This is kinda stupid….not the content, but what these companies are doing. But at the same time, they can only do what we let them do. If we (gamers) don’t take the nessecary steps to prevent and change the way things are going this will continue to go on indefinetly and I for one don’t want to leave a gaming legacy to future generations that screws and rapes the gamer instead of promoting and supporting them.

Um. Pretty good list, aside from #1. You woldn’t be stuck with a game forever: you could just …(get ready for this) not play it! Yes, no resells, but thats the only downside. Yes, cost will stay the same, but whaddaya expect? theyre greedy. And yes, there’d still be rentals. All they have to do is disable your account on that rented game after whatever time period you rented it for. Thats it! An on the upside, you get all the benefits you mentioned. No, games moving to downloadable format is good.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing downloadable blu-ray based games anytime soon…

What if we live in an area that doesn’t have access to high speed internet? And even if we did, not able to afford it? Does that mean we’re screwed in the future?

5. Do you really think that we(the game developers) put out beta’s as our games. “What we shouldn’t forgive is developers working on closed architectures still delivering half baked products”, these systems have only been out for a few years, we don’t know what they can really do yet. I mean sure we have the specs and the documentation that comes with the dev kits, but a lot of them suck! I’m not say that some bugs are let go because you need to get a title out, but thats how life works, if it doesn’t go out the developer doesn’t get paid, no matter what, so would you rather a game come out then patch or the game not coming out at all.

4. Other then the guys who made Hellgate London who else has admitted to locking data away on the disc it self.

3. I guess from now on I’m going to have sex with my girlfriend while looking at my Master Chief helmet on my mantle.

2. So don’t buy extra things for you console.

1. If you can’t wipe the hard drive of a console there is no reason to not tie it to the actual console. Oh and Live saves what you download to your account and you can re-download them if you delete them. I don’t know how the wii dose this because I dont own one, but then again I like playing real video games.

And Winston, thats all you have ever bought is a license to play the game. You may have a disc of GTA4 but Rockstar/Take-Two(maybe, I don’t know if Rockstar has the game or not) owns the game, almost every game manual has a EULA that tells you what you can do with it, like no reverse engineering or even retail sales, stuff like moding is kinda looked over because no one makes a lot of money off of it and you need the game to play them and thats another sale right there.

It’s a matter of economics. There is no reason for consoles as the next generation computers will have far more computing power as well as lower development costs. The direction of R&D needs to be focused on content rather than platforms.

this is all very scary. As a hardcore gamer, I’ve already been aware of the direction video games have been going, so this is nothing new to me. I almost wish we could go back to teh days when video games was a fringe interest, and not mainstream. There would be less general audience crap, and teh big company’s would stay out of it and stop ruining it. But then some of the games that we love wouldn’t have been possible without those big checkbooks footin the development bill. Maybe…. Who knows really. The sad thing is that unfortunately, hardcore gamers who are REALLY interested in them and who REALLY care about good solid games with depth at a REASONABLE cost are becoming a minority. Alot of the sales are goin to your typical fancy free creditcard wielding shopaholic gotta have it all americans. The same people who throw there money at the latest big-budget “blockbusters” and cookie cutter “pop” music. If the majority thinks its at least BARELY good enough to buy, it doesn’t matter if NOBODY thinks its great. And now that mentality that has driven the movie and music scenes for so long has infested video games.

What i want to know is, where are the underdogs??? In music AND in movies there’s your run of the mill CRAP that everyone thinks is GOOD ENOUGH to pay for, and gets heralded as the blockbusters and chart-toppers, but there’s also an underground for those who REALLY care. We’re not seeing that in video games. At least not as much. For the most part the stuff that is actually VERY GOOD, just happens to be marketable to a general audience as well as people with actual taste. Mass Effect is a good example. I think the biggest problem is getting the game published on a console is too difficult for indie guys. Maybe the future of people like me is on the PC. But with Microsoft holding a pretty standard monopoly on the only really commonly used OS’s that might change too. The whole thing certainly is depressing.

Even if true gamers were to band together and really boycott what’s goin on and keep our dollars in our pockets until we see a change, it won’t matter, and we’ll just be giving up video games indefinately. Because video game consumer just doesn’t give a shit, and liek I said, we’re becoming the minority……

BTW, that last sentence was suppose to read “Because THE AVERAGE video game consumer doesn’t give a shit….”

And for #1, it’s a lose lose situation for everyone. People are going to continue to figure out ways of getting things for free. Period. And companies are going to do as much as they can to protect themselves from piracy. Can’t exaclty fault them for that. But in truth they’re not taking the honest consumer into consideration. They’re going to develop antipiracy policies with only they’re own interests in mind, so honest consumers are gonna get stuck in the cold having to deal with that. And the dishonest ones,” well they’re just gonna eventually find a workaround anyway, so for them it ends up bein only a minor inconvenience….

ok that’s it. I will post no more

A little while ago (like a week) I was listening to my favorite talk radio show(Coast to Coast). On it they had a man talking about the generations and the cyclical parts of generations and all that jazz. This man said that generation X are the type of people that just get things done. Now that I think about it this explains a lot of things in media. Right now they are the ones who make many of the decisions in the video game industry and every year they are the ones who are making more and more of the decisions in other industries as well. That kind of thinking of just getting done will contribute to poor quality. Which is why unless a studio has proven themselves there is very little time given to them to make a proper game.

The man also said that the baby boomers excelled at culture which is quite obvious. Look at who has made almost all of the great modern films, baby boomers with only a few exceptions. While with Gen X guys you have a couple of exceptions and then you have guys like Micheal Bay who want to work fast and get it done so in cause they create something that is sub-par.

Now looking into the future at my generation and probably most of you guys as well. He said we will excel at community building, which I don’t disagree with but I don’t think we will excel at that because it is our thing. I believe that my generation wants to do things the proper way and don’t really care about time and money as long as it is done right. And if my belief is true I can’t wait until we are the ones who are making those kind of decisions. But this is why I like Valve. I really don’t think that they are capable of doing what most developers do in a normal time, but since they care so much about their games they are willing to take the time to properly make the game and it is shows when the game is finally released and it ultimately leads to more sales.

Which brings me to my theory that if all games were made with quality in mind ahead of time and money all games would sell more. Well I can’t say all but most games would and more people would be interested in the video game industry.

This in response to the amount of glitches in most this gen console games that didn’t seem to be there before when there wasn’t the option to patch them later. Yeah I think I went off topic a little but I think everything was needed to be said. I hope it isn’t confusing.

I’ll combine the last two.

Over pricing of accessories is just the same as overpricing DLC. If you are going to be making tons of profit anyways sell it for less and maybe more people will be inclined to buy it and possible give you even more profit. And some kind of HDD should have been standard from the start even if it was only a 5GB one just for loading times alone. Then allow people to buy bigger ones if they want to download crap.

Digital distribution is the devil in my opinion. We are already seeing the horrors of it with XBLA games and the DRM issue. I’m not going to get into the PC side of this because that would just get to complex. But for consoles the only way to do it correctly would be to make the games local to the HDD not the console or gamertag, although they should still be attached to it. That way your HDD basically because like a DVD. With that they would be able to allow transfers from one HDD to another but make it so it can only be on one HDD at a time. But I actually think that would open up piracy to the consoles at the level that it is at on the PC. Which is why I think it is the Devil. You are either restricted by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo or console studios start going out of business because of piracy like PC studios are right now. I would rather just keep my disc.

John:

5. Obviously I’m using hyperbole to make a point, but whether or not they’re counting their money is really besides the point. It is statistically improbable that in their testing they didn’t run across the issues that 60GB PS3 owners are facing if they invested in better than marginal quality assurance. Instead, I have to assume that they released the game willing to accept whatever percentage of failure the knew about in order to get their money. How is this not screwing you, the consumer? Conversely, how does this benefit you the consumer?

4. That’s not my point. The LotR analogy is bad, because while they filmed all three back to back, they released the first film while they were still filming the second, etc. Nor is a 9 hour theatrical release even feasible. They already raised the prices of games to $60 because of increased production costs. If the remaining content was developed at the same time and simply excised from the final game in order to sell later you’re now asking the gamer to pay $70 or more for game content that just a few years ago only cost $50 with the only difference being shinier graphics. That’s not the deal we were promised when Microsoft first introduced microtransactions. The deal was for additional content, and we were paying developers for their additional work. What has become increasingly obvious is that publishers saw an opportunity to take advantage of the system. Again, ask yourself, how is this good for the consumer?

3. Perhaps I didn’t state this is clearly as I intended. We used to get the stuff in collector’s editions of games for free as promotional offers. Now it’s no longer free and on top of games already $10 more + the cost of DLC, we’re having to pay and additional $10 or more for the same t-shirts and knick knacks they used to just give away. It’s a step backwards for consumers.

2. While I may have agreed to it by purchasing the console, what about parents that aren’t as aware of the hidden costs of gaming? And at the risk of sounding tedious, is this marked increase in accessory price, especially taken in context of more expensive consoles and $60+ games good for gamers?

1. There are benefits, I agree. I said that I love Steam. I love demos. What I don’t love is draconian DRM. As I mentioned in an earlier response, we’re already seeing customers screwed if they replace their console on their own out of warranty. In a perfect world, we would have the best of both worlds, but my fear is that publishers will take advantage of online distribution the same way they have taken advantage of microtransactions. They’ll see it as a way to increase profits by taking away the flexibility that disc based games offer. You want to show your friend your awesome new game? At his house? Sorry, he has to buy his own copy. Rentals? Fat chance. Why should publishers let you beat their 6 hour games for $6 when they can force you to pay $50. Why should publishers discount older games when there is no longer a used market to compete with? I recognize that all of these are worst case scenarios, but given the track record of the industry it’s hardly a stretch of the imagination.

At any rate, I really appreciate everyone’s feedback. Debate fuels discussion, and the more theses issues are discussed the better chance we have to find a middle ground between gamers and game creators.

Jr: According to Konami’s site, the limited edition bundle (not the regular MGS4 bundle) is a 40GB PS3.

http://www.konami.com/Konami/ctl3810/cp20111/si3327390/cl1/metal_gear_solid_4_limited_edition_playstation3_bundle

First I’d like to point out that retailers get a big chunk of the margins from accessory sales as well. Other than print media and perhaps some impulse items, accessories get more sales margin than anything else you’ll find in a specialty retailer such as GameStop. These can go for upwards of 30% margin, often cases more than twice what their cut on the software. This is why you’ll get pressed to buy additional accessories whenever you make a system purchase (systems are sold at virtually zero margin).

You’re also looking at the “special edition” concept through the distorted lens of nostalgia; all that free stuff you got with preorders was there because the publishers *needed* to get preorders. Most games don’t need to be publicized in this way anymore; preview and ad saturation is much deeper than it was before. The free stuff is still out there, just not always with the games that you (or anyone else) wants to play before it comes out. That’s kind of the point. I’m guessing you’re also disappointed with the lack of game demos nowadays, as well? It’s the same idea. Look at it from the publisher’s perspective: why spend the money producing and shipping “free” stuff when the sale isn’t closed at the point-of-sale, but well in advance? Most people go into stores knowing exactly what they want now.

Finally, I’m really not sure I follow you on your toll booth economics concept, or at least I did until you brought up micropayments. At what point is it ok for additional content to require a purchase? Does the presence of the code on the disc entitle you to it? Should you get some downloads for free? 5? 10? You have to admit the boundary is a little fuzzy, but if the up-front cost delivers the game as advertised, there isn’t a problem. Lots of games have inactive code on the discs you purchase, just look at Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ Hot Coffee, for example. Would it have been unacceptable for that to have been a premium download?

Downloadable Blu-ray based games ? That makes A WHOLE LOT of sense. Use your brain a little bit, please.

Weston,

While I think DD is a great way to handle games because of its convenience you’re wrong. Within the decade physical copies will still be the majority of game sales. For one, just because you or I have fast enough internet to download games doesn’t mean everyone does.

1. To make games only available through DD means to alienate a lot of customers.

2. People like physical copies and ownership. Until the craptastic DRM issues are sorted out the majority will always choose physical copies over digital ones.

3. As the newer and newer generations of systems are released the newer and newer generations of games will take up more and more room. Not even mentioning lack of enough HDD space to hold all the games gamers would want, no one wants to wait 30 hours for a 25GB download to finish when they could just drive down to their local game stop and buy the game within 10 minutes.

DD is a pipe dream at the moment. It’s only practicality is add-ons and expansions as well as miniature games.

Everything you say here is so true, we alone in my house have spent well over $100 2 Sixaxis controler and then a Dualshock sixaxis, AND NOW THAT ONE IS FALLING APART. this gen of video game systems have failed greatly….

Correct on all points–except–I didn’t like Steam. It thought it was sneaky and controlling. It automagically appeared as a prerequisite when I PAID FULL PRICE for a disc. I didn’t appreciate the digital overlord and I really didn’t like the fact that it gave me no option to install SIX GIGABYTES onto a different drive. Now how am I supposed to buy another Steam game knowing that it won’t fit on my now-full C drive and I’ll have no option to put it anywhere else?

Good article and good points. I love Steam!