"Retailers are 'Parasites and Thieves'"

[Chupperson Weird]

Totally depends on what system's games are on that shelf.

[CrossEyed7]

Saying not everyone has internet isn't fair because that includes the entire population of the United States, so of course it's a small number. We're only talking about the percent of the population who are gamers.

You're not thinking like Nintendo.

Do you know anyone who's never watched TV, never seen a movie, never read a book? Of course not. So let me ask you one more question. Do you know someone, maybe even in your own family, who's never played a video game? I bet you do. How can this be? If we want to consider ourselves a true mass medium, if we want to grow as an industry, this has to change.

[WarpRattler]

I think bobman's problem is that he's only considering "the market for video games" as "hardcore gamers," when we're pretty much a minority. (Also, he keeps implying developers would get more money through digital sales than they do through retail sales now, but it's actually just the publishers who would be getting more money. Developers really only get more money when they self-publish, which isn't happening with big-budget titles any time soon.)

Totally depends on what system's games are on that shelf.

Not to mention what games. PS2 games could be anywhere from a few hundred megabytes (CD games) to several gigabytes (DVD-9 games). So it's really just a retarded way to look at things.

[Lizard Dude]

I've stayed away from the Special Olympics here partly because I don't have a PC to type screeds with and partly because the used games debate is a philosophical morass with no easy answers, but I do want to point out that two of CE7's attacks on digital distibution were absolutely ridiculous because no one else called him on it.

He said piracy would "skyrocket" if digital distribution took over, but full digital distro would be the worst possible blow to console piracy I can imagine.

He said importing would be impossible if digital distribution took over, but people do it all the time right now and it actually makes it quite easier because you don't have to have your games shipped in from another, you know, continent. Often you just need to create an account with your location listed as Japan (or whatever). Worst-case, you need to import the physical console from the other country but then you're ready to roll, never needing to ship something again and having access to any import game on release day.

[WarpRattler]

I did mention that all-digital would kill console piracy dead:

(and, as a bonus, it screws over the pirates ... since as I understand it, it's basically impossible to pirate XBL Marketplace stuff)

And I wanted to mention importing, but never posted the thing I wrote twice. Yeah, as long as the console is set up for logging into an account (PS3, 360) rather than a single account or regional marketplace being tied to it (PSP for the former, Nintendo's systems for the latter), importing through digital-distro is a lot nicer. But if consoles went all-digital, companies would need to make it easier to buy points for other regions. Or better yet, ditch points and let people use regular credit cards regardless of region, adjusting costs accordingly when necessary. Or best of all, do that but also ditch region-based accounts altogether, and let users buy games from whatever region they want on a single account, as long as they accept a thing beforehand saying they know a game will be in another language and it's their fault if they buy a game and can't read it.

(And, continuing with that, make it so that if you own a game for one region, you own it for all regions it's released in, so that you aren't screwed if you buy a game in Japanese and then later find out it's been licensed for English release. And make it so that companies can't release massive updates or DLC for a game for one region but not the rest; among other things, this kills Square Enix's love for international editions, which is a plus for everyone who isn't Japanese.)

(Also, as it is now, you only actually have to import a console to play retail games, and even then, only the 360, where the most you can do with regions is change an older system's region through reflashing the console, a process I understand is very risky, somewhat time-consuming, and incredibly inconvenient due to being required every time you want to play Rock Band instead of Ketsui, or vice versa. PS3 is natively region-free, of course, and I believe the Wii's region lock can be easily bypassed through homebrew.)

[CrossEyed7]

He said piracy would "skyrocket" if digital distribution took over, but full digital distro would be the worst possible blow to console piracy I can imagine.

He said importing would be impossible if digital distribution took over, but people do it all the time right now and it actually makes it quite easier because you don't have to have your games shipped in from another, you know, continent. Often you just need to create an account with your location listed as Japan (or whatever). Worst-case, you need to import the physical console from the other country but then you're ready to roll, never needing to ship something again and having access to any import game on release day.

Yeah, on closer examination, I didn't think those two points through all the way. You're right.

[WarpRattler]

So back on the subject of retailers sucking, I had an order from GameStop's Web site arrive today. I ordered Gradius Collection, PoPoLoCrois, and a disc containing the first two episodes of the DarkStalkers anime.

PoPoLoCrois doesn't work.
They sent me the second disc of the anime instead of the first disc.
None of these things have their original cases or manuals. Even the discs themselves are in new shells (games I already owned on the right for comparison):



I'm going to a physical GameStop tomorrow to (hopefully) return this stuff. When I was there on Saturday, they had complete copies of Gradius Collection and PoPoLoCrois, so I'll go ahead and exchange the copies that I have here, and get a refund for the other disc. Ultimately, I wasted $5 (shipping and tax) buying from their online store, a mistake I won't make again.

[nensondubois]

Yeah, their online store also sucks; I got a monochrome original Game Boy version of Chessmaster, and I wanted the game Boy Color version that they had pictured. I didn't bother wasting my time and money sending it back, so instead I kept it but I never bought anything from them online again since.

[Chupperson Weird]

The redone cases aren't actually bad themselves though; they're more durable than Sony's multi-piece UMD cases.

[WarpRattler]

Maybe, but that doesn't help if the disc itself doesn't work.

[WarpRattler]

full digital distro would be the worst possible blow to console piracy I can imagine

As it turns out, nope, digital distro-only stuff on consoles is just as piracy-proof as anything else - which is to say, not at all. It's possible to run pirated download-only games on every current system except the DSi, and that's probably due to a lack of interest as much as anything else.

Summary of the recent situation for Sony's systems: no one bothered with the PS3 until Sony put out the slim without Linux, so no one found out for a long time that Sony screwed up big-time with the PS3's security (and by association that of Blu-Ray and the PSP). Hackers found the root keys for the PS3 and PSP, so it's now possible to sign homebrew (making it possible to run it on official firmware), and Sony can't permanently fix anything without issuing new hardware. A lot of this is explained a lot better in the fail0verflow presentation from last month. (Also, Sony took the hackers to court over all this. I'm guessing the judge will decide it falls under the ruling from the iPhone jailbreak case that Apple lost and throw it out.)

For piracy, on the console side it means the USB exploit that made the rounds a few months back is obsolete, and on the handheld side, people with later PSP models can now play the majority of games available on that system, no mods or exploits required. Notably, this includes the PSPgo; owners of that system can now play non-PSN games. On both systems, pirated PSN games work just like anything else, though the DRM used on paid DLC hasn't been cracked yet (one has to wonder why they don't just use that for everything).

I don't know anything about 360 piracy except that if you do it you're going to get your system banned from LIVE, and I believe several people on this forum have the Homebrew Channel installed on their Wiis (I don't) and could say more about that than I could. At any rate, it's possible to run pirated download-only games on those systems as well.

I'm not going to pretend to know what kind of anti-piracy solutions will be implemented with future platforms, but I'd guess piracy isn't going to be stopped even with full digital distribution. You can look at the all-digital system we have now to see that; even without the signing thing, people had already found exploits to enable homebrew (and by association piracy) using demos.