Quote Originally Posted by The Adventurer View Post
As someone who has been using Steam for nearly 10 years to buy new games, nor makes a habit of trading games in, I don't really see a particular problem with this. What all this anti-used game trend seems to be geared to is pushing players to buying digital downloads over physical media. Because undoubtedly the NEXT general will be discless. So you better get used to it.
Hmm. Nope. I'm not going to get used to it. I'll simply choose not to consume the product I guess. Why does the game industry think they're so special when it comes to second-hand products? I don't see the car manufacturers moaning around about people buying used cars. Lots of people buy used books (look at stores like Half-Price Books). Lots of people buy used DVDs/Blu-ray discs. You don't see the Gap crying around about people buying their used clothing at thrift stores. Imagine this world if second-hand markets didn't exist for anything at all. I doubt there's anyone on this forum who likes the idea who doesn't have at least one second-hand product. Heck, imagine if all houses had to be new, and you couldn't buy a house that had already been built. Of course every company would prefer you pay for a brand new item rather than buying it used. But that's not only wasteful, it's unreasonable to expect. Buying second-hand products is a way for people to acquire things they want or need and still be able to afford other necessities.

One of the biggest problems I see with this idea is what happens fifteen years down the line, when this console becomes "classic". It will be difficult if not impossible to acquire games without resorting to paying the (what I'm sure would be) inflated prices they'd want on their download servers. For those of us who prefer physical copies, we'd have to be seeking out sealed copies with intact activation codes - and that of course assumes those activation codes would still be valid, and that the activation servers would be up and running for eternity. I value still being able to play my older consoles, and that's a freedom I don't ever want to give up. There's also the fact that sometimes, even after a few years on the market, a new copy of a game will be nearly impossible to track down. I had that problem with Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. No one had it new, not even stores that only sell games new. I could have bought it online, but I wanted to purchase it from a physical store. So, I had to go the used route.

Now, while I don't agree with piracy, I also do not agree with the arguments that anti-piracy people love to make. Just because someone buys an item second-hand doesn't mean they ever would have paid full-price for that item in the first place. I know this has been the case for me with some games. I either wait until they go dirt-cheap on sale, or I buy them used at Gamestop. I'm a single parent, gaming is one of my few hobbies, and I like to stretch my budget as much as I can. I can still remember when new games would cost about $40, now they're generally up to $60 (plus any download content they want to milk you for, if you're into that). And exposure to products through second-hand means allows people to discover new content they necessarily wouldn't have been able to otherwise, and means they might start investing in newer stuff, and recommending games to their friends, who in turn will also buy them.

This move, along with the always-online component, is a deal-breaker for me. It basically turns console gaming into PC gaming, and if I wanted to game on my PC, I would. When I played World of Warcraft actively, and my internet connection would go down or would become unstable, I'd turn to my console. I do not want to be in the position of not being able to play my console games just because my internet connection is down. That's ridiculous. I should not need to be connected to the internet to play single-player offline games like Angry Birds Trilogy, or the single-player mode of Band Hero. That is the game industry trying to over-reach and control how I use my devices, and I want no part of that. I love the internet, but single-player games should not need an always-on connection to function. Diablo 3 failed hardcore in this regard. I played it a lot when I got it for "free" with a one year commitment to World of Warcraft. I had some issues with my internet connection over the summer after getting it at certain times of day that were hard to track down and fix, and whenever I would get disconnected, it would screw up whatever I'd been doing. It made me not even want to play (well, so did the game itself, but that's another story for another thread).