Decline PS4 wins the console war against XboxONE, yet it is a hollow victory as Consolesdämmerung is upon us

[Blaine]

There's a silver lining in all this: If the PS4 utilizes a comparable anti-aftermarket scheme, perhaps GameStop will go bankrupt. Their entire business model is based upon purchasing almost-new used games for $9 store credit, then reselling them for $5 less than they'd cost new.

Fucking GameStop. I'll buy 20 copies of Call of Duty if this next console generation makes them suffer.

 

[IDtenT]

Why would Microsoft set that price but not the reselling price?

Why does Coke sell Coke cans at a certain price to a retail store and allow the retail store to set their own price?

Uh that's not analogous at all. Coca Cola sells those cans, so of course they set the fucking price.

Returning a game to a retailer to trade it in is a transaction that's purely between the customer and the retailer. Microsoft has no reason to set a price. They have the 35 pound fee for "reactivating" a game. Between buying back and reselling games, the retailer needs to make enough money to pay that fee and still earn a profit. That's probably the only constraint they'll have.

These same unconfirmed reports also suggest that the activation cost for consumers buying or borrowing pre-owned software will be £35.

You're absolutely correct. I was being stupid.

What if you had a digital only copy? Will they have an online digital market place? ($35 + trade price)

Does this really require a third party or can you do it yourself?

 

[Infinitron]

What if you had a digital only copy? Will they have an online digital market place? ($35 + trade price)

That would be weird. There is no difference between a "new" and "used" digital copy, after all. So the only difference would be that the number of "used" digital copies would be limited. But there'd probably be so many of them after a few months, that for anybody willing to wait it would effectively be a permanent discount to the game's price.

 

[Hobz]

I'm all for a reselling system that lets developers/publishers get their cut on the business, but considering how poor the deal is for people willing to sell their game back as it is, I wonder how bad it's gonna be by then. Will people pay $60, sell for $15 and buy used for $45 ? or even worst than that ?

Maybe they should let people resell games directly on the xbox live store, so that players don't have to pay for the cut of gamestop and the likes. Or Maybe they could just let reselling and brick & mortar die already and offer steam-like deals on their store.

 

[Blaine]

Will people pay $60, sell for $15 and buy used for $45 ? or even worst than that ?

GameStop's rates are ALREADY worse than that. It's more like pay $60, sell for $9 (store credit, otherwise $5 cash), and buy used for $55.

 

[Bruticis]

I wonder how bad it's gonna be by then. Will people pay $60, sell for $15 and buy used for $45 ? or even worst than that ?

So you mean the values will be exactly like they are now? That's exactly the shit pricing you get from Gamestop & Bestbuy when you buy or sell console games. I'm with Blaine on this one, fuck Gamestop and it's shit eating prices on buying/selling used games.
EDIT: Damn it, ninja'ed by Blaine.

 

[Blaine]

I think they actually raised their trade-in values somewhat in recent years due to a bit of competition from Amazon.com and BestBuy, but they're still bullshit. They used to be absolutely ridiculous, though.

Example:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/tradein/cart.html?ie=UTF8&asin=B003O6E6NE&ece=

BioShit Infinishit is still selling for $60 new. I'm fairly sure GameStop's trade-in offers are significantly lower than this, though, and Amazon can well afford to roll with much narrower resale margins.

You're doing God's work, Amazon.

 

[Dexter]

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING CAMERA TECHNOLOGY. It's about the required detail for the consumer. The consumer today is watching shit at 1080p. The consumer back then watched it on an extremely shitty projector that projected 100 yards away (we were talking about down-scaling not the near mythical pixel value of film). Yes, old movies do look like shit on 1080p and the above still is no different.

Almost everytime you post something in this thread I just want to say "dumbfuck" and move on, but something compels me to answer instead, since I have the feeling that you're not trolling. xD

"Film" is an analog medium and doesn't have a specific "resolution" similar to drawings or paintings while digital cameras have a set upper limit to the amount of pixels and therefore details that they can save, there are many problems with shows being converted to HD from the ~80s/90s as I said that were either filmed using SD digital cameras (because it's not possible) or filmed on film stock and edited on VHS or similar afterwards for TV like Star Trek where they have to remake the entire special effects and use the original film footage that luckily still exists as a starting point.

Now obviously there is an upper limit of what detail one can see with film, especially since there's always been film grain to contend with and there's a different kind of quality between film stock that got better as the years progressed as well as film rot and other things that wasn't kind to some old movie film reels and a lot of the old stuff has to go through painstaking restoration processes.
But a lot of it (and especially the stuff after the 50s) still has enough detail in it to be digitally mastered at ~4K or thereabouts and would/does look very good even today.

Even some of the oldest film content still looks rather fine considering its age and the camera technology of the time, fine enough to release on Blu-Ray in fact:

Spoiler

Le voyage dans la lune (1902) - Georges Méliès

Les débuts de Max au cinéma (1910) - Max Linder

Les Vampires (1915) - Louis Feuillade

Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith

Das Weib des Pharaoh (1922) - Ernst Lubitsch

The Navigator (1924) - Donald Crisp

Die Niebelungen (1924) - Fritz Lang

The Gold Rush (1925) - Charles Chaplin

Battleship Potemkin (1925) - Sergei M. Eisenstein

And no, they didn't have $10 Million explosions and pew pew lasers, but I don't think you can say that "they didn't pay attention".

So that means no Ebay selling? Fuck that even more.

Wasn't that "Azure cloud" thing the "Always-Online-DRM" application they were talking about publishers could potentially use (at least according to this article)?
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/

And what of the persistent rumors that Xbox One games will be "always online" - that is, that single-player games would require a constant online connection to function? As it turns out, those rumors were not unfounded, but the reality is not so draconian. Xbox One will give game developers the ability to create games that use Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service, which means that they might be able to offload certain computing tasks to the cloud rather than process them on the Xbox One hardware itself. This would necessitate the game requiring a connection.
Are developers forced to create games that have these online features, and are thus not playable offline? They are not, Xbox exec Whitten said to Wired - but "I hope they do." So the always-online future may come in incremental steps.

Also not only "no Ebay selling", but no selling at all in a lot of countries or any other way than using "retail partners" and no renting or lending to family members or friends.

If anything, this could even potentially help places like GameStop or similar, because they would be the only place where this was possible.

 

[Hobz]

So you mean the values will be exactly like they are now?

No, I'm pretty sure they will end up worse than what they are now, but I don't resell my games (and certainly not to retailers), so I didn't know the amount. I new the conditions were bad but I had no idea they were that bad.

 

[Infinitron]

If anything, this could even potentially help places like GameStop or similar, because they would be the only place where this was possible.

Yes, that's the spoonful of sugar in GameStop's medicine.

 

[Bruticis]

I dont sell my games either but just take a look at gamestop's website. Here, have a look at Last Light pricing: http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/metro-last-light/91250
How about a nice used copy for 5 bucks less? I fail to see how it can get any worse.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I bet we will see the 80 dollar game being introduced in this new generation, because of the more explosions = more development costs argument. I hope this AAA bubble bursts soon.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

I bet we will see the 80 dollar game being introduced in this new generation, because of the more explosions = more development costs argument. I hope this AAA bubble bursts soon.

The funny thing I think about is the advent of licensed resale partners, will the games even drop below release price or merely stay the same throughout the consoles lifetime?

This thread has been quite entertaining though, no im not butthurt about Microsoft, I run a windows machine, the only ones who could claim/be painted with that would be people on Linux (or apple) with a raging hardon of hate for all things microsoft. Im just enjoying the drama as it unfolds, like the Simcity fiasco earlier, and doubtless other entertainment to follow as marketing fuckwads stumble to shove their heads further up their arses whilst still finding room to plant both feet firmly in their mouths.

 

[Jasede]

Meh, games were more expensive when I was a kid anyway.

 

[Blaine]

Meh, games were more expensive when I was a kid anyway.

Yeah, but in the 1990s, I could get weeks or months of entertainment out of a single game. I can beat Space Quest IV in under two hours these days, but back then, poring over every little detail, reading every description, and getting stuck on puzzles sure added a lot of value.

In the case of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it's provided decades of entertainment.

 

[Infinitron]

The "good old days" with lower prices that people miss are the late 90s/early 00s when PC games cost $40-50 and expansion packs could be as low as $25-30. This was in the United States, of course. Elsewhere, things were probably very different.

 

[phanboy_iv]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...their-say-on-specs-self-publishing-and-tvtvtv

 

[felipepepe]

My old days where around 94, when we had just changed coins into glorious Real, and the Dollar/Real exchange was 1-1... bought lot's of cheap games in that era.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Yeah, but in the 1990s, I could get weeks or months of entertainment out of a single game. I can beat Space Quest IV in under two hours these days, but back then, poring over every little detail, reading every description, and getting stuck on puzzles sure added a lot of value.

In the case of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it's provided decades of entertainment.

I still play duck hunt every day here on the forum.

 

[grdja]

Meh, games were more expensive when I was a kid anyway.

You mean when price of game included the freaking hardware memory cartridge? You don't say!

 

[Jasede]

PC games, too. Wing Commander IV was 100 DM - 120 DM depending on the store. So that's what, $50 - $60?

 

[Dexter]

 

[Blaine]

The "good old days" with lower prices that people miss are the late 90s/early 200s when PC games cost $40-50 and expansion packs could be as low as $25-30. This was in the United States, of course. Elsewhere, things were probably very different.

Games were relatively much more expensive in the 1990s, adjusting for inflation. As you can see, SQ4 is available for preorder on this list, which means it's circa 1991 at the absolute latest. $60 in 1991 is $100 today.

 

[Infinitron]

Blaine Yes, things were different in the early 90s and before that. That's what I'm saying - the "good old days" aren't THAT old.

Notice though that there is a nice, Steam-like variance of prices on that list. The smaller/more casual games cost less.

 

[Blaine]

Notice though that there is a nice, Steam-like variance of prices on that list. The smaller/more casual games cost less.

In many cases, it's because they're older titles and thus discounted, but a few (like Mixed-Up Mother Goose, a kids' title) are priced lower due to their nature, yes.