How long before Console games have serial numbers to Activate/Play online?

The second game market is good for business though. I only buy second hand games because I can't afford new ones. The money I pay to a seller on ebay or via cex provides them with funds for buying more games. If you cut off the second hand market, you stop me buying games and you stop the first line buyer being able to fund as many purchases.

In any case, the notional lost sales are totally unquantifiable and may not even exist, much like how music pirates allegedly buy more music anyway.
 
flibby said:
I'm kinda suprised games companies haven't developed their own type of disc, like an offshot of what they are basing their consoles around (bd/dvd etc) and creating their own writers which are given to games developers and disc printing companies. Surely that would massively hinder piracy when you can't easily get ahold of a device to write the game or the actual blank disc itself?
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The Dreamcast used it's own type of discs but it didn't help. People found a way to get it to run the same thing but from CDs.

The Gamecube also used it's own type of discs (I seem to recall that they weren't exactly the same as 8cm DVDs although they looked like it) but it still had security gaps and was still pirated relatively easily.
 
Smit said:
The Dreamcast used it's own type of discs but it didn't help. People found a way to get it to run the same thing but from CDs.

The Gamecube also used it's own type of discs (I seem to recall that they weren't exactly the same as 8cm DVDs although they looked like it) but it still had security gaps and was still pirated relatively easily.
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Yep, and the Wii uses non-standard DVDs. I don't know what the differences are, mind you.
 
Wouldn't bother me in the slightest having to enter a serial number. It's not like it has ever caused a problem on the PC platform.

As long as it is left at that and no further DRM is introduced.
 
Instead of coming up with a new type of disc they should invent some big plastic thing with microchips in it and the game on it that you shove into the top of the console.
 
Meths said:
Instead of coming up with a new type of disc they should invent some big plastic thing with microchips in it and the game on it that you shove into the top of the console.
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:D but even that gets ripped to floppy discs :p
 
Smit said:
:D but even that gets ripped to floppy discs :p
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I was thinking that as I was typing but didn't Starfox on the Snes have some graphics chip in the cartridge that wasn't in the machine?

Not that I'd like to go down that road again mind you.

Think of the amount of floppy's (or is it floppies?) you'd need for MGS4.:eek:
 
vonhelmet said:
The second game market is good for business though. I only buy second hand games because I can't afford new ones. The money I pay to a seller on ebay or via cex provides them with funds for buying more games. If you cut off the second hand market, you stop me buying games and you stop the first line buyer being able to fund as many purchases.

In any case, the notional lost sales are totally unquantifiable and may not even exist, much like how music pirates allegedly buy more music anyway.
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That's exactly the same as me, I can't afford the best part of £40 for a game so I wait until I can get it at a decent price second hand, and I'd be willing to bet that most of the people I bought games from use that cash to buy a new release.
As someone who isn't rich enough to spend that kind of cash on a game then the second hand market also stops me from looking into modding my xbox as I can get games pretty cheaply, especially older titles, heck I just bought the GOTY edition of Fable II for £9.98 from Game's website :cool:
Games are like cars, when you've had enough of one you trade it in for a sexier, younger model. Introducing DRM to consoles would crush that and I personally think that it would damage sales figures in the long run.
 
JaFFa said:
serials would just hurt multiplayer gaming, Im not sure how effective it would be to combat piracy. Its not like PC piracy was killed by it. I dont think they would add it into consoles.
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Serials are the only thing thats stopped PC piracy from literally overrunning the format because you mostly still can't play legit multiplayer without a valid key.
 
I don't think there will be a major change this generation. There might be the odd game that has some half-cocked idea that you have to register a serial number on their website to be able to play the game. Even though PS3/Xbox360 still have a few years left in them, it's a bit late to be chaging all the rules. This would push people away and it's completely different to the PC because you buy a Sony branded game, Sony hardware etc. You are buying in to the PS3 and placing your trust in Sony an no one else. On the PC you buy a PC from anywhere and each game developer is marketed to you individually. Also casual gamers make up a huge % of the console market so I don't think it would happen.

The general opinion is that the PS4 (and xbox 3/720) won't be on sale for 3-4 years yet. In that time, both broadband connections and harddrives will get bigger and cheaper.

I've had a look into the future and this is what I saw:

I think the PS4 will be launched with no disk-drive and be download only. When you turn your PS4 on, you will be greeted by a service that is a cross between itunes and Steam. You will be able to download any game (for free:eek:) and play it for 1 hour. After that, it will sit in your game list and you will have the option of 'delete' or 'purchase' (or just leave it sitting there ghosted out, bugging you because you want to play more of it (£££!)). For more casual gamers, there will be 'gaming hours' where you can buy 6 hours of gaming on anything at all you want. So if your mate(s) texts you and says "do you fancy a game of Fifa 16 later?" you could just use a gaming hour and play it. You will have plenty of space of your 4TB HDD and your 150/200mb (or 50mb if you're cheap:o) internet connection will be plenty to download it in the time it takes to cook and eat your dinner. Or if you have some family round and someone says "we were playing that new Guitar Hero game at someone's house, it's good put it on" then you can. Now, if you use 2 gaming hours on this and you enjoy it, you will get those gaming hours back if you click purchase on the already installed game in your game list.

So what would this mean? Well game shops would have their days numbered. Selling consoles and accessories wouldn't sustain a shop selling to one town, only a website. Consoles would get sold in supermarkets, electrical shops and music/entertainment shops as they do now.

And what about game reviews? Well, I'm not sure about that one:cool:
 
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The next generation of consoles will almost-certainly still use hard copies of games. For a start, retailers will have no motivation to stock consoles that they can't sell the games for; it's why various places don't stock the PSP Go. You mention supermarkets, but I work in a large store for a certain supermarket chain and we don't sell the PSP Go on my department. That being said, there's no demand for any PSP-related stuff anyway.
 
TheVoice said:
The next generation of consoles will almost-certainly still use hard copies of games. For a start, retailers will have no motivation to stock consoles that they can't sell the games for; it's why various places don't stock the PSP Go. You mention supermarkets, but I work in a large store for a certain supermarket chain and we don't sell the PSP Go on my department. That being said, there's no demand for any PSP-related stuff anyway.
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The PSP GO is different in a few ways. It's asking people to pay a fair bit of cash for a console that is a good few years old, a hand-held at that. If a new generation console came out and it was download only from day one, then people would see it different. Yes, a few game shops have also decided not to stock the PSP-GO for the reasons i mentioned towards the end of my last post.
 
I wonder if stores gave the publishers a share of the trade ins/2nd hand games this wouldnt be such as issue. Some of the big US retail stores have been found out opening new games and selling them as used for $5 less, all the money goes to the shop as its "used" so they can keep the money themsleves. As for DD i dont think our infrastructure could stand several million console users downloading a new game when the next COD game comes out, also many of the people i know are on a 10G download a month limit, you couldnt DL a PS3 game with that.
I also think that these licence keys should only be between £5-10 max for trade in games not the £15-20 i have heard mentiones, both sides need to have a good chat as it only seems to damaging the consumer.
 
I think it could, especially in 4 years. Today I have a cheap 10mb connection. 4 years ago I'd not long gone from 1mb to 2mb. I could have 50mb if I wanted so what will these figures be in another 4 years? Also, a gamer downloading a game a month isn't much compared to everything that gets downloaded and half the houses in the country watching hours and hours of cable TV every day. It all comes down the same line
 
If they do something like this, it wont be because of piracy, it will be because it will harm rentals and the second hand market. The latter is something they care about far more than piracy and I'd say it loses them far more money than any amount of piracy.
 
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