs., say, being heavily fined if you _don't_ participate in ObamaCare, or jailed if you try to start a First Class mail service.)
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Personally, I'm fine with digital download replacing media. It is better for the environment and more efficient. I would expect the system to (a) let me sell my key to another person, and (b) let me re-download the data if I need to.
(a) will never happen. With any of the console manufacturers, unless Gamestop decides to make a console, then maybe. (b) might if you're lucky, but think how many hours you will waste re-downloading games when your Xbox720 inevitably breaks.
Another thing that digital downloads will put a stop to is: taking a game over to a friend's house to play. Sure, you could give him your Xbox Live login (or PSN) but that's linked to your credit card. How much do you trust your friend? Also, you'd have to coordinate with your friend the day before, or wait hours for the game to download to his console. And that's if he has enough room on his hard drive. And let's not forget the move towards metered broadband...your friend might not be so keen to download your game if it costs him money.
I wouldn't touch an all-digital distribution system. Convenience is one thing, but there are just too many aspects of console gaming that we take for granted that would disappear. It's bad for consumers.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I see this happening. What's the difference between this and Apples App store? With apple as a precidence, MS can move forward and create a version of the xbox hardware (read lite version) that's cheaper and more compact, that eschews the drive....
If the claims in the article are anywhere close to reality, then I wonder why they didn't consider the effect on the actual development of games.
Think about companies like EA who rush timelines and overwork their employees already! Now all of a sudden they're presented with a situation where the digital media can be altered at any point by patches and upgrades, and they aren't limited to a "gold" copy of the game. Now, granted, many current games with CD's release patches to improve the flaws in the game, but imagine when all of a sudden greedy companies are given a license to release unfinished games? I could see a world where no one purchases new games for several months, just because it was released unpatched.
Digital distribution is fine, as long as these guarantees are in place:
1) I can transfer my rights to the game to some 3rd party (ie, selling it on the 'used game market')
2) I can play the game without it needing to 'phone home' (so I can play it offline, and I can play it even if the activation servers go away).
3) I can play my game on any other device (eg, my wii breaks down and I buy a new one-- i should be able to play all my purchased games on the new one).
4) If the next generation console is backwards-compatible, I can transfer all my old games onto it and play them there (again, hopefully this would work even if the old activation servers no longer exist).
wrap it all up in drm if you want, but it needs to walk and talk like physical media, including all the freedoms (rights) i have now with my physical media.
Capitalism has a tendency towards monopoly. This was pointed out by Marx in the 19th century, and expanded upon by Lenin 95 years ago [marxists.org]. T
I have a broader theory than that. Things tend towards shit over time. The longer the period of time, the greater the likelihood all will be shit. Finally that shit hits the fan, people get mad enough to do something about it, and they put together something that isn't shit; it might even be quite good. But then they relax and time goes on and things start going to shit again.
Capitalism sucks. Marx and his buddies saw that, tried to come up with a better idea. It turned to shit. Capitalism has had a few reversals thanks to the threat of socialism/communism but now that the threat has gone away, things are sliding to shit again.
Microsoft products suck. But some hippies and computer scientists tried coming up with a better idea and Microsoft said "Oh, shit." So they were able to actually reverse the shittification process of the 9x series and came up with Win2k. Brilliant. But then the slide towards shit resumed. Some people liked XP, some people hated it, but everyone hated Vista. W7, a reversal or a further slide down the shit chute? Only time will tell.
So, to somehow get back on topic. Company makes a game machine. It's great. Company gets greedier and graspy and ends up alienating customers, turning to shit. Eventually people won't want to use their shitty products anymore and they go away. Atari exists only as a brand name used by another company. Sega is a shadow of its former self. Nintendo remains but people argue as to whether they've declined or are stronger than ever. Certainly they don't dominate the market as they did in the NES/SNES era. Sony came onto the scene out of nowhere with the PSX, reigned supreme with the PS2, and became an also-ran with the PS3.
It's hard to say what the future will hold but I do think the console makers are lusting after digital distro. The only question is whether the market would bite. I thought Circuit City's Div-X would have been more popular than it was and was pleased when it failed. Will customers make the right choice here?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The visibility of their product is what sells it, not just the cheaper price point than Sony's offering or their "household name" factor.
To most people, "Microsoft" is what you call Word/Outlook/Excel. "My Microsoft is broken," they'll tell you, then go off to drink a coffee with a name more complicated than "Word."
If Microsoft wishes to retain credibility as a console manufacturer, they either need to do some colossally big marketing of the idea of independence from physical media or they run the risk of falling behind on game sales - the bread and butter of the console gaming market.
Plus, come Christmas time, what is Grandma Mildred going to buy for the kids? A plastic card that they can use via the XBox's digital distribution system tied to mom and dad's credit card which the children or the parents would have to redeem for the nebulous concept of "Points" that the children can then decide how to distribute between the various XBLA offerings? Hell no, she's going to buy them "Wii Carnival Games" or some random racing or sports game for the PS3.
This is not to say that it's impossible to escape from the concept of retail software, only that they need to come up with an effective marketing tool to get people to start thinking of gaming as something that happens on the Internet, not in the home on the box plugged into the TV.
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.
I've never been impressed with the concept of selling used games. I respect and think that that the right to do so is important, but given how incredibly crappy the return on one's investment is I've never even considered selling a game. Today's used video games are yesterday's baseball cards. I remember the exact same predatory purchasing behavior going on at my local mall in the 1980s. If it could happen without tarnishing our right to resell a game, I'd be more than happy to see this 'business' model fall apart.
Due to the above, I think people shouldn't focus so much on the used game sales and instead consider the net benefit that *might* be had if the physical distribution model went away altogether. First off, no more disc-based DRM schemes. Secondly, buying direct has the *possibility* of driving down prices. Obviously, if Sony, MS, et al decided en masse to keep game prices high they could do so, but they would at least have more flexibility by not being beholden to the retailers. If there's one lesson to be learned from the last several hundred years of product distribution, it's that there's always a better deal to be had by skipping the middleman.
If the publishers did decide to engage in price-fixing, there is a strong argument that could be brought against such behavior. Let's say that a game today sells for $50. Now, tomorrow the physical distribution model evaporates, we're all buying direct, and the publishers refuse to take advantage of the opportunity to undercut one another to gain a competitive advantage. This is obviously not free-market behavior, and the only question that would need to be asked is, "How can you claim to sell something for the same price as you did yesterday, when the distributor and retailer markup is gone?"
The answer to that question, of course, would depend on how strong the gaming publisher lobby is...
Shouldnt you be worried when companies start owning entire countries?
Or has that already begun to happen and games are just the next step....
I'm not sure if I really buy the doom and gloom prophesy here. Valve has produced some of the best games in the past few years, and they could have limited them all strictly to buying through steam for the PC. It would make sense too, since even if you buy a hard copy you have to register it with Steam/Valve. They haven't though. Almost every single game they make can be bought in a physical or online distribution method, and many times the physical is actually cheaper than the online distribution method.
There will probably also always be a way to obtain a hard copy of games, especially in any country where there are bandwidth caps. Friends of mine in the UK or AU could never do what I do, which is reformat a computer, turn on steam and let everything download and install itself. The process of just doing that would eat their bandwidth for a month and probably incur huge costs. Digital distribution will never be a sure thing until unlimited bandwidth is everywhere in the world.
then I will just be sure not to buy an Xbox3.
And why you would buy an Xbox that's 357 versions behind the current one is beyond me.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
The more perfect comparison would be to Apple and the iPhone.
You got the touch!
Its amazing to me how people correctly identify and even moan about artificial functional limitations like DRM or vendor lock-in, yet go right ahead and buy the products that implement it anyway.
The manufacturers will only continue to make such abusive products for exactly as long as people positively reinforce them by spending their hard-earned cash on them.
I vow to never buy an Iphone, a Kindle, an XBox, Windows 7 or any other product that artificially limits their owner in order to enforce vendor-lockin or DRM. I do my homework before any big purchase. Its often really not that hard to find alternatives that do just as good a job but dont implement mechanisms that screw you over.
Please everyone else reading this: make a commitment to yourself to do the same. It is only as a group that we can change this for the better.
I take issue with this quote: "...but Microsoft has no such restrictions. They could cut console production costs and take control over the entire supply chain in one fell swoop. There would be zero room for publishers to negotiate anything in such a de facto monopoly. The perfect comparison is Wal-Mart. As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart is able to demand pretty much whatever it wants of suppliers because it grants access to such large numbers of consumers."
It is quite true that Wal-Mart takes control of aspects of its supply chain much more thoroughly than a typical retailer. That said, consoles are all about the games that are available. Publishers have the right to develop for any console they wish, be it the PS3, XBox 360, Wii, DS, PSP, the PC, and so on. The competitive action doesn't necessarily need to exist on the retailer level for there to still be competition. If a hardware company gets all Hitler on its publishers, they won't develop for that platform, nobody will buy said platform, and the platform will severely suffer for it.
Also unlike a retailer such as Wal-Mart, a gaming platform's life is measured in years. There are also a lot more gaming platforms than there are discount retailers, and there's always a new one on the horizon. Given that a platform's 'semi-captive' audience is relatively short-lived, I don't think that there's too much to worry about with regard to monopoly behavior on top of a downloadable model any more than there is with today's physical distribution.
Also, the part of the argument that states, "They could cut console production costs and take control over the entire supply chain in one fell swoop." is bullshit. C'mon guys...
Ok, let's assume that Microsoft does indeed corner the market in order to "take control over the entire supply chain." What happens?
First, suppliers are forced out of business (with Microsoft) because the higher prices that Microsoft charges in this scenario inhibit any sort of profit. These suppliers either die or move to PC gaming (assuming Microsoft doesn't control that). With less competition, the developers are left with less initiative to innovate, therefore games start to suck. Fewer people are willing to pay for new games because they suck, which leads to lower profits, more buyouts & mergers of developers, less competition, and overall crappier product.
At this point, consumers will be looking for something else. Queue up new competition. Microsoft is forced to lower what it charges in order to stop developers from leaving to the new console or attract them back if they have already left.
If you don't believe in the likelihood of this happening, take a look back at the US auto industry in the 70's. Before the Japanese auto invasion, US automakers were putting out a lot of crap. Since they were so dominant, inefficiencies abounded and product suffered. All it took was a little bit of real competition and they were forced to change their ways.
If you still don't believe me, look back at Nintendo circa the N64. After their dominance in the early 90's, they restricted the range of developers. Innovative games were stifled if they didn't fit in with Nintendo's ideals. The developers went to the Playstation, and it took Nintendo two more consoles before they finally regained the market share that they had lost.
Finally, it is extremely unlikely that this happens in the first place. There are currently 3 major consoles. Two of those would have to fail before your scenario is even likely. On top of that there are hundreds of independent developers that put out PC games, which would be in direct competition with the Xbox.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Sony, MS and Nintendo already control exactly what you are able to sell (on physical media) and they already take a significant fraction of the revenue. So digital distribution doesn't give them any more control than they already have.
Game developers are getting hurt badly by the game resale market and it is changing the kinds of games we make. Maybe digital distribution will give us the business model to make a wider variety of games again.
Microsoft a monopoly? No, no way....
Capitalism only tends toward Monopoly because of Government intervention. Patents and Copyrights encourage Monopolies to form, remove those restrictions and a Monopoly is impossible.
The PSP Go will have no UMD drive, owners will have Sony's store alone for buying games.
Lets just hope it fails.
Downloading Game:
|====--------------- 21% /|
ETA: 6 hours 27 minutes
May the Maths Be with you!
At the end of the day, you decide if a game's entertainment value is worth the price. Whether you physically have it or not.
If you pay for cable TV, or going to a movie at the theater, you pay for the experience. Then you are done. You can't sell that experience as "used". What's so different about a game?
So, the only quibble about not being able to resell a game is whether it was overpriced to begin with. If so, don't buy it, just as you wouldn't buy a movie ticket to a movie that you heard sucks...
If a game is fairly priced, you get your entertainment out of it, then you are done.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm sorry, but $600 a month is more value to me (and just about everyone else) than feeling good that I didn't indirectly support some sweat shop.
Don't feel bad about this. The anti-Walmart classist buffonery stems from childless water-buying yuppies and hipsters who don't really give a damn about -- what's the screed? "slave labor in China?" right -- they only care about re-creating the nurturing womb-like environs of their tweedy ivy-covered university towns, where the anemic vegetarian goths who ran the registers at the poorly-stocked yet over-priced mom-and-pop stores screamed at them not to let the cat out every time they walked in. The Wal-Marts put these stores-as-hobbies out of business, and they also logically attract the struggling working class who aren't on their daddy's expense account, and the presence of these folks forces the yuppies and hipsters to wrestle uncomfortably with the reconciliation of the beliefs they high-mindedly espouse on Internet chat boards and the classism they actually feel toward the lesser-educated and blue collar.
Hey, if I'm going to go anti-Walmart on this board I'm going to get modded down anyway, so let's give it both barrels...
These days, my favorite IT mailorder shop (alternate.de) has a large selection of 22" models, typically in 16:10 screen format with 1680x1050 pixels resolution. The cheaper models are around 150 euros, and I guess most people who buy a new screen get something this size.
C - the footgun of programming languages
but if your prices come down to make up for that loss of value, then we can probably reach a deal.
They probably won't though, because games have gotten more expensive to make.
As a bit of an aside, the fact that game publishers/developers argue against selling used games has always seemed silly to me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of money that people get from selling old games gets put towards buying new games. The person who couldn't sell their old game wouldn't have as much money to spend on new stuff. And it's not like everyone who buys used games today would just shrug their shoulders and go buy a full-price copy instead.
This is true too; and from another angle I got Fallout 3 used recently, and will get all the PS3 content as soon as its on PSN. I also discovered Oblivion, and picked up the GofY edition new.
One thing that I really dislike about capitalism is the concept of the race to the bottom. I don't blame the system; I blame the consumers. If you always focus on the cheapest price, you get what the airlines are delivering to us now. Less leg room, poorer service, hidden fees - which is essentially the race to the bottom. If it were not for government oversight (something not typically found in pure capitalism) - we would likely be seeing more planes dropping from the skies - as maintenance is a huge cost to the airlines.
I work with top PC OEMs in product design and market competition scenarios. It is exceptionally frustrating to see how entities like Best Buy make up for the gap in PC sales profits. For the most part, Best Buy (I am picking on them, but they are not the only ones) will sell computers at cost, or sometimes below cost. They order machines which hit a price point (say $499 USD), with a decent processor, but crap parts and low RAM amounts. Because of the volume, there is a lot of competition for an OEM to meet the price point and move machines. Often, they themselves do this at cost, and bridge the gap with 'bundled software' - or trial crapware.
So here is the rub - the OEM is counting on the trial software for profits, and they may make $1 for every app they preinstall, and an additional $5 if the user activates (or purchases) the software. Best Buy, on the other hand, intentionally sold a machine with less RAM than it should have. The machine, therefore, runs slow with the crapware and the lack of memory. Time for an upgrade! Sell the user a couple of sticks of overpriced memory, and charge them $99 for a tech to install the memory (5 minute job) and uninstall the trial software (5 min job, as this can be scripted). That $99 + aftermarket memory is a great place for Best Buy to make their profits on the PC sale - that, and extended warranties and huge markup on cables/printer cartridges. However, part of this process is to remove the software that the OEM is counting on to make their gap.
Again, this isn't the fault of capitalism; but having consumers fixate on the price creates these situations. From my perspective, capitalism is where all parties have created win-win situations; where the buyer pays a fair price for the goods provided by the seller. As soon as the buyer fixates only on the price (such as the situation Walmart creates), then we lose the win-win deal, and likely end up with compromises that negatively impact the buyer long run.
I don't know how other people feel, but for me, there's no way I'll be buying the next full size game via a digital download (think Fallout 4), unless it is MUCH, MUCH cheaper. There are too many risks to me:
- What if my HD dies?
- What if the game was not so great and I want to resell it when I'm done.
- I can't swap and share with friends.
- what if it won't transfer to the Xbox720 (or whatever).
- What if my account is banned for legit or non-legit reasons?
Since I now take on these risks by buying a digital-only game... the price better make it worth it, or I'm not interested.
Of course, I may not have a choice in a few years. *sigh*
Didn't a similar situation happen with Nintendo controlling the publishers? Eventually a system came out with less restrictions (PlayStation) and the controlling environment left.
If they really do stifle competition then they're ripe for a class action suit. Maybe then we can finally break open the monopoly console makers have on the software that runs on their machines. Telling me I can only use my xbox with games you approve is a bit like saying I can only use the hammer you sold me for prying nails.
"a" adapter? As if there has only been one model
The model I linked is the one I happen to own, and it's nice for watching YouTube on the tube. But my point is that Walmart* and Best Buy stores don't appear to carry any brand of VGA-to-TV adapter, nor do any of the "as seen on TV" marketers.
Alternatively, I can't remember the last video card I owned that didn't have video out
I looked in Best Buy and Office Depot, and none of the desktop PCs on display had an S-Video jack. A lot of them didn't even have video cards as such; instead, they had a VGA port on the motherboard.
I have PCs in my living room and rec room running mythtv, and the real problem is input devices.
Front panel USB port, 4 port USB hub, gamepads or arcade-style joysticks. Unless you're trying to shoehorn FPS or RTS into a sofa environment, gamepads should be enough. What we need is more HDTV penetration so that major label PC game developers will recognize a market.
This doesn't make sense to me, how does the advent of digital distribution change create monopolies and take power out of the hands of the publishers?
Already any publisher has to ask the platform creator for the code or whatnot that allows their game to work on the platform, therein lies the power the platform creator has.
How does digital distribution add more power to the platform creator?
The same number of competitors exist in the marketplace so I don't see the monopoly.
The publisher still has the games, and the platform creator still has the rights to let the publisher make the game for their platform, what has changed?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
If this article is about "The Downsides to Digital Distribution", it begs the question as to what analogue medium the submitter and editors previously got their games on- audio cassette?!
:-)
Surprised that I'm the first geek to spot that one.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Plus, come Christmas time, what is Grandma Mildred going to buy for the kids?
I don't know about Grandma Mildred, but in my family, Grandma Carole already buys iTunes gift cards, Marathon fuel gift cards, Best Buy gift cards, etc. Heck, Sony has started to package a PSN gift card in what looks like a Patapon 2 game case.
A plastic card that they can use via the XBox's digital distribution system tied to mom and dad's credit card
I've never owned an Xbox 360, but I do know that accounts on Wii Shop Channel, which uses Nintendo Points cards, do not need a credit or debit card.
they need to come up with an effective marketing tool to get people to start thinking of gaming as something that happens on the Internet, not in the home on the box plugged into the TV.
If this becomes the case, then the Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. series will end. These games (and their clones on other consoles) have always been about catalyzing social interactions among players.
No, they wouldn't do that! //Would they...
This makes me a little sad, as I remember when my cousin used to come over to be babysat by my parents, and he'd bring his glorious collection of Nintendo cartridges with him.
This is a little more difficult to support with an all DLC way of life...
Okay- he can log into his account from my machine...
But what if he wants to leave his game with me for a couple of days?
Now we're talking a whole key lending system...
Not that I think any of this will happen (internet tech will have to surpass disc tech)... but I doubt ANY company would get it 100% right. Some of us would lose.
The scenario described is NOT a monopoly, but perhaps a recipe for disaster for Microsoft. If game developers don't like MS' rules, they can still take their games elsewhere, whether to another console by Sony or Nintendo or to the PC (Valve's Steam service, for example).
It's only a monopoly if game developers have little choice but to develop under MS' rules, for example if most of their customers use Xboxes. Nintendo and Sony would have to both be "defeated" for this to happen. Right now Nintendo is going in a different direction and trying to distance themselves from the traditional "more polygons, more cost = better system" approach and I think they're doing a pretty good job which would make it difficult for Microsoft to beat a competitor who's technically not trying to compete. I don't know too much about Sony. But there's also the PC gaming scene which would be another haven for devs if Microsoft should impose significant rules or fees. Yes Microsoft monopolizes that OS market already, but you can already run anything you want on a Windows PC, and if MS tries to change that devs will simply stick to developing for the old Windows, consumers will stick to running the old Windows, and this would be very bad for MS.
Sorry if I don't cover EVERY RELEVANT LAW IN EVERY JURISDICTION WITHIN ALL 50 STATES AND ALL TERRITORIES. I'm in Georgia; pardon my lack of automatically including jurisdictional differences a thousand miles from me.
Your nit-picking makes my point: at least when capitalism tends toward monopoly, you at least have the choice of not participating; the government also tends toward monopoly but does so by OUTRIGHT PUNISHING NON-PARTICIPATION. Here in GA, if I don't want health insurance I don't have to buy it. You in MA will, per the links you provide, be punished by fines if you don't buy health insurance (and jailed if you don't pay those fines, and killed if you sufficiently resist incarceration).
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
2nd Law of Thermal Dynamics.
Things go from together/nice to dissipated/shitty unless you continuously maintain and improve. This is true of relationships, CARS, houses....
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I don't actually expect prices to numerically come down from where they are, but maybe it'll keep them from going up as fast? I'd be happy with that.
If you consider that the average price of video games has been around $50 for a few generations, then it's reasonable to say that games have gotten rather cheap over the years. Especially when you consider how much more cost goes into producing them. And then remember that due to inflation, $50 in 1990 was equivalent to over $80 today.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Microsoft still *needs* the publishers!
So if MS puts up such idiotic restrictions, they will be left without publishers.
And if the publishers instead are so pathetic losers that they still publish for MS, because of [insert circular reasoning], they they deserve it, and will go down with MS.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Besides the already mentioned inability to resell or give away a game when you finish it or no longer want it I have seen other issues that aren't discussed as much.
Patches
A couple issues here. Currently there are quite a few games on Steam that have retail patches available but have not been patched on Steam. Usually you can't use the retail patch on the Steam version. There is also the issue of community patches, like for Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Since the community patch isn't an official patch it will not be offered on Steam, even though it fixes many issues with the retail patches after the developer stopped supporting it. There is a nine page topic on the Steam forums. Unpatched Games on Steam
Forced patches is another issue. There have been cases where they broke something and you are unable to back out. It can be a hassle having to download hundreds of megs before you can play a game. I have run into that several times, just having a few minutes to play a game and then having to download forced updates before I can start.
Bandwidth Caps
With many ISPs considering or already implementing bandwidth caps, having to download huge games, especially if we are talking PS3 Blu-Ray, will use up your allowance pretty fast.
WRT to the market
Completely off-topic but no wonder I could never figure out what WRT meant. This is the fourth time today I have seen it used this way. How is it a shorthand acronym if you repeat parts of it? With regards to to?
Now excuse me I need to go to the automated ATM machine.
If physical medium will disappear for video games, what makes you think the same won't happen for video? Your assumption is likely correct that the availability of games on physical discs will decline over the next ten years, but the same will be true for video. Blu-ray is likely to be the end of the line for DVDs, and that line will end well short of ten years from now. In addition, if providing digital download content is more profitable for the manufacturer, Sony will certainly jump on the bandwagon. Coupled with the fact that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are already selling games via download, means the assumption that MS will be the only one who'll jump on the download bandwagon is specious at best.
We need both, Socialism and Capitalism (either implicitly or indirectly) to build and sustain a great Nation.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
The PS3 had a Blu-ray drive because they knew that DVD and the PS2 promoted each other and were hoping the same would happen with Blu-ray.
Stand-alone players are cheap enough now, and there's no HD-DVD to compete, so there's no major benefit to Sony to add a drive to their next console.
How are consoles less friendly to students?
Perhaps I wasn't unclear. I didn't mean student gamers but students learning the craft of video game development. Look at Nintendo's criteria to get a devkit: established businesses only.
Is "computer meeting the hardware specs [...] for Windows Vista [...] " a standard?
Now you're just being obtuse. The answer, of course, is an unqualified "No."
I don't see how not. Obtuse? Perhaps. Deliberate? No.
Frozen bubble is 15 years old (or rather, a clone of a 15-year-old game)
Yet 15-year-old games show up in your precious consoles' online download stores. On Wii, all of "Virtual Console" is emulated games, and a good percentage of "WiiWare" is remakes (e.g. Tetris Party, Dr. Mario Online Rx).
As a bit of an aside, the fact that game publishers/developers argue against selling used games has always seemed silly to me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of money that people get from selling old games gets put towards buying new games.
Your argument has always seemed silly to me. If you sold a game, the publisher lost one sale compare to if the buyer bought it new.
Even assuming you put 100% back into games (unlikely), it would only result in the same total of sales. And because the developers need to keep making new games for the "pass through" customers, it reduces the market for higher-budget must-have titles and emphasizes quantity over quality.
And it's not like everyone who buys used games today would just shrug their shoulders and go buy a full-price copy instead.
Actually, that's exactly what they would do. The price difference in the major used game stores are pretty minimal.
The "I can't afford it" argument has always been very weak. In all honesty, if someone can afford a $400 games console and games, chances are he'll have plenty of money to make up for the $15 price difference for one little game.
But for how long? The Bells were broken up, but now Verizon controls most of the Northeast, Qwest controls the West, and AT&T controls the rest of the country. The seven baby Bells are now three - with one of them being AT&T, who was not supposed to be in the local loop business.
Or how about Standard Oil. In 1911 it was supposed to be split up, the biggest of the monopoly ending bust of the trusts. In 1999, the two biggest of those companies remerged and became ExxonMobil, making it the #1 company on the Fortune 500, with over $400 billion in revenue a year. The government tried to break it up a century ago, but the tendency to monopoly still overtakes things.
You also say - "Firstly there are monopolies which have been artificially supported by an industry structure imposed by government (e.g. BT in the UK), in other words they are not a failure of the free market, they are a failure caused by government subverting the free market." It would take a while to begin to disentangle this sentence. Firstly, the phrase "free market" is not the kind of thing someone seriously engaged in social science would (or should rather) use. It is like saying a free country, or the political party in the US that supports freedom or the like. It is just entering these propaganda phrases into the discussion, which serves no purpose. I am not sure what a free market is - in the USSR, the way a market appeared to a customer was they walked in with rubles and walked out with a hat or shirt or whatever. In the US, people walk into a store and buy shirts and hats with dollars. Why is one transaction free and the other not? It really makes no sense. Those are marketplace transactions. People say "free market" although the concept has nothing to do with either freedom or markets.
Yet another reason (as if any were needed) that the PC is by far the superior platform for anything except sidescrollers, and other twitch-based button-mashers that don't require complex input. As with just about anything else in computing, Open = Better.
Riiiiight because there are no other places for us to shop then Walmart
You. Really. Have. To. Spell. Things. Out. For. Some. People.
I went out of my way to explicitly make clear that I was arguing specifically...
against the general principle that I hear over and over again that "no monopoly lasts forever"
And even after that you still can't grasp that someone can attack and criticise a particular and specific stupid argument and/or technique without them necessarily being a supporter of the thing you were arguing against.
I put that disclaimer in to avoid *exactly* that sort of kneejerk thinking, because it's all too common around here, despite Slashdotters' supposed reputation of being logical and smart.
And even after that some people still don't get it.
The other replier to your comment got it *exactly* right by the way:-
I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that Wal-Mart is a monopoly. The GP post was talking about monopolies in general, and that's what he responded to. He quoted the line. He never says anything about Wal-Mart at all.
Oh, and FWIW, even if I had been arguing the point you mistakenly think I was arguing about, I'm not wasting 25 minutes watching Penn and Teller, who- while they sometimes make some valid attacks- are blatantly partisan in favour of their own libertarian viewpoint and not really interested in presenting a balanced case.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
a and b conflict. you can not have both.
b insures you can have a backup copy when you use a.