Does this remind anyone of the horse armor addon?

Games went from $50 to $60. Gamers bitched, but still bought games.
Online services were charged on top of your ISP charge. Gamers bitched, but still bought it.
Extra content as DLC, or content already on the disc was purchased or unlocked for a fee. Gamers bitched, but still bought it.
EA wants to charge for online if you buy their games used. Gamers bitch...

See where I am going? They will keep charging if gamers let them.

The days of simply buying a game to play are so far gone, I wonder if we were better off before they became 'next gen'

1: I own 4 xbox's, 3 or which have different gamer tags, for my kids...this will stop me from ever buying another sports game from EA, and I buy 2-4 every year for my kids to "share" on their "separate" gamer tags. This is not some half ass internet threat that I have no intention on following through with, I have actually just canceled 4 different EA preorders as of 5 minutes ago.

2: If you don't think this will effect the online community for games, you are wrong. It might actually get rid of a few of the kids who can make a game bad, but it will also make it smaller and harder to find games.


3: If you don't buy or sell used games, and think this will not effect price you are wrong again. I honestly believe that the used game market helps keep the price of new games from getting higher, and also gets games to drop in price over time. It is not the only factor, but competition has never hurt. The head of Activision has said that if it was up to him, he would charge a lot more for MW2...or other games....he does not do it, because it would stop some from buying, but also push more toward the used version. If that used version was gone from the picture.....

You know where it's going. Video games will be the first medium to switch entirely to digital distribution, and when that happens, there will be no used game sales.

And when that happens I'll probably be done with it. I hate full price digital distribution.

^^This. I've often said that if and when gaming goes full digital distribution, I'm done (well as far as the whole buying new consoles and new games argument, I'll still play my old systems as long as possible). But I've been playing for nearly 30 years and writing (blogging, internet column, whatever) about games for almost 5 years now, and it breaks my heart that gaming is headed towards this direction. It used to be about the consumer, now its about making as much as money as possible. Where's the LOVE!?!

This already has happened with stuff like Mass Effect 2. I personally have no problem with this. If I don't like it I am free to not buy EA games or to wait until the price of the new game is cheaper to make up for buying it used. This will get me to buy fewer games not more so my pocketbook is the real winner.

This kind of free thought and rationale is not welcome here.

But I love me some ridiculously cheap digital distribution, aka Steam sales.

Also a failed analogy. For one thing, unless you're super rich, you're not buying cars as often as you buy video games. And if you are, none of this matters anyway. But a car is a significant one time purchase and there's more to factor in than the quality of the radiator.

For another, I think it's fair to assume that the reason that this car has a bad radiator is because it has been used for too long. For this analogy to work, you'd have to point out that the used car salesman has purposefully removed the radiator functionality unless you pay more on top of it.

I'm already seeing problems with this system cropping up. I bought Mass Effect 2, used the code for the Cerberus Network. My roommate began playing the game on his gamertag on my console. My 360 red-ringed before he could finish playing it. Got my replacement system, my roommate pops in his game, and he can't access his save because the new system isn't recognizing the DLC. I'm in the process of deleting and redownloading the DLC to see if it will allow him to access it, but he may have to start all over, and he was in the middle of the final mission when the console died. If he doesn't want to start over, he'd have to pay $15 to download the Cerberus Network. That's just shitty.

The same could be applied to a game. A used game might have scratches all over it making it freeze at points during the game. Could be missing the manual, box could have been a dog toy for the previous owner.

Kinda like those hardcore sports gamers out there that only buy Madden or Fifa every year and nothing else?

In the end there is one major plus to this, Gamestop, who still sort of sets the used game prices, is going to have to lower what they expect to get for used games even more. That means you could see some 44 dollar used games right off the bat, and not 54 bucks....this actually is a great thing because in some games I have no plans to play the multiplayer (like Bioshock 2) and having gamestop hit 44 right off the bat, will push ebay and amazon to under 40 right off the bat....this actually might backfire and push even more people to used games.

What?

Scratches on the game are not going to make the multi-player stop working, nor would paying money to the company that makes the game going to get the multi-player working. So I'm sorry, but your agrument to his statement doesn't even make sense.

I have yet to have a game get in such bad shape that just say the multiplayer stops working. Nor do I believe there is technology now that would allow a company to get the item working without sending it in by paying some money.

He mentioned "if you are rich" so I'm pretty sure he meant price wise it is significant. When games get to the price of a car in any capacity then I think it's time to stop buying games.

I'm sorry man, no offense, but it almost feels like you are being deliberately obtuse just to try to further your opinion.

Alright, ignore my point that the analogy doesn't make sense unless the used car reseller purposefully put in a bad radiator so you have to buy a better one...from him only.

THQ has followed suit starting with UFC 2010.
http://www.pastapadre.com/2010/05/19...or-online-play
http://www.destructoid.com/ufc-undis...e-174080.phtml

So now that is Ubisoft, EA and THQ.

I'm fine with it. I definitely prefer them to keep it to only 1 code though. All the codes I got with Dragon Age were a pain in the ass to enter.

I never buy used so while I won't ever have to pay the fee on top of a used game price I do rent here and there. I guess I am lucky in way that I don't have the free time I used to a year ago to play online a bunch. I don't mind paying full price for a game but I will be more selective about which games I get from now on.

In a perfect world this will hopefully make developers work harder to fully develop the online portion of their game to get people to really WANT to play online. I just don't think this will be the case in the long run.

Of course it won't. 90 percent of the people who buy a sports game, or a FPS like MW2 will be playing online, those games aren't quite as fun as offline. They don't need to make the experience better, people will still buy it. Just look at that Modern Warfare 2 map pack. 15 bucks and you only get 3 maps I think. That is ridiculous, they still sold hundreds of thousands of downloads though

As long as people "allow" them to do it by purchasing it, they will never stop with ridiculous stuff like this.

It's 5 maps. 3 new & 2 old.

Well just played some UFC online with a friend. Felt stupid to put in a PSN code just to play online. And guess what? Buggy and full of lag. Online menus took forever to load, and matches were laggy. At one point during a clench, my friends fighter started to slowly slide backwards, until we had this for 2 minutes:



No movement, just hovering, crowd booing, Joe saying we suck, etc.

But hey, Online game features unlock!!

I doubt any of those issues have anything to do with inputing a code.

The part I like is if you don't know about it there is nothing I saw that tells you there is a code on the back of the manual to enter. When you launch the game without entering the code it pops up to download the new DLC which is online access for 400 points. No where in the description of the content does it tell you this is free for a new copy and the code is on your manual. I wonder how many people ended up buying it when they didn't need to.

Now that is totally shady. This needs to stop.

What im trying to get at is THQ touted this huge new online experience (justifying the $5 code for those who bought used) and the same shitty online experience one usually gets in a game like this, is still there.