If this is true I'm guessing this was their bad Gamescom news. Seems legit, it's a way of having "family sharing" without it being completely insane and fits right in line with how well Microsoft has communicated things earlier.
@chaser324: I think working on it through PSN/XBL next gen is the key. Some people were already buying The Last of Us off of PSN just for the convenience of it. So just do as Steam did and make it easier than retail, match or undercut in price, just get people used to buying from these services. People were annoyed when you needed Steam for HL2, not when you could buy a game there if you wanted for a reasonable price and some added convenience.
@oginor: Exactly, they did not force or rush it. The circumstances for why Microsoft chose to do so are irrelevant, I still think it's the wrong approach. During the next generation both Microsoft and Sony can slowly over time do with PSN and XBL what Valve did with Steam.
And MS absolutely needs to earn my trust. I'm not going to spend 500€ because I think they'll be nice and give me games for cheap. They need to show me they can actually deliver
@kierkegaard: Agreed with pretty much everything you said.
So why not offer sales on PSN and XBLA, Steam-like models that already exist?
In a market that isn't completely closed businesses tend to charge as much as they think they can for a product.
What I'm saying is they already have a way of offering sales without involving used copies at all, and if anything the existence of used games is an extra incentive for digital sales. If publishers don't feel like doing it then fine, but I won't feel bad for them or accept whatever changes they want as a result.
@chibithor: Yeah..we were going to try that until the Internet got its panties in a twist, remember? ;)
No we weren't. We were going to force the issue and lock the games down into a Steam-like system with the possibility of sales maybe in the future. Steam had to prove itself over time as a viable option, Microsoft had no intentions of doing any of that.
If anything used games should be an incentive to do more sales, to entice consumers to buy digital which moves us into 'the all digital future' and reduces the amount of used copies going around. Or is it just like piracy, a problem that people can blame for everything that goes wrong?
There's a reason that guys like David Jaffe, Cliff Bleszinski, and Mikey Neumann were out there supporting these efforts. They've seen the numbers and are highly aware of the harsh realities of modern game development. A lot of publishers and developers are really struggling out there right now. If we want video games to be a healthy industry, something has to be done.
Perhaps instead of trying to hurt the consumers who consume your products the industry should be more reflective and take a good long look at itself. You don't need a 1000 people to make a game, it's absurd. They need to rethink they way they make games instead of trying to squeeze every last penny out of the people who support the industry and their livelihoods.
You do realize there's a reason why NBA 2k is 15$ on PC a month after release and 55$ on consoles right.
What incentive does a publisher has to come in and offer an awesome sale when that consumer has the right to them sell their game back to Gamestop? You're talking about squeezing every penny out of the consumer but the model they were offering was that which exists on the PC through Steam. The cheaper model.
So why not offer sales on PSN and XBLA, Steam-like models that already exist?
Log in to comment