That was your entire point?Originally Posted by heybtbm
Obviously it does negatively affect those that regularly play online but purchase their games used. It raises the cost of this hobby for that portion of EA's customer base, which is the purpose of this decision.
I stopped buying EA games after my Spore reached it's limit. I'll never buy an EA game in my life ever again, even though i want Dead Space 2 and Bad Company 2 so bad. EA will be the ones who kill gaming.
Nevermind, I should have read the rest of the comments before posting.
Last edited by Griking; 05-20-2010 at 10:42 AM.
What's even worse is that they close the servers down within a year.
You don't have to be smart, you don't have to have all the facts, you just have to be confident.
I'm throwing Activision in that I think they're going to follow suit.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
I never cared for EA to begin with, and I've been more pissed at them ever since they tried to ruin GTA and other titles by trying to buy Take Two. The gaming industry just continues to swirl down the drain, IMO. Midway made better sports games than EA could ever hope to. NBA Jam, Hangtime, and Gretzky Hockey were awesome. I loved those titles, and I don't even like sports! They only have Burnout cause they swallowed Criterion, right? Sure, they have NFS, which is playable. They mostly repolish the same shit repeatedly and call it sequels, much like Yukes does with their crappy wrestling games. What the hell happened to AKI? They made some of the best-selling wrestling games in history for N64, but then they just disappeared.
We have to put up with 360s that die all the time. I'm on my 3rd 360, and it would probably be double that if I actually played every day like I used to. I heard even the most recent revision, Jasper, has issues because they cheaped out on cooling after they shrunk the GPU. PS3 hardware has its own insane issues because something as simple as putting in a faster hard drive can break games. How stupid is that!?!? Yet, this is the gaming industry that everyone puts up with now. Buggy games, expensive online content that's encrypted out the ass, etc. It's almost good that I'm still stuck on dialup, because I wouldn't be able to resist playing Halo 3 and other titles online if I had the ability to. If this digital distribution doesn't kill gaming, the motion control crap will though. It's utterly insane what Nintendo does to otherwise awesome games. That stupid remote is no way to play Punch-Out when there' no logical reason not to allow the classic controller to work on games like that. The New Super Mario Bros and Mariokart wii have the same issue. I own 95 Xbox360 games, 3 Wii games, and 6 or 7 PS3 games.
PC gaming gets expensive and irritating too though. There's very little reason to buy games when you have to crack them to get around the lame DRM/activation or play without the disc in the drive. Better yet, some of the anti-piracy stuff has even been known to cause security holes in windows in the past or only work on certain OSes; Starfuck and Sony's music rootkit crap come to mind. It's even worse when the game actually bitches about emulation software like Alcohol/Daemon Tools being installed on your system. I stopped activating software the first time I had to call Microshaft to get my student copy of Office 2000 unlocked after a reformat.
I notice people comparing new game sales to movies in the theater. How many people actually WANT to go to theaters anymore? Why go get raped for 2 tickets and popcorn when I've got a 50 inch TV and surround sound at home!? The only reason to go to theaters now is because Hollywood is still pumping life into a dead industry by withholding the DVD releases! For the price of 2 tickets to an evening showing, you could go buy a new DVD to watch and see the new blockbuster movie later. Once again though, people choose to support these shitty theaters and allow them to remain in business. It's like iTunes. The music on iTunes isn't even CD quality! It's lossy, DRM-infested crap, but people buy it because they either don't know any better or don't care. Offer up some nice, unmolested FLAC/WAV files and I'll happily buy them digitally. Otherwise, I'll buy a used CD for $2 and rip it to my HDD in the format I prefer to listen to.
This will probably become an industry wide trend very soon.
http://kotaku.com/5503312/nintendos-...-digital-games
Licensed to you, not sold.Nintendo's DSi XL hardware manual plainly states both that all DSiWare downloads "are for use only on a single Nintendo DSi." The manual also indicates that "software downloaded from Nintendo DSi Shop is licensed to you, not sold." What that adds up to is that, while Nintendo is selling people a new DSi to buy, it currently expects its consumers to pay for downloaded games all over again — or do without them.
<Sothy> its the internet <Sothy> who cares
I cant believe I just saw this thread now. This is craziness. I have bought madden on release week pretty much the past 4 years, this really turns me away from EA. Other than madden and bad company 2 they have never offered me much.
Autobots. Roll out.
Don't know if this is a sign of things to come, but EA's Skate 3 was released a few weeks ago which uses a activation code to access shared content and the online portion of this game is completely dead. Most sessions I join are empty and it'll take on average 10-15 minutes for someone to show up. I've only played one game so far where the lobby was filled with 6 skaters.
Don't know if it has anything to do with this new "Skate Share" code business but it looks like this game is a complete bomb. The official Xbox forums for it are barely active too. Maybe it's everyone's way of saying they don't want these online access codes in their games.
This also happens with Wii systems.
It's bullshit.
eBay Auctions / GameTZ profile / DP Feedback / Youtube / Twitter / RateYourMusic
None of this is new; EA's Battlefield 2 and then 2142 were there years ago. For Battlefield 2, the serial numbers get tied to accounts (I bought a BF2 complete pack used and only got to add Special Forces to my basic BF2 installation; the Euro and US invasion pack keys were used and thus not available anymore). For BF2142 the main game was again registered to somebody else when I bought a used copy off eBay - then I got lucky and found it cheap at Goodwill.
None of this bodes well for the relationship between gamers and companies; it's bad when I can feel a victory at having gotten their content at no profit to them. This is why I like the Steam model: When you buy something, theoretically you can keep playing that across different formats - true to form, Valve has invited everybody to get on a Mac to download play Portal there. The costs allow them to be just that generous compared to retail, where the expenses of making and moving discs and mostly empty boxes dictate everything.
I don't blame the retail companies for having to face off against used games the way they are trying to; it's been a simmering confrontation for what feels like nearly a decade.
The Valve system takes away the rationale for trading games, gives more profits to the developers, people aren't out there charging outrageous amounts to get copies of old games, and you can still wait them out for good price drops that wouldn't be possible at a brick and mortar store where they really need to charge $50 years after a release to justify having kept it on a shelf. I think that, viewed that way, this really is a story about the evils of physical media. (I know "data wants to be free" is a common argument, but somebody has to pay somewhere down the line).
We are going to have to get used to not having something physical to show for games. Really, people should be rejoicing that games are so easy to distribute that people can send games for free over the Internet, versus the old days where you'd have to go to a hobbyist swap meet to get copies of somebody's Apple // or DOS opus or whatever the hell.
You might, but I won't. Whether it makes any difference or not, people need to take a stand against that DRM-infested shit. I want my physical media, and I'll never activate games or software to use them. Sad the industry learned nothing from Assassin's Creed 2. How long were the people with legit copies completely screwed while the pirates kept on playing? heheh.
I still do care, actually, and I really care more about DRM and (to a lesser esxtent) lack of discs because the vast majority of my gaming these last couple years has been single player content, so DRM really hurts me. (I find the old-fashioned "disc check" the most effective deterrent still.) The ability to plug into Steam and pay $6 straight to the developer is a lot better than doing a dance on eBay or Amazon and hoping for a disc not encrusted with shit and disease, and with an un-used key. (Sloppy seconds are baaad.)
OK, DRM-infested shit = bad. So is rotten food, that's bad. What about stuff on Steam, however? Not a whole hell of a lot there DRM-wise (that I know about anyway), and it might even be appropriate for EA because there's really not an obvious way to hack into the multiplayer when you don't have an account. Even if you did hack into individual multiplayer sessions, you'd be missing out on stats and a number of the other features that go with having an account to your name. (Hence most of the attacks on Steam multiplayer have been focused on stealing accounts, rather than on hacking into them to create spurious new ones.)
Valve's system makes clear that it is easier and better to focus on securing the services that are controlled by the distributor (in this case Steam). It doesn't really upset people, dedicated hax0rz can still distribute broken copies of singleplayer games, and multiplayer gamers can be happy with a relatively cheaterrific-neutering secure service. All of this requires 0 discs!
In other news, I wonder how many dead people have been awarded the Halo in TF2.
That's gotta be good for something. Maybe another Achievement. (Collect a wearable while dead IRL. - image is an open hand sticking out of a grave)
personally i think its a good move. games are costing companies increasingly more and more to make. instead of raising prices to 70$ or taking forever to drop them, or totally BS anti-piracy methods like net-connection-a-must-to-play, i prefer this.
10$ aint much. and if you like the game and developer, you should be supporting them to begin with. buying used makes the developer about as much money as pirating it outright.
and like everything in this world, if you cant afford it, you cant have it. =/
and if youre really down on your luck, perhaps your money is best spent on things aside from games.
its not like theres nothing to play, play some old games and save up meanwhile. the cutting edge of anything (be it automobiles, games or technology) will always cost premium and not be attainable to everyone.
Last edited by Poofta!; 05-25-2010 at 01:22 AM.
And that's pretty much everything that needed sayin'.
I recently downloaded Steam so I could get Portal, overall it's fine with me but I just don't like how it's always loaded into RAM even when I'm not using it. I just hope that I'll be able to uninstall it when I'm done. I'm probably worrying over nothing but I'm nervous of installing software that can't be uninstalled properly.
Half the fun is eating the popcorn.
It depends what you mean by "swirl down the drain". If you look at it from a broad perspective, not much has really changed since the 1990's except for online (including play and downloadable content/games). Good stuff is still being made.
Those three titles are essentially "arcade" titles (though I'm not sure about that Gretzky game) for ease of jumping in and playing. No real "seasons", no injuries or anything simulation-like. EA's sports titles were always a "balance" between sim (stats, trades, etc.) and fast action. Same with titles from Sega Sports, 989, 2K Games, etc., etc. So "better" really is "preference". You prefer the arcade sports games. Doesn't necessarily make them "better" (the millions of Madden fans would probably disagree).Midway made better sports games than EA could ever hope to. NBA Jam, Hangtime, and Gretzky Hockey were awesome. I loved those titles, and I don't even like sports!
Um, again, this is a practice that's been going on for quite some time and not from just EA. Even your NBA Jam had its different iterations-same game but just some different stuff.They mostly repolish the same shit repeatedly and call it sequels, much like Yukes does with their crappy wrestling games. What the hell happened to AKI? They made some of the best-selling wrestling games in history for N64, but then they just disappeared.
As for AKI, they split from THQ and started doing other titles. I think they did Ultimate Muscle and the Def Jam fighting games.
Can't argue about that. I'm on my second.We have to put up with 360s that die all the time. I'm on my 3rd 360, and it would probably be double that if I actually played every day like I used to. I heard even the most recent revision, Jasper, has issues because they cheaped out on cooling after they shrunk the GPU.
Um, source? First I've heard of this.PS3 hardware has its own insane issues because something as simple as putting in a faster hard drive can break games. How stupid is that!?!?
With the millions of sales of multiple titles, are some of the bugs that bad? No game is perfect. I think, being on the internet, we hear from the more vocal minority than anything in many cases. And I don't get your beef with encrypted online content. Um, if the content is for your game, what's the big deal that it's encrypted?Yet, this is the gaming industry that everyone puts up with now. Buggy games, expensive online content that's encrypted out the ass, etc.
While I'm not one to let go of things easily, I'm starting to dig digital distribution. It has the potential to offer games to people at lower prices than retail. Granted, it could all come tumbling down years later but for the majority of people who game, they probably wouldn't care. Remember, we here that hang at DP are a minority. Gaming will continue as it was, just not in disc form. The only thing that would "kill" anything would be individual titles that require regular DLC to make it playable.If this digital distribution doesn't kill gaming, the motion control crap will though.
So....you have a thing against motion control I take it? If not done right (ie just mindless waggle), I agree-it blows. But if it works (Wii Sports Resort, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, etc) it can be an awesome experience.
I do have to agree with this-the Wii Mote is just not a good substitute for a game pad. Punch Out and NSMB could have had options but no. Gotta play Nintendo's way. HOWEVER, Mario Kart can be played with the nunchuck, which works really well. The waggle there makes sense. But in that regard, different strokes for different folks.It's utterly insane what Nintendo does to otherwise awesome games. That stupid remote is no way to play Punch-Out when there' no logical reason not to allow the classic controller to work on games like that. The New Super Mario Bros and Mariokart wii have the same issue.
Just out of curiosity....why did you post this? Showing how few Wii games you own compared to the other systems? Just means you really don't like Wii, which shows you've got some bias against.I own 95 Xbox360 games, 3 Wii games, and 6 or 7 PS3 games.
Um, what? Funny thing with the perception of PC gaming-people tend to look at it like their PC is JUST FOR GAMING when they use it for so much more. There's also the myth that you need the latest greatest card practically every other year to keep up. Wrong again. Again, the vocal minority who have the liquid cash to have an expensive rig is niche at best. You can run many games of TODAY with you have a semi decent CPU (not a $300 Wal-Mart special) and maybe an extra $130 for a mid range graphics card. When buying your PC, you just have to think ahead a bit if you want to game. You may already be dropping $500-$600, what's another $100 to future proof a bit?PC gaming gets expensive.....
I bought my current PC two years ago-Gateway (yeah, shoot me) with an Intel Core 2 quad core Q6600 with 3 GB of RAM. I just slapped in a $130 XFX Ati Radeon 5750 card in there and I can run games like Just Cause 2 with high details and at my monitor's native resolution (1440X900) and it runs like melted butter. Sure if you total it up from what I originally paid ($1,000 for the PC plus the card), it may seem expensive but I use the machine for a ton of other things-video editing (has a capture card), desktop publishing, document writing, media access (play music, videos, etc), communication, check book balancing, etc. etc. All the stuff I do with it justifies the price I paid. So really, if you just look at the "gaming" side of it (just the video card), entry into PC gaming is actually pretty cheap.
You make it sound like ALL games are like that. And people really have THAT big of a beef with having a disc in the drive? Why even play on your consoles? Gotta keep the disc in the drive and the 360 and PS3 have hard drives....There's very little reason to buy games when you have to crack them to get around the lame DRM/activation or play without the disc in the drive. Better yet, some of the anti-piracy stuff has even been known to cause security holes in windows in the past or only work on certain OSes; Starfuck and Sony's music rootkit crap come to mind. It's even worse when the game actually bitches about emulation software like Alcohol/Daemon Tools being installed on your system.
As for the "certain OS's"-what's the deal with that? After a while, OS's like Win 9X or 2000 just don't have the ability to run the new stuff. Why should Microsoft keep supporting their old OS's? That's like saying you should be able to send your Atari 2600 to the current Atari company and expect them to fix it.
I know about the Alcohol/Daemon Tools issue. If I'm not mistaken, those tools were running in memory so I just turned them off. No big deal.
Office 2000 (at least with SR-1 included on the disc) was the first Office to have activation, if I'm not mistaken, so it wasn't all that great to start with being a first timer.I stopped activating software the first time I had to call Microshaft to get my student copy of Office 2000 unlocked after a reformat.
Just out of curiosity, since you need to activate the software to use it, do you still buy software and crack it?
Personally, I've never had problems with activation. Office 2007, Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, software at work...no issues.
Lots, looking at recent ticket sales. Reason: people like to go out. You can change this argument to ask "How many people actually WANT to eat at a restaurant anymore? Why go get raped for 2 dinners when I've got a cook top and an oven at home?!" I don't know about you, but while I've got a lot of fun stuff at home, I still like to go out to a theater to see a brand spanking new movie on the big screen with friends and family.I notice people comparing new game sales to movies in the theater. How many people actually WANT to go to theaters anymore? Why go get raped for 2 tickets and popcorn when I've got a 50 inch TV and surround sound at home!?
Ok....now we're getting into conspiracy theory thoughts. Withholding DVD releases? C'mon. This has been a concept (theater first, home copies later) for like what, 30 years? Longer maybe as you could buy movies (or at least parts) on 8mm/Super 8mm/16 mm for home projector? Again, it's not about just the movie, it's about the experience. Like, why go to a live concert of your favorite rock band when you can buy the CD and crank up the tunes at home?The only reason to go to theaters now is because Hollywood is still pumping life into a dead industry by withholding the DVD releases! For the price of 2 tickets to an evening showing, you could go buy a new DVD to watch and see the new blockbuster movie later. Once again though, people choose to support these shitty theaters and allow them to remain in business.
Um, if I'm not mistaken, iTunes no longer has DRM'd files or at least offers files for a little bit more without DRM. I know Amazon doesn't, where I buy my files as I don't like iTunes the software.It's like iTunes. The music on iTunes isn't even CD quality! It's lossy, DRM-infested crap, but people buy it because they either don't know any better or don't care. Offer up some nice, unmolested FLAC/WAV files and I'll happily buy them digitally. Otherwise, I'll buy a used CD for $2 and rip it to my HDD in the format I prefer to listen to.
And yes, people don't care-if it sounds good to them, does it matter? Remember, people used to buy cassettes and listen to them happily, even with "tape hiss" and noise. Some would dub CD's to tapes to play in their cars and they were happy. In fact, unless the file was poorly compressed, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Again, the vocal minority (audiophiles, like you apparently) get all up in arms over these services.
So, you buy a used CD at $2, but what about the artist? Don't you want to support them so they continue to make the music you like? Oh wait, that's what concerts are for but hold on! You don't wanna get raped for a concert ticket when you can play that used CD on your surround sound system at home.
Posting Permissions
FTC Disclosure Notices:
This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated. As an eBay Partner, I may be compensated if you make a purchase.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Similar agreements apply to other advertising or affiliate programs such as those from Google, etc.
Copyright © 1991 - Present Digital Press. All rights reserved.
Reply With Quote
