EA Blocks Multiplayer Mode on Used Games XBOX360/PS3/PC

iamtheoneneo said:
all your points completely miss the point! the publishers do not want the 2nd hand market and have been unhappy with it for years now. none and yes that means ZERO money goes back to them through 2nd hand goods.

it has nothing to do with piracy..

point 1) you get everything ,the devs/publishers who made the game get nothing.
point 2) your argument here is completely counter productive you say online prices will rise then quote steam - a system that has above retails prices for years now regardless of prices elsewhere mainly down to their server overheads which are massive.
online prices will not rise, its basic economics and lost retailing. you also missing the point as to why online prices are cheaper full stop - its because they cut out the middle man, import cheaply and dont hold assets in the forms of shops. Thats why its cheaper not because of bloody game or gamestation lol.

i would understand your reasoning if it wasnt so poorly thought through.

oh and for the record blockbuster are losing profits becuase they failed to keep up with online rental schemes and still offer ridiculous day rentals.
and game are losing profits bc of they have also failed to be competitive and generally hold far to many assets for the minimal demand of a company like Game.
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Point1: Yes, because they already made their profit on the first time sale of the product.
Point2: Nope, not counter productive. Think about it: GTA4 was £5 on Steam, and it had a filesize of 15gb. I take it valve is losing money on that one? Course not, they have a clever hosting model.

Except they are happy charging £39 for MW2.
 
These car comparisons are annoying me. As you use a car its performance degrades and its cost to maintain increases, it has a life expectancy, it's inevitable it will one day stop working. Because of these issues the price of a car plummets in comparison to the cost of buying new. Used cars will eventually drop out of the market once they've been overused, games can constantly circulate, drawing in a constant flow of revenue to everyone except the publisher/developer.

With a game it never degrades, it is and will always be the same game. Because of this retailers are able to charge a price that is very similar to that of the brand new item, thus drawing more interest away from these new games. The profit margin is huge and the losses to the publisher/developer are also large.

I'm not arguing what EA are doing is right or moral, just that it can't be compared to the used car market.
 
Gzero said:
Point1: Yes, because they already made their profit on the first time sale of the product.
Point2: Nope, not counter productive. Think about it: GTA4 was £5 on Steam, and it had a filesize of 15gb. I take it valve is losing money on that one? Course not, they have a clever hosting model.

Except they are happy charging £39 for MW2.
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Valve don't set the prices, more often than not it's the publishers. :rolleyes:

Quite often the publishers set their Steam prices high in order to steer some sales towards the high-street where they receive more of a share.

Streeteh said:
These car comparisons are annoying me. As you use a car its performance degrades and its cost to maintain increases, it has a life expectancy, it's inevitable it will one day stop working. Because of these issues the price of a car plummets in comparison to the cost of buying new. Used cars will eventually drop out of the market once they've been overused, games can constantly circulate, drawing in a constant flow of revenue to everyone except the publisher/developer.

With a game it never degrades, it is and will always be the same game. Because of this retailers are able to charge a price that is very similar to that of the brand new item, thus drawing more interest away from these new games. The profit margin is huge and the losses to the publisher/developer are also large.

I'm not arguing what EA are doing is right or moral, just that it can't be compared to the used car market.
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Good post.

To be honest I can't blame companies for wanting to claim back some of the money that the high-street shops try to take from under them. The profit on second hand games is ridiculous and almost always when I buy a new game in the high-street I get offered a second hand version for only a fiver off. The shops know they can make four or five times the money undercutting new copies. I'd have more of a problem in the "degredation of the second hand industry" if the prices offered by shops were actually worth the discount.
 
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Streeteh said:
These car comparisons are annoying me. As you use a car its performance degrades and its cost to maintain increases, it has a life expectancy, it's inevitable it will one day stop working. Because of these issues the price of a car plummets in comparison to the cost of buying new. Used cars will eventually drop out of the market once they've been overused, games can constantly circulate, drawing in a constant flow of revenue to everyone except the publisher/developer.

With a game it never degrades, it is and will always be the same game. Because of this retailers are able to charge a price that is very similar to that of the brand new item, thus drawing more interest away from these new games. The profit margin is huge and the losses to the publisher/developer are also large.

I'm not arguing what EA are doing is right or moral, just that it can't be compared to the used car market.
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Could we try comparing it to DVD/CD's?
Or maybe art (you see games going on the bay listed as 'rare')?

Oh that reminds me, you lose a chunk in resale when these games are 7 years old and they turn off their servers for it. Makes me sad, today you could pick up say original Sonic game, but in the future games with DLC components will be missing parts of the game.
 
Gzero said:
Could we try comparing it to DVD/CD's?
Or maybe art (you see games going on the bay listed as 'rare')?

Oh that reminds me, you lose a chunk in resale when these games are 7 years old and they turn off their servers for it. Makes me sad, today you could pick up say original Sonic game, but in the future games with DLC components will be missing parts of the game.
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And you expect them to keep servers running forever? It's inevitable that they shut them down. :rolleyes:

Would you rather they just included no online features, so that they can never be removed?
 
orderoftheflame said:
Would you rather they just included no online features, so that they can never be removed?
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Yes, i would rather they finish the game in the first place instead of hashing out DLC..

orderoftheflame said:
And you expect them to keep servers running forever? It's inevitable that they shut them down. :rolleyes:
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Yep, under their new model i have paid $10 for the sole purpose of 'renting' their servers so i expect them to be there for as long as i want to play the game

To be quite honest i doubt it will help fight piracy, it will instead encourage it
I certainly would think twice about buying half a game...
 
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I think this could cause a loss in brand new game sales.
If I want a a new game then i'll buy it brand new but use one of my other games to trade in.Where I live the local game trading shop offers good prices for used games.If the price of used games starts dropping because of this then it may stop people buying as many brand new games.
I could trade in a game that's a month or 2 old for £20,so it's about £25 i'd pay for a new game.If I suddenly start only getting £10 for a used game then I won't be able to afford as many games.
I only buy used games if it's something I wasn't really bothered about but just fancy playing it.
 
Gzero said:
Point1: Yes, because they already made their profit on the first time sale of the product.
Point2: Nope, not counter productive. Think about it: GTA4 was £5 on Steam, and it had a filesize of 15gb. I take it valve is losing money on that one? Course not, they have a clever hosting model.

Except they are happy charging £39 for MW2.
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but they didnt make any money on the preowned tho - when they technically could have.
that price on steam would have been the sale price id imagine it would have been a lot higher earlier on, and regardless of price on steam a % always goes to the devs which is more then preowned copies ever do.
 
EA are selling games not leasing them, once they sell a copy of a game, they have no further rights to that copy.

If they want to get arsy over the 2nd hand market they should go into competion with game etc and open up some shops and take trade in etc. But they wont do this because it costs money.

Next thing microsoft and sony will be making you pay £100 to activate your 2nd hand 360/ps3 you just bought. Because according to some peoples logic on here, they didnt make any money out of that sale.
 
doofski said:
Next thing microsoft and sony will be making you pay £100 to activate your 2nd hand 360/ps3 you just bought. Because according to some peoples logic on here, they didnt make any money out of that sale.
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Actually,they did.Any publisher has to pay rights or something to the console owners to release games on their consoles.That's why console games cost more than PC games.
 
anticonscience said:
Intel/BMW/AMD etc. get top whack first time round, the person then selling as second hand gets a fraction of this cost when they sell it. If you could sell Intell CPU's close to RRP cost when you came to sell it I'm sure Intel would have other ideas about the second hand market the same with BMW etc.
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You can get close to full price selling second hand if you sell a week after you bought the item, but that doesn't really happen with CPUs or cars.
 
Nexus said:
It's nothing to do with who has 'access' to it though, you seem to have missed the point. It's the fact that the 2nd hand user was going to buy the game, thus the profit would have been divided by the shop/Dev/Publisher; instead though, they've bought the game they were going to buy and the profit all goes to the shop.
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The thing is, anyone selling so close to release as to create a "second hand" game in the hands of the retailer that can be sold for near full price, is no doubt going to be buying another new game, so there's still more sales.

It's not like someone buys a game, trades it and then never buys a game again.
 
Streeteh said:
These car comparisons are annoying me. As you use a car its performance degrades and its cost to maintain increases, it has a life expectancy, it's inevitable it will one day stop working. Because of these issues the price of a car plummets in comparison to the cost of buying new. Used cars will eventually drop out of the market once they've been overused, games can constantly circulate, drawing in a constant flow of revenue to everyone except the publisher/developer.
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The car comparison is more relevant if you consider cars being sold second hand while only a month old, or thereabouts, with barely any miles on the clock i.e. with no appreciable wear.

Streeteh said:
With a game it never degrades, it is and will always be the same game. Because of this retailers are able to charge a price that is very similar to that of the brand new item, thus drawing more interest away from these new games. The profit margin is huge and the losses to the publisher/developer are also large.
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Games do fall out of fashion though - older games don't sell second hand for nearly as much as newer ones.
 
vonhelmet said:
The car comparison is more relevant if you consider cars being sold second hand while only a month old, or thereabouts, with barely any miles on the clock i.e. with no appreciable wear.
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Good argument and i can't completely disagree. However its worth noting that car manufacturers are artificially pushing down the value of quickly-sold second hand cards by introducing long, non-transferable warranties. People aren't keen on buying newer second hand cards for a similar price to a new car as it lacks the warranty that they could get for that little bit extra. I guess you could view this as the car manufacturers version of doing what EA are now attempting.

Games do fall out of fashion though - older games don't sell second hand for nearly as much as newer ones.
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True, but that doesn't stop the 'real' value of the product remaining the same in my eyes. It still has all the same features and elements the original product has, if someone chose to play it 150 years later, it'd still be the same game as it was when it was first released whereas a car would be unlikely to run without huge amounts of maintenance.
 
The online code for accessing EA's online features of the games should be available to any user who gets the game - it should be passed on. How they can legitimately restrict that access only to the first user who buys the game is beyond me...

1 user/buyer = 1 game and profit gained from that.

EA want 1 game = Multiple users and to profit each time a different user PLAYS THE SAME GAME PRODUCT.

This to me is very dodgy. How can they be allowed to sell the same game twice, three times, four times, 5 times etc etc

I understand if EA want to charge extra on the game itself fair enough so they can support their online services of a game (servers etc) but they cannot charge extra for each and every user. Why? Because when you and i sell a game on we no longer use the online service of the game so you will still have only 1 user = 1 game sold.

The online aspect once unlocked (paid for) on 1 game should remain unlocked ...not this garbage about every new user of the same game having to pay to use the online aspect of the game.

They are trying to reap rewards and profit on nothing actually being sold...

They cannot and should not be allowed to restrict gaming in this way. imo EA have stepped over the line here...
 
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