Comments on: Secondhand Gaming: Past, Pirates and Future

By: Gideon

Gideon — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:08:14 +0000

I miss code wheels. Made me feel more “part” of the game. AND I miss the need to make your own maps. that was crazy cool to have to do!

By: cthulu93

cthulu93 — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:23:49 +0000

I shop at Gamestop myself occasionally,not so much for their prices as much as for their selections.You can find older,harder to find games from many different platforms,current generations as well as older 1’s.Until I can get every game from different consoles and era’s downloaded to my PS3 and be able to play it on the PS3 going to Gamestop is the easiest way for me to buy 8-bit nintendo games,not that I buy alot of those but occasionally I run across 1 that I remember from the good old days and I pick it up.

By: Janice

Janice — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:46:38 +0000

I’ve been watching this for a while and its a bit disturbing in some ways. Namely developers, publishers and companies like sony accusing their customers of piracy for buying used games. In reality they are NOT losing money to used games. people have been selling & trading used games for years privately and at flea markets, and the developers & publishers make their money on first sale. To be honest we’ve not seen a single studio or publisher go bankrupt from used game sales. And some throwing out blatant insults calling used games “immoral” or even calling people buying them “pirates” or “criminals” is very defamatory and not justified.

By: Burbie52

Burbie52 — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:00:53 +0000

Wonderful article Mike and I agree we are up for some incredible changes in the near future. I have been gaming since they were invented, and it took many years for us to get from Pong to PlayStation 1, and quite a few less than that to get to where we are now. The rate that this technology is speeding ahead is astounding, and I believe that we are going to be on the forefront of this new generation of gaming with Home. Good job explaining everything.

By: NorseGamer

NorseGamer — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 06:34:08 +0000

Back in the day, a lot of classic games came bundled with “feelies” — something like a codebook, for instance, which you couldn’t complete the game without. Bryan Fargo’s Wasteland is a perfect example of this; it served as a rudimentary form of copy protection.

Today, we see a lot of games offering downloadable content for purchase. These files provide a revenue stream for the developer regardless of whether the game was purchased new or used.

In the future, I fully expect to not really “own” a piece of physical media, but rather pay an acquisition price to download access to gaming experiences I want to enjoy. This, to me, makes perfect sense.

A colleague of mine suggested that the death of the secondary market would give game publishers too much proprietary control — that they could effectively charge whatever they wanted. The catch, I quickly pointed out, is that they can only charge what the market will bear. Price something too low *or* too high, and you don’t get your budgeted ROIC.

With regard to Home, I personally think it’s very, very good for the gaming industry. It’s an opportunity for some unique, thoroughly enjoyable gaming experiences that simply couldn’t be produced any other way, due to the costs involved today. And, at the same time, it provides a template for the industry to study on how to blend social networking and gaming for console users as opposed to exclusively PC users.

Personally, I’m very excited for what the future holds in this industry. I really do feel the next ten years are going to rewrite a lot of the business model that’s used today.