I am tired of the copyright industry feeling like I am just renting their products. Real tired. I don’t know whether these features will actually make it into the final product, or if they’re even in the works or just dastardly rumors, but an MS rep did contact the author of the last article linked above and didn’t even come close to a weasely, keeping-the-door-open kind of faux-denial corporations love to engage in on points like these. So my guess is whether it is going to make it past the cutting room floor or not, everyone really is seriously considering it.
If true, I think I’ll just give up gaming for good. Gaming is a pretty expensive hobby as it is and being able to save money on used games helps me get my money’s worth out of a console. I doubt many people will be on the margin like me, but I wonder if there’s any internal concern that profits are going to take a hit or not. Both MS and the game-makers presumably feel like they’re getting pinched by the used game market, so maybe they guess that they’ll gain revenue faster than they lose it from marginal gamers. Or maybe they think gaming really is addictive, and their customers are just hooked anyway. I don’t know.
Ditto for me, I have felt for a while now like I am no longer the target audience anyway. I’m sure the fanboys and those who buy consoles and games just to flaunt them will still be buying it even if the PS4 sexually assaults at every start up to make sure you don’t have a copying device in a bodily orifice.
I’ve recently been rediscovering and having a blast with a lot of the games I passed over the first time around, cheap too.
I just bought my PS3, and I’m quite content not to purchase any new games for a looong while now with all the “new” titles available on the PS3 for me to play through. If they actually do do something like this, I can certainly see myself as waiting off for a long while for any new game purchases, or perhaps just sticking with Computer games and my old PS2 and PS3 games for a while rather then the newest and shiniest games.
I don’t know how it would affect me. When I lived in Japan (where the MSRP for new games is about $90) I pretty much only bought used games. Since coming back to the US I’ve pretty much only bought the PC versions.
I’d probably suck it up and just buy new. I disagree with the OP’s comment that video games are expensive. They’ve been stuck at the same price point ($50-60) for a long time and, honestly, compared to most other leisure activities I think they’re very cheap.
As for the industry as a whole, the used gaming represents a massive revenue loss for developers (isn’t it something like 30% of the market now?). I think that profits would go up even if a large number of marginal customers quit.
The devils will be in the details, of course. I suspect that digital downloads of older games for a cheaper price (like Steam for the PC) will be large part of the new console gaming environment. One of the reasons I’ve been buying so many PC versions of games is that they’re just so cheap on that platform (and that console exclusives are dwindling in number).
Why should they give a shit about you and your quest to save money? I don’t blame them for this one bit as Gamestop has been siphoning money from game publishers for far too long as it is. I’m surprised its taken this long actually.
Funny how people don’t complain about the inability to sell their Steam games once they’ve bought them.
“Used games are often purchased by people who wouldn’t have bought the game new in the first place”. Yeah. Thats true. Who gives a shit though? Thats no loss for the publishers if those people never get to play the games.
I’m predicting that for every 10 copies of a game that are sold used today 4 new copies will be sold on there place when used games are killed. Yeah thats 6 people who wont get to play the game but again, why should companies care? Thats 4 more copies they get paid on than they would have in the used days.
For me it’s like music. I think it’s unreasonable to make someone pay a second time for something they already had. If a disc gets damaged and I want to replace it, why should I pay full price for a new game when I’ve already done so once before? If that’s the way they want to do it, make it so that you have to buy a code to access the online content, that code better be good for all copies of the game that you might end up playing rather than keyed to your original, unplayable copy or I’m out too.
They don’t have to, of course. It’s their business.
I suggest you take this up with your local library, not me.
I don’t “buy” Steam games, either.
:shrug: I doubt that’s true but I don’t really care what they think. My money has gotten more and more tight and shows no signs of suddenly bursting into song so someone’s got to take a hit. I’d rather it not be my gaming pastime but that’s life.
Well Amazon might see a boom while game stores might start closing out of marginal markets. That’s life, too.
Well, if you’re on the Steam forums, they complain every moment there’s not a giant sale for them buy all their games for 85% off.
“When’s the next sale? When? Why wasn’t there a President’s Day/Valentine’s Day/Groundhog Day/Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday/MLK Day/Casimir Pulaski Day/Ides of March/St. Patrick’s Day/Spring Equinox/Easter/Passover sale???”
Stupid beyond belief. I almost never buy used games, but if they actually do this, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m done with those consoles for good. It’s a ridiculously greedy practice that just smacks of a “let them eat cake” sentiment.
People who buy games used are indirectly paying the developers. People won’t buy as many new games if they can’t sell them back. People already don’t buy as many games on Steam because of this, and wait until they go on sale. Only the diehards buy games new.
And, of course, there’s the rental companies, which probably buy a lot of the games, who will be driven out of business.
Plus there’s just the simple fact that, when someone owns a physical copy of something, they feel like they actually own it. How many people do you know who put up with the restriction on DVDs rather than put them on their portable player? Do you notice that so many people jailbreak their iPhones and iPads, to the point that it had to become legal?
In other words, what you can get away with in downloads is not the same thing you can get away with if you’re still using physical disks.
Those four extra copies you mention come at the expense of the six people who don’t buy the game at all because they can’t afford to not be able to resell it. Of course, those numbers aren’t exactly accurate, and maybe it turns into a net win for them. But then there’s still the rental companies and the increased desire to pirate.
I predict PC sales will finally hit their stride if all the companies do this. And, if Nintendo stays out of this, they may actually make even more money despite odd limitations of their new console. Hardcore gamers may go back. Then again, it’s Nintendo–even before the virtual console they freaked if you pirated an NES game that you could only buy used otherwise.
Look, I’m all for copyright rights. I refuse to play emulators.
I DO complain about the inability to sell my Steam games. I bought Fallout 1 and 2 on Steam, because my old copies don’t work properly on my newish Windows 7 computer. The video is sort of messed up, and so it’s almost impossible to tell how much money something is worth. However, the Steam versions of the games have the same problems. Can I get my money back? Can I resell my games? I don’t think so (I didn’t check) and no. This pisses me off.
The thing is, I will often buy a game used. If I like it, I’m far more likely to buy a newer version of the game when it comes out. I’m not likely to drop half a C or more on a franchise that I’ve never played before. Yeah, I read reviews, but that’s not the same as playing the game for a few days. Same thing with used books…I buy most authors in used paperbacks, but there are some authors that I think deserve the royalties, so I buy them in new editions. So yes, if I can’t buy a used game, then the publisher will almost certainly never see a dime of my money, whereas if I can buy a used version, I might very well be persuaded to buy newer versions of the game when they come out. So the companies SHOULD care whether or not I can buy used games.
And game console companies should care about backwards compatibility. One of the reasons that I decided to get an XBox 360 instead of a PS3 was because my PS2 works fine, I still have a lot of PS1 and PS2 games that I like to play (including some arcade game ports), and the PS3 wasn’t backwards compatible…and there was nothing in the PS3 game library that I really wanted.
What’s the specific problem? A lot of people are still playing the original games, so there’s likely a fix out there.
In theory all Steam sales are final, but in practice things are more flexible and they will sometimes give refunds.
They should care whether (the specific) you can buy used games. But should they care whether (the general) you can buy used games?
I think the average GameStop user walks in, sees that he can get a new copy of X for $60 or a used one for $40 and grabs the used one because it’s cheaper. That’s the extent of their thought process. Certainly that’s what my thought process was. So that’s what they’re going to be concentrating on.
You’re right that cheap older games can provide a gateway to their modern sequels for some consumers, but I think that the industry is going to use digital downloads of older titles to fill that void. They’re already doing it on Steam.
I’ve been saying that was EXACTLY what was going to happen next gen.
I told everyone: you need to look at what a modern PC and what modern PC gaming is like, 'cause just like last gen, the consoles will inevitably try to imitate.
Of course, console gamers said no way, now how. I was an idiot for saying so, and Miicrosoft and Sony would go bankrupt, etc, etc.
Well, pardon me while I sit here smugly and say “I told you so”.
Ultimately, I don’t think there will be enough of a backlash to cause major harm to the next gen consoles. It might take them 5 years instead of 4 to get back to the install base of current gen… but that’s about it.
Yes, they’re cheaper now than they’ve ever been, in terms of quality for what you pay, but when my money gets tight, something’s got to go, and gaming is my most expensive pastime. Thankfully it seems I’ve got a year or two left.
Funny that Ford and Toyota don’t think that way, isn’t it? Well, no matter, it’s their business to run how they want.
If they move it to a digital distribution model, whatever, otherwise it’s a stupid, stupid idea. I don’t buy used, I like to support the developers, but I like to have the option. Except, I do buy OLD games used. There’s tons of old console games that simply aren’t sold anymore, and I can only get a used copy. Some entirely series I would never have bought if it weren’t for playing the first used. Unless they plan to make every game available in perpetuity via download, I think this is stupid.
That’s the nice thing about Steam: you can buy a brand-new game for $60 bucks, or buy a 8-year old game for $10, just like at the local Gamestop–except new or old, your product is invulnerable to disk failure or loss. And Steam doesn’t run out of product when its 3 copies of whatever get sold. Since I don’t get around to playing games until years after I buy them anyway (I bought Twilight Princess when it was new, and will get to it eventually), I’d rather be able to buy it once, cheaply, than shell out twice that for a possibly working disk I can sell for–what, a quarter of what I paid for it? A fifth?