Gangsta rap made me do it.

@boj4ngles: Just because something has been around forever doesn't make it good for the industry. It's more of a problem now than it was due to the astronomical costs involved in making a game and consumers being more frugal with their purchases.

I have no idea what point your trying to make about Resident Evil. Games are still going to cost $60 new and getting rid of used games doesn't mean the game will always cost $60. That's the business plan that has always been in place and with used games they're far more reliant on day 1 sales.

No. Every other entertainment industry has to deal with secondhand product. You don't hear bitching about it because those industries are run responsibly, while ours is an industry where companies spend Hollywood budgets without having near the reach.

If the astronomical costs are the problem, the solution isn't to punish the consumer: It's to lower the fucking costs.

honestly I do not believe anymore that is is what publishers dictated Microsoft to do. This is beyond anything publishers wanted. That is just Microsoft's thinking mostly balmers Thinking. They really need to get rid of that guy.

This. The fact that we might get a Gears game on the PS4 tells me all I need to know about what publishers think.

I'm not sure what entertainment industry you're talking about but the film and music industry have been bitching about it for a long time.

I don't really see how the consumer is being punished by getting rid of used games.

All I am going to say is that CBOAT confirm Microsoft went to the publisher with this stuff.

@hunkulese: Neither of those industries have made such a crazy push for it though. You can still buy unrestricted copies of movies and music, on discs, that can be sold/moved around at will. As of now, physical and digital media coexist in every entertainment industry, and I really don't see the need for that to change so quickly. Maybe once digital proves to be better than physical the market will shift, but until then we need physical media.

the problem is that they are forcing it on to you no matter what. Sony instead goes the natural way by offer people a choice and sometime the switch to digital will happen naturally. You do not need to force this stuff upon people.

@darji: Exactly! When digital proves to be better, consumers will gravitate towards it and physical media will die out on its own (and consumers wont be so bitter about it). We aren't there yet though, so MS attempting to cripple physical media and giving the upper hand to digital will just make people angry

That's exactly what I was thinking as well. Microsoft try to force the change when in reality it should be first and foremost accepted by the customer. How can a company make the consumer want the change is pretty much what sony is doing at the moment: Don't restrict Blu ray but also support digital content as much as possible, show people that it can be advantageous to go the digital road instead of buying a disc. The change won't happen in 1 day, but if they can show that buying digital game has more benefice than the restriction it come with, then the custumer will be ready for the change and disc will fade away by itself.

Also, the big plus of this method is that it let sony plenty of time to figure out the best method to handle Digital Market when it will become the main way to sell game. But for now there is no rush, the transition as begun slowly but surely. For example, I just bought Tomb Raider bundle on PSN for 20$ that incldule a bunch of skin pack/multiplayer map and it came with Quantum Conumdrum . If deal like that continue to improve on console, it can only be a good thing for consumer.

The whole PS4 thing makes this question pretty crazy. I mean if the publishers were lobbying for it, then that means Sony kind of pulled a fast one on both Microsoft and the rest of the industry with their announcement. I imagine that if publishers were aggressively campaigning for this DRM, that they would mak the exclusive content and game deals contingent on whether or not Sony bent to their demands. Since there was a a lot of evidence of good relations between Sony and publishers throughout the entire show, that means that the publishers couldn't have been pushing for this stuff right? Otherwise there would have been more outrage, more backlash. Which just makes Microsoft seem so much more stupid! How could such a big company, with people who are paid so much to figure stuff like this out, actually think this is a good idea?