Console Makers Pushing For More Network Reliance 198
There's a story on Joystiq about the convergence of games consoles and network play, suggesting that the industry is slowly moving away from physical media, preferring the control and simplicity of online distribution. The article points out that Microsoft's Games for Windows Live, despite being relatively unpopular, has seen continued development with an eye toward interacting with Xbox Live. Quoting:
"While it's unlikely that the next generation of consoles will completely forgo disc-based media, downloads are quickly becoming a much bigger part of the experience. Some games, such as Rock Band 2 and Gears of War 2, are now shipping with codes for free downloads. This isn't because the publishers like you and want to give you free stuff. It's part of a larger strategy to increase the importance of the online presence, where content can be tightly controlled and decrease the importance of physical media, and thus, used-game sales and rentals."
Re:Arrrr (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My argument against this (Score:2, Informative)
Unless of course they got the ISPs to host the data unmetered...
Re:"we don's show a record..." (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with everything you've said, but I have a slight pedantic nitpick.
Nintendo of America was the only one to produce cartridges for the North American market (not counting unlicensed games). In Japan, several development houses made their own cartridges, and the Famicom Disk System required only a special floppy drive to publish games. NoA adopted this business strategy because they wanted control over what cartridges were published while still encouraging third-party development houses. They felt that uncontrolled development and publication of sub-par third-party games was a major cause of the Video Game Crash of 1983 [wikipedia.org], and wanted to avoid having a second video game crash.
This hit Konami hard - Nintendo of America's guidelines were to only allow five releases per developer in a calendar year, so in order to publish all of the games that they wanted to market in America, they had to start up an American subsidiary called Ultra Games [wikipedia.org].
And you can't sell that game used (Score:5, Informative)
It has long been the dream of the media studios to kill the secondary (used) market for media (music, movies, software, etc.). Now they've finally stumbled upon the perfect solution (ironic that they actually *fought* the idea tooth-and-nail back in the Napster days).
A sad thing for me, too. I buy most of my console games used at a huge discount online. All you have to do is wait a few months after release and you can get most used games for a fraction of their retail price.
Re:Arrrr (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, most console makers can detect consoles modified to play pirated games and ban them from their online networks anyways (I know MS did this with the original X-Box). In that case pirated games currently are only good for single player or at best pirate server play anyways. This wouldn't change that.
My only concern in the whole matter would be: all my game now rest on a single hard drive. A single, fragile hard drive. The things that fail with an alarming frequency compared to optical discs. How do I go about getting all that replaced if the hard drive fails? If there's DRM involved, then backups wouldn't be possible.
Also, consider the longevity: I have Atari and NES cartridges over 20 years old now, and they still work fine. Somehow I don't see a hard drive full a games working a few decades later.
Re:Arrrr (Score:3, Informative)
1 - I make a cracked server app and release it in public domain.
2 - Someone unrelated to you or me runs the app in a public server and releases the IP to a semi-public list of cracked servers.
3 - You pay 20$ to have your console cracked, or directly buy it cracked for +15$.
4 - You download the list and connect to the servers.
The point is:
IF 5 - They push harder and make intrusive systems.
6 - More people make the effort of joining the pirate network.
7 - More people get involved and add their effort. For example an app that reunites the cracked servers IPs and keeps the lists up to date or a worm that infects machines and installs a distributed cracked server or whatever else.
8 - The pirate network becomes easier to use so less geeky people join.
Re:Arrrr (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be very confused about how cracking the 360 works.
The way the anti-piracy works is that they burn the game dvd's in a way that can't be done by a home burner and then they tell the dvd drive in the xbox to check for those signs of it being burned by a real burner.
The crackers get past this by installing new custom firmware on the dvd reader that tells the console that the dvd was industrially burned regardless if it is or not.
The reason some people get banned from live is that the live server sometimes asks questions regarding the data on the dvd and badly made copies sometimes have missing/bad data.
The new firmware you speak off isn't actually new firmware, it's a new dvd drive all together that apparently uses millitary technology to make the firmware tamper proof, the current work around is to just install another dvd reader and I suspect the anti-tamper itself will be cracked eventually.
The game console itself is never involved in this piracy war,, it's all waged in the dvd firmware.
Re:Arrrr (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't exactly accurate. Buying something like rockband songs or using the gears 2 download code ties the content to your xbox live login. If your xbox dies (not exactly unlikely) and you get a new one, logging in enables you to re-download all that stuff.
Your point still stands however, since 20 years from now xbox live probably won't exist in its current form and you wouldn't be able to re-download anything that you lost.
Re:Arrrr (Score:3, Informative)
I've found that Versus play gives the game way, way more longevity. It's just about the only thing I play now.
But yeah, they probably needed at least 2 more regular campaigns and 2 more versus campaigns at launch. Sure, it's already got 20 actual maps, which is quite a few for a multiplayer-only game (how many does TF2 ship with?) but this particular game needs more.
Judging from what Valve's said and what they've done with past games, I expect significant free content releases for the game over the next couple of years, so there's that. The real savior of the game, IMO, will be the release the map editor. When that happens, there'll be dozens of new maps and play modes coming out every month.