Slashdot Mirror
Xbox 720 Might Reject Used Games
silentbrad writes "Online passes are a recent staple in staving off used sales. Limiting what used buyers can access is a protective measure for publishers, much to the chagrin of parts of the gaming community. Chris Kohler of Wired argues that the death of used games is inevitable, and passes are the first step toward something exactly like a native anti-used game something integrated into consoles. He notes, of course, that digital is the future of buying games, but in the meantime we may be looking at 'an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but ... becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.' Also at Kotaku, the source for the Wired article (which is the source for the IGN article)."
Because you should turn around twice and walk away.
I'll just reject the Xbox 720.
A) There is no way anyone has information on this system that would be negative toward it's image.
B) People won't even bother to buy the new console and stick with the 360
C) What if you change systems, buy a second new system, or these systems fail as often as the 360 (hope not)
"Hey the PS2 is going to prevent you from playing used games!"
Oops, no, you can just fine...
"Hey, the PS3 is going to prevent you from playing used games!"
Nope, wrong again...
"Hey, the next Xbox is going to prevent you from playing used games!"
At this point, I'm convinced it's just a way for the hardware people to wrangle a little bit extra developer support before launch, where inevitably they aren't stupid enough to do something that would alienate their core market...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
we'll be able to witness the 'resale value' elasticity of demand.
Can you ever really own software? It seems natural to think of it as a product that can be bought and sold... but in the modern era of licenses and DRM, of artificial scarcity, we are slowly coming to realize that we are paying money for nothing. The fact that this stuff can be copied on a whim jars with traditional notions of physical property.
Oh, that's alright. I'll just have to cut back on my video game purchases so that I don't end up with a whole bunch of crappy games that I can't resell.
This could be a huge boon for the PC Game industry. And no, I'm not talking about Piracy. But, without used games to bring the cost down, gamers like myself will shift more of their funds to heavily discounted digital download titles on the PC, which is something I've yet to see matched on the console side.
Why is the headline of this article focussed on Microsoft and the Xbox 720? Surely this is pure conjecture and can just as easily be applied to *any* PC or console game? I haven't RTFA as it'll be a load of made-up crap by the author.
Yes; it does seem that reading is a skill beyond many of the people stepping up to defend Microsoft from this accusation. From the fine article:
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
After some years of neglect, since the late 1990s some libraries, universities, and other cultural organizations have realized that videogames are an important cultural artifact, so are worth preserving just like films and other bits of culture are. There are now things like this at Stanford, and quite a few others. These are usually put together by buying used arcade cabinets, cartridges, CDs, etc., from anything from flea markets to eBay (in addition to donations from individuals and collectors).
Videogame makers seem to be doing whatever they possibly can to make this as difficult as possible, especially for organizations like libraries that need to follow the law. It seems like if videogames are actually documented/preserved as interesting cultural artifacts, it's going to be by less-official organizations that crack them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If the secondary market becomes impossible, piracy will spring up to take its place, if anything else to increase availability of hard to find titles.
crazy dynamite monkey
2010 bought x-box
bought Black Ops
played it, sold it and bought GoW new double pack
played it sold it and bought new copies of ME1 and ME2
if i have to pay $60 for games, and no resale then i'll buy a few games like ME or Dragon Age where you can replay with different characters to get some value
or just keep playing x-box 360 games. lots of GOTY and other super editions with DLC and add ones out there for CHEAP.
You'll need to buy a license key on line.
This disk will just be a distribution for large files (not every one has high speed broad band yet) and advertising medium.
In related news, Gamers might reject the Xbox 720
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
they are just like the Apple App store... the prices are lower but you are forever stuck with the purchase, you cannot sell it.
Heck I can't even sell the apps I bought with my iPad should I choose to never have an Apple product again, the apps don't go with with iPad. When I sold my iMac recently I had to revert it to Snow Leopard because when I asked Apple, Lion belonged to my account, not that machine I bought it for (the new machine came with Lion)
So how low must the prices be before its acceptable to give up the option of resale?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
might reject Xbox 720.
Well last night I went to refil my insulin pump, and woke up nearly dead today. It was just water, or saline, or who knows.
It was probably dihydrogen monoxide. That stuff is found in cancer cells, and is the major component of acid rain.
So in the future, lets say... 18 years from now, you won't be able to legally play that game that came out in 2013 because there are no more keys left and the servers are down. You might still have the console, and the disk, and perhaps you paid money for it, but with that game, with that anti-used-game protection, it's useless. And of course, going around the copy protection would be the only way to play it again, which is illegal.
Where is in modern times, you can play an 18 year old game without breaking any laws. Buy a Sega Genesis or a Saturn, buy the game, and so long as it isn't scratched up you can have a nostalgiagasm.
It stinks, won't stop anybody, and make criminals out of everybody, eventually. This idea is worthless.
that you the publishers spent millions of dollars on absolute garbage like mindjack and no one wants to buy it?
What SHOULD be dying is all the garbageware game publishers!
That means nothing! I can say that I heard from a reliable industry source that rtfa-troll is into smoking dried bananas, and is as a consequence incontinent. If he can't name the source, then it's conjecture. It's that simple!
FIRST I would like to welcome our new POST used game overlords.
Because the article is about Microsoft and the Xbox 720. Because the source of the article is about Microsoft and the Xbox 720.
You'd be amazed at what you can learn when you RTFA instead of posting a knee-jerk reaction.
We are be ratcheted.
You're beyond the pale of /. orthodoxy.
Microsoft is the enduring force for truth, justice, and the American way - in the console market. Sony is the devilish corporatist plutocrat outfit in this sector that we love to hate. If you want free mod-ups, you have to bash Sony in game threads, MSFT in PC threads :)
Actually i will if this is the way it will behave. The same goes for any console that does this kind of thing. I buy most of my games used, and keep my gaming systems for as long as they last. I stay away from any game that links to online services or verification in order to function properly. If i want a time-limited gaming experience, I'll visit one of the few arcades that are left (which I do whenever I'm near one).
My subtext is just a figment of your imagination.
Limiting features based on not having a key is a better idea.
Such as limiting a certain number of weapons to be held, or certain number of AI bots in a game, or even limiting the game up to a certain point, removing side-quests, etc.
It would give more reason for people to want to buy the game first, or get a new key.
Getting rid of brick and mortar stores is a terrible thing for them and the industry, as is going entirely digital.
A lot of companies make a large chunk of money on limited editions and the like, such as coming with original artwork (or rather, scanned original artwork), some models, whatever.
Not only that, getting rid of them would be getting rid of a large chunk of your market because NO sane person is going to sit and download their double-digit gigabyte games.
What with bandwidth caps and slow speeds, and of course the triple digit numbers of people ALL DOING IT AT ONCE, yeah, come back in a couple decades when the backbones of most countries aren't made out of crap.
Better idea, CDN in each country. Each store signs up for a licence to have a hub installed in their store. This then downloads the games to them on release. People can come in with some memory device (SSD, HDD, flash, whatever), pop the game on, it gets copied, take it home, copy to console, done.
If they have no device, they rent a device from the store to take it home. (this could be an avenue for the stores to make a bit of money for those who have no memory storage)
You could also allow sync to be done via this method. They hop on over to the store, they upload their achievements and the like to the hub. It all gets uploaded at off-peak times at once.
Obviously there is a lot to workout with such a system, but it is better than telling your fans with no internet to beat it.
You now have the best of both worlds, people who can internet and people who don't have decent internet or none at all.
The fact that Steam, PSN, XBL all suffer bad times even with upper-average traffic, what makes you think it'd hold up against everyone ever on those services using it all at once?
They'd literally DDoS the poor servers, which I can't count how many times has happened when, say, a new huge game has came out on Steam. Switching locations like a madman to find something that will at least work, even if slow as hell.
They'd have to have an insane number of load-balancing at the front of the network to prevent it dying so hard.
note: I always buy brand new wherever I can.
Like Woodward and Bernstein were just engaging in conjecture?
when at least half of your target audience will wait a few weeks/months to buy your game used from a store like Gamestop ruining your companies projected sales/income and it makes it difficult for you to get funding for games, its a problem. why bother making anything other than a game hoping to cash in on the COD market for sure income, then to make a niche new original game that wont have as many sales and more than half are still lost to store resellers. that said, when games have no replay value and after your 10-20 hours of gameplay its just a 50-70 dollar paper weight on your shelf you wonder why you bothered to buy it.
I know it's a small part of their business, but how will this decision affect a rental company like RedBox. The other day I noticed they rented out titles like Skyrim and Call of Duty. Moreover, what about companies like Gamefly, whose entire business model is based on the ability to share titles? Along with regular customers, I imagine these companies will not go down without a fight.
my mom posts on slashdot.
If it is, i'm not buying this !
I don't really care about used game since i rarely buy one but if the Xbox broke down, that means that all your game become useless if it won't work on a new console.
KIlling the used game market is going to backfire because the sale of used games subsidizes the purchase of new games. A lot of people make the calculation that they can buy a ~$50 game, play it until they are tired of it and then sell it for ~$20 - making the effective price only $30.
If the publishers make it impossible to resell that game, that amounts to nearly a doubling of the price for a new game and thus a lot less people will be able to afford it. These game publishers should be care what they wish for.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sorry to be off-topic, but I hope my fellow slashdotters avoid the IGN link as IGN's parent company, News Corporation, is a proponent of SOPA (I know it's been tabled, but the company has already put in their support for the legislation, which is bad enough in my opinion).
Somewhat along the same lines of an earlier post claiming that piracy will solve this issue.
I agree that if someone wants to play the game in 18 years. They will play the game. Emulators rule. I love that MAME exists and give me strolls down memory lane without sucking quarters out of my pocket in that stuffy, over-heated, converted room behind the Mini-Golf rental shack.
http://mamedev.org/legal.html
Read their "Legal" section if you think that "piracy" is the only solution.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
So it's like steam and the games are tied to you?
As long as it let's you go over to other peoples Xbox and play as guest like you can with steam then it may be ok.
Microsoft is the enduring force for truth, justice, and the American way - in the console market. Sony is the devilish corporatist plutocrat outfit in this sector that we love to hate.
Might this difference in reputation have something to do with the presence of Xbox Live Indie Games vs. the removal of an advertised feature and lawsuits against those who would restore it?
This will probably make my cracked (backspace)(backspace)(backspace) used games worth more money on ebay.
Reminds me of my Atari, Commodore, and Amiga days.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
heavily discounted digital download titles on the PC, which is something I've yet to see matched on the console side.
Are PC games typically discounted such that someone can buy four copies of the PC game for the price of one copy of a console game? Because that's what it would take to make up for the difference in the multiplayer paradigm between the two markets.
There are scores of people who will not buy a new game unless they can resell it. There are also scores of people who will only buy used games. Both of these groups will not buy a new gaming console if they can not take part in the used game market.
Can't I just simplify my life and bash both in both genres?
If it's true I can't buy games, play them, and then sell them as "like new" used condition (thus recouping my money), I might as well just stop playing modern consoles. I'll become a classic gamer (Ataris, Commodores, Segas, NESes, PS2s.)
I hate RIAA. I hate MPAA. I hate limitations upon my freedom.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
you can find any game anywhere in a B&M or online anytime.
Where can I find a lawfully made copy of Earthbound? Nintendo refuses to release it on Virtual Console. Or are you referring only to current-generation games?
SOPA, PIPA(which have only been delayed to calm the media), ACTA and now this. The new decade doesn't seem like it will be a good one for humanity at all. I wonder what's next.
It just solidifies the future of PC gaming.
"This is NOT a new player. In order to play this game, please replace the current player with a new one, and start again."
"This system does NOT accept used players."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
why people continue to complain when they know that the console maker is going to do stuff like this makes no sense. You are accepting you don't even own your console when you buy it.
I hope they realise the number of gamers for whom selling used finances their buying new. Just like the car market, except there manufacturers absolutely covet the used car market. Many of the used buyers are kids who don't have the money to buy new games except at birthdays etc., or casual gamers who would never pay new prices. I note that the article refers to PC games generally being one-time use, I respond noting PC game pricing for brand-new games is almost always cheaper than used console games, quite often substantially cheaper. Even then, "one time use" keys used to be only relevant to multiplayer, single worked fine. Even now DRM generally allows for multiple machine installs. Only online downloads are locked to one account.
Similar happens with the consoles themselves too. Almost every time I upgraded a console generation I sold my old one + games to finance the new. MS/Sony/Ninty get an early adopter whilst also selling games to someone on the older gen.
The problem with the used market is not the used market, it is the margins taken by the retailers. If you sell a game for $10 and store then sells it for $30, they extract $20 from the used-game economy.
Create a corporation*, purchase the XBox and games through the corporation. When you want to sell, you transfer the equity in the corporation to the new owner. The h/w and s/w never change hands.
Watch Microsoft fight a couple of hundred years of corporate law. Sit back. Laugh.
*Yeah, I know. This will be prohibitively expensive for something like a couple of games.
Have gnu, will travel.
(Different AC)
I read the article and it is just made-up crap. Sure, it's based on Microsoft tossing the idea around, but it's about as substantial as aerogel. This entire story is a knee-jerk reaction. Pot, meet kettle.
You appear to have never heard of a suicide battery. As I understand it, it's fairly common for some kinds of arcade games to lose their programming after several years because essential decryption keys are stored in battery-backed SRAM.
of course other people can use the account but only one computer can be logged in at a time
Which hurts households with multiple gamers. On consoles, you don't need to buy four copies of (say) Super Smash Bros. Brawl to play with four players.
I haven't bought a new CD (music album) in about 10 years. In that time, however, I have bought over 100 used CDs, averaging about $5 each, from online stores like secondspin.com. I simply unpack them, record each album to my FLAC archive, and put the disc/inserts away for storage. I keep a list of CDs I might want to buy and about twice a year I order a new batch of 10-15 albums. This has proven to be a great way of acquiring new music, and the best part is that I get the actual physical albums. I don't even care if they have a few scratches (most don't), as long as they record perfectly.
In conclusion, I feel damn good about sticking it to a corrupt industry backed by a corrupt government.
I might reject the Xbox 720.
Next up. Madden 2014 will stop working when Madden 2015 is released. People who keep playing old games are picking the pockets of the developers. They're still playing old games when they could be buying the new versions and playing those.
These prepared garbage posts about the moderation are hitting most of the articles right away.
I don't know what's going on, but it's getting annoying.
It's not the evil that is the issue, it's who does it and what we think of them.
Apple does Evil E. Google does E as well. Apple does E because they are evil. Google does E but it's okay, because they promise for the moment not to advance beyond E, and because they have goodness in their hearts.
This has the potential to completely alienate users but it also have the potential to be a useful platform.
In other words, they need to make this exactly like Steam. With steam, you can not resale games either but the other services steam offers more than make up for it.
With Steam, I can go to a friend's house and log in with my account to download and show them a game. The donwload is also pretty fast in most cases.
With Steam, the price is right. New titles cost full price but they have so many promotions that I buy most of my games under $10. Oh and steam is also FREE.
I got a feeling that with Microsoft we will get games tied to your Xbox hardware instead of your account, or maybe require that hardware key I am reading about. They probably offer no offline play because, you know, this is only for pirates. Full prices forever, barely any promotions and a monthly fee on top of all that.
People say console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming but that's far from true if you don't consider used games resales. If you don't buy used, it cost a lot more to game on console than on a PC.
personally, I always read at 0 or -1 points or not. Also I try and use my mod points on posts that have not been modded however should be, or stuff modded down i mod up if it should be. I rarely bother modding down as like you said most people read at a 2 anyway so why bother? I dont know if I am in the minority in the way I choose to mod, but thats how I like to do it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How can these corporate dunces not understand that the used game market is what fuels new game sales ?
On the few occasions where I've sold a game, in my case it's because I didn't like it, and wanted to free up those funds to buy something else. My most recent example was last year's Splinter Cell game (which I dubbed "Gears of Splinter Cell"). I spent $60 on it, didn't like it, sold it to someone else for $45 or so. Then I turned around and spent another $70 on Black Ops. So far, the game industry has made $130.
If I were unable to sell the game, due to arbitrary restrictions enforced by the platform, the other guy would not have gotten his hands on my unloved Splinter Cell, and I would have had $45 less to spend on my next game. Restricting that private sale then directly results in one less retail sale.
Now, I only rarely sell games. I'm more of a collector, and I like to revisit old games every few years. I can afford it, so I'm not the typical used-game-market kind of guy. A lot of my friends are, though, and they rarely have more than 4-5 games in their possession at any given time. They beat one, sell/trade it, get a new one. That's the key factor: they keep buying new ones with the money from used sales!
The people who are buying used games ? They're not even on the radar. $70 for a video game is fucking expensive, considering most modern titles are hastily-polished turds. About half gamer guys I know in the 25-35 age range are broke asses, working retail jobs and having less than $200 left after rent and necessities. The used market is the only way they can afford any games, so they may not contribute directly to the game industry's bottom line, but it keeps them addicted. How often have I heard these guys go "Man when I get a 2nd job I am so buying a PS3"... but kill off the used game market and these folks will find other hobbies, and you lose them as a customer for life!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I play games often, but it is always digital downloads when they go on sale on Steam. It server the same function as used games (pick up older game a few months after launch for cheap) but the money goes to the developers. This hurts used game retailers trying to sustain their shrinking business model, gamers without internet connections, and lovers of physical media.
and, i may reject xbox 720.
aerogel?? you were watching modern marvels this morning werent you?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
In my life I've gone through :
3 PS2
2 xBox
2 PS3
All died of overuse/bad hardware.
I've just replaced my old Xbox360 for a slim one.
I'm I to understand that if that policy had been in place I would have had to buy back (at premium price) my whole librairy of games each time I replaced one of my consoles ?
No more rental either ?
Some years ago when pay-DLC and subscriptions became the norm, I just stopped playing games. My quality of life has improved as a result. Surely more people will follow a similar path once gaming becomes too annoying for them, just as it did for me.
Any game that doesn't allow full re-play by another person... Don't buy them. Period.
Don't do the "In" game. Don't buy the "latest and greatest".
Let them know why you aren't buying them.
I have to say my wallet is thicker and I can do more productive things with my time without them.
Fuck the game industry if they won't allow re-sale or fully functional used copies.
...because DRM price gouging is not the game we usually intend on playing when we pay good money for these stupid, stupid locked-in consoles.
And I thought Sony could be bad...
Now I'm waiting for that one guy to claim you're a shill for Reading Rainbow.
..when I purchased NHL 11 used for my 360, and didn't realize until I started playing that it required a $10 online pass for multiplayer. Nope, not gonna do it, and I would urge anyone with an ounce of sense to reject that model as well. EA doesn't even maintain servers for most of their current-gen games, they use P2P. The only thing they physically host are stats and whatnot, so it costs them very little to maintain; the bandwidth and storage requirements are minimized to a huge degree.
Microsoft is still impressively thoroughly evil. This is just more of the same.
You can't even stream Netflix with your Xbox 360 without subscribing to Xbox Live.
There is no good reason for this, except Microsoft being greedy, evil bastards.
I think they are going to hurt their sales of consoles also. If an out-of-warantee Xbox 720 breaks, some people will just buy a new one. If all of your old games won't work on it, then there is no point. Perhaps they will get theirs fixed instead. But if it is beyond repair, I think many people would write off that console and not buy another or any other games for it, and would probably steer clear of the next generation of that console also. You can only screw people over soo far before they get wise to it.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Attempting to keep control of a product you sell and prevent it's resale is bad for the economy and should be illegal, as it destroys whole ecosystems of commerce.
I'm sure cloth retailers would love to put used cloths stores out of business.
Do you think it would work if they started including a license with their cloth that required the item to be returned to them and not resold? I mean , just because you pay for it , is no excuse to think you own it or have the right to modify it , right?
How about care manufactures, do you think people would put up with having to sign a license agreement for that required you to always have your car serviced at the dealership and return it to the dealer rather then discard it so as to protect 'their engineering' .
Not that they haven't tired, there is all kinds of poor engineering that has cost car companies lots of rep and lots of money , in attempts to prevent people from fixing things themselves. Now with all the computers and key fobs etc they are starting to finally have some success. That should also be illegal.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
This is one of the large reasons why the 360 and the games I have bought for it will be the last legally purchased games I will ever buy. After buying 2 used EA titles only to find I could not play multiplayer, a large component of either game, and am harassed every time I turn on the game to "buy an online pass", I have lost all respect for game companies. I have a little respect for Valve, but after the issues with Steam and their growing trend towards "pay to win", I don't believe I have any reason to give them my hard earned cash anyhow. I bought Portal 2, but that will be the last game from them as well. HL2: Episode 3 is just a slap in the face at this point and if it ever does get released, I fail to see why I should pay $60 for something I have been waiting to be released for many years.
First Sale Doctrine.
How is it that these companies who block the FSD are not violating the law?
Oh come on. You know he would sell his soul to meet LeVar Burton the greatest actor that has ever lived.
Time to offend someone
Microsoft may have finally found a way to completely kill off console gaming.
I figured the prevalance of +5 over +3 was just that if it's good, more than 4 people are going to like it enough to mod. To get only a +3, you have to walk a very fine line between being good enough for 5 people to like and being bad enough to get downmodded.
I know this is just speculation, but I couldn't think of a better way for Microsoft to help Sony regain some marketshare. As for me, I love my XBox 360 and I own about 15 games - more than half of them purchased new, but if Microsoft did this with its next-gen console, I would certainly steer clear of it. And I couldn't see myself ever giving money to Sony again, so that means I would either keep playing my old games and try to max out my achievements, or relegate my game playing to my phone.
If this become true, how about i campain in the social networks, alerting everybody to not buy the console?
Will the consumer be wise enough to do this?
Standard Template:
Console _console_name_ to have some _feature_pulled_from_ass_ that is guaranteed we won't like.
Then a barrage of arguments defending and lamenting _feature_pulled_from_ass_ without anyone doing the least amount of investigation as to whether the source is reliable or feature would ever exist.
Followed by my smart ass comment to point this out.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Remember how many 360s died in their first year. Now imagine the customer service hassles (and class-action lawsuit) for all the users inconvenienced when their 720 red-rings and takes all their legal, registered games with it.
bah.
Users Might Reject Xbox 720
Reputation Management. They couldn't succeed at raising the reputation of their client here so they resort to spamming/trolling all stories in an attempt to game the system.
If we can't sell used IP, you can't sell "used" stock shares.
Where's your righteous ideology now?
I heard bonch was a Reading Rainbow shill. Mod down.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Looks like it's back to the PC for me!
I stopped buying games after the GC/PS2/NDS because I didn't want:
- DRM ruining everything (e.g. used game control/restriction)
- DLC and micropayments
- Casual shovelware crap
I thought I'd be playing video games my whole life, but I can't support a business model which fucks over the customer in order to attain the most amount of profit as humanly possible.
Most importantly, money invested in video games is worthless. When a publisher doesn't support a game it will never work again (Phantasy Star Online, anyone?). The current trend is to make video games disposable. Just looks at how the Vita supports PSP games -- you have to re-buy games you already bought just to play them.
The video game industry is now in the disposable razor industry. No thanks. I've already spent tons of money on video games, and I still HAVE and most importantly -- OWN -- everything I've bought.
Anyone who's been buying games as of late has nothing. Sure you get fun games, but it's a fleeting thing and you'll have never it again within a few years of the launch date.
I think you guys are mostly wrong. I strongly suspect (but admit I nothing to back this up with) that the game industry is mostly supported by a group of people ages 12-25, and of that mostly male. I doubt very much that that age group will complain enough to change anything. And by complain I mean any sort of complaint (letters, boycotts, etc). Just look at DRM, and having to have a Steam account to play games (or whatever company you are buying from). I personally will not buy a single game that has DRM, requires an internet connection to play single-player (the mode I most frequently play), limits my number of installs/hardware changes, or any other limitation, but the gaming industry hasn't stopped doing it. Why? Because the people who buy games WANT games, and the only way to get them is to bow down to the producer or not buy games at all. Realistically speaking, not enough people will refuse to buy the DRM ridden games to stop the companies from putting DRM in them, just as not enough people will stop buying games cause they can't resell it or play a used copy online to make the companies stop preventing reselling.
I'll not buy anymore anything that puts limits to me and my enjoyment. End of story. So, put the 720 where the sun doesn't reach.
It's also dangerously addictive. After being exposed only once, a person can survive being deprived of it for just a few days before dying from withdrawal symptoms. So far nobody has ever been successfully weaned off dihydrogen monoxide.
Let me show you the future:
You go to the store, you buy a "game". You go home and open the green plastic box, and take out your little slips of paper. You slowly and laboriously enter a long alphanumeric code. Your console blinks some LEDs and talks to MS. Your console puts a light show on your TV and tells you about the ABSOLUTELY BADASS game you just "bought". An hour or two later, it's done downloading and you can play.
There is no used game market, and don't buy games grey market, or you'll get all your games revoked!
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
And get the game on Platinum Hits or whatever and actually pay the developer money instead of lining game stops pockets and pay 1/2 price. Win for everyone but gamestop. But no, gotta have it launch day! Well then, pay the price. People wait for TV to go streaming and books to go paperback, why can't you wait for the video game? If everyone pirated it or bought it used the game won't get made.
Games are expensive. Many people feel they can buy games because they will have some re-sale value after the fact. But with being stripped of any resale value, I have to wonder if this will result in more "careful consumerism." But in the end, we are seeing consumers stripped of their rights when they buy things. (Yes, I know they are technically 'redefining' what consumers are buying and what their rights are, but the net effect is the same.)
This kind of abuse simply needs to be outlawed. If someone buys a game in physical form, there should be no way to restrict their use of it. By making clever software, they are doing essentially what the DMCA says consumers can't do. They are circumventing copyright by inhibiting access to legal material copies which are owned by individuals.
Well if most people read with a setting of 2 than if you mod down a post you don't like that is new you'd essentially move it off the majority of peoples screen and banish it :-) So I guess you have more power if you mod down than up because modding down gets rid of it but moding up its still there with the rest of things.
I very rarely mod down it has to be a pretty blatant personal attach or something. I mainly comb through the twos and look for ones that were worthwhile and help them along. Things that are already 3+ will show up for virtually everyone so I don't bother. But giving a slight boost to someones unmodded post helps when people visually filter via the "I have 5 minutes what is good" criteria.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The AC's post is actually old copypasta that just happens to sound relevant given the recent going-ons here. I've read that exact post several times before.
Also, it's from a minute after the story went up, whereas the shills always manage to get the same time stamp as the story.
So this is just old-school FP trolling, IMO. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Agreed. It is a step function I think. You get modded up slightly more people will bother to read it. Once they do assuming it is a good post and they have mod points you'll probably get another point. If they don't agree it is good you'll get bounced back to 2. So 3 and 4's are just paths to getting a 5 afterwards people probably won't bother to mod you because it would be a waste to give a point to something that is already a 5.
A true Technophile knows an xBox is a PC, and I have a high end gaming rig and gaming laptop. Why oh why would i pay for an xbox? Cant upgrade it when new tech comes out.. and i can get all the games on the PC (cheaper too). --- yes yes yes.. i am an avid Sony tech.. and have everything Sony under the sun (well Vita is ordered and coming soon).
Hiding out in here to sockpuppet mod yourself up a bit eh? I guess at least you've stopped with the Great Bunzinni and iOS vs. Android marketshare trolls for the time being.
As many people on Slashdot like to say, IP (like software in this case) is not a physical good. Piracy of IP isn't theft because you haven't taken the original.
So when applied to the reverse situation, when you want to "sell" a "used" piece of IP...what does that even mean? If IP can't be stolen, how can copies of it actually be sold "used"? How can anyone enforce that you're actually selling the IP and not merely selling a copy of it? DRM? A "promise"?
Agreed.
Also, there's not incentive to slow moderation at +3 or +4... If you see a post at +4, it's probably going to be better than one at +2, so why _wouldn't_ you mod it to +5? The moderation system is really more of like/dislike setup and has no encouragement for mods to actually say that +4 is fair score and that +5 would be too much.
I've often wondered if it might make sense to increase the costs associated with modding up. Instead of one mod point per mod, instead charge X mod points, where X will be the new score (or current score if modding down). That would mean it would take someone _really_ liking your post to get it to be +5, and having it be free to correct -1 posts. This would also limit abuse from bury-brigades because they would burn through points very quickly tearing down +5 posts.
Besides, dedicated screens are much more enjoyable for most games.
In a game of perfect information, such as Chess or Street Fighter, or in a game of otherwise symmetric information, such as Blackjack or Dr. Mario, I don't see how dedicated screens on a LAN of PCs would necessarily improve the experience over multiple gamepads on one big screen. True, this doesn't apply to competitive FPS or RTS, which like Stratego are games of hiding information from the other players. Do you claim that "most" multiplayer video games are games of hiding?
Perhaps if you'd taken a regular, non-fucking chemistry class you would have learned of hydrogen peroxide- two hydrogen and two oxygen will bond all right. The mono part is unnecessary for reasons other than the one you stated.
That being said, it's too bad they didn't offer a fucking chemistry class when I went to school, that sounds like an interesting topic.
Honestly, as much as the "no used sales" bothers me, I'm also worried as hell MS will screw up their controller. IMO, it's currently damn-near perfect right now (with the exception of the d-pad for many, I know - I don't use it that much), at least for my hand size. The PS3 controller feels too small and lightweight, and it's not nearly as ergonomic-feeling for me. And Nintendo seems to make a game of create an even more horrid and unwieldy controller with each new console generation.
Xbox Live and the Xbox controller are the reason 95% of my game purchase are for the Xbox, even though I own all three consoles. I only buy games for the others when they're exclusive to that platform.
Personally, I'm not sure I put much stake in these rumors, though. If MS were solidly in the leader position, I wouldn't put it past them to do this. However, with the current 3-way race with no runaway leader, I think they can't afford to annoy their customers that much. Competition is a good thing.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Will never buy one
Sure you won't have an online community as robust as X-Box Live, but now that we know their performance specs are comparable (the Xbox may be up to 20% more powerful - thats like a PS2 to Original Xbox difference), we know that most 3rd party games will end up on both systems, and you will be able to play online on Wii U for free, AND buy used games.
Born to Play
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide
The moderation system is really more of like/dislike setup and has no encouragement for mods to actually say that +4 is fair score and that +5 would be too much.
That's what the overrated/underrated mods were intended for, but they've never ever been used for that purpose and probably ought to be removed. To my knowledge, the only reason people ever use them is because they're immune to meta-moderation. Well, that and so they can make posts +5, Troll or -1, Insightful.
Where have our anti-trust laws gone. These One Use Codes are an artificial restraint on trade. Their only purpose is to prevent a secondary market and drive prices up. Since when is that legal.
Most of the games that I buy on Gog.com, GamersGate.com & Steam are between $2 - $10, I couldn't care less about trading them or selling them on. In thinking that I spend hours, if not days playing these cheap games, in comparison to a cup of coffee which costs $3.50, I've got nothing to complain about. Further to this, I still have all my games that I've collected as a kid. In that I've never sold any games in the past, why would I start worrying about doing so now?
Further to this, I've noticed lately that I'm finding myself too lazy to rummage through my box of old floppies & CD's, and instead I'm simply repurchasing my favourite games of yesteryear as a download. Total Annihilation, Constructor, Rise of the Triad... The install, the patches, the compatibility hacks are all automated, meaning that once the game's installed I don't have to fuck with it for 2 hours to get it running on Windows 7 64-bit.
TLDR;
I paid the internet $10 to download and install my favourite classic games that I already own cause I'm lazy. But hey, I have games to play, I'm a busy man! I don't have time to rummage through storage boxes!
I always knew my fucking problems were because of having the wrong chemistry.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
Realistically, blocking the ability of gamers to sell their used games isn't likely to be that much of a concern. PC gamers have already shown they're willing to accept that when coupled with reasonably sensible pricing schemes (eg. Practically any PC game download service, such as Steam).
The real problem for a company trying to implement something like this is going to be with the stores. Historically, stores such as Gamestop have only minimal margins on the sales of actual gaming consoles. (The Wii is a rare and notable exception there, and the Wii U is unlikely to be different on that score.) It's the same kind of razor & blades business model that Microsoft and Sony use selling them the consoles in the first place (though not as extreme, since Microsoft and Sony usually lose money on each console sold.) This is why many stores try to up-sell you to a bundle when you're buying a console, since they make so much more on the margin of those games (even the ones that they seemingly discount dramatically for the purpose of the bundle).
If you eliminate the possibility of these stores selling used games on a console, then you're leaving them only with new games (average margins) and consoles (minimal margins). What do you think will be the result of that? Most likely, they'll shift shelf space to something with better margins, if not eliminate the product line from their stores entirely. After all, when a games store sells you a console, they're hoping to continue to make money from you from game sales in the future. If you can't buy used games from them, then your value as a customer to them has just decreased dramatically.
If I really want a game, I'll probably buy it new if it's in the $50-60 range. If I want it less, I'll wait for it to age for months and buy a cheaper, used copy. Give me cheaper *new* copies over time and I won't need the used ones. It's the same with movies: I'll go to the theatre if I really want to see a movie. Otherwise, I'll wait for it to come out on DVD and save some money.
Ask them if tHEY care..
If all new games were $30-40 and no used game market they would make WAY more money than now.
used gamers might reject xbox 720
When you share a screen, the things that you actually want to see are made smaller.
How is this true even when you share a screen without splitting it? Say Ryu is fighting Ken for example; why would one be made smaller on each end of the connection?
Almost any multiplayer game can be played from separate locations
This is true if the game is turn-based, or if a real-time game allows reliable prediction of the events over the next ping time. I've read reports of horrible lag in Internet play for Street Fighter IV and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
It took him a minute to post because he was managing 11 accounts, posting in 8 different comments sections of 3 different blogs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You can't find serials or license keys on the internet. Nope, nowhere. They don't exist.
Electronics Boutique / Ganespot has created the problem. They are ripping off the consumer and they are ripping off the game manufacturers. Their business practice of removing product from packaging is open to abuse. My own customer experience has been very poor.
Game manufacturers have responded by product codes and in-game content that is souring the gaming experience. I can't blame them.
More open and honest dealing with the end customer is what is required. If Microsoft puts Gamespot out of business by preventing used sales it would be ok by me.
Sure, it's based on Microsoft tossing the idea around
Not even that. It's based on some unspecified "industry source" claiming that Microsoft is tossing the idea around.
What does "digital is the future of buying games" mean? Any electronic game I have ever purchased since the 1980's has been digital.
maybe this move can lower the cost of games all around?
that lets you use used games and much much more is beyond me.
Make their download games simple iso's they can play as is or burn to disk to play at friends house.
One of them should be using this like a club to beat them with.
You cant tell me its not a winning position.
I have precisely two things to say:
1) You're all fuelling stupidity like this by complaining and bitching about it, then running out to buy the latest BF/MW sequel
2) None of you are going to bypass your chance to be Commander Shepard for a weekend again just to "send a message"
3) None of you seem to recognize gaming as the addiction that it is
Society is setup in such a way that gaming away your free time is perfectly acceptable, and so is spending $60 on the latest greatest piece of trash from Electronic Arts every two months. You're all addicts- druggies- and you don't even realize it. Gaming manufactures of course love this fact because they can keep feeding you lower and lower quality crap, and you all just lower the bar to the point that it seems awesome even though whatever it is you're playing is likely a turd compared to the last game.
Stop playing games, and life becomes exceedingly simple. You'd be surprised at how much money you'll have. At that point console makers will be forced to do something that actually makes sense and that you might perhaps want to buy in an effort to lure you back.
But simply saying "TAKE MY CASH! PLEASE!" irregardless of what they do is precisely the reason why they're pulling shit like this. It's because the majority of the users out there don't give a flying fuck because they're too retarded to realize how many times they've been told to bend over and take it since they purchased their console.
I would say "vote with your wallet", but not nearly enough people will read this and actually do that, so it's totally moot. Enjoy your gaming market, I'm going outside where the graphics are wonderful and the levels are expansive.
-AC
will they use chip smashers too?
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Will it still work with my homeless mods for Kombat?
Raiden zipping into people and making them explode? That's a combination of gumby voodoo doll with the pharisees accusing Jesus,"He is possessed by Beelzebub!" after he went up the mountain to pray (not to the throne of Moses).
There's the ultra homeless fight... that's where the homeless guy is constantly looking like he's in "finish him" and all you need to do is go up and bag on him for the entire life meter.
Some of the homeless Kombat characters have special attacks--dumpster food, alcohol bottles, swarm of cigarette butts. The Minnesota Mike mod bares his buts'n'huts right at your character.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I think a good solution for the game companies would be you come out with a game, sell it digitally only, and then people can trade in i.e. delete that game from their online account and get credits they can use to get another game cheaper. It kills the used game market but fuck it, they are crooks anyways.
Unless they plan to allow special copies for rental purposes, this spells the end of game rentals. Of course, that just might be part of the intended suite of effects rather than a side effect.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Okay, so what happens to all of the games I bought when my 720 inevitably red rings? Do I get to buy all of those games over?
18 years, you say? Civilization II came out in 1994, and I still play it all the time.
Note that you don't even need to have the CD in the drive to play.
stresses the CPU/runs the fan for some reason (the game seems to go through DOS, and I'm running XP natively, that might have something to do with it)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Publishers might think this sounds good, but it could reduce sales because consumers will be much more cautious about which titles they buy. Renting is a great way to try before spending $60, but you won't be able to do that. The option of selling the game used also greatly reduces risk because you can sell it back without too much of a loss. These measures probably wouldn't impact AAA titles, but smaller titles would probably be severely impacted.
Clearly, you wrote this before the submissions that followed this one.
Effectively, if a person buys a portion of a company and receives a voucher for it, it should not be able to be resold unless it the company itself chooses to purchase it back and then resell it to someone else?
Amen!
five ten? years i have a working original Atari and Nintendo NES and games for them i still use them. they are the only console game machines i on everything else has been pc, and i still play dos games on dosbox and windows 95-8-se-me games in a vm games and consoles can last for decades if you let them. for example i will always be able to play those old pc games i can keep dosbox source code and compile it on any computer i ever get. same with the win 98 vm i can compile virtualbox on any (x86(_64)) new computer i ever get. and continue to play those games forever and when they stop putting cd drives in computers i will simply rip the disks to iso files and mount them. my games will never die. when the atari and nintindo die i will have the roms and and an emulator. when this becomes standard i will still be sitting happy with my back log of decades worth of games to keep me occupied, along with new open source and drm free games i will be fine for a very very long time screw the game industry they can f*** them selves. long live V.O.G.O.N.S.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
The mono part isn't necessary. You're not going to get anything but a single oxygen atom to bond with two hydrogen atoms. Take a fucking chemistry class.
Your a retard!!1
When Sony announced the forced arbitration agreement, with an option to opt-out, gamers everywhere were furious. When Microsoft introduced forced arbitration, I didn't hear a peep about it. I found out only by actually reading the new EULA (and fully rejected it. Now, some of my downloaded games no longer work).
The quantity of evilness has little to do with reputation. Sometimes it just depends on who moves first.
Why? Because they get bonuses for a short-term gain (or even just the convincing story of a short-term gain: see DRM solutions providers or SPAM list merchants) and don't care that it kills long-term. And that would just get labelled as due to piracy, hence government handout required.
The ones pushing this have no reason to care about your point. Every pound that SOMEONE ELSE makes off "their" stuff (they still consider it their game, remember, even after you bought it), is a pound THEY LOST. Even if they don't want to make that pound (see the orphaned works), they will see that nobody else makes it.
without a used market for buyers of new games to recoup some of the cost of their unwanted games with, they simply won't buy as many new games.
If the software companies management thought as far as that, they'd lower their prices.
What they will do is to raise prices more and create more restrictions for users. Seeing the consequences they will never acknowledge that they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, they will blame "pirates" as usual and lobby for more restrictive legislation.
My son NEVER buys new games. Hell, he can't afford them with the meager amount of money he gets from doing various chores. Also, if there are no used games, then when your console hits end of life you can no longer play it, just the games that you bought with it originally.
Yeah, console vendor lock-in is to blame. I mean, look at the flourishing used PC Games market.
Oh, that's right: copyrights mean you can't use Company A to play the Company B only title.
No.
I hope this answers your question clearly enough.
No, no, NO, NOOO! *sticks fingers in ears and whimpers gently*
Publishers who are fighting Used games should beware. If I am no longer given the opportunity to SELL a game I've purchased I'm a whole lot less likely to take a "chance" on buying it in the first place. Just like PC games, I don't buy unless I *know* I want to keep it long term, and thats only a 1-5 games a year.
This is why mobile gaming is taking over, $1 pop shots on something that may or may not be fun. Who cares.
please god don't drive me to nintendo
Wasnt this a "Rumor" before the PS3 launch??? Yea, the used game industry is huge and any console manufacturer would be stupid ignore that. There is a reason like Best Buy has jumped into the used game market.
From what I understand this is already practiced by EA and a few other companies.
Multiplayer will be disabled.
Have fun buying a game you can finish in 4 hours and has no replay value.
Simple solution: Just allow the lazy nature of the human video gamer to prevail.
Ignore the pirates, ignore gamestop. Stop talking about them, stop trying to build heavy roadblocks to counter them. Do not actively acknowledge their existence at all. Just start building around them. Quietly.
The next XBox will undoubtedly have a robust online marketplace. Take a page from Steam's playbook and release games there. Every single game. Still release physical copies as well, but price the digital ones slightly lower. You explain it by saying "We save money on packaging and shipping costs, then pass those savings on to you!" Instant brownie points among gamers, and you create a difficult decision:
People must decide between going to the store and paying $60, then going to a different store a few months later to get their $20 for selling it used, or just buying it for $50 from the comfort of their couch and having it forever. Even better, 6 months down the road you can discount the online version. Again people have a similar decision: go to a store to buy a physical used copy that might be scratched and will require another trip to the store again to sell back, or just buying it online at the discounted price.
Of course, there will be a small group of people who will never stop figuring out ways to pirate games, and nothing you do or say will stop them. The trick is, again, to just ignore them. They represent MAYBE 5% of gamers out there (especially now that Wii and its ilk have expanded the definition of "gamers" to include my freaking grandmother) so do not put systems in place that hamper the 95% legitimate contingent, just to spite the 5% who aren't going to be affected anyway
caveat: pricing numbers are for the sake of argument. I have no idea where the 'sweet spot' is to cause the best dilemma while maximizing profits. I'm sure the multi-billion dollar companies can figure that one out
When Sony announced the forced arbitration agreement, with an option to opt-out, gamers everywhere were furious. When Microsoft introduced forced arbitration, I didn't hear a peep about it. I found out only by actually reading the new EULA (and fully rejected it. Now, some of my downloaded games no longer work).
The quantity of evilness has little to do with reputation. Sometimes it just depends on who moves first.
True - And actually, on Slash-I-love-Microsoft-and-the-360-and-hate-Sony-dot, there was no mention of the forced arbitration on the 360 (even though, with MS, there wasn't even a choice to opt-out via snail mail).