Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Posts
You are arguing against points I'm not making.
I'm talking about the industry here, not the consumer. The more copies pre-ordered, the more copies the store orders, and that means more money to the publishers.
If you want to talk about what is consumer positive, then of course the pre-order hardsell is not. Then again, the used game market IS, even though the premise of this thread was that it was harming the industry.
You said that pre-orders means more copies ordered means more money to publishers. I pointed out that stores seem to have little trouble estimating demand for games whether they push pre-orders or not.
Since stores order enough games to sell (that being, you know, how you make money when you run a store) the publishers seem to get the same amount of money either way.
It's not like best buy is going to run out of a big game and say 'well shit, we ran out, we won't buy more of THAT' and not, therefore, give any more money to the publishers.
I'm actually not sure, but I thought he was arguing that stores that push pre-orders will always order more initial copies than stores that don't.
Which is ludicrous, so it might not be what he's saying, but I dunno. The argument either doesn't make sense or is so obvious that it never needed to be stated. "Stores stock supply to meet demand." Um, okay?
This, this right here
Gamestop wouldn't go away in any scenario, if they were struggling they would be chopped up and sold and the storefronts would still exist.
Yeah, but the other companies acquiring that aren't filled with the terrible, money-hungry, customer-annoying bastards and policies that EBStop is comprised of.
Therefore the entire video gaming industry will crumble. It's not enough to just sell games. That's absurd! You have to chase the dollar down the customer's throat if need be!
So if Gamestop disappeared tomorrow, plans for downloadable-only titles would kick into high gear instead of the current '5-10 years out'. I doubt anyone else would rush in to fill the retail void. We'd just live with Best Buy, Amazon, and Target until everyone has broadband.
With rare exception it is not true. The stores stock shitloads of the Halos, Marios, Call of Dutys, and the other major titles, but pre-orders still play a role.
If you're talking about other retailers outside of Gamestop, well... I'm really sick of pointing this out, but those are not game retailers. They make their money on other stuff. They can afford to order too many of a video game and leave it on the shelf for a while. Gamestop can't.
Plans would not kick into high gear because the infrastructure still is not there. It doesn't matter if one of the huge retailers disappears, because there still isn't enough broadband penetration in the U.S. And, hey, some people (like my parents) have "broadband" that barely hits 56k.
So... doesn't this just mean that there's no reason to have game retailers in the market? Is it too specific a commodity, like having a tomato store? Why bother with the tomato store, when the grocery store works just as well.
Because the tomato store will stock strange tomatoes that the grocery store will pass over? Because the tomato store will have a bargain bin for excess tomatoes it wants to sell, while the grocery stores will just dump them and take a loss? Because for someone who doesn't get to eat tomatoes a lot or is buying tomatoes for their kids, they might value the opinion of someone who works all day with tomatoes?
Should I keep going?
Jaren Cannier, Mul Warden. Freedom. AC 18 F14 R14 W14.
So you're saying that analogies are like zombies then
Jaren Cannier, Mul Warden. Freedom. AC 18 F14 R14 W14.
Pointed this out based on the fact that you, personally, feel that you don't ever have trouble finding the games you want.
I'm sorry, but that's not exactly empirical.
Actually, the zombie thing was more of a metaphor
A metaphor? Is that like a simile?
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/the-end-of-used-major-ruling-upholds-tough-software-licenses.ars
"No, you don't own it: Court upholds EULAs, threatens digital resale" By Nate Anderson (September 10, 2010)
A) GameStop hardly stocks much in the way of "strange tomatoes," particularly new. You might find a used copy of that wacky JRPG that's off the beaten path, but they sold the three new copies they stocked back when it released, and never got any more in. Amazon.com is a better place to get "strange tomatoes," delivered right to your door. And for tomatoes that aren't grown anymore, you're better off hitting a site like Half.com first.
B) Most retailers do bargain bins too. They will eventually stop stocking them, but then again so will GameStop (see above...hell, they barely started stocking most titles)...I think what you're thinking of as a "bargain bin" is actually just "used titles that never sold or that they just gave a kid $0.50 for."
C) I have no doubt there are great GameStop employees out there, but I've found that their advice is often...sketchy, at best. I've been in-store and heard them help these tomato-buying parents you speak of, and I'd like to think that whatever they're pushing is actually some overstocked game the store is trying to unload...because if it's honest advice, then that might be worse.
Not unless that ruling, which applies to PC software, is somehow drastically expanded to include physical copies of console games, which already have a different legal status when it comes to resale and rental.
The ruling in this case refers to an organisation that purchased upgrade licenses to the software it already held, on the condition that the existing copies they held of the previous version were destroyed. Instead of destroying them, it resold them.
If they had purchased (vastly more expensive) full licenses for the new version, they wouldn't have come with that restriction, and there is a much stronger case for "first sale" applying to the original copies.
A). I guess online shopping makes this moot, but for the average kid getting a giftcard or a cash present, a physical store is a more likely destination than online shopping. I can find Disgaea or other JRPG's or offbeat stuff a lot more easily (even used, yes) at GameStop than I ever would at Wal-Mart or Target. Yeah, they short order sometimes, but in their defense, not that many JRPG titles catch on in any big way and they might be stuck with 5 copies of Attelier Iris 3 for a lot longer than they would, say, CoD: 7.
B). Yeah, I mean used here and maybe they gave some kid 0.50 for a game I'll buy for $4.99, but what was that kid's other option again? Goozex? The shipping wouldn't be worth the $1.50 extra he might receive. That game also may have been part of some sort of trade-in special as well. Do they screw customers on this? Yeah...what place takes used and screws them less. I guess craigslist or ebay, but that takes way more legwork than walking down the street and handing them to someone and walking away with a new game.
C). Sometimes crappy licensed titles or sports titles are the right games to recommend. My brother loves video games, but he only loves Spongebob and Spyro and Disney stuff. Recommending Ico to someone shopping for him would be terrible. When the employee has, "My son likes football and I don't want to buy him anything violent" to work with, pitching the mom Madden 2k6 might not be the most evil thing in the world. Compare this again to Target or Wal-mart where the person working the counter knows nothing about the product and just shrugs.
Jaren Cannier, Mul Warden. Freedom. AC 18 F14 R14 W14.
Not sure it would have made a difference.
in this case failure to destroy after upgrading, makes it clear the goods are no good.
However, the decision invalidated first sale and essential step by holding the architecture firm as licensees, which they interpreted as not having access to those defenses.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/09/10/09-35969.pdf (only 25 pages :lol: )
regarding games
the gamasutra article also mentions: "Indeed, Electronic Arts' standard EULA, while not mentioning resale policy, explicitly states: 'This Software is licensed to you, not sold.'"
granted that advisement is missing the other two tests: limitation on use, limitation on transfer. dunno if you need all three or just one, but they'd probably be easy to add. until then presumably it's a transferable license.
interestingly they throw it back to the lower court after invalidating the defenses with an advisement to examine the resellers misuse of copyright counterclaim. which considering the losses incurred due to Autodesk's DMCA stuff with ebay seems like it has a point.
Of course not being a lawyer I don't grok what's important in law.
The 9th court is handing out some very dangerous authoritarian verdicts recently. I thought they were supposed to be the hippy-dippy "liberal" court of appeals.