Okay so E3 is over, and for better and for worse all our dreams and nightmares came true. Sony pawned Microsoft by just restating what they said in their February conference, and Microsoft was like a crappy band, or trapeze artist trying to avoid bottles being bottles being thrown at them. Which just reinstated all the internet memes that sony fanboys were 'hard at work' making in their spare time. oh and EAs' yawn-fest, and ubisofts awesome show.
Then in a rare instance of fanboys working together, although they probably don't see it as much, Sony and Microsoft fanboys together bombarded Microsoft with so much negative feedback that all of the internet seem to have turned it's back on microsoft creating a whirlwind of nauseating press that Microsoft was left looking stupid as their stockholders screamed at them with such a force that in any other circumstance it would have been called verbal abuse, and carried a two year prison sentence. So microsoft dropped all their DRM features, and here we are today.
One thing about Microsoft was that they wanted to get rid of the sale of used games, but then back tracked to leave it to the publishers, but we know the truth. The question being is: what is so bad about used games?
Looks harmless to me.
Over the past few years developers and publishers have demonized used game sales like they are a plague upon video games, and the longer it last... the worse it becomes, but is that true? I mean are used game sales the sole cost of developer house layoffs, and publishers not making enough money?
The short answer is "no," not by a long shot, despite what all the brainwashed kids say. Seriously, there are people who say they want the sale of used games to come to an end. Are you serious? Video games are the only market in america that are run by the people for the people, and you people want to ruin that? seriously? That's just like Monsanto letting farmers buy seed, but not letting the farmers use the seeds that the food produced. It's the same thing.
No games shall be sold that we don't own
Weighing in on used game sales is not the problem; high development cost are. Plus the fact that games take so freaking long to make. Take Tomb Raider for example; it was a fantastic game that sold a million copies in 2 days, and as of march 2013 selling 3.6 million, which 3 months later has probably sold another million copies. On the other hand you have Heavy Rain that sold 2 million units, and was a booming success. what's the difference? High production cost. Developers need to look for ways to make their games cheaper. Just because your publisher hands you a huge wad of cash doesn't mean you gotta spend it all on the best of the best.
The developer 4A Games made Metro Last Light at a tenth of the cost of any triple A game, and it looked better than a lot of triple A games, and on top of that it sold more than their previous game in it's first week, so it can be done. I'm not saying go through the extremes they went through, but losing syberian tigers, and weekend hooker brawls might be a step in the right direction.
A very very hard chose i know... but it has to be done
Another solution would be video games going on sale more often at places that sell them like Best buy, Gamestop, and Walmart. I see new games go on sale once a year at gamestop, and that is pretty sad. If they ran a program where each month select new games would be on sale, it would make people want to buy them other used games. as of now no one whats to pay fifty bucks for a game that is six months old. Especially someone who bought the game, and traded it in, but a few months later wants to play it again.
The last thing on the topic i will talk about is ownership. People are talking about how you don't own the disc the publisher does, and you don't have the right to sell it. First of all yes you do own the disc, and are free to sell, lend, or use it as a clay pigeon for target practice. what you don't own is the material that is on the disc. okay it's like if you make a mod of a game, say skyrim, that is so great that it ups the graphics, and gives you a ton of extra side missions, you can't sell that as an original product. You will be sued. What you can do is put it out free on the internet for everybody to enjoy.
Enjoy...
I won't get too much into DRM, because it's gone off the xbox, but some actually liked the idea of DRM and saying Microsoft should have stuck with it. Not only would that have been a complete disaster for Microsoft, but most of the world would not even be able to even use the Xboxone, and they pissed off CD Projekt RED, and believe me... you do not want to piss off CD Projekt RED.
Come at me bro.
To me it showed how greed Americans can be, both companies and consumers. It was like they both were telling people in rural areas, and people in other countries to just shut up and take it.
Anyone remember this pile?
Another thing people are saying is that Sony has left DRM to publishers, and that means that in the future there will be heavy DRM used games with both Microsoft and Sony on multi-platform games that use it, and that for some reason is is a reason to buy a WiiU instead, because Nintendo doesn't let publishers use DRM. That is bold faced lie, and Nintendo has in fact let publishers use DRM on their games. Remember Resident Evil: Mercenaries?
it's okay if you don't remember this game. Alot of people are still trying to forget about it.
Resident Evil: Mercenaries had DRM in it that wouldn't erase the saved data from one game to the next in order to soften the sale of used trade ins. Never the less people were pissed, and Capcom got a huge storm of criticism for it. Yes this was just one like small thing, but as the old saying goes "give an inch, and watch them take a mile." How many publishers were looking at Capcom when they were doing this and rubbing their hands in a sinister way?
Good... Good.
One thing back in February that people were complaining about was "None of the games feel next-gen." Well what is next-gen suppose to feel like? It seems with every coming of the next new generation of consoles something goes missing in the games as new concept and ideas are added that people either expect, or have no clue what happened. Another thing about that that people don't seem to take into account is with each next Generation of games a younger audience gets introduced to them, and miss out on the generation of games before it that somehow become stale because they can't do what the current gen does.
Much like how people are questioning if TellTale Games The Walking Dead games are actually 'games?' I grew up on sidescrollers and point and click adventure games, so for me it is "Yes? I don't see how they aren't?" But for people who don't know what a game is without doing every action in realtime, I can see their dilemma. I also grew up on QTE with the Sega CD, which had FMV games that were just a set of QTEs. At the time they were cutting edge and amazing, and I was more than excited to see them return in Resident Evil 4.
But back on topic "What makes a Next Gen experience?" It was said that all the games looked like current gen games with a new coat of paint, and better draw distances, then all the press at E3 said that Ubisoft were the only company that was really giving us a next gen experience. Is that true? With games like The Division, is the next gen experience going to be one of a different online experience?
With it's Next-Gen door closing experience
To tell you the truth, I don't know how to measure what the next-gen experience should be. The current gen filled the gap on immersive experiences that draw you into the world with games like Uncharted 1-3, Metro 2033 (and last light), Battlefield and Call a Doodie, The last of us, and Gears of war. One thing I can say is I hope that older gaming genres are put on the back burn in favor of the genres that sell better.
This was fun to me. Games that didn't take themselves seriously, and were new and exciting.
This wasn't fun to me. Brown FPS games were you can't even see what you are shooting at.
Whatever the next gen experience is, I hope that it isn't just defined by realistic graphics. I hope it's a world you set into with each being so much different from the last. People get too focused on the story that it pulls them out of the world. If i am in a world filled with robots, like scrapland, the last thing i'm gonna worry about is were the story is going. Not every story can be a masterpiece, but every environment in a game can be a work of art. I just hope the next gen doesn't fill up on FPS military shooters.
Video game violence. Okay, I know people who say to ban the sale of M rated games to minors, but I don't believe in that. Kids will find ways to get access to them anyways. When i was young I got a Sega Genesis just because of Mortal Kombat. Since the SNES version censored the blood and the Genesis version didn't, it was a given to me which system to get. But even before mortal Kombat the Genesis games pushed for blood and violence, and I loved it.
As a kid this rivaled Playboy magazine as the best thing in the world
Hell, during the NES any game that had the smallest bit of blood in it became my favorite game next to the Mario and Ninja Gaiden series. Kids like blood, violence, and gross things... why take that from them? There are no studies that show that violent video games cause violent behavior. period.
So feel free to comment and tell me what you think about some of the things I said in this blog post. I'd like to hear what the community has to think, and what it has to add to the conversation. I may have missed a thing or two.