Quote:
Originally Posted by Metal_Sonic
Looks like GTA . . . in Paris . . . in the 30's/40's.
My fingers are crossed for today, though.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Metal_Sonic
Looks like GTA . . . in Paris . . . in the 30's/40's.
My fingers are crossed for today, though.
Unfortunately, this is the sole reason. Numerous game companies have been whining about the used game market for years. Even Sega was opposed to it for a long time. Every time you buy used, you don't buy new, which means they don't get money. Unfortunately, they already GOT the money for that particular copy.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMatthews
Mike Capps wants the used game market banned and new business models to ensure people only buy new. Vince Desi thinks that Mike Capps can go fuck himself, though.
I also have to question if digital distribution is such a money maker, when Sega stuck a bunch of Genesis games onto the 360 and PS3 collections and sold them for what was effectively $1 per game, while download prices are between $5-$10 each.
Digital copies have not hurt used prices. Castlevania SOTN is $10 on XBL or PSN but used game stores still want $40 for the PS1 version. I wish it would hurt prices, but new digital copies can't be played on the vintage consoles.
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong as a $10 DSware download?! Releasing next week? Sweet.
Nintendo's conference was alright. Better than last year's. DS had a good showing (as usual) with Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Wario Ware DIY, Mario and Luigi, and Golden Sun 3. There weren't that many surprises for the Wii, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ecstatic over Super Mario Galaxy 2. Add New Super Mario Bros Wii and Metroid: The Other M, and you have a solid showing. Not to mention Wii Sports Resort which looks like a lot of fun. I can't pass on a sequel to one of my favorite multiplayer games ever.
I just hated seeing things like the James Patterson series. Seriously? The Women's Murder Club? Shoot me. It was nice to see Nintendo tout three genuinely mature third party titles (Resident Evil DC, Dead Space Extraction, and The Conduit) this year. Last year they promoted three "hardcore" third party titles as well: Shaun White, Star Wars the Clone Wars, and Call of Duty WOW. Not saying those are bad games (except for Star Wars), but they're mainly aimed at teens, not older.
I wish that were true: unfortunately, they have even more financial incentives (realistically the only kind most companies factor-in) than just tapping into "lost" revenue that's tied up in the used game market. For one, it's gotta cost far less these days to buy, set up, and run a server 24/7 than to press copies of DVD/BD/UMD/whatever, print paper instruction manuals, produce cases for the games, etc. Also, as someone else already mentioned: with download, there aren't two (plus) layers of middlemen between the publisher and the end consumer, so the profit margin is potentially much larger if the retail price is comparable. They have every reason in the world to force download-only on us (and soon), and once it becomes both feasible and a guaranteed better revenue-generator in the short-term, they will. There will likely have to be a transition period where both are offered, at least until broadband penetration reaches some critical threshold in the target markets, since broadband is necessary both for realistic download times and for PC-style activation-type DRM on consoles as they've all moved away from offering dialup--then again, it it'll allow the master plan to be executed that much more quickly, we may see dialup modems offered for current consoles. I live in a relatively rural area of the U.S. and work for a kind of meta-ISP, and there are still many people here on dialup, but if we start catching up to the rest of the industrialized world in broadband penetration, we Americans can look for this to happen shortly thereafter since all it would require, even of current-gen systems, would be a firmware update and possibly a USB HDD. The only exception to going full download-only, everything else being ideal for it's adoption, would be if they found a way to make even more money by selling it on a physical medium: maybe premium packages with all manners of junk like is common with RPGs, but even so there will very likely come a time soon when all copies of games sold on physical media will be DRM-locked to an individual console and not playable otherwise (without bypassing the DRM, anyway)--it'll be far easier to pass this off as "normal" once selling a game on physical media is the exception to the norm of downloading a game that, by design, is coded in such a way as to lock itself to one playback device (PC/console).Quote:
Originally Posted by Diosoth
99% of the above applies equally to films, music, etc.
It's gonna suck balls.
We're effectively on the leading edge of the transition phase, where both have to be offered, but even ignoring that: it makes way more sense to offer the old games as collections when pushing to a physical medium due to the associated overhead from publishing that way, whereas a la carte downloads have effectively no more overhead than would the entire collection taken as one single downloadable purchase--plus companies always charge more for a la carte than they do for the "package deal" (hence the term).Quote:
Originally Posted by Diosoth
As far as online distribution's are concerned. I wish Steam wasn't as invasive and unstable as it is in windows, but I love the fact that they push old titles for cheap, and have 'sales' every so often.
If it didn't 'shit-the-bed' as a windows service, I'd probably turn it on long enough to 'quit' downloading the old games for free using torrents whenever I get the urge to play something.
I love the Battle.net model the most. Buy your games, register the keys, have them simple to download, install, and play online, no services needed.
Did you guys hear about this?
Lame!
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by MrMatthews
Since when was EA 'not' Lame in the past 15 years?
Hey, EA has been doing some cool stuff lately.
But as a marketing ploy, this was insipid (and I don't use that word lightly!)