I think that the nature of used games obviously requires changes to the current industry model, as it IS a game changer and the devs should get paid for their work. But the regulations Microsoft is trying to apply are absolutely the wrong way to go about it, trying to change the world instead of their own business practices.

I like used games and they used to be. I never was a fan of Microsoft so Xbox consoles mean dick shit to me.

However Sony's PS4 will let third party developers block games at their discretion that creates the "illusion" because let's face it, developers are greedy. Especially the big top famous developers like Konami, Capcom, Square Enix, etc. They'd be stupid to NOT block their games.

I'm frankly bummed out about next gen. Nintendo better not commit this mistake with the successor of the Wii U. Cause fuck them if they do it. Between this used games issue and general lack of backwards compatibility gaming is going to the dogs.

Used games aren't a terrible practice. It's certainly not killing the industry as a few people make it seem. Not to mention borrowing games from a friend also falls under this "used game" category.

And while it may not be worth purchasing a used copy of a new title ("Great, I get to save $5"), purchasing a used copy of a game 3 or 4 year old game for $10 is pretty sweet, especially considering they're more than likely not going to be printing new copies of most any 4 year old game.

>>174975
Pretty much this. All the complaints about Used games come from entitled publishers jealous of Gamestop's money.

Someday I hope there's some kind of brick and mortar store a la record stores, where if a person had, for example, never owned a NES, they could just walk in and buy a gently used one and some games for a decent price. I know it has almost no chance in hell of happening, but I'm old-fashioned and wary of eBay.

A good chunk of the console games I own are used. We never had the money to buy a shitton of games, and usually couldn't unless it went down to $20 or so. I still prefer the old-school word of mouth, "here, let me lend you this game I just finished" way of getting friends into a game you like. I think it still works.

>>174977
>Someday I hope there's some kind of brick and mortar store
..is this what people believe? That these places don't exist? That they will in the future?

, _, rip video games

The Devil's Halibut - Used Games

I don't blame the used game stores. There was a market for their services and they did the entrepreneurial thing by filling it. But I think that it's pretty apparent that they aren't good for the industry side of gaming, and I can't fault companies like Microsoft and Sony for taking steps to discourage the reselling of their products.

>>174979
Kinda this. TotalBiscuit raises some valid points in his video about how used videogames are different from pretty much every other form of used goods out there. I still prefer to buy games used because they're cheaper, but from a developer/publisher standpoint it really CAN make a large difference in the amount of money a game makes them.

>>174979
>they aren't good for the industry side of gaming
People say this. But what does it mean in a deeper sense? Does it simply mean that they aren't getting as much money as they want? Is disallowing consumers to reuse games on another device really worth the extra funds they would get? It's pretty clear, to me at least, that budget is not exactly equal to a games quality.

>>174978
No no, I mean I want brick and mortar stores to never go away. I don't like the idea of not being able to go home with physical media in my hand.

>>174981
The proliferation of Gamestop style used games treadmills, mixed with stuff like Steam sales means that as video game development costs go up (and they DO keep going up, because 90 fps 2160p graphics aren't going to produce themselves), less money per unit is going to the developers, which is basically the reason why so many studios died in the last few years, and why video games are increasingly either massive, annualized surefire hits or limited scoped indie games.

>>174979
>they aren't good for the industry side of gaming

They don't have much of an effect at all. Pricing new games more competitively would be a better answer than DRM, but the publishers are afraid to move on it (due to the possibility of losing profits or Gamestop shitting on anyone who tries.)

>>174984
>and they DO keep going up, because 90 fps 2160p graphics aren't going to produce themselves

Framerate and resolution are hardware based. They don't cost extra money to achieve.

>>174984
I wouldn't mind graphical quality stagnating for awhile (or even going back a step in quality) if the writing and gameplay increased. If we reduced lag. If we had better artwork to begin with so when the game aged, it still looked good.

The upsides of eliminating the used game market:
(For Consumers)
....
(For Companies)
* The value of games remains high.
* Even unfinished stinkers can cost up to half as much as a modern classic.
* Alternatives to buying new games go down as accessibility to cheap games goes away.
* Incentives to buying new games go up.
* The ability to recall or cease distribution of games is more effective.
* Incentive to buy a newer console goes up.
* Necessity to play by the new rules of the new console.
* Hello, half a grand console investment.
* Hello, Gold Account investment.
* Owning the means of digital distribution- pay brick&mortar stores and even overseas shipping near to nothing.
* Owning the means of regulation. Why be like Nintendo, and take Game Genie to court, when you can simply refuse anything operation on your proprietary network in order to participate? Spend 3K on just the account to use the system, think twice about getting banned from it.

The reason why there's a war against the used game market is because there's a difference between purchased property and product. If you don't own the product, physically, independent of legal entanglement and contract to treat the data and etc. a certain way, you don't possess it. You can't do whatever you want with it. The game industry heads feel access to older models and distractions from their new products is simply greed and arrogance. Video games you can privately purchase and can be played offline aren't threatening to new business, they're threatening to a sense of entitlement and control and domination the industry feels is due to it.

They aren't protecting themselves, they're trying to ensure dominance tomorrow.

Consumer rights > Corporate rights
Right of First Sale is a consumer right.
Ergo, that right trumps all else.

This includes digital things, because when I buy a game and download it I physically own the bits and bytes on my hard drive, and I should be able to sell and trade those, as well.

Developers deserve to stop me selling my game as much as a car dealership deserves to stop me selling my car. Now, they have no requirement to service the game after I sell it (support, or allow the second user to play online) because those are services (as opposed to a good) included as part of the original price, and that can be non-transferable by a license.

>>174984
>Steam sales
It's funny you mention that, because every report I've seen about those (first or third party) basically say that during sales everyone makes a fuckton of cash.

If developers are having a hard time struggling in this market, they need to seriously re-evaluate how they approach game development and sales--perhaps as an entire industry. A copy of a movie goes for $30 (we'll focus on the Blu-Ray/AAA market). That movie will get you about 2.5 hours, plus a number of bonus features/extras. These extras range from an hour or two to dozens of hours, but most of this is fairly simple stuff like fliming setup/costumes, bloopers, or interviews. All of this is fairly cheap compared to the actual budget of the movie.

Meanwhile, a AAA game is expected to be about 10 hours or more, and that's just the main campaign. Often you have sidequests, optional objectives, or online multiplayer in addition to that, all for $60. AAA titles are easily surpassing the cost of most movies excepting the really CGI-heavy stuff like The Avengers or The Hobbit. So, compared to the passive movie, we're paying only twice the amount for at least four times the amount of entertainment (ignoring quality). Now, I'm not saying that high-end game should start off at $100 or more, but I think that the industry needs to shun using a flat MSRP for most titles. Titles should be released at a price relative to their cost and their potential sales. This means that some games, like Cowadooty, might actually cost less because it's such a huge seller. This absolutely would not happen, at best they'd keep it the base $60 that everyone is used to now. Other games that are a new IP but have the same amount of money poured into them would have to start at a higher price point to try to make back their money sooner.

Which leads me to the next change: not every new game needs to be AAA. While this might make it a harder sell, those more willing to take a chance on new IPs will be okay with an A title, especially if it's relatively cheaper than other titles. I think companies should focus on putting out shorter, cheaper titles that have new IPs, stories, or gameplay, where assets are often reused and perhaps voice acting skipped to cut down on costs. Games that sell well enough can go on to become AAA attempts. My thinking is that a small studio would put out 2-4 A games a year and one AAA every 1.5-2 years. This can be further bolstered by making phone games that are free or cheap and just implement one new game mechanic for the purpose of testing or testing, using the minor ad revenue or income to supplement such testing.

Focusing studios on trying to churn out AAA after AAA is going to burn out the big devs and publishers. It won't cause another video game crash, though, because smaller studios and indies will happily step in and pick up the slack.

>>174990
Suppose there came a future where the console companies switched this all around.
A new system comes out. This new system is, for all intents and purposes, marketed as a game system. You play video games on it. Functionally, that's only part true.
What you actually buy is an input/output machine. It doesn't actually play games. It lets you fiddle with a controller, it lets you see feedback on the screen. It also connects to your internet.
The next part you buy is the Account, ala X-Box Live Gold. This enables you access on a monthly basis to their proprietary network. That's just access to their private network. This network allows you access to an aisle of games. You can buy access to these games.
You do not physically download any of these games. You don't need to, you are not permitted to. All that is yours is the input/output device and the Account signifying you've purchased access to these games.
The actual hosting of the games and the code sits in the company's servers. You interface with the game only by way of the controller and the television, but the company retains all rights and privileges and ownership over the games, much like a monthly access arcade.

What would the rights of a consumer be, then?

>>174991
>Suppose there came a future
I don't have to: http://www.onlive.com/

It would work the same was as Netflix. This turns gaming into a service vs. a good; another analogy, if the Netflix one doesn't cut it, is paying to see Shakespeare performed instead of just buying a book for the play instead. (Though this isn't as good as the Netflix analogy, as the medium and experience are quite different.) And this is fine; with a service like OnLive (regardless of the quality of OnLive itself), I pay a monthly fee with the expectation that I'm renting. However, it's not just the games I'm renting, but also their remote hardware to render and interact. It's exactly like WoW (minus the rendering), except single-player.

In fact, renting is a limited time ownership agreement for a pro-rated sum, which is why you can't claim ownership on rented titles, either. Same goes for anything else that can be rented, from a car to a lawn mower to a sofa.

But this bullshit about how I actually buy a "license," especially when I'm getting a physical disc, is just that: bullshit. I don't buy a "license" for a power drill or a car, I completely own the item in question. Not to mention that both the entertainment and gaming industries have been happy to flip-flop, depending on whether considering a license or a purchase suits their current needs more.

>>174992
>I don't buy a "license" for a power drill or a car, I completely own the item in question.
If there was a huge used car market that was completely separate from the car dealerships, you might have to. Can we stop comparing games to things that aren't games and using that comparison alone as an argument against games having a different ownership model?

>>174996
>If there was a huge used car market that was completely separate from the car dealerships, you might have to.
There is, and I don't. There's individual reselling, which (AFAIK) doesn't involve the dealer at all so long as the car is paid off before being sold. Then you have lots of smaller lots that deal only in used cars, many with no particular brand. (That many of these are shady is beside the point.)

>>174996
Law is all about precedent, so no.

>>174999
>Law is all about precedent, so no.
We're not discussing legality here, so that argument makes no sense to me.

And none of the comparisons being made hold up under scrutiny because modern console video games are very different from every other product on the market in terms of how they are sold, used, and resold. They aren't like movies or music, which get revenue from many sources in addition to home sales, they aren't like physical products like cars and books because a video game does not deteriorate with use, and they aren't like video games in the past because the prevalence of online multiplayer and content updates means that cost for the developer doesn't end once the game is launched.

Let's take a hypothetical and say that some FPS is released for a modern game console that supports online multiplayer. I buy this game new and after a while I get board of it and sell it back to a game retailer. They then sell it to someone else looking to buy the game. They have effectively doubled the time and money the developer will have to spend maintaining the online multiplayer (and all other content) for that one copy of the game ''without giving the developer another dime''. And game retailers are encouraged to do this because used games are where they have the highest profit margin. This drives the price of new games up and leads to fewer people buying the game at all.

>>175002
If your product has online play, that if your problem. It's a service you chose to implement, and it's not the consumer's fault nor obligation to pay extra for it. You can argue that they could charge a subscription, but that's as far as that goes. The consumer is permissed to play the game as long or as often as they please throughout the lifetime of the game, until that server is shut off. It doesn't matter who actually owns the game, it doesn't matter how many hours of the day they play. That excuse does not hold water.

What you've got to understand is that now when you buy a game, you don't own shit besides a "right" to play it. The disk is just a fuckin' side effect.

>>175008
No, what I understand is that that's how the publishers want it to be, so they can have more control over (or purely squash) the second-hand market, not how it should be. Right now it's just an understanding, I don't think that such licenses have been challenged in court yet in the US. (They were in the EU, where they ruled that digital sales fall under RoFS, so companies had to give consumers a way to resell their bits.)

I still don't see what was wrong with EA's online pass model, truthfully. Except that they sometimes forgot to package the game with the fucking online pass...

>>175011
While I hate EA, I thought that the online pass was a good move. If server maintenance is paid for by continued sales, then second-hand certainly hurts in this regard. (If it's an initial investment to be used over X years, then it doesn't.) It's a good way to show continued interest in the online servers beyond simple player count, and also is an effective and, IMO, proper anti-piracy method.

With online games, you're not just paying for the disc and it's contents, but for the company's central servers and services. So long as you can buy the game used and still have access to all the offline content, I have no problem with the idea. I think, as do others, that EA did away with online passes only because both Microsoft and Sony have built game-locking into their consoles, rendering it moot.

I actually didn't mind online passes, and I thought they were one of the smartest DRM methods this generation.

Used games are only a problem because major publishers still cling to the idea of uniform game prices at around 60 USD - regardless of the game's actual QUALITY- even though everyone plans ahead for DLC for almost every game these days despite their initial success. If more people tried to give greater incentives to buying the game new and sticking with it, such as the ridiculous amount of perks that come with PAYDAY 2's Career Criminal Edition Pre-order - which is also under the price of a regular edition console game at launch, than they'd have a leg to stand on against piracy.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218620/

But obviously the consumer and the entire cottage industry of USED GAMES is to blame for piracy and GameStop. Not the publisher who makes their games too expensive to sell well if it doesn't pull in 10 billion in the first week or the console companies who don't know how to actually market to normal and gamer audiences at the same time.

>>175018
Chicken or the egg: Do people buy games used because new games are expensive, or are new games expensive to make up for the fact that multiple people will buy the same copy used?

People buy used games because new games are expensive.
New games are expensive because "designing" them has bloated to disgusting levels of cost to pump out those "AAA BLOCKBUSTER" titles.

>>175026

Irrelevant question. The key to breaking the chicken/egg cycle is in the publisher's hands. As amply demonstrated by the popularity of Steam and similar digital distribution formats, if you make games affordable, even only periodically, the players stop caring about used games.

>>175026
I think your blood is composed purely of the kool-aid you drink.

Are they still ignoring Digital Sales in their numbers currently?

>>175033
Funny how inquiring as to the reason behind a point made by someone else is labeled as irrelevant while the original claim is left unchallenged.

But I wholeheartedly agree that limiting or removing the sale of used games would need to be accompanied by a drop in prices to be in any way beneficial. That's the same conclusion drawn by this study done on the Japanese market: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/nyu-used-games-study/

>>175050
Are who ignoring digital sales in what numbers?

Games don't work without the systems on which they're played, so it just makes sense to me that people behind them should be the one setting the rules, with the consumer free to choose to use their services or not. And I just can't get mad at undertandable business practices.

The anti-used games movement will never stop being stupid mainly because the mindset behind it is about equating a regular part of the free market to a CRIME. No amount of bullshit damage control will make the idiotic "used games are just like piracy" propaganda outbursts un-exist.

Video game companies need to adapt to the market instead of demanding that the market changes to suit their business models. I can only hope that the idiotic fight against the customers ends up backfiring hard. Preferably before the stupidity seeps into other areas (imagine the next usable Windows having the xbone's online requirement).

>>175008
There's a big difference between understanding something and accepting it.

>>175026
>Do people buy games used because new games are expensive

Obviously not, I mean what kind of LOSER needs to look at the price of their entertainment? Poor people just steal it anyway, right?

>>175053
...and thanks to people like you, things can only get worse!

Thanks for voting for anti-features and feature removal! Keep up the good work!

>>175055
I'm not denying it'd be worse; that's why I'm not planning to give them my money if they actually do implement that stuff. I'm just saying I see no reason to feel wronged if they did.

>>175052

It's an irrelevant question because the chicken/egg question is a historical one: "Which one first created these initial conditions?" This discussion is about the current state. It doesn't matter which came first.

>>175052
Yeah. Maybe the companies should experiment with that model.
The reason the price of PS2 games dropped before was because Sony was overcharging for their stuff, if I'm recalling my pedantic video game news from 8-10 years ago correctly.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/nyu-used-games-study/

>>175221
This seems legitimate, but I wager the used game market is simply impossible to kill. Getting rid of the brick and mortar of Gamestop or cutting into the reseller business would just hurt the reselling. eBay would start thriving hotter, local dealers would pick up business but not grow beyond a certain point.
and the end result would still be people choose to forego new games even more, because of the practices being used to screw over the consumers. Microsoft is in for a world of pain, but Sony might hang around. Depending how duplicitous the 'third party decision' thing is.