http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-death-of-used-games-and-control-of-the-second-hand-market-could-be-the
The article, also known as "A lot of things talking about nothing," because that's basically what it is. It's a meaningless opinion piece for a couple of things.
This is good news for a few reasons. The first is that piracy will likely be reduced. If the system phones home every so often to check on your licenses, and there is no way to play a game without that title being authenticated and a license being active, piracy becomes harder. You'll never be able to stop pirates, not entirely, but if you can make the act of pirating games non-trivial the incidence of piracy will drop. This is a good thing for everyone except those who want to play games for free.
Kudos on at least mentioning that with the way things are going now, piracy will basically be impossible to eradicate, on any sort of significant scale. However, there is a problem with making the statement of "[making] the act of piracy non-trivial" and then immediately saying that "the incidence of piracy will drop," like that piracy being non-trivial is a deterrent to any competent pirate? When has "the act of piracy being non-trivial" ever kept the incidence of piracy at a low rate? The code will always get cracked eventually. And on that note I'm not even sure how Microsoft's amazing stroke of genius is going to deter piracy.
I bet it will
encourage it.
The current economics of game development and sales are unsustainable. Games cost more to make, piracy is an issue, used-games are pushed over new, and players say the $60 cost is too high. Microsoft's initiatives with the Xbox One may solve many of these issues, even if we grumble about it. These changes ultimately make the industry healthier.
One reason for the current state of the game industry's economy is because developers et. al believe more power means more success in the grand scheme of things, rather than aiming for what really matters, which leads to products that are unsatisfactory to a hungry and increasingly savvy gamer market. It's a matter of a failing philosophy towards game development as a whole; if any of you remember the Xbox One's "reveal," you'll have remembered their constant ramblings of TV, sports, and of course, Call-o-dudy, to which there were mentions of the Amazing Realistic Texture Dog, but at the end of the day, who gives a damn about how good graphics are if the game eventually turns out to be shit? Bad example, I know, because people will fucking buy CoD X198538TH anyway, but you get the point. I don't think Microsoft's decisions with their platform (I won't call it a console anymore because it's evident where Microsoft wants to go with this) will contribute at all to fixing the major issues plaguing that particular part of the problem.
Especially "players say the $60 cost is too high," that's a very brazen and bold statement to make. When you consider the target demographic of the games made for consoles nowadays, it's absurd to expect them to be able to afford the $60 SRP on release. Yes, even if they ask relatives or family with disposable income, $60 is pricey. Where I live, that's almost 2500php, which is... Actually more expensive than new games on release here locally, which is pretty damn funny when I think about it.
You know, people, there's a reason why people like indie games so much.
Also, the idea of artificial shortages will go away overnight. The next time a GameStop clerk gives you shit about not pre-ordering, tell him to get stuffed; all you need to do is find a disc to install the game and then buy the license. Microsoft doesn't even need to host the game files at this point, one person could buy a copy of a game, everyone installs it and buys a license, and suddenly ten people have purchased the game, although GameStop only received income from one sale. Pretty neat / terrible, right?
Um. Okay. I'm not sure that's how it works Mr. Ben.
This means that the market for console games is about to change, and the economics are going to get very interesting, very quickly. Removing the concept of buying a used game will lead to more sales for publishers, more control for Microsoft, but it could also lead to changes in how retail sells games, where the margins can be found in this business, and lower prices across the board. There is a whole lot of ?ifs? in this scenario though, and it's possible GameStop could leverage its clout to stop some or part of this, but I'd love to see how all this shakes out.
But yeah, there's... That's a really naive way to look at the situation, and while I'm not an economics kind of person, there's a lot of things I find which are glaringly off. Like how eliminating a second-hand market is going to be
totally beneficial to the whole matter. If that's even going to happen. Furthermore, I love how he's revolved all his arguments around GameStop like it's the only way that used games and such are distributed/sold. Yeah.
Lot of talk that doesn't mean much at all.
