I can assure you that if this was illegal in the USA, that sites like Gamespot would not take these rumors so seriously. Not that I give any credit to Gamespot, they are a terrible source of information. I am sure the legal team at Sony would be well aware of such a law were it to exist.
The primary reason for consoles to still exist is anti-piracy measures for single-player games. While this isn't really an anti-piracy measure, it is in the same vein, as it would allow game publishers to deny people the opportunity to play a game unless they've paid the game publisher directly.
Remember that publishers don't care how many people play their games. They care how many people buy a copy. Would blocking the resale of used games lead to more new copies being sold, or fewer? It's not obvious, and it could plausibly vary with a number of other factors, but it's entirely possible that the answer is "more".
As for not supporting Sony, if you only buy games used, then they're losing money on you. They lose money on the console itself, and then try to make it back by taking a cut of all new game sales. Fewer consoles sold but more new game sales per console sold could easily work out as a win for Sony, even it if leads to fewer new game sales in total.
Incidentally, losing money on every console sold but trying to make it back by taking a cut of new game sales is Microsoft's business model, too. Nintendo and Apple make their consoles cheaper so that they make money on every console sold, in addition to taking a cut of sales. (Apple makes consoles? Yep, the iPad is a console, whether you like it or not.)
The primary reason for consoles to still exist is anti-piracy measures for single-player games. While this isn't really an anti-piracy measure, it is in the same vein, as it would allow game publishers to deny people the opportunity to play a game unless they've paid the game publisher directly.
Remember that publishers don't care how many people play their games. They care how many people buy a copy. Would blocking the resale of used games lead to more new copies being sold, or fewer? It's not obvious, and it could plausibly vary with a number of other factors, but it's entirely possible that the answer is "more".
As for not supporting Sony, if you only buy games used, then they're losing money on you. They lose money on the console itself, and then try to make it back by taking a cut of all new game sales. Fewer consoles sold but more new game sales per console sold could easily work out as a win for Sony, even it if leads to fewer new game sales in total.
Incidentally, losing money on every console sold but trying to make it back by taking a cut of new game sales is Microsoft's business model, too. Nintendo and Apple make their consoles cheaper so that they make money on every console sold, in addition to taking a cut of sales. (Apple makes consoles? Yep, the iPad is a console, whether you like it or not.)
The primary reason consoles still exist is certainly not anti-piracy measures. Sure, that may mean developers opt out of PC development, but it is not the primary reason. The main reason consoles exist is because they have been the dominant force (for good or bad) in the gaming market since the industry came off of Arcades. PCs are a huge investment and a ton of people are not as familiar with them as they are with just plugging a console into your TV. Accessibility is the key reason consoles exist at this point. Do I think they will exist forever? No. Hell, I would say there are a ton of people who are willing to pay more for accessibility.
As long as there is a market in which people are ill informed though, people will opt to purchase a console for gaming instead. Yeah in the long run you will probably get more money's worth out of a pc, but the console market is changing. Consoles arent coming out every couple of years anymore. This console generation lasted 8 years? How long do PCs usually last you? I could tell you right now I have gone through atleast 2 and countless upgrades since I purchased my original Xbox. I still find PC gaming to be better but I am not blind to how successful the consoles still are and continue to be.
All that said, if this does happen, it will hurt the console market and we will see consoles dissappear sooner then later. I think they will all go digital soon enough though, which means that it won't matter anyways.
This is a good thing in my opinion. With pirating is rampant as it is I 100% support this. Want to play a game? Demo it. Want to play more. BUY IT!!!! Thus leading to more money to the companys that make the games we love.
I for one fully support this.
Hero Evermore Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982. Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
This is a good thing in my opinion. With pirating is rampant as it is I 100% support this. Want to play a game? Demo it. Want to play more. BUY IT!!!! Thus leading to more money to the companys that make the games we love.
I for one fully support this.
Yeah not many are seeing this for what it really is....the end result of piracy and only buying used games. Spend your entire life trying to ensure games developers go out of business to save yourself a buck you have to expect ridiculous countermeasures to come into play.
Sad that it may make honest buyers lives more difficult as a result.
imnot terribly concerned at best itl take a year to be cracked and i wouldnt even feel bad doing it. i can even imagine rentalplaces doing it for free fir buying a years membership
Poeple will find a way to reset this and nothing Sony could do about this. Even if they have a way of discovering it they can not then start to ban users considering the sale of second hand items is not illigal even if it is against the EULA.
In fact this whole thing might even not be allowed in the EU. However have not kept up with this case so not sure if they has been an other ruling by now regarding this
Originally posted by adam_nox
Having the game bound to one owner ruins their collectibility. It also screws over players who choose to rent over buy. That's like expecting people to buy every movie they watch.
I expect there might be special rental edition of the games in questions...the offcourse cost a hell of a lot more to buy for rental companies
Originally posted by Purutzil
Honestly I'm in some forms for this... though my issue is those extra profits go to the publisher, not so much the developers who do all the hard work and give the great games. I always disliked Ebgames for the fact they do take away from money hard working game designers get due to Used games. In a way I wish you could control where the money went to for purchases and provide a platform in which the people who create games can profit from it more. Stores should promote buying new games rather then selling old ones and the producers should NOT be raking in a majority of the profits, particularly if they are attempting to push games solely for profit which unfortunately many are (big case in point, EA).
I think though my 'ideal' would be quite hard to accomplish, though perhaps there can some way to promote this type of growth. In a way Indie games do have this benefit already as it is though its not really explored in terms of having a 'physical' title to launch with.
Game publishers do it to themselves. I do not mind buying an indi-game first hand because the prices of an indi-game usually is in line with the product you buy. However with publishers you in general just pay 50-60 euros. Regardless of the quality of the game and it's duration. Take homefront. When trying to find the price of it at release I came across this
THQ, the publisher actually complained about the prices drop. A price of 50+ dollars for a game that only last 5-10 hours and with a crappy multiplayer game. the gameplay was oke and the story really nice and bugged on the consoles it seems. but how can a game like that be worth the same amount as let's say COD? Where people spend 500+ hours playing the campaign and multiplayer?
Instead of limiting second-hand sales they really need to check there own payment models and not be lazy and just put the same price on every game.
As much as I understand their reasoning, and have no sympathy to retail outlets like Game Ltd for pushing 2nd hand software before new, because 2nd hand products have a larger profit margin. Companies like Game pay very little for games from people that want to trade or sell their games but sell nearly new title for £5 less than the new copy. They also take all discs out of the box and end up scratched or damaged and end up being of second hand quality anyway, so because of their policy I avoid them as much as I can.
What i'm interested to know is, if they go ahead with this, what happens if I buy a new machine? Do we re-register every game, is there a long process to go through to have the new machine accept the software? or are we all forced to buy a new copy? If its the latter I can see a very big back lash coming, and multiple claims against Sony.
I don't particulary like console gaming even though I own an Xbox 360 and a WII, I'm always on the PC as it feels so much more comfortable and natural to play games. So this new implimentation of coding discs to hardware won't effect me yet, how long before they apply this technology to pc's remains to be seen.
What i'm interested to know is, if they go ahead with this, what happens if I buy a new machine? Do we re-register every game, is there a long process to go through to have the new machine accept the software? or are we all forced to buy a new copy? If its the latter I can see a very big back lash coming, and multiple claims against Sony.
It's registered into the disc. Not into the machines. The disc has no way of knowing you got a new machines or using that of a friends. Or did I misread it?
I for one will not as I buy a lot of my games second hand. Hopefully they won't do this as they would lose out completly to Nintendo and Microsoft. Unless Microsoft does the same, then Nintendo would be loving it.
Microsoft is working on doing the same thing. It's going to hurt console players and hurt sales but won't affect PC players considering we are use to it by now.
Console gamers will buy many games without to much concern because they know they can always trade it in if they don't like it. They aren't as comfortable with what PC gamers go through and the only reason we are is because we've been dealing with it for years.
I don't think it will affect primary sales much at all. People who would buy new games will still buy them. Probably be the death of many game shops though, who make a lot of money by buying and selling second hand games.
I for one will not as I buy a lot of my games second hand. Hopefully they won't do this as they would lose out completly to Nintendo and Microsoft. Unless Microsoft does the same, then Nintendo would be loving it.
Microsoft is working on doing the same thing. It's going to hurt console players and hurt sales but won't affect PC players considering we are use to it by now.
Console gamers will buy many games without to much concern because they know they can always trade it in if they don't like it. They aren't as comfortable with what PC gamers go through and the only reason we are is because we've been dealing with it for years.
I tried re-reading what you said and each time I kept scratching my head. I haven't been a console user for years, but I own a lot more games on PC than I ever did on console becuase they go on sale for dirt cheap very often. So when you say we are used to not re-selling our games you say it as its a problem. If anything I feel sorry for console users. Always being gauged for high prices and rarely seeing a good deal on games. I just wonder if consoles will still charge full price when they eventually go digital and offer no deals until the game has been our for a year or more.
Originally posted by Coxel That is illegal in the USA. They might be able to enforce that elsewhere but here we do have a right that protects us from such measure and has been upheld repeatedly by the supreme court.
I don't know what you are talking about but if you agree to buy a game that works only on 1 machine that's your choice.
The only thing you can do is refusing to buy the console and the game, but there is no law in the world that can forbid a publisher to bind 1 game to 1 machine.
Personally I think that this will incentivate Piracy, since they will find a way to crack it , they always do.
The first segment here does a solid job of breaking this down.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Probably the best way they could handle it, is if the games were linked to a specific account rather than piece of hardware, and there was an option to pass ownership of a game to another account either for free, or for a small charge perhaps, it would also negate the problems where games are linked to a specific piece of hardware, and that unit has to be replaced because of damage etc. it would mean though that in order to use a console, you would have to load a password protected profile.
If they ever do this (and I'm honestly not sure if they really will) it'll just do what every form of DRM has ever done: it'll just increase piracy. It won't be long before someone else manages to manufacture RFID chipped discs with some kind of crack to circumvent this.
Just look at the PC gaming scene, where DRM has been stuffed down our throats for years now. Steam is probably the only widely accepted form of DRM (i.e. account bound serial codes but you can acces them from any machine). All of the others have generally been cracked within hours whilst many are genuinely inconvenient for paying customers (hello always-on internet connection required) encouraging them to use a cracked copy instead.
The ONLY way I can see this working is if the RFID chip is registered to your PSN ID and not that specific machine. That way you could play it on any console (even a friend's) if you log in... exactly like Steam.
It'll still be cracked with dummy RFID chips as soon as the first such game is released though.
I understand why they're trying this. I don't agree with it but I understand. I really didn't have a problem with them doing the thing with redeemable codes to experience the online content but if someone buys a disk I don't see where they can tell them not to sell it. If physical disks go away and maybe the price of games come down some to reflect the lack of producing them, shipping them etc. then maybe they have a better shot.
The repercussions of this is that Games companies will see NO money from purchases (DLC is still bought by people who get 2nd-Hand games).
Also, what happens if I buy one game to play on two consoles. I buy a single player game once for both me and my other half. I will then have to spend double the amount to play the same game? Hell no. I want to take my game round a friends for a LAN?... I then have to take my console too as I can't play on his console?
I want to own something when I pay for it. That is the inferred agreement, when I go to the checkout stand at a retailer and pay them their asking price for a product : that they are GIVING it to me in exchange for the currency tendered. What I choose to do with it is my own business. I could buy a new frying pan and, if I so choose, decide to hang it on a tree in my yard. I don't want the store coming back to me to protest and reclaim their product or cite any misuse. To me, selling an unharmful product and then regulating what I can do with it in my own home is paramount to NOT selling the product. It's a rental. And if it's a rental or lease, then I expect to pay rental prices : 2 bucks.
My guess is the game tag will be linked to your psn account and as long as you are logged into your account with the original disc it will work on whatever console you use even if it is a new console or one belonging to a friend
Well first of all this won't be 'illegal' in the US. As pointed out by others PC gaming and other media actually already does this.
The industry knows pirates will circumvent any efforts they uses to stop them. But they can cut out one of the means at which their games lose money.
Game Stop could be in more trouble than Sony, but Game Stop's already started adapting to this rumor and have for the last 2 years. Have you noticed the number of DLC / Cash Cards they started selling? Not as huge of a mark up gain on their end, but it'll keep the company around.
I'm more surprised that Sony and Microsoft will release any disks at all. I'm rather certain digital downloads will be their focus and I bet Sony and Microsoft will release their systems with game streaming in mind even if it's not a feature availiable at launch.
That said this could be a win for console gamers; because Steam will be releasing a system. The big 3 will have to compete against prices on Steam. Then they'll all compete with one another.
This is a good thing in my opinion. With pirating is rampant as it is I 100% support this. Want to play a game? Demo it. Want to play more. BUY IT!!!! Thus leading to more money to the companys that make the games we love.
I for one fully support this.
Yeah not many are seeing this for what it really is....the end result of piracy and only buying used games. Spend your entire life trying to ensure games developers go out of business to save yourself a buck you have to expect ridiculous countermeasures to come into play.
Sad that it may make honest buyers lives more difficult as a result.
heh only the reult of piracy u dont think sony hasnt wanted the rental buisness dead for years ? SAY GOODBY TO games you can play with NO internet to me i should be able to sell what i own period. or charge rental prices not 70 dollars for a game !
Originally posted by allendale5 I want to own something when I pay for it. That is the inferred agreement, when I go to the checkout stand at a retailer and pay them their asking price for a product : that they are GIVING it to me in exchange for the currency tendered. What I choose to do with it is my own business. I could buy a new frying pan and, if I so choose, decide to hang it on a tree in my yard. I don't want the store coming back to me to protest and reclaim their product or cite any misuse. To me, selling an unharmful product and then regulating what I can do with it in my own home is paramount to NOT selling the product. It's a rental. And if it's a rental or lease, then I expect to pay rental prices : 2 bucks.
That only works when those who sell things to you, don't own the politicians. Since they do, the law is what ever those owned politicians say that it is. You or I may not like that, but the politicians control the enforcer class, and as long as they do, they get their way.
Comments
The primary reason for consoles to still exist is anti-piracy measures for single-player games. While this isn't really an anti-piracy measure, it is in the same vein, as it would allow game publishers to deny people the opportunity to play a game unless they've paid the game publisher directly.
Remember that publishers don't care how many people play their games. They care how many people buy a copy. Would blocking the resale of used games lead to more new copies being sold, or fewer? It's not obvious, and it could plausibly vary with a number of other factors, but it's entirely possible that the answer is "more".
As for not supporting Sony, if you only buy games used, then they're losing money on you. They lose money on the console itself, and then try to make it back by taking a cut of all new game sales. Fewer consoles sold but more new game sales per console sold could easily work out as a win for Sony, even it if leads to fewer new game sales in total.
Incidentally, losing money on every console sold but trying to make it back by taking a cut of new game sales is Microsoft's business model, too. Nintendo and Apple make their consoles cheaper so that they make money on every console sold, in addition to taking a cut of sales. (Apple makes consoles? Yep, the iPad is a console, whether you like it or not.)
The primary reason consoles still exist is certainly not anti-piracy measures. Sure, that may mean developers opt out of PC development, but it is not the primary reason. The main reason consoles exist is because they have been the dominant force (for good or bad) in the gaming market since the industry came off of Arcades. PCs are a huge investment and a ton of people are not as familiar with them as they are with just plugging a console into your TV. Accessibility is the key reason consoles exist at this point. Do I think they will exist forever? No. Hell, I would say there are a ton of people who are willing to pay more for accessibility.
As long as there is a market in which people are ill informed though, people will opt to purchase a console for gaming instead. Yeah in the long run you will probably get more money's worth out of a pc, but the console market is changing. Consoles arent coming out every couple of years anymore. This console generation lasted 8 years? How long do PCs usually last you? I could tell you right now I have gone through atleast 2 and countless upgrades since I purchased my original Xbox. I still find PC gaming to be better but I am not blind to how successful the consoles still are and continue to be.
All that said, if this does happen, it will hurt the console market and we will see consoles dissappear sooner then later. I think they will all go digital soon enough though, which means that it won't matter anyways.
Not sure how this will be in EU but I read this on steam forums.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2783990
This is a good thing in my opinion. With pirating is rampant as it is I 100% support this. Want to play a game? Demo it. Want to play more. BUY IT!!!! Thus leading to more money to the companys that make the games we love.
I for one fully support this.
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
Yeah not many are seeing this for what it really is....the end result of piracy and only buying used games. Spend your entire life trying to ensure games developers go out of business to save yourself a buck you have to expect ridiculous countermeasures to come into play.
Sad that it may make honest buyers lives more difficult as a result.
Poeple will find a way to reset this and nothing Sony could do about this. Even if they have a way of discovering it they can not then start to ban users considering the sale of second hand items is not illigal even if it is against the EULA.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/07/04/curia-digital-distribution/1
In fact this whole thing might even not be allowed in the EU. However have not kept up with this case so not sure if they has been an other ruling by now regarding this
I expect there might be special rental edition of the games in questions...the offcourse cost a hell of a lot more to buy for rental companies
Game publishers do it to themselves. I do not mind buying an indi-game first hand because the prices of an indi-game usually is in line with the product you buy. However with publishers you in general just pay 50-60 euros. Regardless of the quality of the game and it's duration. Take homefront. When trying to find the price of it at release I came across this
http://www.fudzilla.com/games/item/22153-homefront-price-drop-not-supported-by-thq
THQ, the publisher actually complained about the prices drop. A price of 50+ dollars for a game that only last 5-10 hours and with a crappy multiplayer game. the gameplay was oke and the story really nice and bugged on the consoles it seems. but how can a game like that be worth the same amount as let's say COD? Where people spend 500+ hours playing the campaign and multiplayer?
Instead of limiting second-hand sales they really need to check there own payment models and not be lazy and just put the same price on every game.
As much as I understand their reasoning, and have no sympathy to retail outlets like Game Ltd for pushing 2nd hand software before new, because 2nd hand products have a larger profit margin. Companies like Game pay very little for games from people that want to trade or sell their games but sell nearly new title for £5 less than the new copy. They also take all discs out of the box and end up scratched or damaged and end up being of second hand quality anyway, so because of their policy I avoid them as much as I can.
What i'm interested to know is, if they go ahead with this, what happens if I buy a new machine? Do we re-register every game, is there a long process to go through to have the new machine accept the software? or are we all forced to buy a new copy? If its the latter I can see a very big back lash coming, and multiple claims against Sony.
I don't particulary like console gaming even though I own an Xbox 360 and a WII, I'm always on the PC as it feels so much more comfortable and natural to play games. So this new implimentation of coding discs to hardware won't effect me yet, how long before they apply this technology to pc's remains to be seen.
It's registered into the disc. Not into the machines. The disc has no way of knowing you got a new machines or using that of a friends. Or did I misread it?
I don't think it will affect primary sales much at all. People who would buy new games will still buy them. Probably be the death of many game shops though, who make a lot of money by buying and selling second hand games.
I tried re-reading what you said and each time I kept scratching my head. I haven't been a console user for years, but I own a lot more games on PC than I ever did on console becuase they go on sale for dirt cheap very often. So when you say we are used to not re-selling our games you say it as its a problem. If anything I feel sorry for console users. Always being gauged for high prices and rarely seeing a good deal on games. I just wonder if consoles will still charge full price when they eventually go digital and offer no deals until the game has been our for a year or more.
I don't know what you are talking about but if you agree to buy a game that works only on 1 machine that's your choice.
The only thing you can do is refusing to buy the console and the game, but there is no law in the world that can forbid a publisher to bind 1 game to 1 machine.
Personally I think that this will incentivate Piracy, since they will find a way to crack it , they always do.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
If they ever do this (and I'm honestly not sure if they really will) it'll just do what every form of DRM has ever done: it'll just increase piracy. It won't be long before someone else manages to manufacture RFID chipped discs with some kind of crack to circumvent this.
Just look at the PC gaming scene, where DRM has been stuffed down our throats for years now. Steam is probably the only widely accepted form of DRM (i.e. account bound serial codes but you can acces them from any machine). All of the others have generally been cracked within hours whilst many are genuinely inconvenient for paying customers (hello always-on internet connection required) encouraging them to use a cracked copy instead.
The ONLY way I can see this working is if the RFID chip is registered to your PSN ID and not that specific machine. That way you could play it on any console (even a friend's) if you log in... exactly like Steam.
It'll still be cracked with dummy RFID chips as soon as the first such game is released though.
This will just lead to more console piracy.
The repercussions of this is that Games companies will see NO money from purchases (DLC is still bought by people who get 2nd-Hand games).
Also, what happens if I buy one game to play on two consoles. I buy a single player game once for both me and my other half. I will then have to spend double the amount to play the same game? Hell no. I want to take my game round a friends for a LAN?... I then have to take my console too as I can't play on his console?
(\ /) ?
( . .)
c('')('')
Well first of all this won't be 'illegal' in the US. As pointed out by others PC gaming and other media actually already does this.
The industry knows pirates will circumvent any efforts they uses to stop them. But they can cut out one of the means at which their games lose money.
Game Stop could be in more trouble than Sony, but Game Stop's already started adapting to this rumor and have for the last 2 years. Have you noticed the number of DLC / Cash Cards they started selling? Not as huge of a mark up gain on their end, but it'll keep the company around.
I'm more surprised that Sony and Microsoft will release any disks at all. I'm rather certain digital downloads will be their focus and I bet Sony and Microsoft will release their systems with game streaming in mind even if it's not a feature availiable at launch.
That said this could be a win for console gamers; because Steam will be releasing a system. The big 3 will have to compete against prices on Steam. Then they'll all compete with one another.
a yo ho ho
heh only the reult of piracy u dont think sony hasnt wanted the rental buisness dead for years ? SAY GOODBY TO games you can play with NO internet to me i should be able to sell what i own period. or charge rental prices not 70 dollars for a game !
That only works when those who sell things to you, don't own the politicians. Since they do, the law is what ever those owned politicians say that it is. You or I may not like that, but the politicians control the enforcer class, and as long as they do, they get their way.