The end of used games?
 

From joystiq.com :

Recognizing this is a rumor, I'm really kind of pissed off by this. I don't like it on the PC and I really hate the idea on consoles. I don't doubt that this is the road that the industry is heading regardless if this specific rumor is true or not.

I can't count the number of places I've brought a copy of Street Fighter to so that I could engage in some competition. This means that if I want to play at location other than my home, I have to cart my entire PS3. I believe I should have free use of a game I purchased. Damned inconvenient, another way to force my gaming online, and just a big FU to consumers.

Plus, I like buying used games.

There's already a discussion in the sticky PS3 thread up there.

I'm sure they'd like nothing more than to piss consumers off even more, not to mention some of their biggest retail partners (Gamestop, EB, Blockbuster, etc).

This will never happen on disc media. This is a bullshit rumor.

Now digital media. Yes, they want you to buy it that way in the future because with DRM you are stuck with it.

That is why I vehemently oppose paying for digital media. It would totally change the economics of media distribution and I guarantee you that it is not in favor of the consumer.

It won't happen but they'd love it if it did. I believe Nintendo once tried to stop the sale of used games at retail in court and they got shot down like a meteor.

I know if it came to that point I'd find other hobbies. The $60 prices they want are just too damn much for me to justify spending on a game so I rely on the used market. I've yet to buy a game for $60 and I'd like to keep it that way.

I could see sony trying to do this. Put a license on their media. Sony always tries weird things like this. Probably why I stopped buying their goods a while back.

To me used games ended when ebgames and gamestop merged and you couldn't get 25% off and free shipping from ebgames.

Considering that each PlayStation that I've owned (both PS1 and PS2) have each had to be replaced multiple times, does this mean that if my PS3 breaks that I'll be unable to play any of my games because the license is only for the old system?

Let's not forget that you'd never be able to rent another game, either ... unless rental outlets get different games, in which case you just buy everything used from BBV.

This will probably happen with the next generation of gaming after the Wii, PS3, and 360.

I can see all games being purchased online in four to five years. It'd save a ton of money for producing and distributing games. And with disc space becoming cheaper in the future, it'd be a viable option.

I think the used game market will be gone in about 4-5 years.

Personally, I think getting rid of the used game market is a good thing. I try not to buy used games as it is because none of the money spent on a used game goes to the game company, it all goes to the retailer. I always try to spend the extra $5 or $10 to support the game companies when purchasing a game.

My only concern is, as I mentioned above, that should my system break I won't be able to play my existing games on a new system due to licensing issues.

Most people are willing to spend $50 or $60 for a new game when they know they can recover $25 to $40 a month or two later when they sell it. Take away that resale value, and it's guaranteed that new game sales drop, thus prices would have to drop.

With all the hand-wringing and complaining by executives in this industry, you'd think they're the only ones that have to deal with a used market.

Of course, exactly $0 of that savings will be passed on to consumers.

Yep...remember when PC games were in big boxes? Or CDs were in those big cardboard boxes? Now smaller, but not cheaper.

There will always be people who are willing to pay a premium to get a new game, 'now'. The resale--or trade-in--on those games helps subsidize that person's buying another new game. Prices on almost everything eventually drop. The used market cons can be applied to virtually any industry, none of which have collapsed due to the sale of used materials.

I buy used games, I also buy new games. I prefer to wait until a new game hits 15-30 bucks rather than 50. It allows me to buy more games and spread my gaming dollar out. If I was stuck buying one 60-buck game every four months, instead of 1 15-buck game each month, and that game sucked and i couldn't sell it--well, I'd be buying a lot fewer games, and being a lot more cautious with my purchases, in the future, which would ultimately hurt the industry.

If they linked the game to a specific machine, then yes, they need to make more stable hardware. And lots of people buy games and take them to a friend's house to play.

Whereas DIVX never caught on in terms of movies, this is the videogame equivalent and it seems to be the "wave of the future" so to speak.

Has Sony shot this down yet?

The record companies have tried to fight this battle in the past, only to be smacked down in a big way.

The fact is, resale of copywrighted or patented item is considered 'fair use'. Imagine if you couldn't sell your car when you wanted a new one. It's ridiculous!

Sony should know better. They JUST went through having to recall all of those stupid spyware-infested ("copy-protected") audio CDs.

They are a consistent threat to consumer's rights, so I wouldn't have been surprised if this had proven true...

I don't recall signing a contract saying I wouldn't resell my car. Sony would definately have that as a part of its licensing agreement that you would have to "sign" before accessing the content.

My understanding is that what is determined to be fair use of copyrighted materials often depends on the format of the material. For example, you may be perfectly legit to sell a used book, but that same book in electronic format has an entirely different set of regulations... I'm not entirely up on the DMCA, etc but I know that things are much different based on the distribution format of a given material.

Four to five years? No way. Too many people are not comfortable not having a hard copy of the game. A file on a hard drive is not as guaranteed as a disc in a box to most people. Downloading cheap extra content is one thing, but a $60 game? People would not feel that is a safe purchase.

Also, I don't think broadband will be widespread enough for this to happen, and even with broadband, a whole DVD/HD-DVD/Bluray disc worth of content would still take too long for most people. Not everyone wants to go online with their games. I game with a group of people and am the only one who goes online. I just don't see this huge "catching up" of the mass market gamers in four to five years.

True dat! I just lost my original XBOX and all my progress and -PAID FOR MAPS and ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS- for Star Wars:BattleFront II. I ended up having to RE-PURCHASE them to play this game LIVE on my 360. :grunt: Had I had those maps on a disc, like HALO II's Multiplayer Map Pack, I could've just loaded up ALREADY purchased content on to the new system.

That really pissed me off....

Sidenote: I re-downloaded the HALO II maps to my 360 because at the time I wasn't sure if the Map Pack disk would work(it does). But of course it didn't matter because the were ALL FREE so it was no big deal.

Makes sense. I have friends with XBOX's and Playstations that either never went online or no longer go online.

The cost of production and distribuition is minimal to that of cost of the actual production of a game. (<5%).

Cost savings? Yes. "A ton"? Not really... Especially when compared with the increasing development costs which are expected to go up nearly 300% in the next 3 years.

The copyright stuff has to do with selling copies. This notion that you are purchasing a license exists nowhere in the law. It may be illegal to copy a CD and sell the copies, but the CD itself is a good that you purchased and may transfer.

In the history of music and film on recorded media, there has never been any serious suggestion I'm aware of that a secondhand market in recordings has any copyright implications whatsoever. The music industry is a special interest, and, like all special interests, it is able to get the legislation it wants when the impact on everyone else is minimal. But the impact of shutting down all the secondhand record, movie and game retailers would certainly draw public ire.

If the market permits it, they might try to hard-code something into the software that stops it from being transferrable, but that would probably upset a lot of people, and would be bad for the console advancing it in competition.

As for online distribution, discs are still a lot cheaper per-gigabyte than hard-drive space, and digital distribution for games that take up 50-60 megabytes and get downloaded a few hundred thousand times is a lot less complicated than digital distribution of games that take up 5-6 gigabytes and get downloaded a couple of million times.

Seems it isn't true:
http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/159
http://www.playfuls.com/news_3827.html