Online Solution for Renting FFXIII?

Forever-Fantasy.net has translated what was discussed at Square Enix's recent stockholders meeting in Japan. Near the end of the meeting there was a short question and answer period, in which Square Enix President Yoichi Wada took part in:

[beast]

You loose money when hard copy is sitting on the stand. But if you use online download media, there is no investment of packaging and Blu-ray disk cost, PLUS you cant rent online games . So the future in gaming might just be online games download atleast in some aspect ie activation of games or even download patch to activate a game. All this wont work because not all have internet.

[Blackcanary]

Thats true but is there any other way around it?

[Sangria]

The question is: what is the link with Final Fantasy XIII? There's no size limitation on Playstation Store, but it's not sane to make a several-GB game on PSN, and i really don't think (or hope) FFXIII or FFvsXIII will be 4-5 GB.

So in my opinion, there is a misunderstanding in what Yoichi Wada said, maybe Square Enix have plans with Playstation Store but it has no link with FFXIII.

[ki0365]

renting is all that can work with gigantic games. hard drives break too often to put everything you own onto it.

[Isaac]

It will not be. They will simply require you to activate your copy through PSN. That way you can always use FFXIII but only with your PSN. Which is lame because if I want to lend the game to a friend he will not be able to, or even my roommate. Square Enix loves the fact that there is no piracy on PS3 and will not be for a long time (which is also incentive for them to make the game way bigger than a DVD9), and they want to squeeze as much money from FFXIII as they can, which is not allowing but one PSN tag to play the game. If anyone wants to play, they will have to pay full price.

[Le-mo]

Sounds like a good plan to me. Fans of the series will buy a copy and keep it, others will might want to rent it and they can do so by downloading the game online for a period of time. But then again, the file will be huge.

[Isaac]

Did you read the article? They are not gonna rent 50 GB worth of information, they will simply combine the disc with an online solution, which is simply registration your FFXIII copy through PSN, a sort of DRM. By the time FFXIII comes out, there will be plenty of PSN users anyway, it does not matter if "not all have internet". Most people do, who the hell puts a PS3 over internet in their priority list anyway? Having internet is not a luxury anymore, like cars and cellphones (unless you live in a third world country =( ). I do not doubt that the next consoles will be completely online, or at least that they will have the option for every game to be released online.

[Asurastrike]

I better be able to get a physical copy. God, SE is so money hungry.

[GodofPeace]

I will not download a game that is going to above 15 gigs of memory that would be RETARDED. Obviously its not going to happen

[Seraphim]

1. This makes absolute sense since every rental is profit for the rental company, not the developer. And between rentals and used games sales these developers are losing A LOT of sales. This is just a way to tap into additional resources you'd otherwise be losing from rentals.

2. Sega Channel. Remember it anyone? That was the best thing to happen to gaming period. $10-20 [?] a month for 50ish titles that you could play anytime, anyday, and the list changed monthly w/ popular titles often coming back the following month. So why not offer some sort of online rental service for games?

The only thing I can't grasp is the price and time limits. To be a viable option for those who have an internet connection this service has to be comparable to or cheaper than traditional rentals.

So how do you go about finding the price point that competes w/ rentals?

- $15 a month to target gamefly and dust conventional rental stores?
- $5 per 25 [or X] hours of play?
- $10 for two weeks?

that's the only possible downfall that I see. Because if the value and reason isn't there people will continue to turn to already available methods for renting...

Anyway it's a great idea for them to gain revenue off the game. They'd still be selling hard copies to those who want it while appealing to those who want to rent it instead of buying it or rent it to see if they want to buy it. Perhaps they could rent it and if you choose to buy it give it to gamers at a discount. X dollars for rental minus X dollars for digital download equals a better price than buying it retail...

[Dream Machine]

Something inside me tells me this relates to a possible demo, rather then anything else. I'm sure FFXIII will be pushing 50GB at least, disregarding everything else, people with 40GB PS3's won't be able to get it!

[sinncross]

give me physical media SE that i can buy and own.

[juuken]

Um...physical copy please.
Unless they have something up their sleeves, I don't think this is a good idea.

[JoelR]

They are doing a physical release - they are just trying to find a way to link your account to the game so as to avoid aftermarket poaching of their sales.

[juuken]

Hope it works.

[max-jeager]

he was saying that the products that are not buy and the online aspects can come into a rental option but how can anyone would rent XIII when it is a 50 gigs or more game (with compression for the compresion wh0res)

[JoelR]

account linking

basically every game sold has a serial number and they link it to a psn account on a master server. If you sell the game the next person who buys it needs your account or it will not work.
Easy to implement if you are willing to survive the backlash.
They could also put in a transfer fee - if you sell the game they will transfer the rights for X$ to the new person - say 20% of the original cost. This would still allow transfers but also allow them to make money on the used market.
You could also store all saves online - and require them to use the linked game to use the saves.
(with a tech support division to help if someone damaged their original discs - but that is cheap if you can keep all the aftermarket sales to yourself)

This option is more palatable now - especially since they now have an account loyalty program. Before trophies people might have sold their accounts as well as the game but since they are attempting to entangle people into loyalty programs it makes it easier to make a account a permanent thing.

This has been discussed at several dev conferences and while it is held as a good idea... no one wants to risk the consumer backlash as of yet and without an account loyalty program it was thought to be a non starter(though we have been comparing it to MMOs recently)

[avacadosnorkel]

without them I'd be stuck

[JoelR]

Or... you'd just wait a bit longer to get the money and buy it anyway. Remember that the core gamer is around 30 years of age, University Grad and employeed in a job with an average salary of 50k+ now so the cost of games really doesn't affect sales as much as you might think.

(core being those who buy 5 or more games a year)