5 ms·

1) Microsoft doesn't set the price of games. What would have happened would be developers setting slightly higher prices than XBOX360, citing inflation and 'inc

1) Microsoft doesn't set the price of games. What would have happened would be developers setting slightly higher prices than XBOX360, citing inflation and 'increased costs of development for more sophisticated systems' as reasons why the games are still more expensive. In other words, they'd be saying, "If it weren't digital only, it would be $89.99 instead of $59.99, so count your blessings!" Consumers are so well-trained to believe that they have no control over price; it's sad, really. 2) While you may have the luxury of a decent internet connection at a reasonable price, that is nowhere near the case for much of the USA. Gaming consoles are least common denominator products by design, so cutting off that huge segment of people for selfish reasons isn't a smart idea. 3) At 0.58 oz, a DVD weighs less than a sippy cup, so even the smallest of toddlers should have no issue carrying it. You're also missing the bigger point that, with a disc, you don't have to wait 2 hours for a game to download before you can play it.

MartinCron 13y ago
3) At 0.58 oz, a DVD weighs less than a sippy cup The Xbox One will support blu-ray discs, so your entire argument is invalid.
gfodor 13y ago
1) I don't buy that somehow gaming is a price fixing scheme. SNES games were $80 and that was 20 years ago. Market forces affect prices, and the used game market is a large market force. 2) "Re-authenticate every 24 hours" does not imply decent, always-on Internet. Most of the U.S. can re-authenticate every 24 hours. And those who are in the small minority that cannot should not prevent everyone else from the benefits of being able to digitally share their games with others. On military bases and space stations there can always be a special edition XBone that doesn't require connectivity and only plays discs with some software tweaks. Now, instead, we all lose. 3) The point about lugging it around was not the weight, it's the fact in 2013 there are use cases where a disc is the only way to do something, in this case, sharing a game. My lapto and iPad don't have disc drives and I haven't bought a game on a DVD in about 10 years.
- brigade 13y ago
  1) Well, the whole "games are cheaper as a digital download" sure isn't true while physical copies are being sold in stores, thanks to agreements to not undercut retailers' prices. Only when a game is old enough that physical copies aren't being sold anymore does become true. As true as an incomparable equality can be, that is.
- GVIrish 13y ago
  1. SNES games were more expensive because they were on cartridges and manufacturing cartridges was/is far more expensive than manufacturing CDs/DVDs 2. So while someone's connection is flaky they can't play games. Users in entire countries would regularly have problems playing games. Overseas military wouldn't be able to play at all. You can say, "Just make a military edition" but how exactly would you control who can get one? How would you prevent military people from reselling them. And perhaps the biggest problem with the online DRM is that if the DRM servers ever go down, every XboxOne on Earth would be insta-bricked. Xbox Live has gone down multiple times and PSN was down for a month, it is more than a passing possibility that the DRM servers could go down. Especially because they make an extremely attractive target for hackers. Even with all of that, nothing is stopping Microsoft from offering digital-download games for cheaper than physical games. Maybe their DRM architecture is an all or nothing deal, but that would be the fault of their lack of foresight.

MartinCron 13y ago

3) At 0.58 oz, a DVD weighs less than a sippy cup The Xbox One will support blu-ray discs, so your entire argument is invalid.

gfodor 13y ago

1) I don't buy that somehow gaming is a price fixing scheme. SNES games were $80 and that was 20 years ago. Market forces affect prices, and the used game market is a large market force. 2) "Re-authenticate every 24 hours" does not imply decent, always-on Internet. Most of the U.S. can re-authenticate every 24 hours. And those who are in the small minority that cannot should not prevent everyone else from the benefits of being able to digitally share their games with others. On military bases and space stations there can always be a special edition XBone that doesn't require connectivity and only plays discs with some software tweaks. Now, instead, we all lose. 3) The point about lugging it around was not the weight, it's the fact in 2013 there are use cases where a disc is the only way to do something, in this case, sharing a game. My lapto and iPad don't have disc drives and I haven't bought a game on a DVD in about 10 years.

brigade 13y ago
1) Well, the whole "games are cheaper as a digital download" sure isn't true while physical copies are being sold in stores, thanks to agreements to not undercut retailers' prices. Only when a game is old enough that physical copies aren't being sold anymore does become true. As true as an incomparable equality can be, that is.
GVIrish 13y ago
1. SNES games were more expensive because they were on cartridges and manufacturing cartridges was/is far more expensive than manufacturing CDs/DVDs 2. So while someone's connection is flaky they can't play games. Users in entire countries would regularly have problems playing games. Overseas military wouldn't be able to play at all. You can say, "Just make a military edition" but how exactly would you control who can get one? How would you prevent military people from reselling them. And perhaps the biggest problem with the online DRM is that if the DRM servers ever go down, every XboxOne on Earth would be insta-bricked. Xbox Live has gone down multiple times and PSN was down for a month, it is more than a passing possibility that the DRM servers could go down. Especially because they make an extremely attractive target for hackers. Even with all of that, nothing is stopping Microsoft from offering digital-download games for cheaper than physical games. Maybe their DRM architecture is an all or nothing deal, but that would be the fault of their lack of foresight.