Sony Introduces 'PSN Pass' To Fight Used Game Sales 291
Gamasutra reports that Sony has introduced "PSN Pass" — one-time codes that will unlock complete online access for certain games. "The company didn't offer details on how used and rental players would access online features in these titles, but did clarify that first-party use of the passes will be decided on a game-by-game basis." The initiative is similar to the "Online Pass" that EA rolled out last year, and to Sony's own experiment with SOCOM 4. Sony's explanation for the Pass will probably leave you wishing Google Translate supported marketing-speak: "This is an important initiative as it allows us to accelerate our commitment to enhancing premium online services across our first party game portfolio."
Re:online games (Score:2, Insightful)
"These games don't have monthly subscriptions because that only works with mmo games. This means the game company is fully dependant on the income from game sales."
Keep it in perspective: Sony (or whatever company involved for game X) will shut the server for that particular game down after X months or X years REGARDLESS of used or new game sales. It will be done. As such, this point you're making means nothing. They spend X dollars putting the server up. They base this off of new game sales, fine. BUT. In order for a used game to connect to this server, it means there's one less "new" game connecting to it. To put it simply, the total number of games bought will stay the same. The game will go offline after the same amount of time anyway so WTF screw with used games sales.
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:online games (Score:2, Insightful)
These games don't have monthly subscriptions because that only works with mmo games. This means the game company is fully dependant on the income from game sales. When people resell their game the game developers get nothing, so they also have less incentive to support online games.
Thanks for the astroturfing, man, but your argument doesn't even make sense. The game developers also get nothing if the original owner continues to play the game.
Do I get reimbursed if I buy a game and stop playing after three months? Of course not, so why should the game developers get to double-dip if people play it for longer than anticipated?
Or consider books. I also own books I haven't finished even once. I don't pay more for the former, and I don't get money back for the latter, and in either case, if I resell a book, the publisher gets nothing. Or how about cars (we love car analogies)? I got a Ford, and if I resell it, Ford doesn't get anything, despite the fact that it costs them an opportunity to sell a new vehicle. Should I really be allowed to resell an object, for no other reason than that it is MINE?
And all that hand-wringing about how running servers costs money (not to mention things like security - and we all know how much money Sony invests into these things, right)... if game developers have a problem with that, let them charge a monthly fee. That's fair and transparent, and people can decide whether to buy a game or not then.
Few people play for 2 years (Score:4, Insightful)
whether I play the game for 2 years, using the services provided, or I play the game for 1 year and someone else plays the game for another extra year
In theory, there are no difference.
In reality, almost no one plays for 2 years : most players stays only a few weeks or months and switch to a new game.
So, it is much more easy to find 2 players playing for 1 year than 1 player playing for 2.
The game has been payed for, and that includes the 'right' to the services for however long I wish.
And its price has been established on the statistical cost of usage. Ask Sony for perpetual right to resale your game without feature loss, and they'll be happy to give you a sell you a more expensive version.
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
RIP First-sale doctrine (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another stab at consumer rights.
Up until about 2010 games were considered sold since they weren't expected to be returned, and as such were subject to the first-sale doctrine. Of course then the US courts go and decide that it's all fine and dandy for EULAs to remove this right. *grumble grumble* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine]
In my day you had a disc, and that was your game. You could play it, lend it to a friend, sell it, turn it into a shuriken (though that was mostly done with AOL cds). I miss that.
Re:online games (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not anti-open source, in fact I use CentOS and Fedora on my servers every day and I love its scripting abilities. That's where open source software really shines. At the same time I also understand (and acknowledge) that open source software has serious problems on desktop and especially with usability, because that is the truth. Of course we could all just lalalala, but doesn't that do more harm than bringing the fact out?
Pro Facebook? I've just pointed out that normal people like to use it and the fear mongering and "I just don't get it" attitude on slashdot is getting tiresome. For an intelligent community this large the sheer amount of ignorance is sometimes astonishing. I've also noted about the Google+ love and Facebook hate here on slashdot, objectively, as again many people here on slashdot don't seem to be able to see past the google-love mindset and that they both violate privacy and common good. The difference is that Google takes a soft, psychological way to do this and it seems to work for geeks as well extremely well. Like the previously noted "Do you want to improve your browsing and install Chrome" marketing with no "Yes" answer but a soft "Oh I guess that's ok" button.
It's not some shady slashdot marketing, it's opinions that sometimes differ from your own. Learn the difference.
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:online games (Score:2, Insightful)
Really!??!!
I'm sure what you meant to say was "Selling your hardcopy of game X is akin to selling your DVD copy of film Y"
Saying otherwise is suggesting - like all good *AAs - "we should get paid every time someone experiences our work, regardless of how it is transferred".
That's fine - you can say that if you wish - first, reduce your prices to that of every other "experienced" offering - anywhere between 99c and $10 - thanks.
Anything else and you're double-dipping - why should that be allowed again ? Nope ? Thought as much.
Disclosure: I buy my games - I don't rent them or get them second hand. (I'm also a software developer - so don't try the "you don't understand the process" argument here either).
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:online games (Score:4, Insightful)
If the disk is mine, I can resell it as I want. It's like a book, and don't tell me that reselling books is bad. Once I sell the book, movie or game, I can't see/play it again. So, what's the problem?
And game creators do win with second hand sales. Because many people won't buy so many games if they couldn't resell them later and recover part of their money.
Re:online games (Score:2, Insightful)
No sir, people pay for products and services, not "experiences" (not for a movie, not for a game)
When people go to the theater, they're paying for a service: the service of a seat in a room with a screen for a certain time, during which happens to be running a movie. While in the theater, people could completely ignore the movie that's showing and not "experience" it at all during the time (fall asleep, make out with boy/girlfriend, focus on chowing down on the popcorn, etc)
When people buy a DVD, they're buying the actual product: the disk, which happens to have the movie on it. People could actually never fire that DVD up and never "experience" the movie.
No sir, game makers do not sell "the experience of the game", even if they think they are. They sell an arrangement of 0's and 1's (which happen to, if interpreted by the right computer, lead to a game). Of course, they think part of selling this pattern includes the "right" to decide who gets to duplicate or use this pattern.
This "right" however is ridiculous to enforce, as you admitted yourself: you can't unsee a movie, or a game. The idea (of the resulting game/movie) is duplicated the moment it is "experienced", and cannot be undone (short of wiping people's memories...). Furthermore, having an idea duplicated does not mean the maker (you) is now one idea short. See, if somebody buys or steals a physical DVD disk, the disk maker is now short one disk. If somebody buys a seat in a movie theater (service), that's one less seat the theater has to sell to others
But with "experiences", or ideas, having one more person know about it doesn't mean you now have one "less" idea.
Thus, "first sale" cannot be reasonably applied to ideas like it would with goods and services. That is one of the flaws of current IP laws: it's trying to treat ideas like goods and services, and trying to control the spread of ideas like controlling the spread of goods and services.
Don't get me wrong: content makers should be compensated somehow. IP laws came from good intentions, but it is working off on flawed principals, and not keeping up with the changing times (to say the least)
And please drop the fear mongering and doomsaying about how eventually nobody would make content. One doesn't have to look far to see how that's not the case: music and mp3s
For all the music piracy that goes on (and it went on even before mp3s, in the form of cassettes and tapes), the music industry is still around. In fact, the smart ones, instead of clinging to old outdated IP laws, embraced the new technology, and adapted to new business models.
Whether Sony's move is a cling to dated laws or a smart adaptation will depend on the actual execution and implementation. Without more details, more cautious people (and your usual Sony-hating crowd) would of course think it's the former.
Re:online games (Score:5, Insightful)
They hope that nobody will be using the online services of the game a year after the initial purchase, but that's not something they're necessarily entitled to enforce.