Can You Count, Suckas!!

Can you count suckas! I say the future is ours!

Today MS keeled under the pressure of gamers. Gamers united, from all castes and creeds. We had the Playstationers standing side by side with xboxers. PC neckbeards fighting alongside Nintendowners. All against the tyranny of one corporation, MS. And Suckas, we made them grovel. They have bent over and changed their policies. No more mandatory online 24 checks for all games. No more totalitarian control over what can be bought and sold. Used games are back. And they're here to stay.

Can you dig it! There are ten millions of us, and but a few of them.

The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another. We have been unable to see the truth, because we have fighting for ten square feet of ground, our turf, our little piece of turf. That's crap, brothers! The turf is ours by right, because it's our turn. All we have to do is keep up the general truce. We take over one borough at a time. Secure our territory... secure our turf... because it's all our turf!

CAN YOU DIG IT!!

*BANG*

Shut up

@fourwude: No, Sony fucking swerved on them and they fucking panicked. If you actually believe that they "bowed" to customers then you be crazy.

Yep, a few thousand tweets changed everything, you're right.

If Sony weren't in the picture, I have no doubt that they wouldn't change a thing, no matter how much people screamed.

@mandude: Well, duh.

publisheeeerrrss......come out to plaaayaaaay?

I don't know

I think it was more pressure from Sony and Nintendo constantly shit talking them in public along with dev and pubs kinda going "meh" about the used games issue and the system in general than gamers being upset but I think gamers being upset did have some effect.

Hahaha. Well done, man. Well done.

@colourful_hippie: Obviously not duh. Some people seem to be under the impression that we have the ability to influence large corporations (not necessarily the OP). That's not true; we don't. Other large corporations have the power to influence large corporations by trouncing them in the press and pre-orders.

but you tried and that counts for something.

I think.

great you're gonna make me go watch The Warriors again. Well, that's not really a bad thing...

Yeah, Sony influenced them... but it was our immense reaction to Sony's announcement and the pre-order numbers that made them realize "hey, maybe this isn't a good idea"

He's just missing the clinking of broken discs from angry publishers who thought they had beaten the used market.

...would broken discs actually clink? Or tink? Or make any real noise?

"You think they're gonna bend over and take it up the ass that hard after all we've done?"

"Of course they will, you just need to write exactly what I said and they'll believe that they matter and that was them and not publishers changing our minds!"

"Don, are you ready to write exactly what I said you should write in the updated FAQ?"

"I... I think so yeah"

"Ok, then do it! Make them believe it and think that they matter!"

*Don sits down to write the updated Policy thingy: "blahblahblah(I hope this works) "Feed back from the Xbox community" ... alright, now we wait"

Someone reads the updated policy stuff

"OMG THEY LISTENED TO US! THE CONSUMERS!!

"Don thinks to himself: "HAHAHAHAHAHAH! THey actually bought it?! Those fucking morons, hahahaha. Oh I hope you enjoy this dick so hard and unfiltered you naive sluts"

Anyone who thinks that their little hashtag campaign did anything and the publishers and Sony had nothing to do with this move just.. end yourself.
Apply bullet directly to forehead, please, for the love of god.

I'm not saying this isn't some good news, but stop kidding yourselves about who changed what.
After years of being more than just a casual person who plays a video game now and again people should know better.
,01% influence from whiny dicks on twitter.
Rest of it was without a doubt Sonys move and publishers saying "listen, if the Xbox One doesn't sell, the PS4 will"

+1 for little to no noise.

digital zealots need to realize nothing will be impacted for them as microsoft will be still doing day 1 digital.

and to those saying the regular people didnt do anything, If xbox one was outpacing preorders on the ps4, they would have never revoked these policies.

If Sony had gone the same route as Microsoft regarding this DRM stuff then Microsoft probably wouldn't have changed anything, regardless of how much people complained on the internet. I'm not saying that it had no effect but I wager it was pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

We have some influence (keyword some), imagine if the reception to Sony's announcement was all passive. MS would have less incentive to bother following Sony, but yeah Sony not following along with MS was what threw a wrench into their plans.

THAT'S RIGHT. YOU'RE AN INTERNET CHAMPION. NOW GO AND BUY MICROSOFT'S BULLSHIT GUILT FREE. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU'VE WON.

We are the holders of the all powerful Cash Dollar Bills. They must listen.

Pre-order night on Amazon - we made our voices heard.

All the internet posturing doesn't amount to anything. It's the cash money that talks.

My friend, always be PS4 for life. But today was a momentous day.

Look brothers. 3 piggies coming to subvert the truth and divide us. Shilling for the man once again.

Take your piggy white asses and get the fuck out of my thread.

Dig it!

Not really. Corporations freaking out and changing policy when they fuck up is not some great revelation. This is what Sony has done with the PS4 in response to the mistakes they made with the PS3.

"The costumer is always right." Microsoft tried to tell people what was right and they fucked up and were forced to recant. There's nothing amazing in this.

Sony's packed! Sony's packed!

That's actually an interesting point that hadn't occurred to me. The difference between this and other times when there was "internet rage" regarding something in the games industry (such as people getting pissed about the ending to some games) is that this can result in huge money loss, whereas changing something about a game that already came out probably ain't affecting their revenue quite nearly as much. So moral of the story: money talks.

Point well made. At the same token, I feel that if there wasn't such a negative reaction to MS and such a positive reaction to Sony with MS having DRM and Sony not, then MS would still have no reason to change DRM.

didn't have anything to do with the ''PEOPLE FIGHTING A CAUSE'' it was to do with $$$

we r al gmers and we luv gameaing HOORAY

Now I have to read Anabasis again.

I CAN DIG IT!

@thegreatguero said:

Perfect.

I dig it.

People making this point are being needlessly obtuse.

Obviously these companies are doing this for money. But the protestations of the people made them realize that they might be putting potential profits at risk for doing what they planned.

Sony heard people bitching about Microsoft and decided to throw them (and the potential profits) under the bus, because the goodwill they hoped to receive would potentially result in even greater profits. Microsoft saw the massively positive response to Sony's policies and realized sticking to their guns might hurt their bottom line, so they switched tactics.

The voice of the people changed these policies. I don't see how you guys don't get that.

@wrighteous86 said:

So they didn't throw any "potential profits" under the bus. Sony underwent a strategy that they believed would work best for them and would land a strong blow on Microsoft, and Microsoft changed their tactics because Sony's strategy worked. We owe this change to Sony, not "the consumer". Everyone knew "the consumer" was already pissed about DRM in 2006.

I fucking love that movie!

Two sides of the same coin really.

Especially with the sometimes unrealistic goals that the games industry has when it comes to units sold - they really can't afford to piss people off.

So with the back-lash it caused they simply realized they might push much less units onto the market, and without a substantial market-share the money they would make on the DRM policies and developer love they'd get for it, simply wouldn't surpass the massive drop in potential customers. It's really that simple. Call it listening to fans or whatever, but at the end of the day they're still a business.

The fact that they went out and did what they did initially will make it take a long time to regain consumer trust for some. Especially with the way Sony threw bones to consumers, and recent re-surfaced rumors about Valve also giving more digital rights to consumers to potentially lend games to other users.

Microsoft came out thinking they could lead this development and that Sony would follow in their footsteps because what choice would they have? The way I see it it would make more sense for developers to support the system that has the biggest user base, because that would mean the most potential amount of customers, even if they'll loose some money because little timmy gives his game to little patrick when he's done with it, that doesn't make enough of a dent in the spread sheet to be significant. I assume first party games however will be super important this generation since all three major platforms are X86 based - at which point it becomes a distribution problem to NOT put in that little extra development time to make your product work with all three systems (pc/bone/ps4).

"We owe this change to Sony" as was just mentioned - definitely. Without them basically going on stage and telling everyone to fuck off and that the consumer also has rights, not just the company or developers, we wouldn't have seen this development to begin with.

Keep on boppin', boppers!

Also, all of the people around claiming the consumer reaction made no difference really could not seem more ridiculous if they tried. Please stop it, it's just cringeworthy to read people making themselves look so dense and bitter at the same time.

And right now the Wii U has a nice XBone shoved halfway up its ass

Exactly right. The public reaction and Sony's policies are inextricably linked. Sony weren't making these decisions in a vacuum.

Man, now you made me want to watch The Warriors.

Also, that game was great.

SPINAROONIE, BAH GAWD!

Indeed, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Units sold are directly tied to happy customers, imagine that. Piss them off, and you won't sell any units to profit from the draconian DRM to begin with - pretty simple, really...

Sony just saw the limping gazelle and took the bite.

I hope the world ends before the new consoles launch so we can stop thinking about them.