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Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games
BanjoTed writes "In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online."
If memory serves, isn't the PSP one of those systems it's (relatively) easy to pirate for?
I have a feeling Sony has traded getting no money from resales to getting no money because everyone's downloading a cracked version.
Yes, charging buyers of pre-owned games 20 bucks will show those dirty pirates. In other news, as part of my own ongoing fight against piracy I'll install self-destruct mechanisms and DRM in cars and charging 1k for every driver authentication beyond the first. Because I don't want my car analogies to be pirated. It makes perfect sense, I assure you.
They really are completely delusional. What benefit does this provide to the consumers that they'll react positively to? Is there even any theoretical benefit to the consumer? Maybe the research was done entirely among Sony executives.
This sentence no verb.
The sad thing about this is that, this has NOTHING to do with illegal distribution of games.
This has all to do with greedy corporations who keep moving towards the "software as a service" paradigm.
Nowadays, a lot of games you "buy" contain only a very small offline playing offering.
I only want a multiplayer videogame that I can play at home with my friends (at home two!). I just got the "Spyborgs" game for Wii... I haven't had so much fun in some time; it is the first "cooperative player with a history when playing both of them" I have been able to play (since I played Army of Two for PS3!).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
How long before there is a class action lawsuit against Sony for articifically reducing the value of assets that are purchased in good faith. What happens if you wish to sell your PS3 and all of the games? The package will be devalued by the amount of resubscriptions required for the online games.
Nothing like discouraging people from wanting to buy their product -- new or used. I knew Sony was an evil empire (coming from someone that worked for them far too long), but this is just stupid.
I know car analogies are old on slashdot but I seriously wonder how long before car manufacturers start building the electronic components of their cars such that they are needlessly dependent on some online system run by the manufacturer so that your fuel indicator only works correctly if your car has been able to update this month from the manufacurers online fuel level measuring methods database and your aircon shuts down unless authenticated with a secure server on a regular basis as a "car theft prevention measure".
Idiot lawmakers make bypassing or removing the "anti car theft" systems for any reason a crime.
Drivers pay through the nose to have an account with the manufacturer.
Manufacturers get more profit since now people have an incentive to not buy used cars.
Shills start trolling car enthusiast message boards talking about how it's a good thing because this way the car companies get more money to build better cars and everyone wins except those dirty car thieves.
I can honestly see it happening.
How long before there is a class action lawsuit against Sony for articifically reducing the value of assets that are purchased in good faith. What happens if you wish to sell your PS3 and all of the games? The package will be devalued by the amount of resubscriptions required for the online games.
And that's grounds for legal action because? Sony is not stopping you from reselling the games; just not letting you transfer the subscription; something you knew when you bought the game.
A flip side to this is it benefits someone who doesn't play online - used game prices will drop to accommodate the subscription fee; and if you don't plan to play online you now have a code that you can sell to someone who bought a used game. Either way your price for the game would drop if you don't play online.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If I don't want to play online, am I allowed to return the code to Sony for a $20 refund? I should be.
Put identity in the browser.
What's wrong with the word "used"? Are you all car dealers now?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
EA/Bioware adds little perks for people who buy the retail version of the game or preorder it even (a suit of armor, a downloadable character) that you really want to have in a game you have a strong desire to play (Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2). Sony utterly gimps your gameplay experience. I am not bothered by one (and hell think it's a good idea) guess which one that is.
So many people think that the used game market is somehow harming the new game market. They are completely wrong. Through the magic of a priori reasoning, I know that you cannot be harmed merely because you're not getting what you are not entitled.
Let me explain. Wouldn't it be awesome if your coworkers gave you a cut of their salary, for no reason whatsoever? Wouldn't it be great if you walked into a bank one day and the teller decided to give you a portion of the bank's holdings, for no reason whatsoever?
Yep, that would be awesome, no doubt about it. But are you being harmed because your coworkers and bank are not giving you money you don't deserve? Nope.
That's what's going on with the new game and used game markets. The new game industry somehow feels entitled to profits from the used game market. Despite having absolutely no legal basis for such entitlement. In the United States we have the right of first sale. What that means is that we can sell what we bought, even if what we bought was copyrighted material. So we have a right to sell our DVDs, CD, and used games.
Of course someone will say that my coworker/bank analogies fail because they don't take into consideration that the game industry created the games that the used game market is selling. If you think that, you're completely missing the point.
The fact that the game industry originally created the game is completely irrelevant to whether it is entitled to any profits from secondary or tertiary sales. It does not have such a right to profits. None whatsoever. No more than General Motors has a right to profit from the sale of the used Chevy truck you just sold. GM created the truck, does it deserve a cut from every subsequent sale? What about your house, should the contractor get a cut when you sell it, when it's sold 100 years from now? (I live in a house originally built in 1856, exactly who am I supposed to pay when I resell and move out?)
My point is, much like how you have no rights to your coworkers pay, and much like how you have no rights to your bank's holdings, the new game industry has no right to profits from the used game market. None whatsoever.
Of course the new game industry outright lies and claims that the used game market "Is profiting from the sale of our games." It's a lie because once the new game industry sells a particular copy of the game; it is no longer their game. They have absolutely no ownership right in that particular copy. So to accuse the used game market of taking or stealing their property is an outright lie.
I have no doubt that someone will argue that the new game industry is being harmed because of lost sales. I.e., consumers are buying from the used game market rather than from the new game industry which is causing the new game industry to lose money.
Let's get one thing straight: Losing sales to a competitor is not harm. It's competition.
The new game industry's claim that it's being harmed from the used game market is as asinine as McDonalds claiming it is being harmed by Burger King.
Now certainly if Burger King was unfairly or illegally competing, for example, if Burger King ignored health and safety laws to keep their prices lower, in that circumstance one could argue that McDonalds would be harmed by the unfair and illegal competition.
But in this instance there is no illegality or unfairness in the used game market. It's not illegal for consumers to resell their games. It's not unfair to price those used games lower because the products are necessarily inferior to the new ones.
If your industry is somehow being harmed by perfectly legal and fair competition, then it's about time change careers because you have a complete misunderstanding about how capitalism is supposed to work. You are not entitled to someone else's profits, merely because you want them. Get over it.
Unfortunately, this is exactly why the new game industry is having laws passed to make it more difficult to sell used games. Despite what corporations say, they don't really want to compete in a free market, they want the government to bend over and protect them from legal competition.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A company can do whatever the hell it wants! Nobody forces you to buy these games after all. Between bong hits, you hippies whine that policies like this lead to decreased consumer choice, greater entrenchment of established players, less innovation, and price increases across the board. So what? That's just too bad. The right of a corporation to do anything it wants it spelled out in the Book of Job. If a corporation does it, that makes it right.
Still whining, huh? Are you a successful executive? No? When what business do you have talking about anything, loser? Don't like it? Go read a book, or move to a France, or preferably, impress your boss by putting in 12 hours at work tomorrow instead of the expected 10.
I used to be a fan of my C64 games as a kid and I loved playing PC games for years. So much in fact I tried breaking into game development and ran the local IGDA chpater for some years. My heart is still with games and I think they are a wonderful extension to the artforms of literature, cinema and storytelling. When I see how the game dev industry treats its customers these days, I really get the feeling they are way beyond stretching their welcome. Games (especially console games) are so icredibly overpriced and lacking of creativity and intellectual depth that I wonder why gamers are still interested in buying/playing them. I haven't upgraded my gaming pc for almost 8 years now and I only have a Wii because my wife like the balance board games (and admittedly I love being her audience). The only games I occassionaly play are the really old ones, like Civ II/III Baldur's Gate stuff, the good old Sierra point and clicks (Larry, 2D King Quest) because of the humor and fun in these games. Also I really love firing up the C64 emulator for a quick round of classics. When will they stop squeezing customers for every penny and drop the incredible graphics/hardware performance race that has been polluting the game content for the past decade. I don't give a damn about 3D performnace or yet another FPS, come up with something new, interesting exciting. Something that doesn't insult my intelligence and challenges and entertains me in a more subtle way. Dear Douglas Adams I miss you, you were well on your way to solve this problem but you passed too soon. Oh god, is no one going to change this rotten game dev industry we're having? Perhaps I'm just an old fool blabbering about the lost good old days, but doesn't anyone agree that it's not supposed to be like this? *sigh*
We used to buy a silver disk and it contained a game. As long there was an active userbase playing it, you would have multiplayer. Otherwise, you'd organize a night of multiplayer gaming with friends or play single player mode. But the game was yours to play.
If I look at it, the games industry is evolving to a SaaS-model; you pay a subscription fee on a games base and when you stop paying you are denied access.
it wouldn't surprice me, with latest Nvidea's realtime rendering farm et al, we'd soon have a subscribers base "gamers account", where you can pay monthly for "casual gaming", a more expensive "regular gaming"-account or "extreme all the latest games at fuckplenty fps"-account giving you access to certain titles/types of games which you can play realtime over wire.
Gaming like we've known before, on brown or silver disks, seems to be phasing out forever.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
> Sony is not stopping you from reselling the games; just not letting you transfer the subscription; something you knew when you bought the game.
Online play is a part of the game as advertised on the retail box. Therefore barring use from another machine is a crime on Sony's part. There is no "subscription' - I'm not paying Sony to play this game, I paid the store and online play was included.
What if my PS3 breaks down due to a technical failure and Sony's warranty replaces the unit. I would then have to pay $20 again for each game?
If I pirate the game and then pay Sony $20 does that make it legitimate?
It doesnt bypass anything. The first sale doctrine still applies, and Sony has to allow the transfer of DLC to other accounts. Of course someone has to sue them first to force them to respect the law, until that happens they can flaunt the law all they want.
I just don't give a damn about the DLC. I played Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 all the way through without even noticing the little DLC registration cards in the box (typically those are just advertisements) until someone mentioned them. Both games were good and complete. The presence of free-if-you-buy-it-from-us DLC isn't going to motivate me to ignore a used game if it is available. What pisses me off is in-game advertisements for DLC. Every time you go back to camp in DAO some asshole is standing in the back with a bright yellow exclamation mark saying "Buy the DLC for my quest!". No, asshole, if you don't represent a playable part of my game, get the fuck out. I'm afraid we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future, as our (more profitable than ever) game companies continue to morph into greedy bastards like the rest of the entertainment industry.
Doesn't it depend on how they present the product ? Let's say the product is the software, the physical media, the packaging, and maybe online access.
- if 'online' is an option, then I should be able to get a refund if I'm not interested. By law, 'linked sale' must be breakable into constitutive parts in my country (France).
- if 'online' is an integral part of the product, then I should be able to resell it along with the software itself.
We're going to see some fancy marketing-legalese footnotes on those games...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Well maybe not - I guess this is up to the company to set up rules for usage of their products. Instead of charging for games and usage fees on servers they could have change their business model into one where vendor benefits from either usage fees or registration and usage fees. without need to pay for software. This not only eliminates the need to purchase a game but at the same time eliminates the piracy as we know it. Of course then the trade in stolen access codes will ensue but this is easier to control than the stolen access codes on top of pirated software. But I guess at the end the user will be asked to pay on all occasions: by purchase, by on-line registration and monthly fee on top (plus a fart fee for farting while on-line).
They already tried something similar when cars first started having diagnostic ports - you had to use a special machine to read the diagnostic code which was only available from the manufacturer to franchised dealers. This is why OBD-II was developed and is now mandated in much of the world.
Piracy is the better choice. It's been said before, but apparently it hasn't gotten old yet.
This is a cycle, and I'm stuck in it. When the PS3 came out, first I waited simply because I wanted to be sure the platform took off. I eventually said to myself "It's going well, as soon as they drop the price I'll buy one." Well, they not only dropped the price, they dropped the emotion chip. ...so I didn't buy it. Later they were to drop the price, and they dropped the Emotion chip EMULATOR TOO, then Linux boot support, now they're dropping my ability to get good value on resale of games (since that $20 is getting passed to the consumer, my game is not $20 less valuable at resale, especially since most used games I BUY are only $20 or less, that's a huge hit). I was all set, finally just willing to admit there were few enough PS2 games I have that I'd actualyl play it was worth just keeping the PS2 slim i have around to play them, and I was going to buy a PS3 this summer when the price inevitably dropped again.
Sorry Sony, your screwed yourselves again. I'll just buy another PC based game or two, maybe a new Vid Card.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I work for a one of the big european car manufactorer's. I can assure you that car manufactorer's have absolutely no interest in crippliing used cars sales.
If people could not sell their cars(to the dealer or to another user directly) they would keep using the same old car until it can. Car manufactorer's are instead very interested in people changing thir car every few years(2-3-5 are the most interesting spans), so they can seel a new one. People buyng a used medium size sedan are not likely to buy the same car new, while people changing their medium size sedan every 2-3 years are not likely to resort to used cars market(they clearly like having brand new cars), so there is very little overlap.
Also a used car is a very very different product from a new one. They have different values and there are many risks for non competent people buying 5 or more years old cars.
A car, even if there is no newer version, gets old with use and get less and less "useful" with time. There are very little istances of cars which are more than 10 years old and still good for everyday use, at least not without major maintenance(old fasghioned cars are a good example, if well kept they can be in perfect working order, but the cost of mantaining a 50's car in mint condition are very high. What you spend on it in 5 years is for syure much more than what you'd spend to buy a maintain a brand new car for the same time, and you'd have to factor that newer cars have better mileage, and much bettere safety systems, not to mention comfort).
Used games are the same, as long as the instalation media is not ruined they don't loose value due to use or abuse. The only limiting factor in a game value is aging, which is devalueing because newer better games come out. So These people just want to spend less money making new games, and keep milking old cows.
Car makers used not to have this problem up to a few years ago. they did start in the nineties to make new models every 2-3 years because they wanted to push obsolescence on their previous models just to sell more(they mostly succeeded here in europe).
Wrong. You're allowed to activate your account on up to five PS3s and five PSPs simultaneously. You can redownload games as many times as you want.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I don't buy a Sony TV because of my past experiences with Sony's car radios etc. The whole DRM thing is useful to tell the good ones from the bad ones.
Having such cool products.... I wonder if they fully appreciate what they're doing to their brand.
I don't buy Sony products because:
I think any of those alone are enough reason to boycott any company. Put more than one into a single company and there's no excuse to buy anything from them.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Canada is the reason we have Celine Dion, not Sony... Move along now, eh?
I'm sorry, but Blu-Ray was technically the better solution. It had higher storage density per disk, higher transfer rates, stored audio at higher bit rates and required hard coating of the disks. That and HD-DVD was supported by Microsoft for no other reason than their hatred of Java. Screw them.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
They feel the need to screw their customers, and I feel the need not to buy their products.
Shine on, Sony. Shine on.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I readily admit that on paper Blu-Ray was better technically regarding higher density disks. The slightly higher transfer rates are irrelevant regarding movies, since there's no bandwidth issues there unless your source is using an inefficient compression algorithm.
Both BR and HDDVD support TrueHD audio, so I'm not sure where your misinformation on audio comes from. You should also note that almost all movies are in 5.1 audio, not the 7.1 that's supported.
But, BR the implementation was hamstrung from the beginning by DRM requirements, and the implementation at the time of the "win" was far below what HD DVD already was capable of. (we really should just say "bought in as gross an example of monopolistic anti-competitive behavior as is available in history" as Sony mortgaged half the company to do so)
Add to that the fact that the hard coating was a requirement on BR disks, and could have easily been added to HD DVD disks, the only thing left is capacity. Now as to capacity, most BR disks use the less than optimal MPEG2 encoding which is a space hog, yet still leaves lots of room on most BR disks, essentially stating they could also easily fit on HD DVD disks. MPEG4 encoding, which is much more efficient and actually preserves more quality even when a movie is compressed to a smaller file size than MPEG2 equivalent would completely negate the size argument at least as far as movies go - the primary reason for these disks existence in the first place.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Now, now, the Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
"They did underhanded deals to foist a sub-optimal solution (Blu-Ray) on everyone."
After putting out a superior product in the days of VCR's and getting owned, they learned their lesson. This is the way business is done. You make the deals that you need to make in order to turn a profit.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
So long as Sony is upfront about its policy (which may be in question given it is Sony) who cares.
There is a very easy solution. Vote with your wallet. Don't buy the game. If you feeling really pissed, don't buy Sony products. They will get the message eventually, or if they don't they won't be around much longer.
It really is that simple.
However if they "trick" people into buying their products, and then once it is too late announce that "Oh BTW that thing you just bought is now crippled by this DRM, you must be online or register online, etc... to actually play our game". That would piss me off to the point where I would be demanding my money back.
Except it's not up to the company -- the fact that they're trying to invent that right by stripping away the property rights of the buyer is the ENTIRE FUCKING PROBLEM!!!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The capacity and bitrate were the only advantage. On the other hand HD-DVD was a "finished" platform, with dozens of other advantages. It was doing dozens of things that simply wern't possible with the profile 1.0 (then later 1.1) BR disks. Its also pretty much given at this point, that putting java on the player has guaranteed that its been (and will be for the near future) a firmware upgrade/incompatibility nightmare. For a couple of years there, BR was just a scramble to throw in features (think picture in picture directors commentary, that required everyone except the PS3 owners to buy new players) when some hot HD-DVD title came out using a feature. I have a rule about my Blury player, if the disk I'm trying to play is newer than the firmware, then go to Sony's site and upgrade the firmware.
As someone familiar with the actual BR movie streams (chuckle) very few of them actually utilize more than single layer BR (25G) even when they are originally on dual layer. The extra capacity is almost always a second copy of the movie, or some extra crap encoded at 1080p originally filmed with a 480i camera. Even then, they generally come in under 30G (the default HD-DVD dual layer format). Frankly, even now, I can boot my HD-DVD player, drop a disk in and compare the "experience" with recent BR disks. HD-DVD continues to have more polish, and an unnoticeable quality difference. Part of that is the movie studios fault. For example, the default behavior for a HD-DVD is to start playing the movie (not previews) when the disk is inserted. If you want to select another audio stream (cause your system settings weren't correct) the popup menus over the movie allows you to do it dynamically while the movie is playing. The sequence for HD-DVD is "insert movie, watch movie", where is with BR, its "insert movie, fast forward through 3 commercials, navigate menus to start movie, watch movie". Then there are technology problems, for example, probably over 1/2 of the BR movies still can't be resumed from the middle, if you decide to finish watching at another time. This is apparently due to some issue with... wait for it.. the java (BD+?) running on the disks.
Finally, the hard coating was "required" because without it, the disks were to fragile as the data layer is right on the surface. I'm not sure that's an advantage. Someone could amended the CD, DVD or HD-DVD spec to require it too. It won't happen. It isn't necessary with those specifications as minor scratches don't ruin the disk. You can by DVD blanks with the same coating, but very few people do that either. If HD-DVD were still around, they probably would be using the scratch resistant coating to compensate for the error correction changes they were making right at the end to create 23G layers.
Blu-ray supports both MPEG2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and SMPTE VC-1. While there are some Blu-ray discs that use MPEG2, most of them were the first releases of Blu-ray when the studios had not fully converted their processes to newer codecs yet (MPEG2 is the codec used by DVDs). Most releases use MPEG4 these days.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The fact is Sony made a bunch of back-room deals that cut off a competitor that was doing better than they were. When Blu-Ray "won" there was already an HD-DVD player for roughly $100, at which point critical mass would have happened in a natural economic climate. That isn't what happened here.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
People have a right to use their own personal property; Sony does not and should not have the authority to interfere!
The physical game disc that you bought is your property. The services that you access with it are not. Sony has the right to decide who can access external services for a game. They have a right to create ToSs for it and the right to enforce it.
If you are an abusive fuck, they have every right to prohibit you from using THEIR servers to play online. Furthermore, if you accept the premise that they have the right to charge a subscription fee to play online (whether or not it makes sense for them to do so from a market perspective), then I don't see really any problem in a legal sense for this new scheme they are using. It's not very much different than the MMO model, just a one-time charge rather you might have to pay if you got the game second hand, rather than a monthly fee.
"In the US (YMMV) you have a right to do anything you want with your physical copy of the game (outside of making illicit copies). However, any rights for any subscription services are not "basic" - they depend on the contract/license for the service."
This is not true. We have the Doctrine of First Sale. If I pay for a game, that means all features. When I resell that game, the purchaser expects the exact same thing.
Forcing the second purchaser to pay extra money to access what should come with the game AS ADVERTISED is fraud in the purest sense.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.