Dastardly said:
This has nothing to do with the discussion.
Wel I'd say it had a lot to do with the petty squabbling over metaphors and analogies but if ignoring that chunk of the arguement helps you sleep at night then who am I to judge?
Actually, you'll find a lot of publishers that aren't super happy about used book sales. And this move isn't about "trying to cut it out of the loop completely." There are other reasons for digital distribution. One side effect that does, in fact, benefit the publishers is that no--you can't resell a digital copy. The up side, we can begin demanding sharply-lower prices.
While I'm sure no publisher or business is overly happy about second hand sales I think you'll find that in no other case is a) such a large measure being taken to try and reduce the number of second hand sales (you don't see books or movies withholding content unless you either buy it new or pay an extra £10 to the author/studio and if they did try doing this you can guarentee that we'd all all them out on it) and b) no-one cares about whether the publishers are 'happy'.
They're a business, I don't think I should have to treat them with kid gloves just so they'll feel confident and secure in the knowledge that I'm a loyal fan of their games and customer. If they don't like the thought of me selling or even just giving a game away after I've bought it then they
shouldn't have fucking sold it to me in the first place then.
If I was so inclined to, I could buy fifty copies of Battlefield 3 and burn then all in a bonfire, would DICE or EA have any right to be horrified or upset? No.
The games they sell you should stop being their's the second that you hand over money for them (like how most customer transactions are supposed to work).
As for your idea of it being a wonderous benefit for customers who can (and I quote) 'begin demanding sharply-lower prices', allow me to burst your bubble here by calling bullshit on that. Games have been grossly overpriced ever since the dawn of the medium (or certainly the part of it I was around for, I was a Megadrive kid myself) and the only mitigating factor avaliable for poorer families like my own was the fact that we could quite literally give the game store the finger and go down to the local video store's used bin to find stuff cheaper or that I could trade games I'd finished with friends for games they'd finished (hell, I still do that today, I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay full price for Fable 3 after how disappointed I was with Fable 2).
Hell, before game stores and used bins in video stores were common we often found ourselves with little other option but to go to places like carboot sales and the stall market (you know, the kind where you get those dodgey pirate/bootleg DVD's and VHS tapes), there simply weren't really any other places you could get games cheap so it was that or no games (and me as a whining six year old was probably enough pester power to make bootleg Sega games not seem like such a bad purchase). So in my case (and I know I'm not the only one)
the absence of a used game market leaned us towards and encouraged piracy.
I looked at what is one of the leaders for how the digital distribution system would work (Steam, I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it) and a lot of the prices either didn't look all that different from what you'd find in a video or game store or were attaced to items that were inherantly low in value anyway (of course a mod or a repackaged Sega Megadrive game is going to be cheap, the former is just a mod and the latter are almost as old as I am).
I can gurantee you that digital distribution won't result in customers being better able to negotiate better prices for games (in fact, it'll achieve the opposite by taking away that all powerful arguement that no sales assistant wants to hear of 'I can get this cheaper elsewhere', I have seriously managed to work wonders in terms of getting discounts by pointing this out to shop owners), being able to stand in front of the branch manager in person and give them a hailstorm of shit and fury over being charged full price for a game that came out years ago and has two direct sequels (I'm looking as you CoD4) will get you results, having a bunch of spineless and content people sitting behind a download screen and trying to write polite e-mails to the publisher for a price lowering will probably get you the simple answer of 'no'.
Other publishers don't (as you claim) try to "cut out" used sales because there is no way they can. You can bet if they could, they would. Thankfully, new cars will always be in better condition than old cars, so they have the ability to compete on quality where they cannot compete on price... but if they could eliminate it, they would.
How about the fact that a game's price has little to do with the actual quality of the game? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's paid a full blown new price (£45 or $60 depending on your country) on a game that is
awful or paid next to nothing for a game that is brilliant and wonderful (Condemned: Criminal Origins only set me back about £20, and this was a few years ago back when it was newer and around Christmas), this kind of blows your car comparison out of the water there because I can guarentee you that you wouldn't find car manufacturers getting away with selling a low quality, shoddy car for the same price as the newest, most advanced sports car or a fine, quality luxury convertable.
I'm sorry but I find it hard to defend the idea of getting rid of second hand sales when I can get charged more for FIFA than I can for something like Crackdown, Lost Planet 2 or Diablo II.
It just so happens that software, as ethereal as it is, has the availability of this particular distribution method, and that method has the potential of cutting off resale. It's just the nature of the medium that this is the case. Or do you want to also argue that e-books are evil because it means people can't re-sell them, too?
And the absence of re-sale for a lot of people is a proverbial iron boot in the balls. For a lot of people the ability to trade in or sell games is an important source of income, while this may not mean much to those of you who are fairly well off but trust me when I say that those of us on the lower end of the socio-economic scale are all thinking that people who honestly hold the opinion of 'I'm alright so who cares?' can go fuck themselves in a suitably violent fashion.
Also, as previously stated, once I have bought a game, it is
mine to do with whatever I wish. Taking away the ability to actually have any control or choice over what I can do with what is supposed to be
my property is a serious problem.
Would you not be upset if I sold you a car (at an inflated price because it's popular) and dictated that not only must you give me future payments for things such as insurance and new tires but that you must also give me your personal details and inform me (and essentially ask my permission) any time you want to drive anywhere as well as demanding that you never even touch the insides of what is supposed to be yours?
Also, you aren't allowed to sell it on or even lend it to anyone else because that would make me unhappy and I wouldn't get any money out of it.
I somehow get the feeling that you'd be none too happy with that deal (and most people probably wouldn't).
And then you list mostly some limited exceptions to a very broad (and true) rule: No, they don't.
Data gets corrupted and files can be deleted, computers age and need to be replaced and what about accounts getting hacked or suspended (or servers being shut down?).
Nothing lasts forever, even immaterial things such as data and software can degrade and suffer in the long run.
Things such as hackers, computer viruses and other digital threats are all things that can very easily ruin your fun in regards to games aquired through the use of digital distribution (and last time I checked, a computer virus can't warp into your room and fuck up your entire PS2 or Xbox 360 collection).
Mario is Mario is Mario. Disks aren't software. They're the delivery method for the software.
And that would be a fine point to make if it wasn't for the fact that games (even in digital form) do degrade over time and that even the delivery method of digital distribution is riddled with issues (it's just that I'm guessing these issues don't affect you, as such, why should you care?).
And yes, while the disks may depreciate, digital distribution would eliminate that problem. Oops.
No, it wouldn't eliminate that issue, we'd still be facing problems with deprication and other consumer concerns (just in a different form) while making whole new problems that will be much harder to solve.
I gurantee you that if there were no downsides to the whole idea of digital distribution then there wouldn't be such a polarised response to it (in other words,
we wouldn't be having this discussion).