Going after used games and piracy as a top priority instead of creating smooth consumer friendly services is plain stupid. Just look how the music industry has finally opened up and realized that most of us are ready to pay rather than lending, pirating as long as the prices and contents match the expectations and quality demands we have. The AAA games being frowned upon by gamers in conjuction with a surveillance console with a camera is a coctail full of disaster
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PA Report - The Xbox One will kill used games, that's good
- Thread starter hardcastlemccormick
- Start date
Aaron Strife
Banned
You know guys, I just wonder what it'll be like in twenty years or so when servers are shut down and these games are still vied after as classics.
The other day I bought a few SNES games from a local game shop. Two of them (Donkey Kong Country, Lion King) aren't available on any modern service and can only legally be played on the original hardware.
Obviously we're moving towards a digital age where companies will be releasing their back catalogs as digital downloads, but there will certainly be some games that slip through the cracks, whether it be licensing, lack of interest, programming issues etc. So what the hell are we going to do then?
You know I kind of liked when I'd fire up a game console and it would just play the game. Why does gaming have to be such a fucking chore?
The other day I bought a few SNES games from a local game shop. Two of them (Donkey Kong Country, Lion King) aren't available on any modern service and can only legally be played on the original hardware.
Obviously we're moving towards a digital age where companies will be releasing their back catalogs as digital downloads, but there will certainly be some games that slip through the cracks, whether it be licensing, lack of interest, programming issues etc. So what the hell are we going to do then?
You know I kind of liked when I'd fire up a game console and it would just play the game. Why does gaming have to be such a fucking chore?
They'll just be unusable. Every Halo, Gears, and Forza that comes out at this point has an expiration date on being playable at some point in the future. The big offline userbase for Halo will probably move on elsewhere.
Holy shit, that's exactly right as well. In 5-10 years, as long as the console's working I'll still be able to play all my 360 XBLA games as well as disc games. With this system, you may or may not be able to play either.
Is anyone else thinking with the backlash (other than people from the media who can't get their nose far up enough developers' arsecheeks) that MS might actually disable this completely? I just get the impression that once it gets into public knowledge that in a few years you can't resell your games or perhaps even play them, it'll be a bigger deal than just a (big) number of desperate, essentially helpless protests on gaming forums
Eh they get their fanbase to do that.
The best part? Assuming they do a Halo 2 or Halo 3 Anniversary, you won't be able to play them at some point in the future. But you'll still be able to play the original versions, including on LAN, well past the Xbone's servers being shut down as long as you have the hardware.
The industry is young, moves fast and there is a lot of money involved. And I'm afraid that these anti-customer garbage is going to hit it hard eventually.
If you think about it's quite funny. While console gaming is becoming increasingly awkward and even inconvenient, "mobile" gaming and PC gaming are becoming more convenient and cheaper. If these trends continue, customers will be forced to move to these friendlier ecosystems that ironically are incompatible to the policies that these short sighted industry executives are trying to establish: one is a super competitive arena dominated by artificially low prices and the other one is an open platform impossible to control.
They're also the ones that think basing their future earnings on blockbuster games like COD is perfectly reasonable, despite a ton of evidence that this rarely happens. Not to mention the money these companies have wasted trying to make the next COD, or WOW, instead of exploring new ideas with a more restrained budget. I don't feel confident their logic is sound, not to mention my own first hand experience. If I really want a game, I never buy it used unless its the only copy I can find. The games I've purchased used were games I was never going spend full price on (or the $5 off used price for new releases). The only way I would buy any of these games now in a no used game world is to wait for them to tank at retail. Trust me, those developers we're supposedly supporting in this instance aren't getting any money here either once the publisher has to reimburse the retailer for unsold units in credits, price protection, returns.
I... wow. Mind blown. Steam Big Picture mode says hi. It honestly looks like it would be easier to boot your PC and start BP mode. That involves turning your PC on and, well, if it's configured right it will come up with that from the get go.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Because you have guys like Microsoft and EA whose only focus is how can I keep my hands in your pockets at all times?
Yep. I think the next gen might be my last if Sony keep up with MS on all this bullshit. Instead of a HTPC, I'll just hook up my game rig to my tv and go from there. Especially if the 4k tv's are here in quality and price in the next 3 years or so.
What does this have to do with anything either person posted.
It relates to the discussion about the original draw of console gaming (its simplicity) disappearing, and mobile and PC gaming getting simpler.
I thought was addressed fine in the post he quoted, it sounded like he was getting ready to attack the "comfy couch" defense for those who prefer consoles to PCs. We don't need that shit in this thread.
At least wait for an attack before getting your hackles up man. Come on.
What? I was exclaiming my surprise at the realisation (covered in the post I quoted) that indeed, consoles are becoming more complex to boot up and play (at least, the One) whilst the PC is getting easier (with Comfy Couch).
So you thought I was going to be against comfy couch PC gaming? I'm not sure I understand your angle.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Time to upgrade that Compaq, bro.
dragonbane
Member
The opposite of what he described will happen.
It is called reality, the game industry isnt some unique snowflake impervious to typical economic conditions. The 2nd hand market is not forgone growth, either put up the numbers that show that it is frogone growth or stop trying to claim they know. If what they said was actual provable reality, we would have the numbers and they would be in the public eye.
You are full of it, until you prove(game companies included) otherwise. But then again, I'm assuming you gobble up whatever the RIAA and MPAA feeds you as well?
Clark W. Griswold
Banned
Perfect post.
This can't be quoted enough and seriously it must be read. Then read again. No customer should ever be accepting of blame being placed upon them by these companies. Ever.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Yes it should. It's the fucking truth 100 percent too.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
I put in a link.
Refreshment.01
Member
Well... Will you look at the bolded part XD
And then look what a leak is saying:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=58996241&postcount=1
To no surprise i was pretty much on the money. The system applied to retail games instead of a DD like in my example, but basicaly the same thing. Consumers here lose a lot of control but still retain (some what) the "right" to sell or buy an used the game.
There's no way gamers will oppose that system, they'll quickly adapt to it as long as MS, Sony and big publishers say so.
Open Source
Banned
Ridiculous to see the "AAA blockbuster model" blamed. It exists because it was the only alternative when mid-tier became unsustainable, which occurred because...people didn't buy mid-tier games. At least not new, which is the only way that publishers get a return on their investment. In other words, it's a product of companies giving people what they're willing to pay for.
Used games funneling money from game creators to resellers engaged in arbitrage and price discrimination is a problem.
Price discrimination is obviously a necessary tactic to maximize sales over time, but consoles don't have a good way to handle this right now. On Steam, it's "I'll wait for the Steam sale" - not a problem, since the publisher still sees a significant chunk of the revenue, and that's the reason that the PC market is exponentially better at the indie to mid tier levels than consoles these days. On consoles, it's "I'll buy it used," which nets most publishers nearly $0, since only a sliver of the money is recycled into new games (and nearly all that is recycled goes towards those "AAA blockbuster games").
Used games funneling money from game creators to resellers engaged in arbitrage and price discrimination is a problem.
Price discrimination is obviously a necessary tactic to maximize sales over time, but consoles don't have a good way to handle this right now. On Steam, it's "I'll wait for the Steam sale" - not a problem, since the publisher still sees a significant chunk of the revenue, and that's the reason that the PC market is exponentially better at the indie to mid tier levels than consoles these days. On consoles, it's "I'll buy it used," which nets most publishers nearly $0, since only a sliver of the money is recycled into new games (and nearly all that is recycled goes towards those "AAA blockbuster games").
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
Since when? How do we know that when they don't make them anymore?
And can't we have variance even on the high-tier level games? Do we need mo-capped dogs, fish AI and celebrity voice acting?
If they're going to complain about the consumer and how we're fucking it all up for them, maybe they should get their own shit sorted out first. Especially when used entertainment has been around much longer than games have been. It's a bullshit excuse.
Industry wisdom, probably. Just like the countless examples of bs spread through hearsay and scapegoat blaming, which turn into self-fulfilling prophecies once enough people start to believe them.
SolidSnakex
Member
hardcastlemccormick already addressed the mid-tier comment so i'll touch on this. Why don't we see publishers taking the same approach toward console gamers? I'm not even talking about discounts. Why the hell is nearly every game $60? It doesn't matter if it's a single player game that can literally be completed in 6-8 hours or an RPG that takes 50 hours, they're almost all $60. So why is it a surprise when some gamers might want to wait for a used version? They might actually want to really buy a certain game, but they can't justify paying $60 for something that they'll complete in 8 hours and never touch again. But perhaps $40 is more acceptable for them, and that's a price that they can only get through a used version. In previous generations we saw a decent amount of price variation, but now all of a sudden it's basically nothing but $60. We occasionally get a Sly or Puppeteer that hit the $40 price, but those are few and far between.
Refreshment.01
Member
You did a pretty good job comparing retail to the DD system, and what advantages it has over brick and mortar stores.
The AAA model is broken. Costs are not skyrocketing only because games got a lot prettier, they've gone to such highs because the "hollywoodisation" of the game industry. We are talking that a good chunk of monetary resources go in to tangential things in relation to the game.
We see that for the creation of "AAA" games, publishers scout expensive movie writers when most of the time do a similar quality job as the typical game. Big holywood voice talent. Over reliance on cinematics to advance the game plot, when the medium lends itself to a less traditional way to do this. Expensive add campaings to the point of creating super expensice CG movies to promote the game, huge money sink. Blinding putting features that dont fit with the game just to put a check mark on the box, this is exemplified by the defacto deathmatch mode on everything.
Every studio, even ones that shouldn't, wanted to follow that model. That's why THQ is where it is now. So a studio had a luke warm intelectual property, instead of scale the budget for a mid tier release some of this pubs pushed the pedal to the metal and fired up the AAA engine, so most of them are ghosts now.
Thinking about that, the names that just pop into my head that are "AAA" titles that should never have been created as such is just astounding. In the space of a few seconds, Max Payne 3, Absolution and obviously Tomb Raider just came up. Throwing money at a title won't make it sell well. And people not buying the games despite the investment by the pubs should be a sign that THEY NEED TO STOP INVESTING SO MUCH.
Refreshment.01
Member
Those are the most amazing examples i've seen lately, because puring all that money into the games made them actually worse.
Max Payne 3 game flow is ruined by the over abundance of cinematics cutscenes (some of them unskippable).
Hitman Absolution, IO forced a lot more acting in to the plot at the detriment of the game. Exposition in Hitman games worked better through briefing and small snippets of what kind of person the target was.
And Tomb Raider is the culmination of every trend (sh!it ones or otherwise) shoehorned in to a game with no taught put into it. This game should become a paradigm to be analysed for years. No way this aberration costed Eidos a 100 mil, they got sacked.
Pyramid head
Banned
So, what you're saying is that the "AAA blockbuster model" is the solution to the problem of mid-tier games not selling?
"we're tired of risking a medium amount of money on our investments... let's risk a AAA amount!"
Tripple Ay games keep flopping. They're not a product of giving people what they're willing to pay for if people aren't willing to pay for them.
Let me just test a theory here... it shouldn't be this literal, but let's compare the game/folder size for "failed" AAA games and successful ones:
Max Payne 3: 30GB game, 8.2GB prerendered cutscene movie folder
Absolution: 23GB game, 6GB movie folder
Sleeping Dogs: 11GB game, 2.8GB is audio, 770MB movies (audio is acceptable in this regard, IMO. Indicates far fewer in-engine, unskippable cutscenes)
Dishonored: 6GB, 430MB movies
Skyrim: 5.8GB, voices 1.3GB, video 1.7MB
It might've taken me a while to come up with this conclusion for myself, but it's obvious the games industry wants to emulate Hollywood by just "filming" games and using them like some glorified MegaCD/SegaCD movie, using cutscenes as a crutch to move the game forward, rather than doing what GOOD games are doing and using the game itself to move the story forward. Reeks of laziness (why not just include it in the game?) and gross mismanagement.
Missed this, perfect.
Open Source
Banned
Retailer price protection. It's what gets them shelf space. Retailers are also more likely to stock 100 of one title than 10 of 10 different titles, which feeds into the blockbuster model.
Once the market moves away from retail, as it has on PC, customers will benefit from quicker and steeper discounts, though launch prices I'm sure will not drop.
It's all about expected return on investment. Even with the flops and underperformance on an AAA title, it's still a better bet than mid-tier.
Yes, the AAA model is not sustainable for all but a couple publishers. But mid-tier is not a viable alternative, because no one buys them in the face of profitable, sustainable AAA competition dominating mindshare, airwaves, and shelf space. Companies like THQ would be gone either way. The only way to break the AAA stranglehold is to establish platforms where quality and word of mouth are paramount, discoverability is not knee-capped by shelf space limitations and other factors, and publishers get rewarded for every copy they sell.
Amen.
mid-tier only became unsustainable when they tried to market and sell them as 60$ AAA-games
there is a healthy market for 30-40$ mid-tier games, especially if they fill a niche and not just copy AAA-games
actually
If the PS One had the same scheme as Xbox One, not a single game would work now.
the cultural loss would be gigantic
SolidSnakex
Member
That doesn't explain why every game is $60. It simply explains why we might not see such aggressive price drops like we see on Steam. Like I said, when you put gamers in a position where nearly every game is $60, then you're obviously to have some that'll look for cheaper alternatives. That might be simply wait for a price drop or t hey might find a used version of that title. Publishers should start thinking about whether or not certain should be priced at $60. But that's not going on.
Publishers are eventually going to have to start looking at themselves. It's always something other than what they're doing. It's piracy or it's used games sales. But it's apparently never what they're doing. Was piracy or used games why THQ went out of business? No. They were hurt by gambling on the idea that PS3 and 360 gamers wanted uDraw. And when they didn't it left over 1m of those tablets sitting in a warehouse. Were they at fault for Tomb Raider not reaching Square's ridiculous sales expectations, even though it sold significantly more in the same period than any other TR game? Or what about EA putting a 5m sales target on the back of Dead Space 3 even though it was in a genre where only one series manages to sell that much (RE)?
ThisWreckage
Banned
This industry is largely irresponsible. The devs constantly make bad decisions by making their games suffer from franchise fatigue, they refuse to price their games on some sort of scale (why does every game have to be 60 bucks?), and they place all of their eggs in one basket by funding make it or break projects that could bury them in one fell swoop. So PA's argument is that killing used games will make the industry healthier. That isn't true. The problem doesn't lie with used games, it lies with the developer and their sometimes deafening stupidity. Kill used games and that stupidity still remains.
Pretty much all of that is publisher, not developer
Last Hearth
Member
It would give them a short term boost, to their long term detriment. When gamers can't trade it used games to fuel their next purchase, they'll see the harm.
Business executives can sometimes be extremely short sighted.