What is being said that MS is going the direction of the Cloud with their Live services, so this means there is a good chance the HDD on your XBox is going to be used as cache/temp storage, nothing more, and it will require you to be online at 20 minute intervals a la Sim City for a synch.
So starting the game will require an connection to 'verify' the game, your need a connection to 'synch' online, and all that nice stuff over time.
Last I checked, Steam doesn't need half of that, and keeping your Steam offline is pretty easy with a simple 'Sleep Mode' instead of a restart on your PC, which might add over time, but if you don't restart your PC at least once a week, then your have other issues to deal with.
And Sony already said that a constant connection is not needed outside of updates or their services, which are optional, mainly because internally they know how they're going to market to your consumer in Japan (which is something that MS clearly not thinking about).
Keyword here is: OPTIONAL (EI: You don't need to be connected to JUST start a game that has to VERIFY you have the proper game).
Again, this is all 'we worked with the console, here is what we know based upon our throwaway accounts' kind of deal, for all we know, people are blowing it out of proportion, but remember, this is MS we're talking about, the same guys who thought Vista was a smart idea without a control test, and think timed exclusive DLC is going to nudge people in getting a 300 buck console for a 15 buck DLC for a 60 buck game when they already own a multi-platform title on the PS3 or PC.
And FFS guys, take into consideration more then 'but it's not evil, people just complain', do you really need a list again?
All of these are forced by your ISP provider, I'm lucky that I have something like 6 different providers I can choose from and they're all good, but if you honestly for a moment think to even game on a PC with a Comcast connection like in many parts of NA seriously, then you might as well throw away your idea of any serious gaming.
And oh, explain to me how 60GB caps in some places are even OK? If MS is sending back 5KB per minute constantly, if we take the lowest denominator in terms of usage, like 5 hours a day of gaming, over 20 days, then you're spending well over 1.5GB of data JUST for the constant connection, not taking into consideration gameplay data. In a house hold of family of 4, that's simply not enough, and again, I'm using the lowest values, those figures could very easily double and say what you will, but 5GB of data just so that MS can 'check' my game is not OK since I'm being already milked by my ISP.
There is no 'option' here, non at all, I don't see why they can't keep the old XB system in place and just try and improve, brand loyalty my arse.
I just want to say this gif had me in tears, at work. I have somehow successfully managed to get through my fit of laughter without alerting my coworkers, but I'm pretty sure I'm bleeding internally as a result.
What is being said that MS is going the direction of the Cloud with their Live services, so this means there is a good chance the HDD on your XBox is going to be used as cache/temp storage, nothing more, and it will require you to be online at 20 minute intervals a la Sim City for a synch.
So starting the game will require an connection to 'verify' the game, your need a connection to 'synch' online, and all that nice stuff over time.
Any sources for this? I agree that the picture you paint is dismal. I just don't think it's a great idea to jump to conclusions. If it's not speculation and there's more supporting this, then maybe I should be more worried than I am.
I would imagine that this'd prohibit a great many users in what I guess can be termed 'emerging markets' (Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and the middle East) from joining in on the fun anytime soon. Not sure how stable connections are in Lagos for instance, and Nigeria is one of the better run countries on the african continent.
Man, this sucks. It's just as bad as games with expansions or dlc forcing me to download the dlc despite not having bought it because others might have content from it. Like Battlefield 3, forcing me to download several gigs worth of worthless shit I can't even use just to see some asshole in one of my games use a shitty little rifle, thanks I have to wait 5 days before I can play now because I have to download this trite bs since you can't make a fucking standalone version of your vanilla game.
Forced content patches are awful and should die a horrible death. I should be able to opt in and out of this shit ,especially when using Steam which should be so advanced as to allow me to pick which parts of a patch I actually need. I didn't NEED the big Witcher 2 patch, I just wanted fixes, but no, forced to stop playing to wait for a big patch.
Games need to be smaller and not have bugs and be feature-complete on release and if anything else is released for it, sell it as a standalone expansion pack so I don't have to deal with week long downloads for content I can't even play.
Am I doing it right?
But seriously, having any kind of always online anything is a goddamn hassle today, always online just means they can get away with filling up your HD and using up your bandwith all the time, which is a huge crock of poopoo. Not to mention developers probably don't feel like they have to do patches in an optimized manner and can just pile on everything.
PS4 for me it seems, unless they have the retarded near constant PSN updates that take forever there too.
A ton of people bring consoles to places where there isn't much else to do, on road trips, to a cabin while camping for bad weather, to Grandma's house, the airport, when the internet and cable goes out during a storm, etc.
It's not the ISP services that are the problem, it's the publisher servers that always cause issues.
It wasn't Telstra (notoriously bad Aus ISP) that screwed up Sim City, it was EA.
It wasn't (*USA ISP*) that screwed up the launch of Diablo 3, it was Blizzard.
And Microsoft think they can handle online services better than EA and Blizzard combined? Maybe they should start hiring people with an IQ over 5, because clearly they're not winning any fans masquerading as Dumbass, Inc.
Steam gets it. It's not always-online, you can fire up anything in offline mode. Sure you can't activate games offline...because you don't buy or download games from the Steam store in offline mode either.
And Microsoft think they can handle online services better than EA and Blizzard combined? Maybe they should start hiring people with an IQ over 5, because clearly they're not winning any fans masquerading as Dumbass, Inc.
well, Giantbomb where talking about how MS seems to be the one company that can handle the traffic from big game launches like Halo, COD, etc... that was back when they were discussing the SimCity fiasco
I honestly agree with him. Its where the future is heading... deal with it. Like he said. all your devices are always online, in one way or another.
I agree in the way that yes. The future is always on internet. The future is reliable internet. And in this future I would have no problem with always on tech (My sat receiver is "always on" and god knows how many Mythbusters shows I missed because of this bloody design).
Problem is, this future is just not here for many of us. If the internet were reliable in most parts of the world, as MS would like it, then I too wouldn't have a problem (except for the used games part).
the problem with having the game only work online and hooked into a bunch of drm servers is that these servers are all going to be shutdown at some point. and you will not be able to play the game you supposedly "own". do you really want every game you buy to vanish in 2 or 3 years after you buy it? or when a studio shuts down your games go down also? when you play a mmo you know up front that its an online game. but do you really want all your games to be unplayable in a few years after you buy them even tho there is nothing wrong with your hardware. its robbery imo.
you can still play atari and nes games from the 80's. do you really think that these online drm games will still have servers running in 20 years so you can play your old games?
if these studios ever push this and it takes over then you can bet the games you "own" will be shut down in a year or two so you have to buy new games. which is what they really want. they want you have no choice but to buy new games every year.
I agree in the way that yes. The future is always on internet. The future is reliable internet. And in this future I would have no problem with always on tech (My sat receiver is "always on" and god knows how many Mythbusters shows I missed because of this bloody design).
Problem is, this future is just not here for many of us. If the internet were reliable in most parts of the world, as MS would like it, then I too wouldn't have a problem (except for the used games part).
I dont think the future is always online everything devices. I think everyone thinks and wants that to be the future but there is going to be some blowback from that(more than their already has been). The reality will collide with the ideal, the resources and means will not be there.
But what about the people who have no choice? I gave my cousin my old 360. He is only 14 and his parents are not that well off. They don't have internet let alone a computer. His birthday comes around and his parents scratch together what they can to get him the "New Xbox" they get home and boom, he can't play his birthday present because they can't afford to pay for broadband every month.
Have always online features but it is stupid to lock someone out of playing a game they bought. People will deal with it by going to Sony if this is true.
Ohhh I can't wait for internet providers to lower the monthly caps after they see all of the traffic from these always on devices. And you thought data charges on smart phones was expensive.
Quoting points that I agree with, pretty much the idea of always being online is never going to be good, unless their pay raises will reflect those changes and even then we are all just trying to save so again will never be a good idea.
Isn't it awesome how if this ever actually came to be this online thing how ISP's will then be able to charge more and you have no choice?
Awesome right. Always a bigger picture folks connect the dots.
sry if I quoted a troll you didn't want to see a response from..
I dont think the future is always online everything devices. I think everyone thinks and wants that to be the future but there is going to be some blowback from that(more than their already has been). The reality will collide with the ideal, the resources and means will not be there.
Actually I looked around myself, and most devices which offer internet capabilities are always online - even though I could disconnect them if I wanted. My PC is hooked up to broadband, although I don't need it to work or play most games. My iPad is always online, even though I don't often use the internet. Same goes for my laptop, my phone.
None of those devices require to be connected, yet they are, even though I could, as in the olde days, disconnect them when I'm done using the internet. But I don't do that. De facto most devices are just always connected in most households. (raise you hand if you still connect and disconnect like in the modem days ) Mobile devices outside a home are often not, but this will eventually change. And it seems that manufacturers like MS want to take advantage of this for their schemes. Maybe in the future it will work, but right now I think it's too soon. Right now it just reeks like a way to force DRM and anti consumer measures down peoples' throats.
Saw this yesterday. Was hesitant to post it here, just in case it turned out that I was an old fart and this was totally acceptable nowadays. Glad to see people suitable pissed off at this, how dare this douche talk to potential customers this way?
The problem also is, Digital Distribution, always on and all the content that is supposed to be online connected...well considering, that the internet is close to collapsing in terms of capacity. In Germany the main ISP (Telekom you might know T-Mobile, thats those guys) talks about reintroducing Bandwith Budgets, Limitations and so forth, because the way users use flatrates is killing the capacities and is costing them too much. Thats what they say. So yeah iam not seeing an all to bright future for the whole Online thing. Because right now you purchase DSL 6000 in most parts of germany (that is outside of major cities like cologne, Hamburg, Berlin) you are lucky if you get DSL 1500 Speeds... So yeah i think this is one of the most dickish comments i have ever heared. Considering they are pretty much applying the level of High Speed Internet avaibility to the rest of the world... Around my home town a lot of places to this day don't have DSL, they will probably get LTE.
The thing is, this crap is already happening on the XBox Marketplace and such. I have a bunch of games that I paid for from the marketplace and when I don't log in to my Live account, most of those games revert to trial mode and I have no ability to play them. I paid for them, yet I can't play them because the system hasn't verified that I'm not a freeloading prick? A lot of DLC for AAA games goes poof if you lose your Live connection too. I'm not paying money for stuff that disappears the second there isn't a dial home verification that I paid for it. I paid for it, it's mine, and I should be able to play it whether I'm connected or not. So no more Steam or Marketplace purchases from me. They're not getting my money. I'll spend it elsewhere.
@gray
You're exactly right. They're turning our purchases into rentals.
well considering, that the internet is close to collapsing in terms of capacity. In Germany the main ISP (Telekom you might know T-Mobile, thats those guys) talks about reintroducing Bandwith Budgets
you need to re-tune your bullshit detector, its a huge lie. its also bullshit that mobile networks can't handle the same internet traffic. these networks were designed to do just that. the large isp's are making a killing with mobile data now. they want to charge you the same rate on on your "internet" connection that you pay for your "mobile" connection. which is about 10 us $ for one gig. they would really like to turn things like video and audio into "extra services" so the internet is just like your tv. and you have to pay for "channels". you buy a subscription for video and your bandwidth is magically capable of streaming hd video all the time with no lag.
Always on is about more than DRM - they are interested in data mining like... What games you play and for how long, what you watch on Netflix, what ads you click through. Probably your Facebook activity, Etc.
yes that is the main point. the new gold is your analytic data. all these companies want to mine as much info on you as they can and sell it to who ever wants it. analytic data is why google rules. they can target ads with precision. facebook, linked-in etc are selling your analytic data that's there real business. microsoft would love to turn there os into a 24/7 always connected cloud based service. so essentially everything you do they own on there servers and you signed the ula's to give them the data.
these "new" consoles do not even come close to current pc specs. the hardware is all off the shelf low end components. they are essentially selling you a crappy mini-pc in a fancy box. now they want to take your games away and turn them into subscriptions that they can turn off at any time. and spy on you and sell all your data to the highest bidder. its all just sad and disgusting, support indie / pc / linux games. it seems like the only sane option.
The big publishers will always be part of the problem and not the solution. They exist on a platform they created which keeps developers chained to their demands and dinner scraps (profits).
That said, being online is a smart decision when it comes to protecting their source of income. Many have encouraged this false narrative that pirates are the source of income loss, and that consoles are where publishers are safe from piracy... but the fact is piracy is not a problem at all in the bigger picture...and that the biggest source of revenue loss was the used game market found on consoles.
They tried to offset their losses by creating DLC and designing their games around such extra content for a premium price. Thus, if the game was purchased used...dlc at least would be purchased on an individual basis. Clearly thats not enough. By being online and tying games (the license to run software) to an account , they can hit the used game industry where it counts.
Is this a good thing? For developers and publishers... yes. For consumers, no.
Ironically, its not much different for those of us that use STEAM, yet for some reason theres a perception change when it comes to consoles. What then when the steambox aims to be a house hold item?
I think ultimately the industry has a big problem. The only "good guys" are the developers as far as I am concerned. Both publishers and consumers (used game buyers) cheat them out revenue. Publishers attacking used games might end up helping some developers keeping their job, since revenue loss wont equate to letting go developers and shutting down studios. ON the flip side, if the online mentality becomes common place, it sets Steam up by allowing its services to reach a larger gaming audience.
It also seems like the good consumers will always get the short end of the stick one way or another.
Ironically, its not much different for those of us that use STEAM, yet for some reason theres a perception change when it comes to consoles. What then when the steambox aims to be a house hold item?
Legally, all software can be resold in the EU. Games are no exception and Steam is being forced to conform to this.
used games are a miniscule market compared to over all game sales. they don't make any real impact on profit for new games or the over all health of the industry.
its a bit like saying that used books, dvd, or music do that. its total rubbish. there has been second hand markets for all these goods for a long time. you can download just about any tv show movie or game ever made, or buy used cd,dvd,games etc. film industry profit continues to grow, same with games, music etc.
the problems that game and film studios have is of totally different root causes. i don't want to get into the reasons in this thread but used games,music,movies and piracy have nothing to with the current state of affairs.
the large corporations like microsoft, ea etc have one motive GREED. they want more profit for shareholders. games are no different to them then any other part of there business. if they think they can herd the sheeple into a new model where they never own anything merely subscribe to play or watch then they will do it. if they can charge you for every fucking level, hat, potion and spell in every game you subscribe to they will do that to.
to put there motivation into plain english:
if microsoft could persuade you to bequeath them all the money in your bank accounts your house, wife, car, pets, and healthy organs in exchange for a single grain of white rice they would absolutely do that.
at some point before you end up with a grain of rice 'most' people will get fed up and move to other options. could be sony, steam on linux, indie games, pc games, watch more movies etc. somthing that is more fun with a better community, less corporate abuse and hopefully cheaper.
I think ultimately the industry has a big problem. The only "good guys" are the developers as far as I am concerned. Both publishers and consumers (used game buyers) cheat them out revenue.
This attitude that people who buy used games are "cheating" developers out of money is irrational. In the US (as well as the EU, I'm sure), people have the right to resell their property. A person buys a disc, that disc is their property and they have a right to resell it. What perplexes me is that the games industry (i.e. publishers and hardware vendors) sells their games like discreet physical goods, they fix the game to a physical medium that effectively makes it a physical good that is exclusive and rivalrous. Yet, they feel that they should be excluded from this requirement to allow people to resell it because they make less money when people buy used over new.
Now, pardon me for being so bold, but doesn't every other industry that produces physical goods deal with the same issue? If people resell a brand of used goods, they aren't buying new goods from that brand. So the secondary market is competing with the primary market. Some may argue that the game doesn't degrade like other goods do, but that's largely irrelevant and a cop out, the lack of degradation is immaterial. Marble doesn't degrade very fast, yet we allow a secondary market of marble goods. The fact remains that the discs are physical and transferable, making a secondary market possible. So it seems logical to assert that you can't have it both ways. Either you sell a physical good that people can form a secondary market for, or you avoid bringing it into a physical domain, thus evading the entire problem from the beginning.
This brings us to our current dilemma. The games industry is trying to have it both ways by making it impossible to resell the disc. I ask, "what if other industries behaved that way?" What if appliance manufacturers design their products to cease functioning when a new owner buys the house in which they were kept? If the appliances are tied to the previous owner's non-transferable account (because its irreversibly tied to their ID), an entire home would be rendered practically useless, forcing them to buy all new appliances. I don't think people would be happy about that.
The games industry seems to want to have all the benefits that the properties of physical goods provides, but they don't want to allow their customers to have the same rights. They want to be special. They want the protection of property law, but once it gets into the customers' hands, they expect all of those same applicable laws to evaporate. So, they implement DRM or always online requirements to make it impossible to exercise those rights. Some even eliminate the physical medium altogether, but they still want each digital copy to carry the same status of a physical good. Not only that, but those digital goods are rigged so that the customer can't even keep the game like they could with physical discs (DRM and always online again). No, they can have their game rendered non-functional by simply turning off the authentication servers, leaving them with no other recourse than to go out and buy a new game.
So, if you want to sell discs, you have to accept a secondary market. If you go digital, you can't treat it like physical goods. If you try to force it with technology, people will break it and mock your impotent efforts while they play the game anyway. But these are all just scapegoats, excuses to abuse their customers and bilk them out of more money. Like gray said, their greed doesn't allow them to draw the line anywhere, the goal post is constantly moving away. They'll keep going until they either have all the money or they go down in flames. Guess which will happen first.
the reason why the console makers are so reluctant to give up discs and go totally digital is that it essentially kills off the console as a distinct product. your console becomes "just another internet connected device" like your tablet, laptop or phone. all those devices can play games and run software. in the current environment no one is going to pay console prices to play download games that you can not transfer to another device or play offline. that has been the trend with all other media downloads and software. the whole idea of a "console" becomes irrelevant and indistinguishable. they would be in direct competition with steam, indie bundles and any other digital distribution service. they would also have to compete with pc and android device makers who pop out "game devices" much cheaper and less restricted then what microsoft or sony could ever provide.
essentially the only thing keeping the console alive is the fact that people can buy physical games collect them and play them when ever they want. once they kill that off and you no longer have any games just a box that has to connect to the internet to play and you have no idea how long you will be able to play those games the whole platform becomes utterly pointless and vile.
used games are a miniscule market compared to over all game sales. they don't make any real impact on profit for new games or the over all health of the industry.'
Gamestop alone has over 6000 locations worldwide, and they make nearly most of their profit on used games. While they have not killed the games industry it is hard to argue that they haven't had any effect on it.
It's known that they did kill the old kind of used games market though.
I don't think it's necessarily true that killing physical discs will render consoles irrelevant. Microsoft, Valve, EA, Sony, and Nintendo all have some form of online marketplace where they sell games. Tie each marketplace exclusively to their respective console and the concept of a console remains very much relevant. That's the crux of the issue, exclusivity. As long as you can hold on to exclusivity, you can create scarcity and that means leverage in the market to use on the customers.
I just think its too soon, we don't have super fast Internet yet, or not atleast freely available in most areas, it's expensive and most places have a slight intermittent service with data caps also. Most features on these consoles are gonna rely on a good connection and a huge monthly download amount aswell. They also need to realise that console gamers are not pc gamers.
Maybe if they had a 3G emergency connection so you can atleast sign in will cure the problem?
Gamestop alone has over 6000 locations worldwide, and they make nearly most of their profit on used games. While they have not killed the games industry it is hard to argue that they haven't had any effect on it.
It's known that they did kill the old kind of used games market though.
thats not good enough you have to show that in the absence of the secondary market the bulk volume of used sales would equal purchases of new games. that is totally theoretical and open to wild speculation. it is the exact same argument that the MPAA makes regarding piracy even the MPAA does not have the balls to make that claim about used cd's tho. the secondary market does not equal loss of revenue you can essentially put in any number you want as a loss. its totally bogus and has been rejected by courts and has no intellectual merit.
do used book stores damage the new book market? no they are totally separate markets which are driven by different market forces and participants. people buy new books for various reasons. they buy used books for another set of reasons. some of the reasons overlap but most do not. there is no direct correlation between the sale of a book in one market and a loss of sale in the other.
if we used the MPAA's logic you could make the claim that someone who is in the market for buying arari2600 carts at a garage sale is contributing to the loss of revenue of crysis 3. you can also go even further and claim that any market that has a tangential connection to your own burdens you with a loss of sales. movie dvd sales are a loss of game revenue because they are both sources of 'entertainment' and both sold on 'dvd'.
I don't think it's necessarily true that killing physical discs will render consoles irrelevant. Microsoft, Valve, EA, Sony, and Nintendo all have some form of online marketplace where they sell games. Tie each marketplace exclusively to their respective console and the concept of a console remains very much relevant. That's the crux of the issue, exclusivity. As long as you can hold on to exclusivity, you can create scarcity and that means leverage in the market to use on the customers.
at first i think your right but it will not take long for the major hardware manufacturers to offer competing products and services. the general purpose computer market dwarfs the console market many times over. if they market some of them for games the publishers will fly to get titles on those machines because its a far larger market then the console market will ever be. once the 'experience' is essentially the same most people will have no problem gaming on some new device that has nothing to do with xbox or playstation brand.
used games are a miniscule market compared to over all game sales. they don't make any real impact on profit for new games or the over all health of the industry.
That is simply NOT true. The used game market has had a HUGE impact on over all game sales. Are you confirming a bias by any chance?
Consider this, Game Stop alone reports between 8-10 BILLION US Dollars in annual revenue and they also report that most of that revenue comes from used games.
The publisher/developer can sell their game (license the software) once and get paid, game stop can resell that software for a few dollars less over and over and get paid multiple times.
Whats worse is that consumers are willing to spend money on the software, yet chose to give it to someone who had nothing to do with its development.
The side effect of the used game market is studios get shut down, developers get laid off or moved overseas, outsourcing grows, games development is minimalized in order to rely more on DLC and single player titles are left on the wayside in favor of multiplayer ones.
THERE IS AN IMPACT AND ITS A HUGE ONE. This statement isnt subjective...its OBJECTIVE, a fact.
Additionally, this isnt just me saying this but a wide range of developers and studios, both in the US and EU.
Founder of Frontier Developments David Braben: "The real problem when you think about it brutally, if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games" "In some cases, it's killed them dead. I know publishers who have stopped games in development because most shops won't reorder stock after initial release, because they rely on the churn from the re-sales. I won't buy a preowned game out of principle."
He goes on to state, like many others, that the used game market forces developers to go multiplayer over single player (which sees far more used game shelf life) and as a result had to stop development on a narrative driven game called The Outsiders.
Crytek's director of creative development had this to say regarding the implementation of measures which prevent used game sales. "From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome, It's weird that [secondhand] is still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well."
Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack had this to say: "If used games continue the way that they are, it's going to cannibalize, there's not going to be an industry,"..."People won't make those kinds of games. So I think that's inflated the price of games, and I think that prices would have come down if there was a longer tail, but there isn't." "Now there is no tail. Literally, you will get most of your sales within three months of launch, which has created this really unhealthy extreme where you have to sell it really fast and then you have to do anything else to get money,"
These people wouldnt be saying this if there was no problem...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking at the sales charts alone should cause worry. The diminishing of single player titles, and the increase of limited core games which rely on DLC to "patch it into completeness" lay solely at the feet of the used game industry. Entitled gamers who protect that practice are just as much to blame for these side effects.
If gamers dont want games to be online at all times to play, they shouldnt be supporting and protecting the used game market which is creating that necessity.
Are publishers greedy? Sure, so are retailers and consumers. Who is stuck in the middle with the short end of the stick? Developers themselves.
So please dont say the used game market is miniscule when there is no objective information to back up such a claim.
its a bit like saying that used books, dvd, or music do that. its total rubbish. there has been second hand markets for all these goods for a long time. you can download just about any tv show movie or game ever made, or buy used cd,dvd,games etc.
To quickly touch on that argument....
Licensed software is different. You do not OWN a game, just the license to run it. Big difference. Same can be said with other software including but not limited to Autodesk products and Adobe Photoshop.
Tv shows? Movies? Do you think then in order for games to compete they should add advertisements as a source of revenue into their games? Books? not only are the sold as a physical medium but they do not come attached with license agreements. Software does and rightfully so.
In short what I see from you is a lot of confirmation bias regarding the protection of a clearly negative market. There is often a sense of denial from some when it comes to the damage caused. I hope that can be remedied.
This attitude that people who buy used games are "cheating" developers out of money is irrational.
It's not irrational, its factual. Is it irrational when they see profit from 3 games when the game was sold 10 times over? Is it irrational when they lose their jobs because the revenue isnt enough to keep them employed or fund the next project?
Is that irrational?
Whether you want to believe it or not, a huge percentage of revenue loss felt by developers and even more so publishers, is from the used game market.
In the US (as well as the EU, I'm sure), people have the right to resell their property. A person buys a disc, that disc is their property and they have a right to resell it.
I agree, but there are limitations to this. One is that you dont OWN software. You have a license to run it, and its tied to the individual who bought the original. Most license agreements include a clause that says it cannot be resold, traded or copied without the express permission of the studio/publisher behind it.
You also dont have the right to copy data from one onto another and sell both. You cannot look inside the disk and use the source code of the software for your own business.
So yes you have the right to do whatever you want with the products as a physical object, but its limited to what you can actually do with it when it comes to intellectual property and software limitations.
You dont own a game, you can own the medium it comes on, but never the software itself. Just a license.
Make sense?
Yet, they feel that they should be excluded from this requirement to allow people to resell it because they make less money when people buy used over new.
Thats a naive way to look at it. You make products for revenue, revenue pays the people who make it and funds future development...what happens when you lose that revenue?
God forbid developers protect and fight for what keeps them employed and allows further development of products which you and others clearly want to buy. So if you want those goods, why not buy it from those who made it, those who can with their jobs intact, give you more of what you want.
A retailer can and will not give you new games, they give you what the developers make, they are a middle man who is far more greedy than any publisher.
Now, pardon me for being so bold, but doesn't every other industry that produces physical goods deal with the same issue?
Different industries have different protections. Software is licensed, so it doesnt matter what medium its physically present on...the license to run the software is required.
If the physical product is causing a problem, then they will eliminate the physical product in favor of strictly digital and possibly always online.
IF this happens who is to blame? Its not the big bad evil publishers, they are just reacting to the physical medium which is causing losses.
I personally love physical disks and lack of DRM, but I cant expect the publishers and developers to keep giving me that if my actions or that of the medium itself are hurting them.
If you try to force it with technology, people will break it and mock your impotent efforts while they play the game anyway. But these are all just scapegoats, excuses to abuse their customers and bilk them out of more money. Like gray said, their greed doesn't allow them to draw the line anywhere, the goal post is constantly moving away. They'll keep going until they either have all the money or they go down in flames. Guess which will happen first.
To be honest, those are just excuses of an entitled consumer which has no interest in keeping the source of their enjoyment alive.
What will this entitled gamer do when harsher measures are put in place? Will they vote with their wallets? Or just whine and moan at something they created?
Consumers are not the victims here....developers are. When you are busy being less naive you will see this.
Is that a problem? Surely this being a forum filled with game developers already forces bias on a topic like this.
Whats worse is that consumers are willing to spend money on the software, yet chose to give it to someone who had nothing to do with its development.
They're choosing a cheaper price. Nothing more and nothing less. That is what a second-hand product offers and has always offered. I have never seen someone purposefully choose second-hand in spite of the creator.
Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack had this to say:
I just wanna say that I used to respect Silicon Knights and Dennis Dyack a lot, but due to his reputation nowadays I would consider quoting him damaging to one's argument.
If gamers dont want games to be online at all times to play, they shouldnt be supporting and protecting the used game market which is creating that necessity.
Be glad you recognise the problem then, because there's no chance in hell that the majority of consumers are going to make that connection. Even with all this glorious education - people are not going to blame themselves for taking a cheaper price, that is legally offered to them, and then having people they don't even know make decisions that cause the products they bought to be more insufferable.
Are publishers greedy? Sure, so are retailers and consumers. Who is stuck in the middle with the short end of the stick? Developers themselves.
Yeah I agree; with the exception that I won't consider only one facet of the problem to be its sole contributor.
Licensed software is different. You do not OWN a game, just the license to run it. Big difference. Same can be said with other software including but not limited to Autodesk products and Adobe Photoshop.
This is where many people differ. Even I do not enjoy understanding this system and am against it. I'm not saying that I should "own" a game including rights to make additional copies and distribute it etc. But I do wish to own my copy. This includes the programs and games and if I was to sell it I would be partaking in the same kind of second-hand sales as anything else; where the transaction would be: I give up my product in exchange for a valued reciprocation.
In short what I see from you is a lot of confirmation bias regarding the protection of a clearly negative market.
Don't start this. The entire reason piracy cannot be discussed here is because the debate devolves into the slinging of accusations about peoples position on the issue. It negatively harms the conversation.
It's not irrational, its factual. Is it irrational when they see profit from 3 games when the game was sold 10 times over? Is it irrational when they lose their jobs because the revenue isnt enough to keep them employed or fund the next project?
It doesn't matter because none of that can be certified or predicted, that's why business is a risk and business acts the way it does about risks. The people who sign off the firing of others are not the consumers and never have been.
You also dont have the right to copy data from one onto another and sell both. You cannot look inside the disk and use the source code of the software for your own business.
Of course you can't just copy it and give it away as the product itself is practically replicated, just like photocopying a book. But I disagree about mucking with the software. Sure you should not be plagiarising and financially benefiting from another's work without permission. But I don't understand why I shouldn't be able to access the code and split it in half, whirl it around to see what happens; or rip out a model and reverse the colours or make funny poses. Credits and permissions are where credits and permissions are due.
Thats a naive way to look at it. You make products for revenue, revenue pays the people who make it and funds future development...what happens when you lose that revenue?
It's sad and most people simply do not and will not give a long-hauled shit about where the revenue goes; especially when there are oh so many products we consume that we should care more about. Where does my local food come from? Who manufactured my phone? Does this product help the environment? Some people care and some don't.
Look I don't have figures to back up my argument either, but I do think it is a good guess that pretty much most consumers are only paying for the original product received ever. They spent the $60 to get 'Call of Duty 8' (new or used) and never to funnel money to the developers to fund 'Call of Duty 9'. The fact that is what the revenue is spent on is coincidence. Only crowd-funding is the antithesis of this.
IF this happens who is to blame? Its not the big bad evil publishers, they are just reacting to the physical medium which is causing losses.
No they are to blame. Nobody is forcing their hand. I mean outside influences can affect their decision, but it is ultimately up to them to deliver new products or not. After all are we going to blame the consumer now for not buying a product - it harms profits as much as used games and piracy does.
What will this entitled gamer do when harsher measures are put in place? Will they vote with their wallets? Or just whine and moan at something they created?
They'll do both. They may not be entitled to what they want but the products are still created for them to purchase, and if they do not: That business transaction is over.
I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be. The rumor is that once every three months, the console performs a validation check on any games installed. The 360 already does this with arcade games, except the cutoff is once a week at most, not three months. (You can test this by disconnecting your XBox from your network for a few days, your arcade games will revert to demos. Don't worry, your saves will be fine.)
As far as sales go, the used game market may be larger, but it's still fundamentally the same as it was 20 years ago. I think the bigger villain is the rental industry. Before GameFly came along, you had a set number of days you could keep a rental before having to return it, and good luck getting your hands on a copy if the game was popular. It was just less of a headache to buy the game if you knew you'd play it for more than a few days. Now all you have to do is empty your queue and you're practically guaranteed to get a copy with no due date.
By implementing a validation check, Microsoft is effectively forcing a due date back onto the consumer. You can play the game for three months as a rental, but after that you need to register it. Honestly, I think that's fair and we all know the industry could use the help right now.
thats not good enough you have to show that in the absence of the secondary market the bulk volume of used sales would equal purchases of new games. that is totally theoretical and open to wild speculation. it is the exact same argument that the MPAA makes regarding piracy even the MPAA does not have the balls to make that claim about used cd's tho. the secondary market does not equal loss of revenue you can essentially put in any number you want as a loss. its totally bogus and has been rejected by courts and has no intellectual merit.
This is really a false comparison in my opinion, people who pirate games are getting them for free. When you buy a used game it is a marginal discount at best, maybe $5 usually vs. buying new. Meaning that person was a buyer, just at a different price point.
You can't logically illustrate that anyone pirating something would have been willing to pay for it otherwise at ANY price, but that's something you CAN do with a used games market because used games have a cost.
You can argue that the dollar figure in losses can't be conclusively proven but it's still a much stronger case than the reasoning against piracy.
It's been a while since you can't resell most PC games anymore and the PC market has probably never been in such a good shape.
Resell value is not what is important. A large choice of quality games in a large range of prices is. If the next gen consoles kill the second hand market, all they need to do is to open their systems a lot more so indies can compete with AAA games, like on Steam.
Dataday : no one spent $60 for just a "license", and no one will. They want the whole game, with resell value. That's what factual is.
Go on, kill second hand market so no one will ever buy games anymore, not on that price.
And no one spends $15-20 to watch a 1 1/2-2 hour movie in theaters that they cant take home and can only see once per ticket?
I think your point is moot.
People already spend $60 for a license...its called an EULA (end user license agreement). Every console game has one. Many people even buy digital copies of games stuck to one service or another, such as steam or origin. You dont own it, you cant transfer it to someone else on a whim.
I like the idea of owning a legit new copy of a game as well, but see I dont own the code..or the art assets within it...or the audio... I own the license to run the software so its legit. Thats it. The same applies to everyone else.
A game is no different than a licensed copy of windows, or the mac OS, or final cut pro, or any other software you can get. You cannot legally go out and resell old copies of autodesk products that are not used anymore, and the same rule should apply to games.
See part of the problem is that prices WILL go up and have gone up because people fund the used game industry. Prices dont go DOWN because of it.
There is a demand for games so people will still buy them, even when the used game market is shut down. In fact dont be surprised to see platforms like Steam start to take over.
There's no way I believe that prices will go down with the loss used games. Maybe as costs shift to digital like the pricing of Steam, but not as a generality. I just don't trust the big business to lower prices for any reason if they could help it.
And no one spends $15-20 to watch a 1 1/2-2 hour movie in theaters that they cant take home and can only see once per ticket?
They're fundamentally different activities. A standard game is more like buying the movie DVD where you get to watch it at leisure on on own supplied equipment and have the option to give that up by selling it to somebody else - that's what you pay for.
A film ticket is paying for early single use service supplied by a facility with considerably useful equipment. Going to movies can be a past-time but for most people it is an event. You go with friends, grab some popcorn and enjoy the big new hit on the big screen - that's what you pay for.
A better comparison would be subscription MMOs where the player must pay for timed access to a very specific gaming environment populated by events governed not just by the programming of the game.
You cannot legally go out and resell old copies of autodesk products that are not used anymore, and the same rule should apply to games.
But I've always found that funny, I mean you're not using it any more!
I agree, but there are limitations to this. One is that you dont OWN software. You have a license to run it, and its tied to the individual who bought the original. Most license agreements include a clause that says it cannot be resold, traded or copied without the express permission of the studio/publisher behind it.
Actually he's right what he said about the EU. Most US style EULAs cannot be enforced in the EU and many such EULA points are invalid because you cannot make a contract that takes away a right given to you by EU law, such as the right to sell your software license.
There is a right to resell the software license itself, plus the physical medium. That's why Valve is currently being dragged to court, because EU law grants you the right to sell your software but Valve's Steam doesn't offer the functionality.
Actually he's right what he said about the EU. Most US style EULAs cannot be enforced in the EU and many such EULA points are invalid because you cannot make a contract that takes away a right given to you by EU law, such as the right to sell your software license.
There is a right to resell the software license itself, plus the physical medium. That's why Valve is currently being dragged to court, because EU law grants you the right to sell your software but Valve's Steam doesn't offer the functionality.
Oh I dont disagree with the fact the EU works differently in that regard, but heres the kicker...the EU is not the biggest game market out there. Add to the fact that they rank high on the piracy charts...
So lets say they cannot get rid of the EU law which allows software to be resold like that.
What would a publisher/distributor do in a localized zone to offset the cost? Raise prices of course, either that or not sell in the region at all. Either way the consumer over there loses.
There are going to be some pretty big changes coming for this next game generation and it will set a different standard for all, both consumers and developers. I am hoping Valve ends up on top with this one though.
Most other software companies in the EU have arranged themselves with software re-sales. In fact, software re-sales have been quite common before some clever lawyer types thought of putting anti resale clauses into EULAs. I don't see why games should be treated differently than any other type of software.
Although I don't strongly care either for or against it. Just stating how it works in the EU.
So lets say they cannot get rid of the EU law which allows software to be resold like that.
They won't. This isn't about games. It's about every piece of software. I don't think Valve's arguments will have any more weight than those of MS, Apple, Oracle & Co.
In a wider sense this also touches issues about re-sale of other digital media, such as e-books, music, etc. The idea is that the consumer should not have to treat digital goods differently from physically ones when it comes to the rights of what he can and cannot do with them.
What would a publisher/distributor do in a localized zone to offset the cost? Raise prices of course, either that or not sell in the region at all. Either way the consumer over there loses.
That's not how pricing works... In order for that to work you would have to assume that the consumers who are buying games are going to keep doing so regardless of a price increase, or at least enough of them will to justify the increase.
Publishers/retailers/distributors always want to raise prices as high as they possibly can while still selling units. Makes absolutely not difference if they're in a region with used game sales or not...
What would a publisher/distributor do in a localized zone to offset the cost? Raise prices of course, either that or not sell in the region at all. Either way the consumer over there loses.
Consumer over there still have nintendo and sony :poly142: how the hell it's their loses?
It's not irrational, its factual. Is it irrational when they see profit from 3 games when the game was sold 10 times over? Is it irrational when they lose their jobs because the revenue isnt enough to keep them employed or fund the next project?
Is that irrational?
Whether you want to believe it or not, a huge percentage of revenue loss felt by developers and even more so publishers, is from the used game market.
That's not a valid reason to give games special protections over other goods and it is irrational because that's not the fault of the market. It's the fault of a poor business model. It is entirely possible for other industries to experience the same problems you just pointed out. Is it rational to make the same argument for the auto industry? Or clothing? Or furniture? The complaint that the secondary market is larger than the primary market isn't a justification to block the secondary market. You're acting like the developers are the only ones that matter here and that's simply not true, the customers have rights too and your position would infringe on their rights.
I agree, but there are limitations to this. One is that you dont OWN software. You have a license to run it, and its tied to the individual who bought the original. Most license agreements include a clause that says it cannot be resold, traded or copied without the express permission of the studio/publisher behind it.
You also dont have the right to copy data from one onto another and sell both. You cannot look inside the disk and use the source code of the software for your own business.
So yes you have the right to do whatever you want with the products as a physical object, but its limited to what you can actually do with it when it comes to intellectual property and software limitations.
You dont own a game, you can own the medium it comes on, but never the software itself. Just a license.
Make sense?
I understand the concept of software licenses, I'm not disputing that. However, I am disputing that people have a right to resell physical goods and just because there's a licensed piece of software on it doesn't matter. US copyright grants people the right to resell software as long as they transfer all relevant copies to the new owner. So, if you sell an console disc to someone, you are legally allowed and EULA's are a set of flimsy terms that try to revoke that right through extralegal means.
Thats a naive way to look at it. You make products for revenue, revenue pays the people who make it and funds future development...what happens when you lose that revenue?
God forbid developers protect and fight for what keeps them employed and allows further development of products which you and others clearly want to buy. So if you want those goods, why not buy it from those who made it, those who can with their jobs intact, give you more of what you want.
A retailer can and will not give you new games, they give you what the developers make, they are a middle man who is far more greedy than any publisher.
Once again, the industry isn't a sacred icon that must be protected above all else. The law was never supposed to guarantee an industry can survive, that's for the individual businesses to secure through persuasion of the prospective customers that their offerings are superior and worth the price. Industry must justify their own merit to the marketplace. Enacting laws that are intended to secure and industry's viability is unjust and unfair. If you can't justify that a new copy is superior to a used copy, then you probably need to find another way to market your unique value to the customers.
Different industries have different protections. Software is licensed, so it doesnt matter what medium its physically present on...the license to run the software is required.
If the physical product is causing a problem, then they will eliminate the physical product in favor of strictly digital and possibly always online.
IF this happens who is to blame? Its not the big bad evil publishers, they are just reacting to the physical medium which is causing losses.
I personally love physical disks and lack of DRM, but I cant expect the publishers and developers to keep giving me that if my actions or that of the medium itself are hurting them.
Who's to blame? The publishers are most definitely to blame. They rely on a weak business model that relies on government enforcement to make it viable. It's their shortsightedness that left them in this position, not consumers nor pirates. The publishing industry is trying to be a retail industry when they are really a service industry and people are taking advantage of that mistake. That's their problem. In light of the fact that there are other viable business models to follow, trying to control access to copies is a rather inferior option.
To be honest, those are just excuses of an entitled consumer which has no interest in keeping the source of their enjoyment alive.
What will this entitled gamer do when harsher measures are put in place? Will they vote with their wallets? Or just whine and moan at something they created?
Consumers are not the victims here....developers are. When you are busy being less naive you will see this.
Excuse me, but not kowtowing to the will of the industry is not entitlement. Arguing for the rights of the people as they are written is not entitlement. As I said before, developers are not the only stakeholders that matter here and they are certainly not the most important. Everything you said here is biased toward your own bottom line and that is not something that can be allowed to be at the center of policy making. I'm not the one being naive, you are.
Also, the "vote with your wallet" argument rings hollow when the publishers have much bigger wallets thanks to all the people naive enough to buy in spite of all the consumer abuse. It would be a valid strategy if the majority of consumers were well-informed, but they're not. Most are wholly ignorant of the issues at hand and will blindly continue to buy regardless.
Replies
So starting the game will require an connection to 'verify' the game, your need a connection to 'synch' online, and all that nice stuff over time.
Last I checked, Steam doesn't need half of that, and keeping your Steam offline is pretty easy with a simple 'Sleep Mode' instead of a restart on your PC, which might add over time, but if you don't restart your PC at least once a week, then your have other issues to deal with.
And Sony already said that a constant connection is not needed outside of updates or their services, which are optional, mainly because internally they know how they're going to market to your consumer in Japan (which is something that MS clearly not thinking about).
Keyword here is: OPTIONAL (EI: You don't need to be connected to JUST start a game that has to VERIFY you have the proper game).
Again, this is all 'we worked with the console, here is what we know based upon our throwaway accounts' kind of deal, for all we know, people are blowing it out of proportion, but remember, this is MS we're talking about, the same guys who thought Vista was a smart idea without a control test, and think timed exclusive DLC is going to nudge people in getting a 300 buck console for a 15 buck DLC for a 60 buck game when they already own a multi-platform title on the PS3 or PC.
And FFS guys, take into consideration more then 'but it's not evil, people just complain', do you really need a list again?
-Slow connections.
-Shoddy Router.
-Single ISP monopoly.
-Unstable lines.
-Data-Caps.
-Inflated packages.
All of these are forced by your ISP provider, I'm lucky that I have something like 6 different providers I can choose from and they're all good, but if you honestly for a moment think to even game on a PC with a Comcast connection like in many parts of NA seriously, then you might as well throw away your idea of any serious gaming.
And oh, explain to me how 60GB caps in some places are even OK? If MS is sending back 5KB per minute constantly, if we take the lowest denominator in terms of usage, like 5 hours a day of gaming, over 20 days, then you're spending well over 1.5GB of data JUST for the constant connection, not taking into consideration gameplay data. In a house hold of family of 4, that's simply not enough, and again, I'm using the lowest values, those figures could very easily double and say what you will, but 5GB of data just so that MS can 'check' my game is not OK since I'm being already milked by my ISP.
There is no 'option' here, non at all, I don't see why they can't keep the old XB system in place and just try and improve, brand loyalty my arse.
I just want to say this gif had me in tears, at work. I have somehow successfully managed to get through my fit of laughter without alerting my coworkers, but I'm pretty sure I'm bleeding internally as a result.
Holy shit, that was funny.
Any sources for this? I agree that the picture you paint is dismal. I just don't think it's a great idea to jump to conclusions. If it's not speculation and there's more supporting this, then maybe I should be more worried than I am.
Forced content patches are awful and should die a horrible death. I should be able to opt in and out of this shit ,especially when using Steam which should be so advanced as to allow me to pick which parts of a patch I actually need. I didn't NEED the big Witcher 2 patch, I just wanted fixes, but no, forced to stop playing to wait for a big patch.
Games need to be smaller and not have bugs and be feature-complete on release and if anything else is released for it, sell it as a standalone expansion pack so I don't have to deal with week long downloads for content I can't even play.
Am I doing it right?
But seriously, having any kind of always online anything is a goddamn hassle today, always online just means they can get away with filling up your HD and using up your bandwith all the time, which is a huge crock of poopoo. Not to mention developers probably don't feel like they have to do patches in an optimized manner and can just pile on everything.
PS4 for me it seems, unless they have the retarded near constant PSN updates that take forever there too.
somewhere there is /s
It wasn't Telstra (notoriously bad Aus ISP) that screwed up Sim City, it was EA.
It wasn't (*USA ISP*) that screwed up the launch of Diablo 3, it was Blizzard.
And Microsoft think they can handle online services better than EA and Blizzard combined? Maybe they should start hiring people with an IQ over 5, because clearly they're not winning any fans masquerading as Dumbass, Inc.
Steam gets it. It's not always-online, you can fire up anything in offline mode. Sure you can't activate games offline...because you don't buy or download games from the Steam store in offline mode either.
well, Giantbomb where talking about how MS seems to be the one company that can handle the traffic from big game launches like Halo, COD, etc... that was back when they were discussing the SimCity fiasco
I agree in the way that yes. The future is always on internet. The future is reliable internet. And in this future I would have no problem with always on tech (My sat receiver is "always on" and god knows how many Mythbusters shows I missed because of this bloody design).
Problem is, this future is just not here for many of us. If the internet were reliable in most parts of the world, as MS would like it, then I too wouldn't have a problem (except for the used games part).
you can still play atari and nes games from the 80's. do you really think that these online drm games will still have servers running in 20 years so you can play your old games?
if these studios ever push this and it takes over then you can bet the games you "own" will be shut down in a year or two so you have to buy new games. which is what they really want. they want you have no choice but to buy new games every year.
I dont think the future is always online everything devices. I think everyone thinks and wants that to be the future but there is going to be some blowback from that(more than their already has been). The reality will collide with the ideal, the resources and means will not be there.
Quoting points that I agree with, pretty much the idea of always being online is never going to be good, unless their pay raises will reflect those changes and even then we are all just trying to save so again will never be a good idea.
Isn't it awesome how if this ever actually came to be this online thing how ISP's will then be able to charge more and you have no choice?
Awesome right. Always a bigger picture folks connect the dots.
http://4playernetwork.com/blog/2013/04/adam-orth-article/
Actually I looked around myself, and most devices which offer internet capabilities are always online - even though I could disconnect them if I wanted. My PC is hooked up to broadband, although I don't need it to work or play most games. My iPad is always online, even though I don't often use the internet. Same goes for my laptop, my phone.
None of those devices require to be connected, yet they are, even though I could, as in the olde days, disconnect them when I'm done using the internet. But I don't do that. De facto most devices are just always connected in most households. (raise you hand if you still connect and disconnect like in the modem days
Some of those memes are hilarious.
@gray
You're exactly right. They're turning our purchases into rentals.
you need to re-tune your bullshit detector, its a huge lie. its also bullshit that mobile networks can't handle the same internet traffic. these networks were designed to do just that. the large isp's are making a killing with mobile data now. they want to charge you the same rate on on your "internet" connection that you pay for your "mobile" connection. which is about 10 us $ for one gig. they would really like to turn things like video and audio into "extra services" so the internet is just like your tv. and you have to pay for "channels". you buy a subscription for video and your bandwidth is magically capable of streaming hd video all the time with no lag.
yes that is the main point. the new gold is your analytic data. all these companies want to mine as much info on you as they can and sell it to who ever wants it. analytic data is why google rules. they can target ads with precision. facebook, linked-in etc are selling your analytic data that's there real business. microsoft would love to turn there os into a 24/7 always connected cloud based service. so essentially everything you do they own on there servers and you signed the ula's to give them the data.
these "new" consoles do not even come close to current pc specs. the hardware is all off the shelf low end components. they are essentially selling you a crappy mini-pc in a fancy box. now they want to take your games away and turn them into subscriptions that they can turn off at any time. and spy on you and sell all your data to the highest bidder. its all just sad and disgusting, support indie / pc / linux games. it seems like the only sane option.
That said, being online is a smart decision when it comes to protecting their source of income. Many have encouraged this false narrative that pirates are the source of income loss, and that consoles are where publishers are safe from piracy... but the fact is piracy is not a problem at all in the bigger picture...and that the biggest source of revenue loss was the used game market found on consoles.
They tried to offset their losses by creating DLC and designing their games around such extra content for a premium price. Thus, if the game was purchased used...dlc at least would be purchased on an individual basis. Clearly thats not enough. By being online and tying games (the license to run software) to an account , they can hit the used game industry where it counts.
Is this a good thing? For developers and publishers... yes. For consumers, no.
Ironically, its not much different for those of us that use STEAM, yet for some reason theres a perception change when it comes to consoles. What then when the steambox aims to be a house hold item?
I think ultimately the industry has a big problem. The only "good guys" are the developers as far as I am concerned. Both publishers and consumers (used game buyers) cheat them out revenue. Publishers attacking used games might end up helping some developers keeping their job, since revenue loss wont equate to letting go developers and shutting down studios. ON the flip side, if the online mentality becomes common place, it sets Steam up by allowing its services to reach a larger gaming audience.
It also seems like the good consumers will always get the short end of the stick one way or another.
Legally, all software can be resold in the EU. Games are no exception and Steam is being forced to conform to this.
i dont like you
used games are a miniscule market compared to over all game sales. they don't make any real impact on profit for new games or the over all health of the industry.
its a bit like saying that used books, dvd, or music do that. its total rubbish. there has been second hand markets for all these goods for a long time. you can download just about any tv show movie or game ever made, or buy used cd,dvd,games etc. film industry profit continues to grow, same with games, music etc.
the problems that game and film studios have is of totally different root causes. i don't want to get into the reasons in this thread but used games,music,movies and piracy have nothing to with the current state of affairs.
the large corporations like microsoft, ea etc have one motive GREED. they want more profit for shareholders. games are no different to them then any other part of there business. if they think they can herd the sheeple into a new model where they never own anything merely subscribe to play or watch then they will do it. if they can charge you for every fucking level, hat, potion and spell in every game you subscribe to they will do that to.
to put there motivation into plain english:
if microsoft could persuade you to bequeath them all the money in your bank accounts your house, wife, car, pets, and healthy organs in exchange for a single grain of white rice they would absolutely do that.
at some point before you end up with a grain of rice 'most' people will get fed up and move to other options. could be sony, steam on linux, indie games, pc games, watch more movies etc. somthing that is more fun with a better community, less corporate abuse and hopefully cheaper.
This attitude that people who buy used games are "cheating" developers out of money is irrational. In the US (as well as the EU, I'm sure), people have the right to resell their property. A person buys a disc, that disc is their property and they have a right to resell it. What perplexes me is that the games industry (i.e. publishers and hardware vendors) sells their games like discreet physical goods, they fix the game to a physical medium that effectively makes it a physical good that is exclusive and rivalrous. Yet, they feel that they should be excluded from this requirement to allow people to resell it because they make less money when people buy used over new.
Now, pardon me for being so bold, but doesn't every other industry that produces physical goods deal with the same issue? If people resell a brand of used goods, they aren't buying new goods from that brand. So the secondary market is competing with the primary market. Some may argue that the game doesn't degrade like other goods do, but that's largely irrelevant and a cop out, the lack of degradation is immaterial. Marble doesn't degrade very fast, yet we allow a secondary market of marble goods. The fact remains that the discs are physical and transferable, making a secondary market possible. So it seems logical to assert that you can't have it both ways. Either you sell a physical good that people can form a secondary market for, or you avoid bringing it into a physical domain, thus evading the entire problem from the beginning.
This brings us to our current dilemma. The games industry is trying to have it both ways by making it impossible to resell the disc. I ask, "what if other industries behaved that way?" What if appliance manufacturers design their products to cease functioning when a new owner buys the house in which they were kept? If the appliances are tied to the previous owner's non-transferable account (because its irreversibly tied to their ID), an entire home would be rendered practically useless, forcing them to buy all new appliances. I don't think people would be happy about that.
The games industry seems to want to have all the benefits that the properties of physical goods provides, but they don't want to allow their customers to have the same rights. They want to be special. They want the protection of property law, but once it gets into the customers' hands, they expect all of those same applicable laws to evaporate. So, they implement DRM or always online requirements to make it impossible to exercise those rights. Some even eliminate the physical medium altogether, but they still want each digital copy to carry the same status of a physical good. Not only that, but those digital goods are rigged so that the customer can't even keep the game like they could with physical discs (DRM and always online again). No, they can have their game rendered non-functional by simply turning off the authentication servers, leaving them with no other recourse than to go out and buy a new game.
So, if you want to sell discs, you have to accept a secondary market. If you go digital, you can't treat it like physical goods. If you try to force it with technology, people will break it and mock your impotent efforts while they play the game anyway. But these are all just scapegoats, excuses to abuse their customers and bilk them out of more money. Like gray said, their greed doesn't allow them to draw the line anywhere, the goal post is constantly moving away. They'll keep going until they either have all the money or they go down in flames. Guess which will happen first.
the reason why the console makers are so reluctant to give up discs and go totally digital is that it essentially kills off the console as a distinct product. your console becomes "just another internet connected device" like your tablet, laptop or phone. all those devices can play games and run software. in the current environment no one is going to pay console prices to play download games that you can not transfer to another device or play offline. that has been the trend with all other media downloads and software. the whole idea of a "console" becomes irrelevant and indistinguishable. they would be in direct competition with steam, indie bundles and any other digital distribution service. they would also have to compete with pc and android device makers who pop out "game devices" much cheaper and less restricted then what microsoft or sony could ever provide.
essentially the only thing keeping the console alive is the fact that people can buy physical games collect them and play them when ever they want. once they kill that off and you no longer have any games just a box that has to connect to the internet to play and you have no idea how long you will be able to play those games the whole platform becomes utterly pointless and vile.
Gamestop alone has over 6000 locations worldwide, and they make nearly most of their profit on used games. While they have not killed the games industry it is hard to argue that they haven't had any effect on it.
It's known that they did kill the old kind of used games market though.
ok
I don't think it's necessarily true that killing physical discs will render consoles irrelevant. Microsoft, Valve, EA, Sony, and Nintendo all have some form of online marketplace where they sell games. Tie each marketplace exclusively to their respective console and the concept of a console remains very much relevant. That's the crux of the issue, exclusivity. As long as you can hold on to exclusivity, you can create scarcity and that means leverage in the market to use on the customers.
Maybe if they had a 3G emergency connection so you can atleast sign in will cure the problem?
thats not good enough you have to show that in the absence of the secondary market the bulk volume of used sales would equal purchases of new games. that is totally theoretical and open to wild speculation. it is the exact same argument that the MPAA makes regarding piracy even the MPAA does not have the balls to make that claim about used cd's tho. the secondary market does not equal loss of revenue you can essentially put in any number you want as a loss. its totally bogus and has been rejected by courts and has no intellectual merit.
do used book stores damage the new book market? no they are totally separate markets which are driven by different market forces and participants. people buy new books for various reasons. they buy used books for another set of reasons. some of the reasons overlap but most do not. there is no direct correlation between the sale of a book in one market and a loss of sale in the other.
if we used the MPAA's logic you could make the claim that someone who is in the market for buying arari2600 carts at a garage sale is contributing to the loss of revenue of crysis 3. you can also go even further and claim that any market that has a tangential connection to your own burdens you with a loss of sales. movie dvd sales are a loss of game revenue because they are both sources of 'entertainment' and both sold on 'dvd'.
at first i think your right but it will not take long for the major hardware manufacturers to offer competing products and services. the general purpose computer market dwarfs the console market many times over. if they market some of them for games the publishers will fly to get titles on those machines because its a far larger market then the console market will ever be. once the 'experience' is essentially the same most people will have no problem gaming on some new device that has nothing to do with xbox or playstation brand.
That is simply NOT true. The used game market has had a HUGE impact on over all game sales. Are you confirming a bias by any chance?
Consider this, Game Stop alone reports between 8-10 BILLION US Dollars in annual revenue and they also report that most of that revenue comes from used games.
The publisher/developer can sell their game (license the software) once and get paid, game stop can resell that software for a few dollars less over and over and get paid multiple times.
Whats worse is that consumers are willing to spend money on the software, yet chose to give it to someone who had nothing to do with its development.
The side effect of the used game market is studios get shut down, developers get laid off or moved overseas, outsourcing grows, games development is minimalized in order to rely more on DLC and single player titles are left on the wayside in favor of multiplayer ones.
THERE IS AN IMPACT AND ITS A HUGE ONE. This statement isnt subjective...its OBJECTIVE, a fact.
Additionally, this isnt just me saying this but a wide range of developers and studios, both in the US and EU.
Founder of Frontier Developments David Braben:
"The real problem when you think about it brutally, if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games" "In some cases, it's killed them dead. I know publishers who have stopped games in development because most shops won't reorder stock after initial release, because they rely on the churn from the re-sales. I won't buy a preowned game out of principle."
He goes on to state, like many others, that the used game market forces developers to go multiplayer over single player (which sees far more used game shelf life) and as a result had to stop development on a narrative driven game called The Outsiders.
Crytek's director of creative development had this to say regarding the implementation of measures which prevent used game sales.
"From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome, It's weird that [secondhand] is still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well."
Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack had this to say:
"If used games continue the way that they are, it's going to cannibalize, there's not going to be an industry,"..."People won't make those kinds of games. So I think that's inflated the price of games, and I think that prices would have come down if there was a longer tail, but there isn't." "Now there is no tail. Literally, you will get most of your sales within three months of launch, which has created this really unhealthy extreme where you have to sell it really fast and then you have to do anything else to get money,"
These people wouldnt be saying this if there was no problem...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking at the sales charts alone should cause worry. The diminishing of single player titles, and the increase of limited core games which rely on DLC to "patch it into completeness" lay solely at the feet of the used game industry. Entitled gamers who protect that practice are just as much to blame for these side effects.
If gamers dont want games to be online at all times to play, they shouldnt be supporting and protecting the used game market which is creating that necessity.
Are publishers greedy? Sure, so are retailers and consumers. Who is stuck in the middle with the short end of the stick? Developers themselves.
So please dont say the used game market is miniscule when there is no objective information to back up such a claim.
To quickly touch on that argument....
Licensed software is different. You do not OWN a game, just the license to run it. Big difference. Same can be said with other software including but not limited to Autodesk products and Adobe Photoshop.
Tv shows? Movies? Do you think then in order for games to compete they should add advertisements as a source of revenue into their games? Books? not only are the sold as a physical medium but they do not come attached with license agreements. Software does and rightfully so.
In short what I see from you is a lot of confirmation bias regarding the protection of a clearly negative market. There is often a sense of denial from some when it comes to the damage caused. I hope that can be remedied.
It's not irrational, its factual. Is it irrational when they see profit from 3 games when the game was sold 10 times over? Is it irrational when they lose their jobs because the revenue isnt enough to keep them employed or fund the next project?
Is that irrational?
Whether you want to believe it or not, a huge percentage of revenue loss felt by developers and even more so publishers, is from the used game market.
I agree, but there are limitations to this. One is that you dont OWN software. You have a license to run it, and its tied to the individual who bought the original. Most license agreements include a clause that says it cannot be resold, traded or copied without the express permission of the studio/publisher behind it.
You also dont have the right to copy data from one onto another and sell both. You cannot look inside the disk and use the source code of the software for your own business.
So yes you have the right to do whatever you want with the products as a physical object, but its limited to what you can actually do with it when it comes to intellectual property and software limitations.
You dont own a game, you can own the medium it comes on, but never the software itself. Just a license.
Make sense?
Thats a naive way to look at it. You make products for revenue, revenue pays the people who make it and funds future development...what happens when you lose that revenue?
God forbid developers protect and fight for what keeps them employed and allows further development of products which you and others clearly want to buy. So if you want those goods, why not buy it from those who made it, those who can with their jobs intact, give you more of what you want.
A retailer can and will not give you new games, they give you what the developers make, they are a middle man who is far more greedy than any publisher.
Different industries have different protections. Software is licensed, so it doesnt matter what medium its physically present on...the license to run the software is required.
If the physical product is causing a problem, then they will eliminate the physical product in favor of strictly digital and possibly always online.
IF this happens who is to blame? Its not the big bad evil publishers, they are just reacting to the physical medium which is causing losses.
I personally love physical disks and lack of DRM, but I cant expect the publishers and developers to keep giving me that if my actions or that of the medium itself are hurting them.
To be honest, those are just excuses of an entitled consumer which has no interest in keeping the source of their enjoyment alive.
What will this entitled gamer do when harsher measures are put in place? Will they vote with their wallets? Or just whine and moan at something they created?
Consumers are not the victims here....developers are. When you are busy being less naive you will see this.
They're choosing a cheaper price. Nothing more and nothing less. That is what a second-hand product offers and has always offered. I have never seen someone purposefully choose second-hand in spite of the creator.
I just wanna say that I used to respect Silicon Knights and Dennis Dyack a lot, but due to his reputation nowadays I would consider quoting him damaging to one's argument.
Be glad you recognise the problem then, because there's no chance in hell that the majority of consumers are going to make that connection. Even with all this glorious education - people are not going to blame themselves for taking a cheaper price, that is legally offered to them, and then having people they don't even know make decisions that cause the products they bought to be more insufferable.
Yeah I agree; with the exception that I won't consider only one facet of the problem to be its sole contributor.
This is where many people differ. Even I do not enjoy understanding this system and am against it. I'm not saying that I should "own" a game including rights to make additional copies and distribute it etc. But I do wish to own my copy. This includes the programs and games and if I was to sell it I would be partaking in the same kind of second-hand sales as anything else; where the transaction would be: I give up my product in exchange for a valued reciprocation.
Don't start this. The entire reason piracy cannot be discussed here is because the debate devolves into the slinging of accusations about peoples position on the issue. It negatively harms the conversation.
It doesn't matter because none of that can be certified or predicted, that's why business is a risk and business acts the way it does about risks. The people who sign off the firing of others are not the consumers and never have been.
Of course you can't just copy it and give it away as the product itself is practically replicated, just like photocopying a book. But I disagree about mucking with the software. Sure you should not be plagiarising and financially benefiting from another's work without permission. But I don't understand why I shouldn't be able to access the code and split it in half, whirl it around to see what happens; or rip out a model and reverse the colours or make funny poses. Credits and permissions are where credits and permissions are due.
It's sad and most people simply do not and will not give a long-hauled shit about where the revenue goes; especially when there are oh so many products we consume that we should care more about. Where does my local food come from? Who manufactured my phone? Does this product help the environment? Some people care and some don't.
Look I don't have figures to back up my argument either, but I do think it is a good guess that pretty much most consumers are only paying for the original product received ever. They spent the $60 to get 'Call of Duty 8' (new or used) and never to funnel money to the developers to fund 'Call of Duty 9'. The fact that is what the revenue is spent on is coincidence. Only crowd-funding is the antithesis of this.
No they are to blame. Nobody is forcing their hand. I mean outside influences can affect their decision, but it is ultimately up to them to deliver new products or not. After all are we going to blame the consumer now for not buying a product - it harms profits as much as used games and piracy does.
They'll do both. They may not be entitled to what they want but the products are still created for them to purchase, and if they do not: That business transaction is over.
As far as sales go, the used game market may be larger, but it's still fundamentally the same as it was 20 years ago. I think the bigger villain is the rental industry. Before GameFly came along, you had a set number of days you could keep a rental before having to return it, and good luck getting your hands on a copy if the game was popular. It was just less of a headache to buy the game if you knew you'd play it for more than a few days. Now all you have to do is empty your queue and you're practically guaranteed to get a copy with no due date.
By implementing a validation check, Microsoft is effectively forcing a due date back onto the consumer. You can play the game for three months as a rental, but after that you need to register it. Honestly, I think that's fair and we all know the industry could use the help right now.
Go on, kill second hand market so no one will ever buy games anymore, not on that price.
You can't logically illustrate that anyone pirating something would have been willing to pay for it otherwise at ANY price, but that's something you CAN do with a used games market because used games have a cost.
You can argue that the dollar figure in losses can't be conclusively proven but it's still a much stronger case than the reasoning against piracy.
Resell value is not what is important. A large choice of quality games in a large range of prices is. If the next gen consoles kill the second hand market, all they need to do is to open their systems a lot more so indies can compete with AAA games, like on Steam.
And no one spends $15-20 to watch a 1 1/2-2 hour movie in theaters that they cant take home and can only see once per ticket?
I think your point is moot.
People already spend $60 for a license...its called an EULA (end user license agreement). Every console game has one. Many people even buy digital copies of games stuck to one service or another, such as steam or origin. You dont own it, you cant transfer it to someone else on a whim.
I like the idea of owning a legit new copy of a game as well, but see I dont own the code..or the art assets within it...or the audio... I own the license to run the software so its legit. Thats it. The same applies to everyone else.
A game is no different than a licensed copy of windows, or the mac OS, or final cut pro, or any other software you can get. You cannot legally go out and resell old copies of autodesk products that are not used anymore, and the same rule should apply to games.
See part of the problem is that prices WILL go up and have gone up because people fund the used game industry. Prices dont go DOWN because of it.
There is a demand for games so people will still buy them, even when the used game market is shut down. In fact dont be surprised to see platforms like Steam start to take over.
They're fundamentally different activities. A standard game is more like buying the movie DVD where you get to watch it at leisure on on own supplied equipment and have the option to give that up by selling it to somebody else - that's what you pay for.
A film ticket is paying for early single use service supplied by a facility with considerably useful equipment. Going to movies can be a past-time but for most people it is an event. You go with friends, grab some popcorn and enjoy the big new hit on the big screen - that's what you pay for.
A better comparison would be subscription MMOs where the player must pay for timed access to a very specific gaming environment populated by events governed not just by the programming of the game.
But I've always found that funny, I mean you're not using it any more!
Actually he's right what he said about the EU. Most US style EULAs cannot be enforced in the EU and many such EULA points are invalid because you cannot make a contract that takes away a right given to you by EU law, such as the right to sell your software license.
There is a right to resell the software license itself, plus the physical medium. That's why Valve is currently being dragged to court, because EU law grants you the right to sell your software but Valve's Steam doesn't offer the functionality.
Oh I dont disagree with the fact the EU works differently in that regard, but heres the kicker...the EU is not the biggest game market out there. Add to the fact that they rank high on the piracy charts...
So lets say they cannot get rid of the EU law which allows software to be resold like that.
What would a publisher/distributor do in a localized zone to offset the cost? Raise prices of course, either that or not sell in the region at all. Either way the consumer over there loses.
There are going to be some pretty big changes coming for this next game generation and it will set a different standard for all, both consumers and developers. I am hoping Valve ends up on top with this one though.
Although I don't strongly care either for or against it. Just stating how it works in the EU.
They won't. This isn't about games. It's about every piece of software. I don't think Valve's arguments will have any more weight than those of MS, Apple, Oracle & Co.
In a wider sense this also touches issues about re-sale of other digital media, such as e-books, music, etc. The idea is that the consumer should not have to treat digital goods differently from physically ones when it comes to the rights of what he can and cannot do with them.
Publishers/retailers/distributors always want to raise prices as high as they possibly can while still selling units. Makes absolutely not difference if they're in a region with used game sales or not...
Consumer over there still have nintendo and sony :poly142: how the hell it's their loses?
That's not a valid reason to give games special protections over other goods and it is irrational because that's not the fault of the market. It's the fault of a poor business model. It is entirely possible for other industries to experience the same problems you just pointed out. Is it rational to make the same argument for the auto industry? Or clothing? Or furniture? The complaint that the secondary market is larger than the primary market isn't a justification to block the secondary market. You're acting like the developers are the only ones that matter here and that's simply not true, the customers have rights too and your position would infringe on their rights.
I understand the concept of software licenses, I'm not disputing that. However, I am disputing that people have a right to resell physical goods and just because there's a licensed piece of software on it doesn't matter. US copyright grants people the right to resell software as long as they transfer all relevant copies to the new owner. So, if you sell an console disc to someone, you are legally allowed and EULA's are a set of flimsy terms that try to revoke that right through extralegal means.
Once again, the industry isn't a sacred icon that must be protected above all else. The law was never supposed to guarantee an industry can survive, that's for the individual businesses to secure through persuasion of the prospective customers that their offerings are superior and worth the price. Industry must justify their own merit to the marketplace. Enacting laws that are intended to secure and industry's viability is unjust and unfair. If you can't justify that a new copy is superior to a used copy, then you probably need to find another way to market your unique value to the customers.
Who's to blame? The publishers are most definitely to blame. They rely on a weak business model that relies on government enforcement to make it viable. It's their shortsightedness that left them in this position, not consumers nor pirates. The publishing industry is trying to be a retail industry when they are really a service industry and people are taking advantage of that mistake. That's their problem. In light of the fact that there are other viable business models to follow, trying to control access to copies is a rather inferior option.
Excuse me, but not kowtowing to the will of the industry is not entitlement. Arguing for the rights of the people as they are written is not entitlement. As I said before, developers are not the only stakeholders that matter here and they are certainly not the most important. Everything you said here is biased toward your own bottom line and that is not something that can be allowed to be at the center of policy making. I'm not the one being naive, you are.
Also, the "vote with your wallet" argument rings hollow when the publishers have much bigger wallets thanks to all the people naive enough to buy in spite of all the consumer abuse. It would be a valid strategy if the majority of consumers were well-informed, but they're not. Most are wholly ignorant of the issues at hand and will blindly continue to buy regardless.