Came across an interesting article today over on the G4 website. It is in The Feed section for those that want to hop on over and check it out. The story's about the new Resident Evil game for the 3DS. It's save feature cannot be erased. That means if you were to buy that particular game used, you would be playing on someone else's game saves, not your own. Capcom gave an answer that was more double talk than anything that resembles a reason. They explained what the feature does but not the intention behind it. Some think it is to deter the game being sold on the used game market. Just for the record, the gaming industry does not make any revenue outside the initial purchase. Companies like Gamestop have been making millions of dollars each year on used games without one cent going to the developers.
As an avid gamer, I appreciate the used game market. It allows me to save a little bit of cash and play a lot more games. The used game market also allows me to trade in the old for new. Kind of on the same idea of cars in my view. If I buy a 2004 Honda, they don't get any more money for that car. They made there money when it was new. The gaming industry needs to look at the games in that light. Of course when large amounts of money are involved people get a little crazy. Developers complain that it is their property and should be allowed to make money on every turn of the game. They want the same system as the movie industry or music. In case they missed the boat, both of those industries have the biggest amount of piracy around.
The industry should stick to building more content to add to the games. Successful title like Call of Duty and Rockband sold their fair share of new title. Those titles also have a tremendous amount of success selling downloadable content to add to the games. This is where the companies should focus. Even if a used game is purchased, the add-ons can still make revenue. To cripple a game with locked out saves or no access to buy additional content is just spiteful. My suggestion is to be careful. Once you start to handcuffs your consumers, they find ways to break them, and it will cost the industry more in pirated software than a few used games sold.
As an avid gamer, I appreciate the used game market. It allows me to save a little bit of cash and play a lot more games. The used game market also allows me to trade in the old for new. Kind of on the same idea of cars in my view. If I buy a 2004 Honda, they don't get any more money for that car. They made there money when it was new. The gaming industry needs to look at the games in that light. Of course when large amounts of money are involved people get a little crazy. Developers complain that it is their property and should be allowed to make money on every turn of the game. They want the same system as the movie industry or music. In case they missed the boat, both of those industries have the biggest amount of piracy around.
The industry should stick to building more content to add to the games. Successful title like Call of Duty and Rockband sold their fair share of new title. Those titles also have a tremendous amount of success selling downloadable content to add to the games. This is where the companies should focus. Even if a used game is purchased, the add-ons can still make revenue. To cripple a game with locked out saves or no access to buy additional content is just spiteful. My suggestion is to be careful. Once you start to handcuffs your consumers, they find ways to break them, and it will cost the industry more in pirated software than a few used games sold.
Did you hear that Redbox may rent games from their movie rental service kiosks?
ReplyDeleteI heard something about it. Could be a little competition for gamefly but that's a big untapped market. The person that can develop a membership based swap system could be the biggest winner.
ReplyDelete