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Well EA are officially disgusting Rip Off Merchants
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I don't deny that a time of only digital distribution is inevitable, but I am not looking forward to it. I don't like the idea of those companies having complete control over how their games get to me because they already act like wangs whenever the possibility presents itself.
I foresee a lot of monopoly pricing and gimped standard editions in our future, and it's not a prospect I relish. Besides which, my bandwidth limit already whines at me.
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Digital distribution is bad news for you southerners
I really dont see consoles going down that road for quite a while tho, there are still parts of this country that don't have even the lowest spec Broadband and this is suppose to be one of the more advanced countries, unlike the PC there is still huge numbers of people that dont have access to the internet that play console games. With games becoming increasingly large in terms of data, retailers will still be the main method of distribution for quite a while. I personally prefer hardcopies of my games anyway and the idea of having to download 20-30gb's to play one game really doesnt sound pretty, even on my 20meg line.
Its the 1 or 2 year old games that i'd search for when browsing used section, usually you'll get it for a tenner or more less than buying a new copy, and if your like me and buy 2 or 3 games at time... it adds up and is certainly not peanuts. You also tend to find games that aren't available brand new aswel.
And to say that you cant understand why some1 would pay a fiver less for a used game.... are you ****ing serious ? LOL, a fiver is a fiver, maybe your some sort of big shot that likes paying more for the exact same product.. but some of us dont think throwing away money is a good idea.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50629
Its legalised piracy
Considering according to software licensing laws selling second hand games is pretty much illegal the legality is pretty much in question and I'd say it's only the strength that chains like Gamestop have that keeps it legal. You take us to court for selling second hand games we stop stocking your products. Nintendo won court cases in japan about second hand games sales whch makes them partially illegal in japan iirc. This was before the games selling chains had such pulling power.
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Incorrect, EA use their own servers for hosting server side content. While the game itself is P2P that doesn't mean that all the info is.Grumpypants wrote: »Well there is a difference to them if the pirated games are played online as it increases there cost base. Second hand games while they get no money from the sale it doesnt cost them a sinlge penny extra to host them online. So thats a huge difference. MW2 was piracted at least 1 million times thats a possible 1 million players Activision need to host online thats a huge cost.
I haven't seen (m)any publishers say this, what I do see them pointing out is the lost revenue from second hand sales though. Tackling online play on games which are played heavily online is the best way to get at second hand sales though given that retailers won't play ball.Grumpypants wrote: »The publishers claiming that second hand users going on line costs them a fortune and that is why they have to charge is not true. That is why im against an online charge but not against a charge over the full game being bought second hand. If they act fairly ill suppoort them.
Some of us have made that point constantly while also pointing out that it is legal in the US as of recently. I think it's almost a guarantee that something similar will be brought in in Europe at some point in the near future though.Grumpypants wrote: »And just a note to everyone that EULA in your manual is NOT LEGALLY BINDING. It has the same legal standing as me posting you a sealed letter that says inside if you open this letter i own your house. If when you are installing the game they ask you to tick a box that is legally binding.
Also, I'm surprised this hasn't been posted in the thread yet. :pac:
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First of all, in the interest of transparency, I am an employee of Boards.ie and we have an advertising deal with Electronic Arts. So EA helps to pay my wages. I also get copies of some of their games for review purposes (including the copy of FIFA 11 I have at home which does include an online code). I say this just so that no one tries to pull me up on it later
I was fortunate enough to have a chat with a chap called Kieron Gaynor recently who's a producer for Sony (involved in the new Move game called The Fight amongst other things). We finished up an interview and we were just shooting the breeze about the games industry in general and he made the following point:
How much does a new game cost today? Let's say €50. How much do these games cost to develop? Millions.
How much did a game on the NES cost 20 odd years ago? £30 which is €38 and change. How much did these games cost to develop? Thousands.
So Games production has seen a thousand fold development cost increase and we've seen a €12 price increase in the end product. I'd say the developers and publishers are being pretty generous even when you take into account the vast increase in sheer numbers of product being shipped and sold in comparison to 20 years ago (i.e. bigger sales at lower profits per individual item).
Now I hadn't thought of that before, but it's absolutely correct and you know what, being fair, we're far from being ripped off at any stage of the process. I'll expand...
Online services cost a fair bit of money to implement and maintain. It's expected to be a part of the game and I don't think that's an unfair expectation. However, going back to my previous point, back in the day there was no online anything for games and when the intertrons came along, in the last 10 years it's become a key component to games. There was always going to be the initial rush to absorb this new found tech into gaming - games have always pushed the envelope in terms of tech I think we can agree. However, in the rush to add online play into everything, was the cost of it properly addressed? I don't know if any technological revolution has ever caught on as fast and with as much enthusiasm as the Internet. It's really hard to think through to the potential problems and issues you're going to face in 10 years time for the decisions you make today (believe me, I know. I walk this line every day)
People were outraged at the thought of having to pay Microsoft for the use of XBox Live Gold accounts and I was one of them, but tbh, the value you get out of it is astounding. It works, and it works very well. I can't recall ever having a big problem with it in terms of uptime and lack of service. Similarly with a game like FIFA 11 (which I have at home, but haven't had a chance to play yet), the game is so popular that you are spending serious money in getting it's servers up and running to maintain all of it and the bandwidth requirements to push all the data out are probably astronomical (as well as continuing support for the previous game which a lot of people will still be playing). All this costs a lot of money. That means less profits. If you're a huge publishing company like EA or Activision or Ubisoft or anyone, you set a goal for each product of what your minimum profit has to be in order to keep producing the game (similarly for any sort of publishing, be it film, music, print, etc). This is big business, lets never loose sight of that. We're talking Billions of dollars.
So gaming companies are seeing a big fall in profits because of second hand sales. The pic posted earlier shows just how much Game-Stop made from used sales and jill_valentine above also makes the point that without second-hand sales, a lot of these shops would have to close as once again, they wouldn't be making enough profit for it to be worth their while. Now here's the tricky part - each party needs the other to do well. We just don't have the facilities or services to make all gaming digital distribution only in Ireland and we're a rich "first world" country. We will never fully move to online shopping as there's something quite enjoyable about going to a shop and browsing through the new releases and holding something physical and tangible in your hands. That said, I've managed to get over it and pretty much buy all my games online now, but I am an early adopter in terms of internet and technology and far from an average consumer. So the Games publishers and Games Shops need one another but are constantly trying to maximise how they make money out of one another. Now you see content being created exclusively for these game shops for pre-sales (again, a trick EA has embraced whole-heartedly).
So going back to the profits, because that's what it's all about at the end of the day...
Publishers have been exploring many different models for how this thing can work. Activision does very well with the subscription based model for World of Warcraft and so that's become the standard model for all MMO type games. EA spotted a nice trick in offering additional "realism" to FIFA (and I'd imagine other EA Sports titles) in charging a little extra to give you real-world stats and updates. In an effort to take a cut of this massive used (console) games sales business, publishers are looking at this Activation Code for online stuff - this just brings them up to the same level of the PC gaming. The CD-Key was introduced to pc gaming (and indeed most PC software) with anti-piracy measures in mind as well as second hand sales (because it's so much easier to copy a PC game). Consoles are the darlings of the gaming publishers world. They're accessible to the most non-technical of customer, they've turned gaming into a hobby for everyone and not just the nerds, they're difficult to pirate and easy to control. Who wouldn't love that? The PC market shrinks more and more every years despite it, from a technical standpoint, being the superior gaming platform in every way imaginable (ignoring the hundreds of euro you need to spend every few years keeping a gaming PC bleeding edge, but that's a sickness us PC people need to learn to live with).
This second-hand thing though has clearly been bugging the publishers and is eating into the profits from their golden console goose and so action had to be taken! What have they picked? The online bit. Why have they picked it? Cause it's the biggest on-going expense of any game and is essentially where they loose the most money on a second-hand game. Is it fair to the second-hand buyer? Not really IMO, but I understand it. Is it fair to the second-hand retailer? Certainly not, unless they get smart and strike a deal to bulk buy activation codes at source and pass them on to customers at half price or come to some other arrangement with the publishers. Is it fair to the publisher? They certainly don't think so, it's eating their profits up and that's what it's all about for them (as with any business).
In all this chain of commerce, a lot of people are directing their ire at the "man at the top" and that's not unreasonable. It's their decision to implement this change, but it's a decision influenced by the actions of the other links in the chain and so whilst you don't agree with it, you have to at least acknowledge that if you buy second-hand or you pirate games, you're a part of the issue.
If you buy new games all the time, then you're not being affected by this cause you're getting the activation codes included anyway.
So this is the "least bad" solution to a current problem. It looks a lot worse than it possibly is as it just reeks of the big business trying to squeeze every bit of money out of you that they can, but you know what? That's the way *every* business works
(ps: I hadn't intended to make this long a post, my thanks and apologies if you've read it all) 0 -
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