EA to start charging for Online play with used games

[Viper187]

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?

Bugs used to be a lot more rare. Sure, you can crash Mario RPG, but you really have to try. Now there are bugs all the time, and they only patch them half the time. I've seen mention of glitched achievements on 360 too, not that those were a good idea to begin with. Most of them are mind-numbing crap. Plus, there's a serious lack of in-game cheats this generation compared to previous ones. The encrypted content is bad because (1) you can't back it up and just restore it if your drive crashes, and (2) I'm not even sure putting an HDD with encrypted content on a different 360 works. Encryption just complicates things all around and there's no point to it. People are still cracking the downloadable content for use on modded consoles.

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.

Have you heard about what Warner started with movies? The WB Archive. They burn titles to order. Why can't game companies do that instead of us being stuck paying out the ass for some titles that either got under-printed or were ubsurdly popular? Look at PC games. Once they're a few years old, you can rarely find them retail. They could easily burn those to order. Instead, they'll sit there and whine that people are pirating the old games instead of buying the new ones. They rarely seem to keep old games available. That's another issue with DRM and requiring online connections for singleplayer stuff. They can turn off the verification servers anytime and there goes your copy of Assassin's Creed 2 unless you crack it. Kind of like those digital copies of movies they keep including with DVD/BD releases. The activation code is only good for a few months or a year then the disc is worthless because of the DRM. Doesn't stop anyone from sharing copies of the DVD or blu-ray itself online though.

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....

Yes, we do. I've got terrabytes of HDD space. There's no reason to keep a disc in the drive. I won't do it. Consoles have always been, insert game and play without installing. Now PS3, I would argue with. I actually heard that Sony forces all publishers to use the same disc access functions and the functions are so insane that putting a faster BD-rom in the things would break the games. Why would they want to be stuck with 1X drives in those things forever instead of giving people an incentive to buy a newer "special edition" console with an 8X BD-rom? PC games installed no matter what speed CD/DVD drive you have. You have to wonder what kind of idiot would want to hard code things to the speed of the optical.

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.

Just out of curiosity, since you need to activate the software to use it, do you still buy software and crack it?

I mean most Starforce games worked on XP, but not XP 64-bit. Hell, they only worked on IDE CD/DVD drives, so people that adopted SATA early were screwed. Software? No, I've mostly taken to using linux anyway. I do still buy PC games on occasion.

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.

Eating at a restaurant is convenient though. It saves anyone cooking, cleaning up, etc. I've got a 50 inch TV here with surround sound. There's nothing convenient about burning gas to go to the theater when I can have a nice viewing experience here without noisy assholes and their cell phones.

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?

Conspiracy theory? Just because it's been that way for 30 years doesn't mean it SHOULD be. There was also a recent article about certain studios keeping their titles from netflix/blockbuster until a month or more after release. It's like these old directors that won't give up film grain. I've really never seen the point of concerts though. Bunch of screaming idiots listening to a singers that 9 times out of 10 sound better in the studio anyway. There are very few singers I'd really consider hearing live. I happen to enjoy the studio recordings.

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.

As far as supporting the artists, I'd love to support them if I didn't have to support the RIAA in the process. The record companies make more that the artists anyway. I'm tired of seeing TV shows on DVD with altered music and even new themes becuase the original music was to costly to put on DVD...even when the singer is freakin dead!! For example, the theme to Las Vegas was "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis, but it wasn't on the DVDs because the company cheaped out on the music rights. So excuse me if I choose to buy albums used and support the record industry as little as possible.