CliffyB Thinks Used Games Are Bad, Sony is "Playing Us"

[HippySteve]

In the words of Danny Brown- "So guess who's the little *****, that's you, you must suck a lot of dick, that's true". Seriously, this dude worked for Microsoft when he was at Epic, and he's continuing that now.

 

[Simalacrum]

Horse manure.

Sure, development costs are sky high, but that ISN'T a problem for consumers; thats a problem for developers and publishers.

To punish consumers for a problem caused by development and publishing is immoral and irresponsible. To push DRM on consumers for doing something that isn't even illegal is going to alienate people more than they already have been. Its foolish.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Dude....

I see your lips moving but all I hear is:
"PONCEPONCEPONCEPONCEPONCE"

Ugh never liked this dude.

Even though he helped create Jazz JackRabbit?

Whenever this guy's name comes up, people always say this. Hell, it's all over the Facebook comments at the bottom of the article.

My response is always, 'So what?'. Firstly it's not like the game was especially ground-breaking or game changing (it's a cult game). It's not like it was Mario or Bleszinski is Shigeru Miyamoto and even if it were and he were, does that excuse him from all responsibility when he says something completely and utterly stupid (which he seems to do whenever he speaks)? Fuck no.

You're right, but thinking about Jazz JackRabbit makes me wat to play it again.
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/182/0/f/Free_Jazz_Jackrabbit_icon_by_PokemonshowCreator.gif
I'll be back

 

[Sejborg]

Incorrect. The game can ONLY be active on ONE console at a time.

"Xbox One will also allow you to give up to 10 family members access to "log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One."

You can always play your games, but only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Used_Games_and_Rentals

Stop spreading lies.

Where was I lying?
I can always play my games on my XBox One and one family member can play from my shared library. Hence two people can use one copy at the same time. Therefore I can play coop with my brother even if only one of us bought the game.
It is right there in what you have quoted.

This is exactly what is wrong with Microsofts presentation. There are two ways to interpret what has been shown. You claim that this means only one XBox can use said games and I say that since I can always play my games and only the family members are restricted to one active copy that actually two people could use the game at the same time.

Demonstrating the system live would clear this up but Microsoft didn't do that. So the first reaction of people is like yours: Refusal.

That is not how it works. When you buy a game, you add it to your shared library from where you and your "family" can access your shared games. Only one person can access that library at any given time.

So lets say you are the one that buys all the games in your family.
For instance let us say you have bought
Halo
MGS
Gears of War
Tetris

You have the disc's so you can always access the game. So let's say you decide to play Halo.

Then your brother wants to play one of the games you have shared with him. He accesses the Shared Library and then closes all the games off from all the others that are added to your share list. For instance your sister or dad can't access the library because your Brother is in the library. Only one have access to the library at any given time.

Now your Brother also decides that he wants to play Halo. He is not on the games primary console, so he has to be connected every 1 hour.

Now let's say you have been playing Halo offline but now you decide that you want to play multiplayer. Now you connect to the cloud, and then MS can see that the same game is in use on two consoles at the same time. However you have the disc and the primary console, so you will get a message that says: "This game is currently being played by "usertag (your brother)" if you continue his game will end". Remember he is on "secondary" console so he needs to be connected every one hour. Your brother will get a similar message that says his game has ended because now you are playing the game. The game can only be used online one at a time. That is one of the points of the online connection DRM addition.

However your brother will have access to your other shared games: MGS, Gears of War and Tetris. But not the one you are using. It works similar to sharing a disc, only you don't have to travel back and forth to share the disc.

 

[rbstewart7263]

I'm honestly of the opinion that above all else, people actually buying your game is the sticking point as to if something will work or not.

his games do sell though but I think there is some truth to what he says whether the solution is "less graphics" or whatever I dont think the man deserves condemnation for stating the facts as he sees em.

 

[Ishigami]

Do you know how many revenue streams movies had throughout most of their history? One - the theater. Yet they still somehow managed to make Cleopatra.

And time moved on. The budget of movies increased and new income streames got explored, used and established such as online rentals just recently.
This does not exactly prove your point of staying with only one business model all the time if anything it proves the opposite.

Do you know who fought tooth and nail against the VCR, claiming it would destroy their 'revenue streams?' If you guessed the movie industry you're correct!

For the movie industry this opened a new income streams from rentals and home entrainment releases.
Something video games kinda lack as of today. A video game has to make its money back in the first few weeks after release and after that momentum is gone it becomes mostly meaningless as a source of revenue.

You are claiming it is /reasonable/ for me to give up a right I enjoy with every other product in existence (the right of resale) because it might make the life of developers a bit easier and because the poor publishers don't have aftermarket revenue like DVDs, and games are too expensive.

No I'm not, not without proper compensation. The question is what is proper compensation?
Steam obviously compensated PC users well enough to be accepted so what needs to be done to make console users accept such a system?
You are not even asking you just say ?no?.
You can do that, sure, but it isn't helping to solve the issue of video games becoming a very expensive business with a very short time span to recover the investment.

Snip

Where did you get this information?

 

[Sixcess]

"You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing,"

Then make better, more interesting games.

Video games are getting as bad as movies, where they're spending as much - or more - on marketing the damn things as they did making them. If your game is so bland, so by-the-numbers, so uninteresting, that you need to spend that much money on getting attention then you're doing something wrong.

And the games market is far more receptive to word-of-mouth than movies, which are too reliant on big opening weekends. Anyone on this site can list plenty of games that have become successes through word-of-mouth.

In a world where tiny dev teams are making games like Minecraft and Amnesia: the Dark Descent these 'thousands of devs' working on AAA games have no excuse not to make better games.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I wonder how many games people would actually buy in a year if they could only buy new.

 

[Bato]

I don't even know if this is a sentiment already shared in the thread but.

You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do NOT work people.

Then lower them.
Learn to budget and manage your resources.
Bend to the market instead of trying to bend the market, that's how you successfully business.

 

[Charlie Chitty]

Really Cliff? So you're saying that hilarious backward business strategies are fine because triple A releases cost too much and need more money injected into them?

Haven't you simply considered that it's the fault of the massively over-inflated budgets that triple a games have? People stake entire livelihoods on whether "Bland Shooter 6" is going to sell a certain number of copies and then get upset that they couldn't meet the unrealistic target they have.

Meanwhile, games made on a comparative dime thrive and the Indie community thrives with it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a major fan of them, but you can't help but wonder how Cliffy came to the conclusion that the whole industry needs to change instead of the developers that scratch their heads in confusion when they don't get the same profit from a game than they did last time.

It's incredibly childlike to think that budget equates to the return.

Look at Minecraft for example.

 

[Azwrath]

-snip-

In 1950 you would have to pay around 100$ for one of those 21' black and white TVs, now you can get a 45' LCD infinitely superior in any way for less then that. So yes, you can have better things with less money as technology advances, as new, better and cheaper ways of making those things are developed.

I agree with most of what you said and i accept that consumers want more. It is normal, but that does NOT mean developers NEED to spend more then they can afford. My problem is that your main point is mostly based on the ideea that the developer is this naive innocent little girl that has to put out because of the presures of the consumers and that is not the case. Developers are the ones that should be controling the expectations of their costumers.

Just because we expect better graphics does not mean developers need to spend obscene amounts of money to make them true. That is why i do not consider that the consumer has any blame in this situation. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things the consumers can be blamed for, but the insanely huge budgets used by developers is not one of them.

I also do not consider that the AAA needs to go away. They have their place, but they need to start making smart choices. You can not tell me that developers budget and plan correctly when a game sells well over other titles of it's time and they still consider it a flop. That is the most basic exemple of bad planing.

 

[wickedmonkey]

Alright Cliffy, you say you need to pay far out the ass to employ thousands of people to churn out yearly iterations of the same franchise?

Maybe the industry would be better off if, instead of these thousands of people working to quickly to finish of one title for an almost-identical-to-the-last-one yearly release, they were in smaller teams working on several games over more than a years time, having time to polish their products properly, experimenting with new IPs, getting creative and finding new ways to innovate.

We don't *need* a new CoD or AC every year and, hopefully it's not just me, I'd love to see more original games come out than just the same tired formula over and over again.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

just looked at his twitter, replied to the comment 'those of you telling me "then just lover game budgets" do understand how silly you sound right?'

with "why not. not everything has to be AAA. look what happened in the 80's, dont need another collapse"

looks like he has comments disabled though.

 

[Sejborg]

Snip

Where did you get this information?

From a MS employe.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Dude Huge also thinks that Sony has its own used game solution up its sleeve and is just playing on the internet outrage for free PR. "You're all being played!" he warns us. Rumors that Sony's own machine would block used game sales in some way surfaced in the lead up to the PS4's reveal.

I am also curious about this. Either Xbox is run by people that know less about business than me, they have an extremely unlikely Ace under their sleeve or Sony will indeed force some new DRM or use the current one to emulate microsoft new measures. All in all, i have learnt to think that people ain't idiots when it comes to money, so the most likely explanation for me is what Cliffy is saying.

As for the comparison with nintendo, it's really forced isn't it? They have different markets, different objectives and VERY different game libraries; I am sure that if nintendo had a yearly CoD or several big budget series and the likes the behaviour of their consumers would change. I would contest that they see less trading because they have way less games and the average nintendo consumer has more time to save for each one while liking to have a somewhat varied game library.

Based on E3 info, Sony will be keeping the same policies as with the PS3: the publisher is allowed only to use online passes but you can still trade in games and still lend them. In addition, Sony may also be getting rid of their own online passes as they move to having PS+ be their online component (one that still has all the benefits and with actually good reasoning behind it's implementation: there are going to be more cloud based services and there is actual pressure to recover costs)

sources:
Reason for PS+ being required for online
Policy with publishers

In other words, Sony may turn their backs but given their statements and the hatred towards Microsoft now, I don't think that will happen.

I would also argue that the difference between the Japanese (Nintendo, Sony) and American (Microsoft) markets are large enough that used games becomes a deal breaker. In Japan, used games are a lot more prevalent for some reason. I think there was some study that showed that if you completely get rid of used games but reduce the price by a third, profits go up by 19% but I doubt that publishers will reduce prices so used games will be around for a while.

 

[Irridium]

If costs are so high then STOP SPENDING THAT MUCH GODDAMN MONEY!

The video game industry's total revenue last year was $14.8 billion USD [http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/06/u-s-video-game-sales-drop-9-in-2012-despite-rise-in-digital-revenue/]

Used games that year in total made about $1.59 billion [http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Digital-Game-Sales-Hit-10-Billion-2012-Used-Game-Sales-Retail-Down-54210.html]. These numbers are actually down from past years.

Used games aren't the damn problem. The game industry's runaway budgets are the damn problem.

 

[Neeko Masochist]

Isn't this the same guy that bitched and complained when Gears of War 3 didn't sell as well as Gears of War 2 when it should have because it was "Better"?

 

[Ishigami]

Snip

Where did you get this information?

From a MS employe.

Sorry but then I will dismiss this as hearsay until confirmed by a reliable source.
I'm not saying your lying, in fact it sounds plausible, but without source it is not reliable.

 

[timboo_drow]

I can't stand this guy. Everything out of his mouth is self-serving douchebaggery.

Why don't you think used games are good?

CliffyB: Because it takes money away from me.

If the costs of making games is too high, reduce costs, don't try and take away a part of the games industry that BENEFITS THE CUSTOMER.

Even though I was exclusively a 360 owner last gen, I never played a GoW game...and I definitely won't be playing anything this guy is attached to any time soon.

 

[NKRevan]

-snip-

In 1950 you would have to pay around 100$ for one of those 21' black and white TVs, now you can get a 45' LCD infinitely superior in any way for less then that. So yes, you can have better things with less money as technology advances, as new, better and cheaper ways of making those things are developed.

I agree with most of what you said and i accept that consumers want more. It is normal, but that does NOT mean developers NEED to spend more then they can afford. My problem is that your main point is mostly based on the ideea that the developer is this naive innocent little girl that has to put out because of the presures of the consumers and that is not the case. Developers are the ones that should be controling the expectations of their costumers.

Just because we expect better graphics does not mean developers need to spend obscene amounts of money to make them true. That is why i do not consider that the consumer has any blame in this situation. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things the consumers can be blamed for, but the insanely huge budgets used by developers is not one of them.

I also do not consider that the AAA needs to go away. They have their place, but they need to start making smart choices. You can not tell me that developers budget and plan correctly when a game sells well over other titles of it's time and they still consider it a flop. That is the most basic exemple of bad planing.

OK...

No, dev's are not innocent. Like I said, a lot of developers are overspending and that NEEDS to change.

But contrary to what you are saying, I do believe that there is some pressure from the outside to deliver high end graphics, animations and more. Someone earlier mentioned game Journalists focusing on graphics quite often. Reviews DO take graphics into account and if your game doesn't get a certain score, your game won't sell and then you have problems. I am, however, not saying that the consumer alone is to blame. All I tried to communicate is that there is more to this situation than the simple "it's the developers fault" that has been said here.

Yes, a lot of developers need to start planning better. But they will still need hundreds of millions to make certain games work. And that's where the debate about used games comes into play. Like I said, I do not know what would be a good solution. I hope we find one soon.