Sony joins the battle against used games.
MCV News wrote:Echoing the controversial measures announced by Ubisoft last month, Sony has revealed that users of SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title.
UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background.
Furthermore, in a nod to recent plans implemented by EA, anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online.
“Today's consumers are more tech savvy and better connected to the internet than ever before,†SCEA’s hardware marketing director John Koller told IGN.
“Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform, but the launch of the PSPgo and the ability to access the PlayStation Store directly from PSP-3000 were significant steps towards fighting piracy and getting consumers to download digital games legally.
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Their thinly veiled attempt to stave off piracy is more a direct assault against pre-owned game sales. Something that some key companies are seeing as an even more direct threat then piracy. While some companies are offering incentives to buy new with codes for free bonus content (Dragon Age was a huge example of this) this is the first case that will directly cripple a pre-owned game unless you pony up for that feature, which will potentially raise the cost of the pre-owned game to be more then buying new. The PSPGo is fail, that's already been established so now sony is trying to mitigate losses in UMD sales as well.
What they seem to fail to realize (or more likely don't care) is that a good portion of new game sales are because of the pre-owned market. For many users they are buying new because of trade-ins from credit. It reduces the sticker price significantly in the console world.
Is the final step purely digital distribution where you never actually own any content anymore?
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Yes, and I hope it comes sooner than later. Digital distribution is the best cure for piracy. As much as people say "Pirates will always find a way to pirate", there is no piracy on Steam.
And once one gets over the feeling that they should be paying for something physical, it's better for the consumer. No cumbersome DRM, no need to keep track of physical media, and the ability to download and play the game wherever you are.
Besides: You never owned the software you purchased on physical media anyway. Almost all EULAs arewritten in such a way that the user is actually only purchasing the right to use the software. Reselling to a place like GameStop is against those EULAs, and the only reason people can do it at all is because none of the game companies want to really test it in court.
Fully digital distrobution is the future, and I welcome it.
If the game companies start to do things that cripple the resale market, eventually there won't be a market for the games.
The only thing that would counteract that is if people see games and gaming as a service that the game companies are providing to them, which if the game companies go to pure digital distribution will be easier for consumers to swallow. But I personally think that digital distribution will be a long ways off because people don't like change, and going from a product (physical media that contains the game) to a service (download only) is a BIG change.
Wrong. Plenty of games that are on Steam get pirated every time. You still need the actual game files on your PC and that's what gets pirated.
My piracy rate has gone down by 99% since I started using Steam (properly) a while back. It's so easy to just download a game and then play. My nearest game store is a good 8-9 hours drive away, and living as remotely as I do, buying from a webstore takes a week in shipping, so it was so much easier for me to pirate games. I don't mind paying for a game.
Another thing I like about Steam is having all my games in one place, ready to launch.
Digitial distribution sucks. If I have to go to the trouble of downloading something anyway legally and still be struck with some kind of drm or other annoyance why shouldn't I just you know cut out the middle man and pirate it it other then guilt I suppose.
Sony's plan, in my opinion, sucks as much as most of Sony's plans suck.
Unless Steam allows me to gift any game I purchase to someone else then it sucks by comparison to retail.
I think your estimate is probably good. I think the next console generation is going to change it all and that appears to be a few years away.
I think they've done it for some other things, but it's not an every-game phenomenon.
I did the same exact thing.
As I said above: Technically (and by that I mean: according to the EULA) you're not allowed to do that no matter where you bought it, so if you're following the rules, you don't lose anything in this respect.
Personally, I hate used games stores. They hurt the industry, and make a huge profit while adding no value. For me, they are down there with scalpers and EBay gougers.
They hurt the industry? The same way used car dealers hurt the car industry? The industry can cry me a river. Jeez, if only people had bleeding hearts for the car industry, Detroit would be in better shape.
The EULA is a bullshit contract in the first place lets just be perfectly clear about that. You bought this thing, but you technically don't own it and technically can't do anything with it. That's crap. Buying a game doesn't give you rights to the game as in if I buy Game X I don't own the title to Game X. But it certainly gives you ownership of the media it's on and you should then be able to do whatever you want with that media.
As for hurting the game industry. Again they are arguing over potential sales which is also a false argument. Any medium of competition is hurting sales. If I buy this game over that game I'm hurting the other companies sales. Every sold game doesn't mean a loss of a sale there is no guarantee that person was going to buy the game new anyway.
Now what about video game rentals - $5 and how many people never buy the game after their rental period. Rent it 6 times if you want and you are still well under the retail price and likely bored of it by then anyway.
Sorry not buying it. Over priced video games are the only thing that's severely hurting video game sales currently.
We should probably scrap used house, car, appliance, clothing, music, movies, pets, bicycle and oh books while we are at it too.
Point taken, but you have to realize, the used games business is all that keeps a game specialty retail chain like Gamestop afloat because the publishers are not sharing much of their front end margin with the distributors. If your Wal-Mart you can make money on games at an 8% mark-up because you have a store of other products to support your entire business plan. If your a specialty retailer like Gamestop that has already had your core business bastardized by all the big chains, and all you have left is this lousy 8% mark-up on product that your doing a much lower volume on despite the health of the entire industry you helped build, well, your going to do what you have to do to survive, and for them, its mark-up on used games inventory.
It's not something they are doing to specifically hurt the industry. Its something they are doing to survive a industry that has turned its back on them.
They're not retailers, they're brokers. They add no value to the product they sell, and they return no profit back to the original producer of the content. On top of that, their mark-up is huge compared to other "used" stores, like books and clothing.
We'd all be better off just buying used games directly from one another.
Also the EULA is not bullshit. It's a legally binding contract that you agree to when you purchase the software. If you don't agree to it, you shouldn't buy the software. It's on the tolerance of the publisher that you can resell your games at all. If they wanted to, they could take you to court over it. (I don't know if they'd win, since it's never been tried, and no one wants to be the first to test it).
Books, CDs, Pets: None of these things have 'no resale' clauses in their sales contracts.
Sorry, but just because something's digital doesn't mean my Right of First Sale should go completely out the window. I bought a good - a game - that I no longer have a use for. I should be able to resell it at will, and should I choose to sell it to a reselling entity like Gamestop, that should be within my right.
Also, when is the last time you've bought a used PC game? I don't think I've ever seen a store that sells PC games used. If you can't sell a PC game back anyway, kind of makes using that as an argument against digital distribution on PC (aka Steam) a moot point don't you think?
As for console games, I don't particularly want to ever see consoles go to all digital distribution. I like having media for my console games strictly because I can resell the game when I'm done with it if it wasn't good enough to warrant repeat play. Also, I can buy a game used if I know it's not good enough to warrant the full price. The fact that you can't just install it then dump the media back out on the market (generally speaking) makes that possible. IMO that's the one big advantage consoles have over the PC.
And yeah, this is all in reference to console games, since PC games haven't been resellable in years. Steam, however, could perhaps pull it off; if you're really clever, you might be able to copy the source files off and find some emulator that could play it, but in the simplest case, Steam could note that you've sold your license, scramble or delete the game cache files, and that would cover 90% of the population who would never bother to figure out how to get around it.
Why the EULA is BS is because no other medium has such a clause. Video games shouldn't get any special treatment from the second hand market when compared to any other medium or product in general. Why should video games be protected when books, movies, cd's, board games etc... aren't. I'm sure publishing houses would love it if you could no longer buy a used book.
Also lets consider that the EULA vs. used sales isn't even binding in some countries because some countries still protect the rights of the consumer.
They'd be less likely, IMO, provided its a reasonable percentage. This assumes a type of cosigning on Steam's part, rather than reselling. Steam to steam sale is more direct, with the program itself acting as a shop window for me to offer you a game. However, cash flows directly from me to you, with Steam taking some off the top.
A closer analogy to the game stores is:
Would people be upset if Steam allowed resale of games, but only if you sold it to them for 10% of what you paid originally, and then they resold it again for about 80% of the original sale price. This is exactly what stores like GameStop do.