Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Is the secondary video game market in trouble?

Rumors abound over the next generation of consoles about the used game market or the ability to lend or borrow games from friends. The question is do we own the physical copy of the game or are we renting it from the developers? I am of the opinion that my purchasing physical copy of a game or even a cd allows the me the right to lend/borrow or trade as I see fit. Capcom recently went through this with locked dlc on disk. The consumer backlash has since rectified this for all games going forward. The one thing I don't understand about this move is that it all seems to be about money getting back to the developer and yet if the rumors about one off codes for all games and a fee to unlock content on disk for another console or friend is true all I see is people spending less and less on video games. The secondary market allows for someone to trade a game they have finished and put that money towards a new game. So instead of the consumer paying 60 dollars for said new game it would maybe be 35 dollars and the publisher still gets full payment on that game. The consumer could then purchase more games per year. I see this new found iron fist on the secondary market as a bad thing that only hurts both the consumer and publishers/developers. The other side of this is that owning a console would lose the advantage of being a console and only become a cheaper pc.
For those of you thinking Microsoft is the only one thinking about doing this think about Sony and what is stopping them from implementing a similar system? The only way we as consumers can hold onto our rights is by voting with our wallets. Now if it comes out that neither Microsoft or Sony decide to implement this one off activation code then you the consumer win.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Backward compatibility?

Hello, please let me introduce myself. I am Ruggles. Mouse has been kind enough to allow me to contribute to this blog. I am a fan, of the quirkier side of gaming. If you throw an indie, or an overlooked title at me, I'm on top of it. I prefer little blue hedgehogs over bulky space marines, and I play games for fun, not graphics. Let's get onto the rant then,shall we? As we know, The Xbox one is coming out this fall. It will not be compatible with Xbox360 games. But, what of the xbox live arcade titles? NOPE. . It is my opinion that these titles should be tied to your xboxLive account, and re-downloadableto the xbox one. XBLA is actually where most of my gaming dollars had went. I'm very disappointed that these games will not transfer. It appears that Xbox one will get rid of its XboxLiveArcade and indie games channel by lumping them all together in a Marketplace of some kind. This is bad, because I don't want to wade through a ton of junk to get to the content I want. Are they going to use actual cash now, instead of points? And what of the indie scene?Are indie devs in trouble on the xbone? Overall, the more I learn from all this xboxone business, the more that the PlayStation 4 appeals to me.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Video Game Companies Leaving a Generation of Gamers Behind.

    Before Microsoft announced their new console the rumors were not good for core gamers from the beginning. The uphill battle they faced was going to be a hard one to get core gamers but it feels like they just waved the flag and are moving on to a new generation of younger hipper gamers. First at the event they don't even discuss anything about "always on" or the used game rumors. Then they do have a Q&A and announce that it won't be "always on" only to later say it will require some sort of internet connection within 24 hours or the console won't work (http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/22/4354796/xbox-one-always-online-requirement-used-games-confusion)

     My question here is how is this not considered an "always on" connection if not a bare bones version? My main problem with an always connected requirement is that we still don't have the infrastructure in place to handle this as people do still have only dial up as an option and secondly the companies themselves have proven that they can't handle the influx even with beta testing and stress testing(i.e. Diablo 3 and Simcity).