Latest Ubisoft DRM measure - all SP saves stored on a cloud server - by EvaUnit02
Chade on 5/3/2010 at 00:11
Yeah, that's true, and I'd say that's the main influence.
But I also wonder if emotional attachment is a factor. Movies and books succeed because the viewer empathises with the characters within, and those characters hang around once the book or movie has finished. Do you really want to get rid of them?
Whereas games often succeed when the player forms an emotional attachment with his own achievements. Once you "beat" a game, you can only find that achievement again in other games.
If this is correct then you'd expect to see a stronger used-games market in non-story-driven single-player games.
Nameless Voice on 5/3/2010 at 00:28
Another thing is that, for me, and probably a lot of others, I want my games. I'd never sell them.
PeeperStorm on 5/3/2010 at 01:51
Me too. The only games that I'd want to sell are the ones that weren't all that good, and I'm careful enough about what I buy that I don't have more than a few of those. Everything else I want to be able to reinstall and replay next year and 10 years from now, as I do with the Thief and Fallout games.
heywood on 5/3/2010 at 02:14
Quote Posted by Chade
The trouble is that the owner devalues his games faster then the market does.
Why is that a problem? It's central to the existence of a used market. If the perceived value to the owner remains higher than the perceived value to potential buyers, the owner has a disincentive to sell. That _might_ be a good thing from the publisher's perspective, but it isn't _necessarily_ a good thing. For example, it could indicate they didn't set the new price high enough to maximize their revenue.
Quote:
What interests me is why you don't get these problems with books and movies. Or perhaps you do, in which case I wonder why those industries don't go to such efforts to stop it.
They do try sometimes, like the movie industry with DIVX and the publishing industry with eBooks. But in many cases it's counterproductive to kill the used market because a strong used market drives up prices in the new market. Like I was saying before, people factor re-sale value into the price they're willing to pay for something. The used market for console games has traditionally been stronger than the used market for PC games, which might be why new console game prices have tended to be higher than PC game prices.
Also, new sellers compete with used sellers by offering price decreases over time. That happens with DVDs, books, and to a certain extent even with music CDs. But I suspect publishers don't want to compete too aggressively with the used market because if they drive prices down too quickly then people will be more inclined to hold off on purchasing. It takes a bit of balancing to extract the maximum revenue from a market where the perceived value of their good varies a lot from buyer to buyer.
Chade on 5/3/2010 at 03:10
Quote Posted by heywood
Why is that a problem? It's central to the existence of a used market.
A used market can be detrimental if:
1) There is demand for a product
2) People making that product are constrained by lack of money
3) The used market prevents people from selling the product to people at a price they would willingly pay.
I'll take it for granted that the first two conditions exist, and focus on the third. The used games market is a "perfect storm", due to some fundamental nature of many games. A used market will make it difficult to sell games to people at a price they would willingly pay if:
1) That price is expensive
2) An individual item loses value to Bob but not Alice after Bob consumes it
3) Games are consumed quickly
4) The used market efficiently matches buyers and sellers
Cars match conditions 1 and 4, movies/books match 2 and 3, tables match condition 1 only. None of their used markets are all that powerfull.
Games match all 4 conditions, especially 2-4. Games are reasonably expensive for a hobby. Individual games do not degrade with use at all - without crazy DRM. People often buy games and play them once without intending to play them ever again. Many games are consuemd within days or weeks. And the used games market is crazily organised!
That's why it's a problem.
mothra on 5/3/2010 at 09:16
well, the game is out and the DRM works pretty good - as in: you don't notice it at all. My friend has a "normal" DSL connection and we simulated fake loss and choke on the line and the game never faltered. Only when we cut off the DNS or disconnected the net completely it froze after ~ 30seconds only to pick off at the same point if you reconnected (don't know how much timeout there is). We also just ALT-F4'd out of the game and the savepoint was very, very close to where we were. At least customers don't get annoyed if their connection works mostly. Synchronization of savegames happens after playing a session (not during) and you can turn it off completely going for local saves only. Still no way to publish a single player game that depends on the internet. but if someone wants to get it nonetheless: it works.
CCCToad on 5/3/2010 at 13:14
Old News:
David on 5/3/2010 at 13:16
What's even funnier is that it was old news when you posted it.
