Microsoft's Lewis on used games, Windows 7 gaming

Seriously, why post this shit?

Are you retarded?

Let's all post meaningless drivel


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh

ok next?

whats wrong with what he said??

Because it's as annoying as reading 15 "FIRST!!!!" posts.

that makes two of us. im sure it will have it's problems at launch, but i just hope it wont be how Vista was. i know ive personally had some really hard times trying to do stuff in Vista that was simple in XP. i know they tried to make it easier, but they didn't. i will run 7 in my next PC that i'll buy sometime over the course of the year.

Damn, that's exactly where I am right now! I'm planning on building a new computer within the year I hope and I'll put W7 on that. Computer parts are getting quite cheap. So that's nice.

Got a new machine and am beta'ing Windows 7. It's actually pretty damn nice. I probably will actually buy it when it launches.

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=137607

PC Authority's 30 Best Features of W7. Worth checking out if all you know of W7 is blog posts and news articles.

That's awesome that you make games. I checked your site out. Reminds me of Age of Booty but that might be because I just played that game. It's quite fun too

So you're saying that game companies shouldn't complain about piracy either?

Considering both have the same end effect from the developers stand point (no gain from the person playing it), are you really saying that used game sales shouldn't matter? Don't you think there is some relation between the fact that over the last generation that used sales are rocketing (Gstop is reporting like 2.2 billion in profits, where 80% of it was from used game sales), while sequels become more prevalent and creativity is being put wayside for Super_awesome_FPS_031 of the season?

Strange. Let's all pirate everything and buy it used. We'll see how long the industry lasts then.

@Jeepers Creepers 712: While it may not appear that way on the surface, the used game industry is far better for developers than piracy.

First in order for a game to be bought used, someone else must have bought that particular copy already in order to sell it used. With piracy however, only one copy must be bought (or stolen I suppose) before thousands of people can download it. Put simply, if you buy a used game, while you are not directly helping the industry, you are not taking anything away from it either.

Second, as already mentioned many people sell their games in order to buy new ones (which is enhanced by stores giving more store credit than cash for games)

Alphathon: On the other hand, you could say a pirate was never going to buy the game anyway, so no loss or gain. But a Used sale could have easily been a New sale.

I hate arguments like this, because there's never any definitive answer, but at the end of the day, everyone's probably right in some way.

I mean no offense, but the fact that you're a game developer, or at least, the particulars of it don't give you a hugely unique perspective on it.

The website you linked, at least, was digital distribution to sell the game (With yeah, the possibility of shipping a CD later).
You know, I have plenty of respect for you, being a game developer, and you have a better stake in the industry than I do, but your company is no Epic Games, or Konami, or Bungee, who make their lifeblood off of brick and mortar. You kinda forgo that.

However, you are right as well about the resale industry being existent in most other aspects of life. Here's on difference between the game industry and others; developers are more often than not, legally considered "professionals" which exempts them LEGALLY from being paid overtime. The game industry may be booming (except for lately, but that's besides the point) but the rank-and-file employee over at game company X still doesn't make that much money. Unless of course you're a Cliffy B, Peter Molineux, Hideo Kojima, Will Wright, or some other big wig in the game bizz.

Brit-
They're not complaining because gamers sell games or buy used games for cheap, they have a problem with places like gamestop because where a gamer would normally sell 5 recent games on amazon or ebay then buy a couple of new ones if you "trade in" 5 games at gamestop you barely have enough to buy one recent game, not to mention the fact that you'll be buying that recent game used unless you preordered it.

That's what we call a racket, and they're praying on gamers; the publishers are just bystanders really. I'm just surprised so many people shop there when you can get better prices anywhere else.

Re: Jeepers Creepers 712
Yeah, I do worry about piracy and whether the percentage of pirates increases over time. I don't see piracy in the same light as used games. I'm okay with reselling used games because there's a variety of things about used games that limits it's ability to damage the industry.

For example, I mentioned that if 100,000 want to play your game within a given week, then there has to be at least 100,000 copies out-there (i.e. sold). Piracy is a different game because it allows 100,000 people to play the game, but the total sales could potentially be much-much smaller than that. Theoretically, piracy could allow for as few as one copy sold (or zero copies in the case of leaks). So, while used games can diminish profits, it's potential to damage the industry is limited by a variety of factors. (For whatever reason, I never buy used games, and never sell my old games, either.) I also think stopping used-game sales pushes too much against user's rights. And the "right of first sale" prevents companies from stopping sales of used products anyway. The book companies tried to do this a hundred years ago because they realized that sales of used books hurt sales of new books.

I'm the same. I rent almost all of my games, other than XBLA games and PC games. It's far too expensive to constantly be purchasing new games, at least for myself it is.

That's awesome. I didn't want to use to Beta. How is the rest of the OS? Do you like it more than XP and Vista?

Well thats good news. My computer is currently capable of running Crysis at 1920x1200 with all the settings at high or very high (I thing thats wht they're called...in the original Crysis anyway - it's different in Crysis Warhead) with a relativelly good framerate on Vista, so it'll be nice to see how the preformance is on Win 7.

Better performance is better...also obvious comment is obvious* and longcat is loooooooong :)

*reffering to mine not anyone elses just so you know

"Start requiring registration in all games, console or otherwise and force Gamestop and other retailers to purchase refresh codes to resell the game"

Huh? Please explain this a bit further. Do you mean the retailer has to register each copy or the user has to use a key to play a game on a console?

Because if you mean the latter i'd rather just use my PC if i'm going to have to enter a key in order to play a game.

What I'm saying is Gamestop get away with selling console games because there is nothing in the game that prevents it being reused. The disk is not bound to a machine, so there is nothing to stop them selling it again. They *don't* sell PC games because these days most premium games have a serial code. 10 years ago it was entirely different.

Is it impractical to enter a code on a console?

Depends on how you do it. For example, if COD4, Halo 3 or Killzone 2 could have bundled a code that let people download a free multiplayer map pack from PSN/XBL. Virtually everyone who played online would definitely use the code since it's free. The vendor could also ensure that contention for non-map pack servers motivates people to download it.

That alone would seriously stifle second hand sales since you'd lose out on the map pack. If you still bought the game second hand, you'd have to pay $5 or whatever to download the map pack on your own dime. Alternatively the producer might sell the map pack refresh codes wholesale to Gamestop for a couple of bucks and GS could be involved in selling them with the second hand game. Either way producers would claw back some money from resales which they never would have before.

It would be a very simple and easy to do. It's so simple I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.