The moment any anti-piracy retaliation hurts business, it will stop, but the publishers will never stop trying, and to be fair, they have every right to try.
I just don’t appreciate them penalizing people who do buy their products legitimately.
Shouldn’t that be obvious?
I think in this internet age, feedback will be so much faster, these types of problems will solve themselves.
The future is online as far as making the most money goes, but there was never a need to force it. Just ride the trend.
I don’t think digital distribution hurts gamers, the restrictions being placed in games are hurting gamers. If I could log onto any xbox with a live id and play the games I have purchased, I would be happy with that. It isn’t going to happen though. I would be okay if they only allowed you to log on to one xbox at a time. That would require some internet service, but is acceptable as long as not taken too far. I think the overall move to online gaming and trying to milk money out of gamers is worse. I don’t like having to pay for add-ons that used to be free. A perfect example would be the passing dlc for LFD2. It is free on the PC but costs on the consoles. Developers should be able to offer free content if they want. I don’t like the control MS exerts over developers like Valve, making content cost.
Another pet peeve of mine is achievements, especially online ones. Online games basically devolve into everyone trying to get the same weapon so they can earn their next achievement. I just want to play the games and not worry about the damn achievements. That would be a discussion for another thread though.
You can do that. If you buy a game on Xbox Live Arcade or Games on Demand, you can re-download that game on any Xbox 360. The catch is that you have to be signed in as the purchaser account (your friends can’t play) and you have to sign in to Xbox Live to play your games (too bad if your net connection is down).
I sort of agree. One argument against this is that PCs cost quite a bit more than consoles. Console games are usually a bit more expensive than PC games. Microsoft makes a loss on the 360 hardware, so they make it up on software, expensive accessories, etc.
Not sure what the issue is here… achievements are optional, you can just play the game normally and not bother with them if you don’t want to.
Microsoft isn’t taking a loss on the hardware anymore though. I believe they have been making money off of the 360 at least for the last year. Yes, PC’s cost more, but they also do a lot more. The majority of people don’t buy a PC to just play games. They buy a PC to do office tasks, video editing, internet surfing, etc. The extra cost is justified by all the functions a PC does. I know I at least build a PC with that in mind. Yes I do spend a little more to make it capable of playing the latest games, but the added cost of that isn’t much more than a PS3 or 360. I think the only reason why these add-ons cost more on the consoles are because of the closed nature of console hardware. You rarely can develop your own maps on a console or have other user created content. That MW2 map pack that was just released for 15 US dollars was a perfect example. I have been getting regular map updates on all my online multiplayer PC games for years, even from the developers themselves. Some games like Counter-Strike, Quake, or even COD4 on the PC have user created maps that are better than the ones included with the game. I just think the closed architecture of consoles and companies using that as a means to charge more for online content doesn’t benefit gaming. Once your tied in to one of these online services like xbox live, it just seems to me that you are actually given less choice under the guise of increased options and content.
I worry to going back to the start of this thread, that at some point in time MS, Sony, Valve, or whomever is running these online services are going to just decide one day that Game X or Y just isn’t being played by many people anymore and isn’t worth keeping them up on the service because they can’t make money of the games themselves or extra content. What happens to you or me who still want to play this game even though others don’t. At least we know games like Panzer Dragoon Saga are available to us at anytime because we own the physical media and the game and have all the rights to use that software as we would like, on our own terms. I guess I am just a little old school, but I think I still like having the right to own a game on disk and play that game any time or method that I see fit.
I totally agree with you that I can just play the games normally, and do. My problem with this is that most other players don’t. I can’t tell you how many times I was playing Gears of War 1 and 2 and players weren’t going for objectives or helping team mates out at all. They were scrambling to get the hammer or torque bow so that they could get their weapon achievements. It actually frustrated me enough that I let my Live account drop to Silver and have only been playing games online on my PC on dedicated servers. The experience is just so much better that way, but I think that is a discussion beaten to death and best left for another time. I guess my solution to this is not to get rid of achievements. They can be fun, but they do need to be careful what kind of achievements they set for these online games and services because they do not positively benefit gaming that way.
Valve wouldn’t do that, they have no reason to. It’s different on consoles where the game servers (if they exist and aren’t peer to peer) are run by the companies. All Valve runs is server finding services for the games and what not, which are much lighter than actual gamer servers, which as you said are dedicated, and for the most part run by players. Also, they use the same backend for multiple games. If a game isn’t played anymore, then there won’t be many servers to ping and get data from, so the load to their backend will decrease on its own, they won’t need to cut support on their end.
You’ve seen how even Source games’ user modifications still allow you to find servers that play them from the same backend. Valve doesn’t even need to add special support for every mod, it’s just automatic, the mod server sends data to Valve’s backend, and Valve’s backend serves it to you letting you find servers that run those mods. If those mods aren’t played anymore, then the backend won’t be under load for them. So, if they ever use that excuse, it will be just that, an excuse most users will see though, and that’s gonna be bad for business. But considering they still run HL1 stuff even after HL2 stuff have been out for so long, I don’t see them ever doing something like that.
EA has other reasons to close the servers than cost, and it’s to make people buy the newer games. People don’t vote with their wallet when they see such practices sadly, so they get away with it.
I suppose Valve also may have the same incentives later on, but heck, they also make money by selling really really REALLY old titles like the X-Com series, so I don’t think their philosophy fits that mold.
As for actually taking a game off their service so you can’t download it anymore, I don’t think that would even be legal when they’ve advertised the service as letting you download anywhere, anytime, as many times as you want. Other online stores do tell you the download is active for x amount of days and that you’re free to back up the files for later use (and they suck and I never buy from them) but Valve’s doesn’t do anything of the sort.
There’s two… zeitgeists in play for this issue. In the terms of what’s “good for gaming” the thing that’s routinely shunned is the issue of piracy, if it wasn’t for that factor the PC market would still be SOVEREIGN. As things stand, closed platforms are good for gaming, and there’s no real equivocation to be had about that.
As for digital distribution and DRM itself, as long as a reasonable ‘free market’ dynamic is in play, I think it will sort out OK. The commercial MP3 music market is already a good example, as the distribution and competition matures, the expected parameters for ‘ownership’ have evolved significantly. And I think we’re already seeing the results of PS3’s resurgence putting pressure on Microsoft, with things like the USB storage update for the 360. Again, the main thing to hope/pray/invest in is competition, and demand will do the rest.
But to the original premise of the topic: perhaps in a shot term sense DD is impacting the established dynamic for social gaming… but I think the online gaming standard has actually ratified the ‘social nature’ of video gaming. It’s done more to establish videogames as a ‘legitimate’ mainstream hobby than anything else.
I didn’t intend to turn this into a PC vs console debate, but if it goes that way so be it. However, the issue of the topic applies to both consoles and PCs.
frelled - You might be right about the 360 no longer causing Microsoft a loss. My point was really that you’re getting a really good deal when you buy a 360 or PS3, compared to a gaming PC, based on the price of hardware. The other tasks that you perform on your PC are OS related, rather than hardware related - if you compare the raw specs, combined with fact that console games are optimised to the particular hardware much better than Windows games, the price of a console is typically very reasonable.
For the record, I’m not a console or PC only person (I’ve owned both in the past), but right now I do all my gaming on the 360, and other tasks (coding, writing, surfing the net, etc) on a non-gaming Macbook. A lot of people already have a machine for non gaming tasks, so when they’re looking at buying a new gaming machine it’s for exactly that: games.
The Ancient - I’m unconvinced that piracy is the main reason why the PC market is declining/changing. The fact the consoles are so much cheaper than the PC has to be contributing factor, perhaps even the main one. Since the introduction of the Xbox, Microsoft has been putting a lot of effort into their consoles, arguably more so than the PC platform. Franchises like Halo prove that first person shooters can be done well on consoles. This provides less of an incentive for people to invest in gaming PCs who might otherwise if the Xbox option didn’t exist.
Competition may be able to help the situation here, but only if one of the companies takes a stand and makes their online account system more user friendly. But why would they when there’s money to be made from single user licenses (i.e. every person who plays the game, pays for their own license)? Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think the capitalist ideal of “the market decides” will fix the issue.
Change is usually incremental though, one party will offer up something that’s marginally preferable as an enticement, and if it’s relevant enough to most people it’ll work. Which may then cause another party to take things a step further. Though we’d need a fully platform independent climate for gaming for the MP3 example to precisely hold, it has been the main front in the battle over what “ownership” should entail in the purely digital realm.
There’s no guarantees of course, and as always consumers will still have to fight for their ‘rights’ in some form.
I hope you’re right about incremental improvement; time will tell.
Regarding DRM, the music example is a good one, and I hope games, ebooks, and fllms eventually go down the DRM-free route. The problem with online music stores, however, is the lack of a service to manage those purchases, something which Steam and Xbox Live have done much better IMO. It’s a lot less user friendly to recover your purchased music from iTunes if you accidentally lose it. Ideally, consumers should get the best of both worlds without anyone losing money, but there seems to be a lot of misinformation about what (little) good DRM actually does.
That reminds me of politics. I did prefer liberals and conservatives to socialist progressives and neo cons, however, for a less volatile balance.
IMO, online gaming is wholesome and healthy by its very nature because it forces people to be social, and we are, after all, social creatures, whether we initially realise it or not. Very few things can stand in front of mother nature herself.
Geoffrey, the issue here is people using the same console/PC are restricted from sharing games. What would be preferable, having the option to share your World of Warcraft account with members of your household or having an account that can only be used by the account holder?
I feel that services such Xbox Live, which are tied to a gamertag, are reserving online gaming for an elite group of gamers who play enough to justify the monthly subscription. IMO, this is unfriendly towards causal gamers and bad for online gaming as a whole. Monthly subscriptions could be per console or per household, which would be less likely to alienate causal users.
One account per person is naturally what will be pushed. If there’s money in sharing an account somehow, you’ll see it, or if restricting accounts is too restrictive. IMO, sharing solves itself because you can’t really share in the first place; someone else is just using your time. Something like buying several accounts for cheaper is logical if you had people with way limited play times and would therefore never buy a real full account.
Just loosen up a bit on restrictions so that this isn’t the kiss of death imo. Being too unforgiving will send people running.
Abadd, you might be interested in doing this, as it will allow you to play your games when not connected to Xbox Live (and when signed in to other gamertags saved on to your console). I just tried it and it works.
However, the process is limited to use once per year, probably as a means to stop piracy. I think this could fixed by allowed unlimited license transfers, but automatically deactivating the license from the old console whenever someone signs into Xbox Live on the old console.
But at least it’s possible to transfer licenses, even if the process is flawed.