There's a petition for asking Microsoft To Bring Back Xbox One's DRM

I never wanted or advocated for Microsoft to reverse any of the seemingly good ideas they had, I just took issue with the loss of rights in physical media. But why not allow people to opt into the proposed program or opt out if they need to be offline (like military folks) or if they just chose not to be a part of that. I certainly wasn't against the ideas that Microsoft was putting forward, I just didn't like being forced into them. Why they seemingly threw all of them away is beyond me. I have serious doubts that Microsoft was going to create this consumer friendly marketplace where everyone can share and games were cheaper... but I wasn't against them trying.


As for posting the trolls... nah. They want a reaction out of me and they aren't going to get one. Posting them would be giving them what they want.

There is definitely a lot of room to innovate in the digital space and I hope someone does. It's just my personal belief (that a lot of people agreed with, certainly) that they didn't have to throw owners rights of physical media under the bus to reach them.


I mean people keep saying "it was going to be like steam!" I don't see why it still can't be. In fact, and I know this is rare, but currently Alice is on sale on steam for $5. It's on sale on the PSN for $4. You don't need to strip rights to be like steam, or in this rare case... better.

Agreed, you were always in my group of 'reasonable advocates' that were arguing for the right reasons :)
 
You'll see fewer and fewer games that are designed around single player. You already have. I mean, isn't the "6 hour corridor shooter" one of the stereotypical modern console games? And isn't "tacked on multiplayer" also becoming a bigger and bigger complaint? Spec Ops: the Line, for instance? Games that focused on a single player experience, like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, were once fairly common. Now they are not, and they will get even rarer. Didn't EA say they were done making single player games? This is why.

I don't know where you got the EA is done making single player games when they have both Dragon Age and Mirror's Edge in the pipeline. Using Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as examples that single player experiences were fairly common back then as opposed to now is like saying 100% of the games on the SNES were single player experiences.

Now that online is readily accessible to everyone and is a large part of consoles, multiplayer, tacked on and otherwise is often an expectation. That's not going to change just because used games are gone. We aren't suddenly going to just see 40 hour CoD games with no multiplayer. Just as it is now, there will be some games with multiplayer (CoD, Battlefield, etc.), and games with just single player (Bioshock, Vanquish, etc.). That's just comparing shooters, a genre that is the best tailored for multiplayer anyway. Look elsewhere and you'll see that single player games are more prevalent than games with some "tacked-on multiplayer". RPGs have to deal with the used games market just the same as shooters, and it's not like you see RPGs being cut down to 6 hours with some tacked on multiplayer put into them. No, they are still 40 hour plus single player games.

To your 6 hour shooter remark. Why is that ND can make a 15 hour campaign and still add multiplayer? Is their budget higher than CoD or Battlefield? How is it that used games isn't somehow dragging down the quality of the single player there? Used games is a scapegoat for developer laziness, cost-cutting, or simply making the conscious decision to make their single player campaigns 6 hours because they know a majority of their players will jump to multiplayer anyway.

DLC would certainly still exist, used games or no. But since games could survive and succeed without it, you'd see a mix. Now everything relies on DLC as a revenue stream. And we're talking about retail games here, not digital - games that use DLC to compensate for used games. Obviously, digital titles don't have to compensate. And that's why some digital titles have DLC and others don't, and they can be successful either way.

You already see a mix. Just as digital titles, there are retail titles with DLC and without. If you think every retail game relies on DLC as a revenue stream you aren't looking hard enough.

I'm not sure what your point is regarding the pinball tables. We do sell packs at a discount. And the margins on them are quite small. Each table takes months for several people working together to produce, which is why it took us over two years to produce all the existing Marvel tables. I really don't see how that is equivalent to charging someone $5 for a consumable in-game powerup. No doubt that this happens with many digital games. But what I am saying is that it will become more prevalent on consoles as publishers search for ways to mitigate the effect of used games. Same scenario as with content being pushed to DLC - it will happen to some degree regardless, but now it will happen more.

I don't get why you keep saying this or that "will happen" as game makers try to mitigate used games. Used games are PREVALENT now and have been since Gamestop came into existence, shouldn't game makers already be mitigating to the max already? Yet I don't see all that many examples of your strawman of the "$5 consumable in-game powerup". How prevalent is that even in retail games that have to combat used games? Answer: it's almost non-existent.

My point with raising your pinball tables is that there's an opportunity to make money why not continue selling tables. It's not like you guys couldn't create 100 tables and sold it as one big collection for $59.99, but no instead you guys decided to sell them piecemeal. I bet at least one reason is because it creates a continuing revenue stream. Yet somehow you are painting DLC in big retail games as some short of negative, as if they aren't also entitled to create a continuing revenue stream. As if poor little EA and Activision are being forced against their will by the big bad used market to hoist DLC on us. If you are not completely out of touch with us gamers, you'll already know that not a single of us is buying that. You guys all have that right. The disappearance of used games is not somehow going to cause big devs like EA, Ubi, and Activision to simply decide not to enforce that right.

However, publishers will also see this as a solution to the used game issue, and thus it will become more common on consoles as well, sucking away investment capital and paying users from retail games.

Publishers have been dealing with used games for over a decade now and the F2P model has been well known for at least half a decade. If this was going to be a viable strategy to combat used games, why do we still not see your vision of the future?
 
God...I hope this petition gets some momentum and Microsoft changes their position again.

It will be brilliant to watch.

I don't think there's any possibility of that, but perhaps there is a possibility that this petition will hasten the return of the Family Share plan (whatever that may be). Microsoft knows or should know (unless they are completely incompetent) that it can still be done without any of the draconian DRM that existed previously.
 
As others have already said, it doesn't make sense why MS couldn't have just kept the family share plan with digital purchases through their Xbox Live Shop. What really doesn't make sense is, why didn't they just design this all along so that, they gave people options. Yes..gasp...options. So people can CHOOSE to opt out their ability to resell their physical disc, if they install their game to the cloud. And if someone didn't want those features, then they could just play the physical disc like they always did (no 24 hour check in, but they don't get the cloud features like family share plan).

Those defending the DRM practices, just don't make any sense to me. Also, why are people so vehemently feeling like they were robbed of something. MS never got into actual details about what Family Share plan was. And the more details were coming out, the more we were getting conflicting information. People at MS could never just sit down and tell us exactly what it was. You would think if this was the real deal, it would be their #1 feature on the system. That they would be pushing this hard, and it would be at the top of their sales pitch, not in the middle/towards the back.

I'm just skeptical that it was ever what people thought it was (if a thing at all). And I think MS actually used this strategically, to pull some heat off them once they reversed their decision. Because now it's not that a major company fell back on their terrible policies that limited customers. It's that, they decided to listen to the people, but that the people didn't really understand the future of gaming. And that we'll just have to wait another generation to get these amazing features.
 
Think it's a little naive to assume MS isn't reading this very thread

They will take the end results of that petition with a grain of salt as they know some of the signatures were less than truthful

Besides doubt any large corporation (sony included) would really listen to something like this

They use their own metrics to determine strategy (focus-testing, professional surveying etc.)
 
I don't think there's any possibility of that, but perhaps there is a possibility that this petition will hasten the return of the Family Share plan (whatever that may be). Microsoft knows or should know (unless they are completely incompetent) that it can still be done without any of the draconian DRM that existed previously.

There is absolutely no reason to believe the Family Share plan was anything remotely close to what the "interweb" perceived it to be.

It's not like Microsoft has a history of being bulletproof with their policies or erring on the side of the consumer.

Flipping on the DRM-always online plan allowed them to drop the Family Share concept which I really don't believe they were even close to working out or successfully implementing. They were about six months away and couldn't explain it properly. If it was going to be something revolutionary they would have been able to speak to it and provide details.

However...I hope they bring that back too so that all of the whiners can see that their perception of what Family Sharing would be is nothing like what they're getting from Microsoft.

They use their own metrics to determine strategy (focus-testing, professional surveying etc.)

Yep.

Greed + Ignorance + Hubris = Profit

If profit starts to drop...lower greed, ignorance and hubris with micro-adjustments until profits are at acceptable levels.
 
There is absolutely no reason to believe the Family Share plan was anything remotely close to what the "interweb" perceived it to be.

It's not like Microsoft has a history of being bulletproof with their policies or erring on the side of the consumer.

Flipping on the DRM-always online plan allowed them to drop the Family Share concept which I really don't believe they were even close to working out or successfully implementing. They were about six months away and couldn't explain it properly. If it was going to be something revolutionary they would have been able to speak to it and provide details.

However...I hope they bring that back too so that all of the whiners can see that their perception of what Family Sharing would be is nothing like what they're getting from Microsoft.

I agree with you, but if they do bring it back it'll have to be full games now since their executives stupidly stated that it was full games. Imagine how pissed the real petitioners will be if MS announces that the family plan is back but the game sharing is only for the first hour of the game.

Without these comments from people like Greenberg, this petition wouldn't exist because their entire belief in the holy family plan is based on those few comments after the DRM was axed.
 
I agree with you, but if they do bring it back it'll have to be full games now since their executives stupidly stated that it was full games. Imagine how pissed the real petitioners will be if MS announces that the family plan is back but the game sharing is only for the first hour of the game.

Without these comments from people like Greenberg, this petition wouldn't exist because their entire belief in the holy family plan is based on those few comments after the DRM was axed.

Wow I never thought about it like that

It would basically be a put up or shut up to MS if they did another 180

If Family Sharing wasn't all that it was told to us to be by their very own people, not sure MS would ever be able to save face again (totally believe Family sharing was bs btw)

No one would trust a word that MS says (not that many do now though)
 
I agree with you, but if they do bring it back it'll have to be full games now since their executives stupidly stated that it was full games. Imagine how pissed the real petitioners will be if MS announces that the family plan is back but the game sharing is only for the first hour of the game.


Oh man...and if it IS full games, the publishers will lose their fucking minds.

Basically if you and I are "family" and I buy games monthly/weekly....I'm your Gamefly.

I'll be really, REALLY surprised if Microsoft is somehow able to slip that past the publishers. or they go weak-sauce and say, "It's up to the publishers." Which most publishers, I assume; will squash that shit quick.

MAYBE Microsoft could do it with the games that THEY publish...but I think that's all you'd see...which wouldn't be bad but once again, not anywhere close to what they implied.


If Family Sharing wasn't all that it was told to us to be by their very own people, not sure MS would ever be able to save face again (totally believe Family sharing was bs btw)

No one would trust a word that MS says (not that many do now though)

With the 180 they did, I don't see how anyone can respect them from a consumer point of view let alone trust them.
 
You mean like no one is respecting nor trusting Sony after they 180'd and cut backwards compatibility on the PS3?

There was a lot of anger/hate about that as well as Sony's decision to remove the other OS

And the whole PSN hack

I guess the lesson is time heals most things

I know some still soured by one of the above PS betrayals or whatever you call them

Maybe people would forgive MS for doing another 180 but if Family Sharing wasn't as good as proponents were selling it as, I think that might take a LONG time to forgive and forget
 
Not quite the same situation but it all comes down to degrees of fucking up. Microsoft is currently outpacing Sony when it comes to fucking up.

So no matter the amount of fuck up, if one company is fucking up just slightly more than another, then that company is placed in the pillory while the other company is lying in the hammock eating from a cluster of grapes while listening to praise from the peasants? :)
 
Ah, "their" argument. Ooooo, I'm in the wrong "they". How silly of me. Sounds exclusive. Where can I kiss some asses to get into the correct group of people with the correct opinions and arguments?

Just open your eyes to the full details. Sony dropped BC to deliver the price customers wanted.

MS with their arrogance are just like Sony with PS3 IMO...mind you at least the PS3 wasn't proprietary hell.
 
Just open your eyes to the full details. Sony dropped BC to deliver the price customers wanted.

MS with Xbone are just like Sony with PS3 IMO...mind you at least the PS3 wasn't proprietary hell.

Thanks for replying with something else than a knee-jerk reaction.

My original point though was to try to force a more philosophical view (just like you mention at the end of your post btw, yes). Because I honestly don't see much difference in the big picture between big companies like MS and Sony. They all want to make money, and they all want us to like them. They all make mistakes, and we always tend to forget them. The world moves on. But yeah, Microsoft has a history of arrogance, like a typical huge corporation sometimes still living in the 90's. And so does Sony of course. Their proprietary Memory Sticks is one of their more infamous examples of that.
 
So no matter the amount of fuck up, if one company is fucking up just slightly more than another, then that company is placed in the pillory while the other company is lying in the hammock eating from a cluster of grapes while listening to praise from the peasants? :)

You got it!
 
Thanks for replying with something else than a knee-jerk reaction.

My original point though was to try to force a more philosophical view (just like you mention at the end of your post btw, yes). Because I honestly don't see much difference in the big picture between big companies like MS and Sony. They all want to make money, and they all want us to like them. They all make mistakes, and we always tend to forget them. The world moves on. But yeah, Microsoft has a history of arrogance, like a typical huge corporation sometimes still living in the 90's. And so does Sony of course. Their proprietary Memory Sticks is one of their more infamous examples of that.

Everything is down to personal experience. I mean, for me the memory cards was the norm...nothing new so didn't upset me. However I wouldn't have got a PS3 due to price but my boss was in Japan at launch so I got a bargain...and I liked the non proprietary features. With X360 MS screwed me over from day one...I've had no end of issues from no launch unit due to shortages, having to pay £50 for a RGB scart lead due to shortages and of course MS changing the lead type from Xbox...then of course RRoD drm issues etc.

I don't like the way MS are being with Xbone, conversely Sony are being so open, showing they are admitting endless wrongs like controller and man that RRP is a dream!
 
You seem to be handily forgetting that people use the money from trading in used games to buy new games. If removing used games decreases people's purchasing power anyway you've got nowhere.

Perhaps the lower sales expectations for a digital game are for just this reason?

Used games don't necessarily increase total gaming spend, and they don't necessarily increase the entertainment for money that a customer gets. They do necessarily divert revenue from creators to middlemen, which affects what the creators decide to create and the investors to invest in. This is not hard stuff.

Also, it's a faulty assumption that new game pricing would follow the same curve vs. time as it does in the current ecosystem. The economic forces affecting them would be different.

And you seem to be forgetting the fact the the traded-in games are then purchased later. They're not taken out of circulation. The fact that some small percentage feeds back into new games is irrelevant. It's the total spend on new games that is the issue that pushes publishers into these alternative monetization methods or away from retail altogether.

And I get far more entertainment for my money and far more diversity on digital platforms with no used games than from ecosystems where used games exist. It doesn't matter if it's a closed or open platform, console, PC, mobile, whatever. The one unifying factor is that I can't resell the game. That is the reality. You may not like it, you may think it's all some big conspiracy, you may have some exotic explanation involving theories that would make any economist blanch, but it's really just simple economic incentives at work.
 
You guys asking for the old drm back know this would have sunk x1 right? There's no way in hell the x1 would have succeeded with these policies in place. Gamestops, best buys, even Amazon would have actively promoted the PS4 and probably steer people away from the x1. Not only that but the pretty the entire internet would be against them. They would be lucky if they matched Wii U sales. Surprisingly this would probably be good for Nintendo as many gamers would get a Wii U as their second console.
 
And I get far more entertainment for my money and far more diversity on digital platforms with no used games than from ecosystems where used games exist. It doesn't matter if it's a closed or open platform, console, PC, mobile, whatever. The one unifying factor is that I can't resell the game. That is the reality. You may not like it, you may think it's all some big conspiracy, you may have some exotic explanation involving theories that would make any economist blanch, but it's really just simple economic incentives at work.

And if it were true that used games majorly drove platforms, then all the digital platforms would be bankrupt. Steam would be dead, iTunes, Android, PSN, XBLA, etc. etc.

If people want games, they generally buy them. Yes, they may lose some purchases initially because Jimmy 4th grader can't scratch together $40 until his birthday present, but they'll also sell more new titles over the long haul over the months and years with no need to physically store or warehouse or reissue or remanufacture games. That story of used games fueling new games comes from GameStop execs. It's never been proven.
 
They can kill that noise! Shouldn't the petition be for MS to lower the price of the X1? This petition strikes me as a move to further damage X1's chances in the market.
 
I don't know where you got the EA is done making single player games when they have both Dragon Age and Mirror's Edge in the pipeline. Using Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as examples that single player experiences were fairly common back then as opposed to now is like saying 100% of the games on the SNES were single player experiences.

Now that online is readily accessible to everyone and is a large part of consoles, multiplayer, tacked on and otherwise is often an expectation. That's not going to change just because used games are gone. We aren't suddenly going to just see 40 hour CoD games with no multiplayer. Just as it is now, there will be some games with multiplayer (CoD, Battlefield, etc.), and games with just single player (Bioshock, Vanquish, etc.). That's just comparing shooters, a genre that is the best tailored for multiplayer anyway. Look elsewhere and you'll see that single player games are more prevalent than games with some "tacked-on multiplayer". RPGs have to deal with the used games market just the same as shooters, and it's not like you see RPGs being cut down to 6 hours with some tacked on multiplayer put into them. No, they are still 40 hour plus single player games.

To your 6 hour shooter remark. Why is that ND can make a 15 hour campaign and still add multiplayer? Is their budget higher than CoD or Battlefield? How is it that used games isn't somehow dragging down the quality of the single player there? Used games is a scapegoat for developer laziness, cost-cutting, or simply making the conscious decision to make their single player campaigns 6 hours because they know a majority of their players will jump to multiplayer anyway.



You already see a mix. Just as digital titles, there are retail titles with DLC and without. If you think every retail game relies on DLC as a revenue stream you aren't looking hard enough.



I don't get why you keep saying this or that "will happen" as game makers try to mitigate used games. Used games are PREVALENT now and have been since Gamestop came into existence, shouldn't game makers already be mitigating to the max already? Yet I don't see all that many examples of your strawman of the "$5 consumable in-game powerup". How prevalent is that even in retail games that have to combat used games? Answer: it's almost non-existent.

My point with raising your pinball tables is that there's an opportunity to make money why not continue selling tables. It's not like you guys couldn't create 100 tables and sold it as one big collection for $59.99, but no instead you guys decided to sell them piecemeal. I bet at least one reason is because it creates a continuing revenue stream. Yet somehow you are painting DLC in big retail games as some short of negative, as if they aren't also entitled to create a continuing revenue stream. As if poor little EA and Activision are being forced against their will by the big bad used market to hoist DLC on us. If you are not completely out of touch with us gamers, you'll already know that not a single of us is buying that. You guys all have that right. The disappearance of used games is not somehow going to cause big devs like EA, Ubi, and Activision to simply decide not to enforce that right.



Publishers have been dealing with used games for over a decade now and the F2P model has been well known for at least half a decade. If this was going to be a viable strategy to combat used games, why do we still not see your vision of the future?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/no-single-player-only-games-ea-labels-boss-6394663

It's true that there is more multiplayer because online services are more widespread and robust. But that doesn't preclude the idea that publishers are shifting that way for other reasons, too. You mention RPGs. These, especially JRPGs, are far less common this gen. Does that not support my point?

As far as ND games go...the exception that proves the rule, no? I've never said anything would be 100% one way or the other. And this is 1st party stuff, where part of the goal of making the game is to enhance the Playstation brand.

"Developer laziness" - oh. For a second there, I thought I should take your response seriously. Next time, lead with this so that reasonable people can save themselves some time by ignoring everything that follows.

Used games are a much bigger part of the industry now than in the past. The bigger the bite they take, they more publishers are going to find ways to get money through other means. Again, this is not difficult stuff.
 
http://www.gamespot.com/news/no-single-player-only-games-ea-labels-boss-6394663

It's true that there is more multiplayer because online services are more widespread and robust. But that doesn't preclude the idea that publishers are shifting that way for other reasons, too. You mention RPGs. These, especially JRPGs, are far less common this gen. Does that not support my point?

First of all your assumption that JRPGs are far less common isn't even correct. I don't even know what metric you are using, but let's take a look at Tales and Final Fantasy, two of the largest JRPG series, their output this gen is not any less than previous generations, if anything, it is actually higher. So please do not use false assumptions to somehow assert that they support your point. Even if your assertions were true (which they are patently not), are you really claiming that JRPGs are less common because of used games, rather than the fact that production for JRPGs is much, much more intensive than they were in the past, combined with a decreased demand for JRPGs compared to what it was in the past? I've never heard once from any JRPG developer than they were making fewer JRPGs because of used games.

"Developer laziness" - oh. For a second there, I thought I should take your response seriously. Next time, lead with this so that reasonable people can save themselves some time by ignoring everything that follows.

Damn, what a condescending response. I ask you a number of various questions regarding your stance that you just conveniently ignore, but you lock onto this (and ignore the fact that I listed cost-cutting and a conscious decision to cut single player short in response to player preference as reasons in addition) and respond with this trash? Because developers are some sort of sacrosanct sector of the workforce that is completely immune to the human condition known as "laziness" right? You can say with certainty that poor games or poor game design decisions in the history of games has never been due to the laziness of the people behind them? Your response belies the kind of person you are.

Used games are a much bigger part of the industry now than in the past. The bigger the bite they take, they more publishers are going to find ways to get money through other means. Again, this is not difficult stuff.

Ah, I apologize that all of this is so simple and I am not in your enlightened position to clearly see what's so obviously there. I thought we were having a discussion, not a talking down to. I'm done with your condescending drivel and your studio's games if this is the kind of representative your studio employs.
 
For people complaining about poor quality campaigns in CoD...do you guys actually play them or are you just repeating what others have said?
 
For people complaining about poor quality campaigns in CoD...do you guys actually play them or are you just repeating what others have said?

Don't know if you are responding to me, but to clarify I think the CoD campaigns are fine, they are good in the way a summer blockbuster are (huge explosions, adrenaline packed).

They are just short though, but my assertion is that it's pretty much a waste of resources for the developers to design that single player campaign any longer because there is not a demand for that long of a campaign coming from the CoD fanbase, generally. CoD fans are there for the multiplayer and the competition. The 6 hour campaign + multiplayer is not some sort of response to used games, but rather a response to player preference.
 
Used games don't necessarily increase total gaming spend, and they don't necessarily increase the entertainment for money that a customer gets. They do necessarily divert revenue from creators to middlemen, which affects what the creators decide to create and the investors to invest in. This is not hard stuff.

Also, it's a faulty assumption that new game pricing would follow the same curve vs. time as it does in the current ecosystem. The economic forces affecting them would be different.

And you seem to be forgetting the fact the the traded-in games are then purchased later. They're not taken out of circulation. The fact that some small percentage feeds back into new games is irrelevant. It's the total spend on new games that is the issue that pushes publishers into these alternative monetization methods or away from retail altogether.

And I get far more entertainment for my money and far more diversity on digital platforms with no used games than from ecosystems where used games exist. It doesn't matter if it's a closed or open platform, console, PC, mobile, whatever. The one unifying factor is that I can't resell the game. That is the reality. You may not like it, you may think it's all some big conspiracy, you may have some exotic explanation involving theories that would make any economist blanch, but it's really just simple economic incentives at work.

Oh dear, condescending much? You're entirely missing the point, it's not that they increase the total spend over what it would be if everyone bought new, it's that without that option the overall spend on new games would decrease. People only have so much disposable cash income, the idea that money would just appear in people's wallets so that they could buy the same number of games they do now but without any trade in to help them is what would make an economist blanch, it's not hard stuff, it's simple economic realities.

And if it were true that used games majorly drove platforms, then all the digital platforms would be bankrupt. Steam would be dead, iTunes, Android, PSN, XBLA, etc. etc.

If people want games, they generally buy them. Yes, they may lose some purchases initially because Jimmy 4th grader can't scratch together $40 until his birthday present, but they'll also sell more new titles over the long haul over the months and years with no need to physically store or warehouse or reissue or remanufacture games. That story of used games fueling new games comes from GameStop execs. It's never been proven.

Wut? How many people only spend on Steam in the sales (I do, I assume I am not unique), how many people prefer physical console games to digital (a lot, just look at the Xbone disaster). Plus you're making the bullshit $60 console game = $2 iOS game comparison again as if cost has nothing to do with it.

The story of used games fueling new games does not just come from Gamestop execs, how ridiculous, everyone I know does it, I've seen hundreds of people on this board saying they do it, so please...
 
The story of used games fueling new games does not just come from Gamestop execs, how ridiculous, everyone I know does it, I've seen hundreds of people on this board saying they do it, so please...

It comes from GameStop execs. (and other people with a stake in used games).

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21896

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...blishers-Beginning-to-Accept-Used-Game-Market

http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/20/d...utive-argues-used-games-drive-new-game-sales/

And then is filtered and repackaged and spread through a million sub-sites and forums and boards and the like. And then you hear other gamers say it and it becomes "fact." Truth is there is NO study or data to back it up beyond anecdotal reports from GameStop and like places. And that's like the cigarette companies telling us how smoking helped people's health in the 50's.
 
It comes from GameStop execs. (and other people with a stake in used games).

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21896

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...blishers-Beginning-to-Accept-Used-Game-Market

http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/20/d...utive-argues-used-games-drive-new-game-sales/

And then is filtered and repackaged and spread through a million sub-sites and forums and boards and the like. And then you hear other gamers say it and it becomes "fact." Truth is there is NO study or data to back it up beyond anecdotal reports from GameStop and like places. And that's like the cigarette companies telling us how smoking helped people's health in the 50's.

So there's no data to deny it either and you're just following your bias, whilst at the same time claiming you're an authority on the subject? OK.

I have a shelf full of games that I bought new that I would not possess if I could not have traded in my old games for credit. Presuming I'm not some kind of unique tradebot from the future, I'm fairly sure you can scale that up. The kicker is, some of them I'll probably never play and shouldn't have bought.

EDIT: Also, what you mean to say is public statements only come from Gamestop and the like, well no shit, how often do you see average Jo having access to a media outlet, and the publishers aren't going to say it because it would go against everything they've ever said, which is also not backed up with any data...
 
Personally I think if it had gone all DRM on everything

Say everything had DRM/no used games etc. PS4/X1/Wii U

There would be a hell of a lot of growing pains on the developer/publisher side of things

For one people are going to be immediately be turned off by the idea of a $60 price tag on a game, one in which they have little control over

So let's assume magically that XBLA and PSN will follow steam and have good prices but wait people are most happy to buy off steam during sales, during 10 - 20 % of the year when prices are reasonable for a DRM-laden copy of a game

Honestly I think if the scenario above had occurred, experienced franchises (Halo,COD, etc.) would be bought like they are now (maybe a little less) but a lot of lesser known games wouldn't

Used games are a defense against crap titles like it or not

If there is a game I don't like, that I don't enjoy then I can sell it/trade it/gift it etc.

That 60 dollar purchase doesn't necessarily automatically become useless to me

Hence why steam sales are so important because you can buy games for so cheap thus one or two flops aren't going to make it a waste on the whole

Will all publishers be happy if the majority of their games sales are at under the $20 mark?
 
Wut? How many people only spend on Steam in the sales (I do, I assume I am not unique), how many people prefer physical console games to digital (a lot, just look at the Xbone disaster). Plus you're making the bullshit $60 console game = $2 iOS game comparison again as if cost has nothing to do with it.

.

As for this, the reason Steam and iTunes and the like can offer the discounts is that there's virtually no cost to them in terms of releasing games once the storefront has hit a certain level of users and functionality. No shipping, no warehousing, no processing, relatively few employees, no brick-and-mortar, etc.

Currently there's no incentive for MS and Sony to undercut the prices that Amazon and brick-and-mortar stores can offer on physical copies by deeply discounting their digital prices. In some ways, doing so in any regular way endangers their relationships with those entities.

But as soon as its not assumed that the prices are thus somewhat artificially inflated by retailers taking their cuts and all the costs involved with manufacturing and shipping a retail product, their is more incentive to get competitive with similar platforms, lest they get left by the wayside in favor of more PC and mobile gaming. They'd have to compete with each other on 3rd party titles. Currenlty Sony and MS know the other isn't going to drop more than 10% or so beyond what the retailers are selling for for any length of time (and this i relatively rare), so they are in essence colluding to keep prices up.

You'd likely see a very quick change in console pricing. Exclusives and triple A titles and the sure sellers like COD still aren't going to drop quickly. But you'd see way more significant digital deals than we do now.

it's not different than mobile or digital download on PC, no matter the price point. It's different because physical choices exist with the percentages they have now.
 
Oh dear, condescending much? You're entirely missing the point, it's not that they increase the total spend over what it would be if everyone bought new, it's that without that option the overall spend on new games would decrease. People only have so much disposable cash income, the idea that money would just appear in people's wallets so that they could buy the same number of games they do now but without any trade in to help them is what would make an economist blanch, it's not hard stuff, it's simple economic realities.



Wut? How many people only spend on Steam in the sales (I do, I assume I am not unique), how many people prefer physical console games to digital (a lot, just look at the Xbone disaster). Plus you're making the bullshit $60 console game = $2 iOS game comparison again as if cost has nothing to do with it.

The story of used games fueling new games does not just come from Gamestop execs, how ridiculous, everyone I know does it, I've seen hundreds of people on this board saying they do it, so please...

You're assuming constant prices for new games, as if the removal of used games would have zero effect on their price. That's been shown not to be a good assumption in systems where games cannot be resold, as economic pressures typically push prices down faster and steeper.

And where is the evidence that the existence of used games results in higher spending on new games? Anecdotal from NeoGAF? Seriously? Gamestop only offered a very limited piece of data that only pertained to people receiving trade-in credit; it said nothing about all those people (the vast majority of their customers) who do not trade in games but do buy used games.

If it was so easily proved that used games result in higher new game revenues, why wouldn't Gamestop provide the full story instead of one misleading statistic? And why do used games contribute so much more to Gamestop's bottom line? New games were $1.8 billion. Total revenue was $9 billion. Taking some portion of that out for hardware and digital (they don't provide a breakdown), there's still no way that their used game business is a net positive for new game revenues. Only 17% of Gamestop's new game sales are from trade-in credit. It's fairly obvious that they do more than 17% of $1.8B in used game sales.
 
Discless gaming is a very attractive advantage, but is it worth putting all that power in the hands of Microsoft? The used games market provides significant leveraging against highly-priced videogames.
 
This policy would be a huge boon if introduced as an optional component, allowing all offline play, trade and reselling at the same time.
 
It replaces physical disc sharing, what's so baffling?

I don't know -- that people think it was real? If it's so real, and already built in (it wasn't; one exec said it wouldn't be ready for launch), why doesn't Microsoft go ahead with it?

I mean, it's an advantage over the competition, right? Why leave that on the table? Just to teach whiny gamers a lesson because "boo hoo! u didn't want our console vision!"

As with anything, show it working, or it doesn't exist. They never showed nor demonstrated it. It was vaporware, in the purest sense of the word.
 
As for this, the reason Steam and iTunes and the like can offer the discounts is that there's virtually no cost to them in terms of releasing games once the storefront has hit a certain level of users and functionality. No shipping, no warehousing, no processing, relatively few employees, no brick-and-mortar, etc.

Currently there's no incentive for MS and Sony to undercut the prices that Amazon and brick-and-mortar stores can offer on physical copies by deeply discounting their digital prices. In some ways, doing so in any regular way endangers their relationships with those entities.

But as soon as its not assumed that the prices are thus somewhat artificially inflated by retailers taking their cuts and all the costs involved with manufacturing and shipping a retail product, their is more incentive to get competitive with similar platforms, lest they get left by the wayside in favor of more PC and mobile gaming. They'd have to compete with each other on 3rd party titles. Currenlty Sony and MS know the other isn't going to drop more than 10% or so beyond what the retailers are selling for for any length of time (and this i relatively rare), so they are in essence colluding to keep prices up.

You'd likely see a very quick change in console pricing. Exclusives and triple A titles and the sure sellers like COD still aren't going to drop quickly. But you'd see way more significant digital deals than we do now.

it's not different than mobile or digital download on PC, no matter the price point. It's different because physical choices exist with the percentages they have now.

You do realise that Xbox Live and PSN both take a margin equivalent to a retailers cut? So the saving is on manufacture/distribution only. You're assuming that that saving (increase in profit) would be quickly abandoned by price reduction. I wish I had your optimism, I don't believe the Xbone had any plans to reduce the RRP of games, but please enlighten me if you can find anything other than vague pie in the sky promises.

I'm in the UK and prices drop quickly here even with physical media, you know why? Because the retailers are constantly applying pressure to the publishers to help them sell the stock through. You're proposing that removing those retailers and at the same time removing stock risk (the two primary drivers of price reduction) is going to lead to reduced prices within a closed market, good luck with that.

You're assuming constant prices for new games, as if the removal of used games would have zero effect on their price. That's been shown not to be a good assumption in systems where games cannot be resold, as economic pressures typically push prices down faster and steeper.

And where is the evidence that the existence of used games results in higher spending on new games? Anecdotal from NeoGAF? Seriously? Gamestop only offered a very limited piece of data that only pertained to people receiving trade-in credit; it said nothing about all those people (the vast majority of their customers) who do not trade in games but do buy used games.

If it was so easily proved that used games result in higher new game revenues, why wouldn't Gamestop provide the full story instead of one misleading statistic? And why do used games contribute so much more to Gamestop's bottom line? New games were $1.8 billion. Total revenue was $9 billion. Taking some portion of that out for hardware and digital (they don't provide a breakdown), there's still no way that their used game business is a net positive for new game revenues. Only 17% of Gamestop's new game sales are from trade-in credit. It's fairly obvious that they do more than 17% of $1.8B in used game sales.

I did assume constant prices for two reasons, a) all indications we have are that there wouldn't be any reductions in a console environment (see above), nothing has been 'shown' in a closed single vendor digital console environment except that games are bloody expensive (Nintendo eShop, PSN, Xbox Live) and b) if the price of games reduces that only strengthens my assertion, that overall spend would decrease. The only way it wouldn't is if prices dropped enough to offset the loss of value from the product being digital (so constant Steam sale level), which let's face it is never going to happen.

So I have limited data from Gamestop and others as well as my own experience, plus vast anecdotal evidence to support my point of view and you have what exactly? Condescending morality lessons on economics that rely on disposable income magically growing, and yet you laughably play the "No data! No data!" card?

Do you have a source for those figures? Also, your 'analysis' is full of huge assumptions, you have absolutely no idea how many of those customers who only buy used (and I would contest that they are the 'vast majority') would convert to buying new, and how many of those who buy new now would buy less and by how much.
 
Used games don't necessarily increase total gaming spend, and they don't necessarily increase the entertainment for money that a customer gets. They do necessarily divert revenue from creators to middlemen, which affects what the creators decide to create and the investors to invest in. This is not hard stuff.

This is a myth perpetuated by Cliffy B. and others like him.

While I may not be interested in Skylanders personally, Activision took a risk with it and it's paid off in spades.

The Last of Us? Brand new IP which was focus tested and despite the suggestions of those focus tests remained exactly how the devs wanted.

Games like Dead Light and Mad Max (licensed or not, it's not a HUGE brand) are both risks and will more than likely pay off for them.

People like Cliffy B and Jaffe are being greedy. They are under the hugely misguided impression that they deserve money beyond the first sale. They don't. At all. In fact no artisan deserves or receives compensation after their work is done. Not home construction, not a single person below the line in filmmaking, not in car manufacturing, not in clothes manufacturing, nothing. I totally understand that they want more money for their work, but they don't deserve it. At least not beyond the first sale.

Studios closing down is simply because they made games that weren't sustainable. Tomb Raider wasn't a failure beyond Squenix laying huge expectations at it's feet because of poor money management in other projects. They treated it like a bucket trying to catch a flood after their damn broke. It's still successful which is why we haven't heard word one about any layoffs a Crystal D or restructuring since Tomb Raider's release.

I've said this a million times, used games do NOT reproduce. Every copy of a used game has been sold as a new game. Now, the used game sale may increase because a used game can be sold again to be purchased again, but to say that every used game sale is a lost new game sale is beyond absurd because as someone who buys used, I wouldn't have bought that game new in the first place. I buy used because I want to save money and I don't want to be stuck with a game I don't like or has no value beyond completing it once. I'm not alone in this. I can tell you from experience, I've never bought a used game that I would have bought new instead.
 
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