Edge reports durango to block used games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Adventurer]

I believe in fair pricing for good products and rewarding artists/creators for not trying to spoon feed me absolute shit. As opposed to blindly encouraging those same artists/creators to make more shit by buying shoddily made products with my nose jammed in the air about it.

If you're not going to pay for what you know are shitty games, WHY PLAY THEM AT ALL?

I don't care for Call of Duty and its ilk. But, I don't make a statement about bad games being popular by playing off stolen copies. I just don't play them. Because that makes sense.

[AlphaGamer]

.........................

[JSoup]

Edit: No, no, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this "piracy is this, piracy is that" round-robin again. If I want to pirate a game, I will, deal with it. If you want to pay for an overpriced product, you will, I'll deal with it.

[Rickstilwell1]

The main problem I see here is not the disc activation codes themselves, but the whole online required thing in general. It's going to cut out a lot of communities in general just because not everybody has the kind of Internet required to run it. With the Wii U, you don't have to install that update unless you want to use the unnecessary online features. So people who can't afford monthly high speed internet are just going to get a Wii U when the price goes down and more games come out.

[danawhitaker]

They aren't special. All media is heading this way; from books, to magazines, to comics, to movies, to TV shows, to Video Games. Its just the way the economics are moving in the entertainment industry as a whole. Obsessing about the storage medium of a game being integral to the gaming experience is about as short sighted as saying the most important part about reading is being able to smell the book.

That's funny you mention that, because one of the things I enjoy most about reading is the feel and smell of the books. I'm not going to pay for e-books when I can go buy a physical copy of the same thing. Same goes for comics. I don't like forking over money for things that I don't get a physical item for except in certain scenarios. Everyone who embraces everything digital-only will be sorry when their power goes out for more than two minutes and they realize they don't even have any books to read because they only bought digital copies of them. You really want to trust everything to the cloud and to the corporations? I love seeing a shelf full of books or games or CDs, and organizing them, putting the things I enjoy most in places of honor on my shelves. I can't do that with digital stuff. Or, "Merry Christmas, daughter. Here's a piece of paper I printed out with the download code for that game you wanted" - yay?

It's not that I shun technology, or the internet, or social media, or new advances in technology. But I think that things can coexist without physical things disappearing. It makes me sad to think that if everything goes digital, all the "stuff" that we pass on to people when we die won't exist, and will probably be locked up in some online account, inaccessible behind TOS and unable to be passed to our offspring and family and friends. Which is really the entertainment industry's wet dream - making people pay for the same things over and over forever.

[The Adventurer]

Everyone who embraces everything digital-only will be sorry when their power goes out for more than two minutes and they realize they don't even have any books to read because they only bought digital copies of them.

And if your house burns down, or you have a flood you lose all your books. Straw Man is made of Straw. If the power goes off for any period of time where you're electronic device runs out of power, you've got bigger problems going on then not being able to read.

EDIT: You can't read a print book in the dark either. So again. Straw Man argument.

[Rickstilwell1]

And if your house burns down, or you have a flood you lose all your books. Straw Man is made of Straw. If the power goes off for any period of time where you're electronic device runs out of power, you've got bigger problems going on then not being able to read.

EDIT: You can't read a print book in the dark either. So again. Straw Man argument.

That whole arguement only really matters depending on where you live. There are places that are just never going to be affected by floods, and places where if your power goes out all you have to do is go to your friend's house or a library/store/mall.

There really is a different place for each thing. Digital content is convenient for x purposes and physical media is convenient for y purposes. In my life there really isn't one or the other. It's often best to have them in both places so you have a backup in either case. Classic gaming will become to modern gaming what a flashlight or candle is to a power outage. That thing you can always fire up when your internet goes out.

To me all digital content is really useful for though is portability so when it comes to games I try to only buy ones that I know I will like no matter what. Usually this means sequels or copycats of old games I used to play and enjoyed.

[Griking]

And if your house burns down, or you have a flood you lose all your books. Straw Man is made of Straw. If the power goes off for any period of time where you're electronic device runs out of power, you've got bigger problems going on then not being able to read.

EDIT: You can't read a print book in the dark either. So again. Straw Man argument.

I can if I lose power in the day

That being said, I don't see ebooks completely replacing physical books any time soon.

[IHatedSega]

No. I believe in supporting artists and creators. As opposed to be an entitled toolbox.

I emulate because I cant afford Link To The Past for $75! Let alone a new game console and a $60 game. I dont play new games because I cant afford it. If I were to buy a console now then I could because its prices are down on the games I want. If they continue wit h$60 prices and no used game options, this industry is never going to be as popular again. Or at least the console side.

And if theres a flood or earthquake where their servers are and not your place then you still cant play your games. Just because one area is being hit by a force of nature and no one else lived around it, then were all affected even though we shouldnt be. Where are they servers going to be stored? Underground?

[dendawg]

And you sirs, have spoken like corporate mouthpieces w/ your heads up each other's butt.

Oh, look...a half-assed attempt at trolling....how adorable!

[The Adventurer]

And if theres a flood or earthquake where their servers are and not your place then you still cant play your games. Just because one area is being hit by a force of nature and no one else lived around it, then were all affected even though we shouldnt be. Where are they servers going to be stored? Underground?

Companies are generally smart enough to have multiple server locations for just this reason. That's what the 'cloud' is all about. Data isn't stored in one place. Its spread out, duplicated, redundancies on redundancies. It can't be disrupted easily.



I should probably clarify, I'm not for high level DRM crippled games, DRM is bad. Heck, I'm even against system locked games (its the main reason I've not bought any digital games for my 3DS, because they are tied to the device, and not a personal log-in ala Steam) I'm just against the notion that physical media is integral to the video gaming* experience. I know its not, because I haven't bought a boxed PC game since 2004, and it hasn't slowed me down one bit. I'm not saying system locked gaming is the future (I sure hope its not), but direct download is. Physical media just isn't going to hack it for storage space or cost effectiveness 5 or 10 years from now.

*or Comic Books. Or Music. Or Books.

[IHatedSega]

Well, most people's internet isnt good, hence the 6 hour download time for the Wii U update. If we had this this generation Metal Gear Solid 4 is 50 gigs, FIFTY GIGABYTES! How long would that take to download, even if they broke up the game into 5 parts you still have 10 gigs to wait for to download. That would take half a day for me to do on my internet service at night when not as many people are online using the tower. The average storage space someone has for their PS3 is 250 anyway, so how many games can you really have?. Capcom's solution to not taking up space on a hard drive was to have the unlockable characters on the disk, wasnt good of them to charge people for that stuff though.

[Tanooki]

Well glad I have no trust or interest in microsoft systems at all, though it does bother me a bit with Sony in on the racket too. I'm guessing they think that the $5 less Lamestop asks on used stuff won't be much of a deterrant to a new buy, but I think it will be. Used games there can be returned and swapped for another at face value, yet that dick shop will give you like 10-30%~ of your purchase price of a new game turned in which is no good and now with a captive audience they'd do it even more if second hand wasn't killed by this move. Nintendo seems to be the only one with their head only partially in their ass as they're not blocking used, but they are still using asinine system tied accounts which is why I have virtually no downloads on my 3DS and stopped buying them on Wii when it was setup that way when Nintendo Points hit as DSi arrived.

Blocking used games is just unique to games and just arrogant. They try and whine that used games are ruining them and killing jobs. Yeah, right...if used product did that how come all the car companies don't lawyer bomb the shit out of Carmax to put them under? How come the RIAA or the MPAA don't squash the shit out of retailers like FYE that peddle used movies and music on discs? What about used book stores being taken down by Barnes and Noble? It's because it's a fucking lie, a control freak arrogant lie to mask the real problem. The gaming industry thinks it is hollywood and can operate on those kinds of budgets and to bring that level of bang to ever disc and it's entirely unneccessary. A real good game doesn't need a triple AAA actor cast, and a 50 million dollar budget just to create the visuals and audio aspects of the world while hiring some big shot Michael Bey or James Cameron to direct the game. Look at Homefront, hired a huge hollywood writer/director to put that hot mess together along with their coding staffs at THQ and all they did was make an overpriced commonly happening piece of mediocrity which ultimately led to them selling studios, firing middle level employees (to cover the asses of still employed fuckups causing the problem) to cover their asses, and in the end being dissolved and sold off in pieces just recently.

The gaming industry needs to get its own ass, budget, and priorities straight. Used games aren't the problem, THEY ARE. I know it will, I worked in it for years both in development and much longer in media, and I have a brother who still now is a producer at one of those studios.

[Rob2600]

I believe in fair pricing for good products and rewarding artists/creators for not trying to spoon feed me absolute shit. As opposed to blindly encouraging those same artists/creators to make more shit by buying shoddily made products with my nose jammed in the air about it.

If you feel like developers are trying to spoon feed you poop, that's fine. But then why would you go ahead and pirate the poop?

You know, all the talk has been about not being able to play used games but what will this do to used console sales?

Will all of the used Xbox 720 consoles in Gamestop already have a library of games pre-loaded in them or will used consoles not be able to be resold either? Maybe there will be a system restore of sorts when a console is resold.

No need to wonder- this is already happening. People buy used iPhones all the time. Someone even bought *my* used iPhone in 2010. I did a factory reset, and I assume the person who bought it entered his or her credentials and bought new games and apps from scratch.

With all the posts on these forums about how iOS and Android are killing traditional gaming, I'm surprised so many of you are completely ignorant of those platforms and the methods they employ. Game companies don't need to reinvent the wheel.

It's just that digital distribution can suffer in ways physical media can't. No matter how many roms a person downloads, they'll never own the cartridge (barring advancements in 3D printing, at least). There's at least a psychological benefit that comes from real ownership preventing everyone from becoming pirates. You don't want to get to the point where people start to feel that paying for something doesn't net them any gain over outright piracy, which generally doesn't repel people as the idea of physical theft might. If your $60 game gets you exactly the same thing as my free game, well, it's a tough sell once the digital locks in place are inevitably circumvented and the five finger discount is anonymously available at the push of a button.

Good points, but again, iOS and Android are extremely successful and are based solely on digital distribution. There is *no* physical media whatsoever on either platform, but somehow hundreds of millions of people are perfectly fine buying games and apps. I realize games for those platforms rarely exceed $10, but still, I don't hear anybody complaining about the lack of physical media.

And the lack of physical media doesn't seem to encourage piracy either. Yes, people can and do jailbreak their iPhones, but what percentage of owners actually go through the trouble to do that? It's easier to pay a few dollars for a game in the App Store than it is to jailbreak a phone. And that's the key- game companies have to adopt a digital distribution method that's easier, safer, and more convenient than piracy.


I'm sure 80 years ago, some people complained that their local horse buggy store went out of business thanks to these newfangled cars. Magnavox, Atari, and Coleco were pioneers of the entire video game industry and none of them even exist anymore. Times change and as iOS, Android, and Steam have shown, hundreds of millions of people are fine with that.

[JSoup]

If you feel like developers are trying to spoon feed you poop, that's fine. But then why would you go ahead and pirate the poop?

I don't know about this poop you're talking about, but as for developers trying to throw shit at me, perhaps I should clarify that a bit. When I say shit, I'm talking about the result from what I spent to what I'm getting. If I'm being asked to spend $40 on a game with $20 worth of content, yo ho ho, it's a pirates life for me.

[jb143]

And the lack of physical media doesn't seem to encourage piracy either. Yes, people can and do jailbreak their iPhones, but what percentage of owners actually go through the trouble to do that? It's easier to pay a few dollars for a game in the App Store than it is to jailbreak a phone. And that's the key- game companies have to adopt a digital distribution method that's easier, safer, and more convenient than piracy.

Actually, for android anyways, the piracy rate is astronomical. Some people still think that 99cents is too much to pay for games.

[IHatedSega]

Maybe a big problem for games is the way theyre reviewed and the whole hack journalism that exists now. Every single article you read on a site is a commercial for a product, doesnt matter how its written, all that matters is that its for a game or has to do with a game. Theres no professionalism in the whole thing. Everyone is a young 20 something. No Roger Ebert in gaming, and even if there was Roger Ebert reviews only matter to older people, so all those teenagers and kids that are the back bone of the console industry dont care.

[Rob2600]

If I'm being asked to spend $40 on a game with $20 worth of content, yo ho ho, it's a pirates life for me.

But how do you know you're only getting $20 worth of content before you buy the game?

Actually, for android anyways, the piracy rate is astronomical. Some people still think that 99cents is too much to pay for games.

I know this is anecdotal evidence, but nobody I know who has an Android device pirates games or apps. I'm not saying piracy doesn't exist on Android, but out of the hundreds of millions of people who use the platform (phones, tablets, Kindle Fires, etc.), it has to be an extremely small percentage. It's simply too much trouble for the average user, plus the fact that the Play Store is so convenient and inexpensive.

Does music piracy still exist? Of course. But the average user doesn't want to mess with torrents, viruses, etc. It's more convenient to download songs from iTunes or Amazon for 99 cents.

To the average user (not tinkerers and hackers), if the next generation of home game consoles forgoes physical media, they're perfectly fine downloading games as evidenced by iOS, Android, Steam, and the Mac App Store...as long as the overall experience is easy, convenient, and a good value.

[JSoup]

But how do you know you're only getting $20 worth of content before you buy the game?

Learned about the concept through bad purchases.
Then started doing my research on games I was interested in and found that there is generally enough information out there to figure out if a game is worth it or not.
Now I just make blanket assumptions, IE: If it's got a Nintendo sticker on it, it's probably not worth what it's being sold for.

[retroguy]

If it's got a Nintendo sticker on it, it's probably not worth what it's being sold for.

It depends. Wii Sports is fun and all, but I wouldn't buy it unless it was five bucks or something. Super Mario Galaxy, OTOH, would absolutely be worth it, at least for me. Ditto Skyward Sword.