What if you could never share or rent a game ever again?

This goes for both Xbox fans and Sony fans.

What if you are still in the minority?

What if, the MASS consumer still outnumber us and buy digital 2-1 when it's available because they love convenience, are lazy, and have money(especially early adopters)?

Do you have any solid market research data that points one way or another?

What if the mass consumer will still make digital the default medium, because they simply won't care about second hand value, but now we have no value in digital games?

What if you got angry about an issue, focused on a dying medium, feel like you won something, while completely taking away your attention from the fact you are going along with ZERO rights, and no second hand value, for your digital media? They will still make these available on BOTH consoles.

What if you spent hundreds or thousands on new digital purchases which get locked down, can't be traded, shared and never carry over(Xbox Live Arcade)?

What if laptops, tablets, cell phones, and many other video game playing devices don't even have an optical drive and developers make more and more digital games? Have you been paying attention?

What if we just now gave manufacturers and publishers a reason to hide behind this backlash, and still move forward with a 1 time purchase model with ZERO second hand value for digital games? "We gave you what you wanted!"

What if your game makers don't put their games on discs anymore by the end of this generation? What is the solution? Don't buy any more video games? That's going to be our only option?

What if in 10 years the only games you can buy are digital? Can you share them? Can you trade them? Can you rent them? Where is the guarantee? Same fate as Xbox Live Arcade titles?

You won the battle and lost the war? You won the present and lost the future? Are you just going to lean back, sip on drink, and call it a finished job?

What did you REALLY win? And what did you REALLY lose? Which questions didn't get asked? Which questions never really got answered? Which questions should you be asking? Are you satisfied just fighting for the present, or do you care about the future of video games as well?

What?

I wouldn't care, because I never do it anyway.

I don't anyway, i shared games maybe over 10 years ago when i didn't have a proper job and could buy my own stuff, but that it long gone.

It's a future I won't be participating in. I still enjoy going to game stores and picking up a physical copy of a game. I could possibly get behind digital if it wasn't handled poorly (on console) but even than I need to have good internet to download 30 gig games, which I don't. I'll be heading back to the PS2 and below when that future hits.

Read a book.

I play games on PC. You have not been able to do that since the early 90's almost 20+ years ago. It's not that big a deal.

#chemtrails

This is why I buy my games physically, to show that there is still a market for it. I don't understand why anyone would want an all digital future, all that does is take away your options, and more options are always better.

To be honest, It would never affect me. I never let anyone borrow my games and I always buy new. If all I had to do was buy new, then I can deal with that. Unlike some, I can wait for the price to fit my needs. For example, Farcry 3 was massively hyped and people went out of their way to buy it day one, or pick it up used at Gamestop. Me? I waited and Amazon has it listed for $20. That's a whole 75% off, brand new, untouched with the plastic wrap on it and the new game smell attached.

However, other people can't relate to my situation....

Purdy much, yeah. I always buy my games new/unused anyway, though. I believe in developers being paid for their hard work, even if it costs me a little more money.

What if you never have to worry about scratched, lost, or borrowed discs.

I wouldn't care. All I want to know is that in 30 years, I can pop the disc in and have that shit just work. Like a NES. Just the game turns on. I want that feature, and I am willing to pay for it.

It's still puzzling to me that people care so much about discs, but have no issue with any of the benefits of sharing, trading, renting, used games, carrying over to the digital medium.

$60 is $60 for me. Whether I buy a game on a disc or a digital copy, it doesn't make a difference.

And anyone that's paying attention would realize digital is becoming more and more mainstream. More and more devices are coming without optical drives at all. So even though we stopped a small push from taking place, I think the bigger issue has yet to pop-up.

To those of you saying you will go back to PS2 or old systems, does that really seem like such a great idea or an alternative? That's a really crappy alternative for me.

If digital does become the dominant medium, shouldn't we be fighting, asking and trying to get these benefits on digital as well?

Shouldn't we be fighting just as hard to maintain some sort of second hand value in digital games, whether it's in form of sharing, trading, renting, whatever just like people did for discs?

Then I would go full PC, because consoles would have lost the single edge they have over them.

Well I kinda feel that video games are becoming more and more exclusive as a medium. Its already a fairly expensive hobby anyways. The base line to play new console games cost 300 dollars just for the hardware. And that's not counting the price of games. Its probably continue since I doubt the people who make games and consoles actually can relate to those that can't pay for these things. Its becoming more like the tennis of digital hobbies.

Would not effect me at all. Last game i lent to someone was Red Dead Redemption and i never got it back.

I have not shared or rented a game in about 7 years. maybe longer. Even then it was renting from gamefly. I do however trade it all my games to GS.

@mikkaq: But I think that is the issue. There is a good possibility publishers will simply transition to a digital model by the end of the generation anyway with the help of consumers who will prefer to buy digital more and more just because it's available and convenient. So even though you can pop-in your games, assuming your console lasts 30 years(do you really expect his?), there might not be any games left to buy on a disc by then.

And as of right now, the only alternative to the freedom of renting, trading, sharing or having second hand value in digital video games is a rumor that Steam might introduce a digital game sharing feature.

This is a scary thought for me.

It wouldn't be an issue with me. Sense nowadays I usually don't share my games.....

I can it the other way, as a comforting thought. Me, as a game collector now has a hard stop on when collectible physical media ended. That means I won't have to collect games in perpetuity, eventually I'll just have all the physically released classics I want. As for the new stuff, well, it sucks that I can't collect it but at least I now know where it all ends. It's just that games become seriously devalued to me if you can't really collect them like that since I think part of the fun is popping in some old games and seeing how far we've come in a few short years and reliving some old memories.

Maybe in some pipedream lovely hippie future, some console equivalent to GOG will exist. I hate stuff like Virtual Console in their current incarnation because they treat it like a storefront with staggered releases for games that are already out for years, and most games don't come out at all. It should just be a massive ROM library of every Nintendo game ever that you can buy piece by piece, just getting the titles you want.

I'd most definitely be gaming a lot less.

It would be incredibly difficult to get a massive ROM library of every Nintendo game up through, let's say, the N64. Not because of hardware or software issues, but because of the sheer number of licensing issues they would come across, and all to satisfy a few enthusiasts who are either looking for nostalgia or a small window into gaming's past. It seems like the best we can get legally is a small selection of best-ofs (which will always be a bit lacking, again due to licensing), and everything else will have to be preserved in torrents of ROM collections.

I appreciate that Sony is doing something for backwards compatibility with Gaikai, but I wish they would start planning for easy future access when these consoles are obsolete, or at least let someone else do it. That could be through backwards compatibility, porting games to PC and selling them at a discount after the new console is out (not likely, but one can dream), or streaming.

On topic, I have already moved to PC gaming and in doing so gave up lending my games, so the "all-digital future" isn't something that bugged me greatly. What bugged me was the 24-hour check on the Xbox One, but that's gone so yay!

Also on-topic, I wish people would stop assuming that physical media will be completely and utterly gone in the near future. Audio CD's and DVD's still line store shelves wherever I go, and they haven't disappeared despite audio being available in digital form in several different formats. It might be convenient and acceptable for us, the frequenters of the internet, but I doubt it's acceptable for someone who isn't so easily inclined to the digital, networked future that you guys are envisioning or simply doesn't care about the idea of connecting to the internet and waiting a few hours for something to download. Sorry, I just don't see a completely digital future for at the very least a decade.

Plus, going to the store and picking up something physical is just satisfying, and with friends it's even more fun and interesting. Going to a midnight launch of a greatly anticipated game is still something that people enjoy.

Man, I wrote way more than I thought I would on this subject.

The hell are you talking about? My PS2 still sits, proudly plugged into my monitor and played quite regularly.

That's a lot of what ifs.

I just got a bunch of new free Ps3 games this month due to Ps+ and I have barely played any of them. Instead I have exclusively played some old N64 and Ps2 games. If the future goes the way that you are predicting I'll just keep playing all the old consoles. When my consoles die I'll emulate them. If that no longer becomes an option I'll move to a different hobby. I don't buy games for more than $30 and I won't buy a console for $400-500 either, and the current incantations of PSN and Xbox Live have done nothing to show anyone that prices will drop by going digital.

yep,

I would continue doing what I've been doing for a long ass time.
Buy my own games ask my friends to buy their own damn games as well

This does not apply to me.

I honestly didn't even know people still rented video games from a business. I've never seen a rental place anywhere I've lived.

I'd be fine. I honestly can't remember the last time I've shared/rented a game. Though if the rumors are true about sharing games via Steam, that might change soon.

Since Blockbuster and Rogers have died, it has kinda sucked. The only way I can deal now is to just get games on sale on my laptop or get them used (gamestop or kijiji).

I miss being able to rent games, I got to try so many different types of games and I bought the ones that really impressed me.

The way it is currently going, I see myself "maybe" buying one game a year the day it is released and the rest, I have to wait until it goes on sale somewhere. This sadly results in me missing out on when everybody is playing it/talking about it. When the lobby's are all full and the forum topics are plentiful.

Redbox does a decent job if you don't care about the poor selection.

Then we build and army. Here are the introductory training manuals.

Reversing

Applied Cryptography

I see the digital medium being able to bring this back if enough people demand it and stand up for it. It's unlikely you will ever be able to sell or trade in your digital games. But you can get back some of that value through digital sharing, trading and renting.

Would not affect my gaming habits in the slightest. Though I know others would be greatly affected.

The closest I get to sharing games nowadays is buying indie bundles on PC and gifting duplicates to friends. Other than that, I haven't rented a game in about 5 years and I haven't swapped games with anybody since grade school.

I wouldn't mind if that meant dropping the price of brand new games from $60 to $40. Hell, I would buy more games.

I would not be missing out on anything because I never do. Well, I do like the idea that I can share, but I haven't had friends borrow games for a really long time so I haven't needed to.

I have no need for renting and prefer not to really. Just personal choice preferences there.

Like I said in the other thread, every once and awhile, I'll take a copy of a game like, say, Bayonetta and shove it into somebody's chest and shout "Play this, and trust me."

...other than that though, I'm ready for the digital future.

To be honest, they would be better off staying with physical disks because when everything goes digital and internet speeds increase then games will become the next music download. They refuse to let people share and back up, more people will start to go with alternative means of doing so and sales will go down since why spend 60bux on something you don't own and can download in less than a minute for free?

Then I would never share or rent a game ever again.

Then consoles would need bigger, cheaper hard drives, and every game would need an easily accessible downloadable demo that actually gives you a damn good idea of what the final game is like.

I think I'll survive.