Recent comments by the president of Eidos regarding a potential watermark restricting Xbox 720 games to a single console expose a truth the industry just doesn't get: locking out used games by any means necessary at the expense of rentals and sharing among friends is a stupid idea. How badly would such a feature hurt game sales?
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What will happen is what already happens:
Some people will buy day one, while others wait for price drops and sales.
After that, though, things will change:
People won't trade in the game they just beat last week for credit towards the game coming out next month, because they can't. So, with less to put toward a new game purchase, that next game's sales may suffer. Publishers have already cut down on the number of copies they ship to retailers; if people only buy new, and most or many wait until the price drops, retailers will lose money, meaning they want fewer copies of the next game on shelves, meaning publishers sell less copies and make less money. Less copies on shelves means people buy less copies, so fewer people play the game and get into the franchise, meaning potential sequels see less sales as those who would have been swayed by a previous iteration had no means to try the game out and get into it.
And so on.
It won't happen in EVERY case: Call of Duty and the big yearly sports titles can probably escape this. But most games won't be nearly so lucky. Developers and publishers will go under, game stores will close down, there'll be another industry crash.
Extreme case scenario, but not outside the realm of reason, particularly if this were picked up by all console makers. If, indeed, Microsoft is the only one who picks this idea up, they can say goodbye to gaming.
Great point!
If u cant trade games towards a new game, than sales will drop.
Hence, its a 'potential' profit increase.
Nice pointing that out.
again! Seriously admins? Why hasn't this piss poor excuse for a troll been banned? Look through his comment history. I'll sum it up for you. "SONY IS BETTER THAN EVERYTHING, IF YOU DON'T AGREE IT'S BECAUSE YOU PLAY XBOX LIKE A RETARD, ALSO PC GAMES ARE INFERIOR". Sometimes I wonder why I even read comments on this website.
OT - Of course blocking used games would hurt MS. The question is how much.
If used games require a code to be unlocked then i don't think it'll be a big issue at all.
This will still allow people to trade their games in and others to buy them.
Storm in a teacup.
Making games should be left to those who want to make games, not make money, I'll hold my opinion until I see the reveal
No we will not. There was never any say about increasing price to 70$. Someone with no credibility started that rumor after they read that article with the EA interview. Apparently, they read it wrong, because they never mentionned any price increase.
Also, Sony already confirmed that there won't be a price increase, as they said games will be 0.99$-60$.