Edge: DRM-free PS4 is a PR play – expect similar policies across both consoles, say sources

[osed125]

Ckmlb1 said:

osed125 said:

Maybe, but we are underestimating the power of a brand. Imagine EA goes full on with DRM on all consoles, no used games at all. When Mass Effect 4 comes out, people are going to buy it, simple as that.

It's the same as DLC and online passes, people bitch about it all the time, but they are still getting it. That isn't stopping them from buying the game.

If publishers come out with offline DRM you will hear gamers complaining about it to no end, but they will get the game anyway. Publishers know this and they will take advantage of it.

I wouldn't buy ME 4 if they did it and I owned the other 3 at some point. What about all the people switching from Xbox to PS4 because of the DRM stuff now? There's always other games to play, it's not like Mass Effect is the only game around. If they want Fifa there's PES as a replacement, if they want NBA Live there's NBA 2K and so on. EA has been losing a share of the market a while now, they stand to lose more of it if they do things that piss players off. 

Here comes the problem, sales haven't shown anything that makes companies believe that we don't want DRM. Like Nikkon said, SimCity has sold like 1.5 million units, and that game is DRM at it's finest. This is a very powerful indication that gamers really don't care about DRM...it's all "nerd rage" on the internet.

The next problem lies if this becomes an industry standard. Practically every AAA game has DLC (an even worse on-disk DLC) and more companies are doing it every day...yet gamers are still buying DLC. Let's say EA has DRM and Mass Effect 4 sells millions of units...DRM didn't stopped the game from selling, that alone will encourage other publishers to do the same. One day is EA, the other is Ubisoft, then Activision, then Bethesda, then Konami, etc. 

We need to speak with our wallets, and for the few examples we have (SimCity), we aren't doing a great job.