Study Claims Point-of-Sale Activation Could Generate Billions In Revenue

Late last year we discussed news that the Entertainment Merchants Association was pondering a plan to develop technology that requires games and movies to be "activated" when they are sold at retail outlets, primarily to reduce theft and piracy. Now, the EMA claims a study they commissioned has indicated that employing such a system for video games, DVDs, and Blu-ray products would generate an additional $6 billion in revenues each year. Critics of the idea are skeptical about the numbers, pointing out that the majority of game piracy comes from downloading PC games, which this plan won't even affect. There are other problems as well: "In order for benefit denial to work, the EMA would presumably require the three major consoles to have some sort of activation verification function to ensure that games were legally purchased. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft agree to that. There is also a lucrative market for used video games to consider. After some gamers complete a title, they sell it back to the retailer. How will benefit denial handle that situation?"

Just nonsense

[faragon]

And what about the sales lost because of annoying the *customer*? Greedy idiots.

they assume

[branboom]

We would start buying the games again ahahha.

Re:It's about killing the Pre-release

[Amphetam1ne]

I believe there has been talk in the past of not including a main game executable on the disk and only copies that have been activated at checkout will be able to download it. Obviously this doesn't account for things like review copies, beta leaks, etc.

Re:not about piracy

[ls671]

> Impossible? Maybe for you. Game companies spend more time and effort these days on making it
> look & sound pretty than making it fun.
> Music and cut scenes are not an essential part of a game. They're a way to promote games for use
> in shops & adverts.

I totally agree, try the demo before buying. Heck ! If there is no demo, try the pirated version !

  > * 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
  > * 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
  > * 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
  > * 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

I totally agree again, didn't I write :
"This time is over, companies have to provide more competitive prices for people to actually buy the product instead of just opting for the pirated version."

Now for a little sarcasm, I wrote a few games just by myself and this gives me an idea of the effort required to write a game like Crysis. I am still not sure they are making money with it. They probably won't without re-using the engine for other games...

Re:It's about killing the Pre-release

[Amphetam1ne]

The "game" to these guys is getting the release out on the net 1st. They recieve points if they are the 1st group to release, but not points from MS!

Besides, the bans for playing games early on live have been stopped for a while now, there were too many complaints from legitimate customers who'd orderd the game from web/mail order and were unaware that the retailer had broken street date.