Why is renting games legal?

[dunno001]

bardicverse said:
Another thought that popped in my head while reading your reply, what if the companies themselves made their gaming database a cloud based network. Basically you log in to their server, and have access to play all the games available for that console. All you pay for is a monthly subscription and can play whatever you want as long as you want as often as you want. This still leaves the need for a console interface, but basically a box with video, user input devices and network/internet connectivity. This is more directly what OnLive suggests it will do.

That's even scarier, now that I think about it. The point of stores still carrying the systems will remain, so I won't repeat that.

Cost with this method, though, becomes even weirder. I refuse to pay, say, $300 for a system, then be told that I have to keep paying to even use the object. It's a case of double-dipping. I'm willing to pay a monthly access fee, but that system better be damn cheap, or free. (I have the same issue with MMOs.) To take numbers (since I love them), say it's $25/month to access the games. (Roughly equal to a new game every 2 months.) If you want to make a system $300, I'm going to expect it to come with at least 1 year of gaming. For those of us who buy a lot of games, this isn't a bad deal... at first. This would require a system to have a good game come out EVERY 2 months, even as the system reaches the age of the current PS2. Sure, we got to play more games than we probably could have afforded to, but the time of the current PS2 is when things start to get scary.

So... say the system is supprted for 15 years total. There's lots of great games on it, and you're still playing many of them, and have been playing since the system launched. But there aren't too many people left that pay for it, so it gets discontinued, and the server for the system is taken offline. You now have a brick to show for that $4500 you've paid over the past 15 years. In the end, you have nothing. Scarier still, this entire system is now lost. No games remain at all from the system. I don't care what your favorite system is, just snap your fingers and take every game ever made for it out of existance. No longer are we losing game by game from the prior assumptions I've made, now, we lose games by the generation.

And the casual player, well... odds are pretty good that given a year, they'll have played most of the games they're interested in. They'll let their subscription lapse, and forget about. The box will end up in either a closet, or, worse yet, the landfill. They're not going to be following the news for some game coming out next year. They've seen what's on it, they've played it, they're done. Effectively meaning, they've purchased a system with 0 games.

This brings me to the company side. Say, after 3 years, 20 million people have your system and are active payers, and 200 games exist for it. This results in $500 million in revenue per month. So that's $2.5 million per game for the month... sounds good, right? Ask people on this site if they think that Killzone 2 is worth the same amount as WiiSports. The way they lean is irrelevant, but I'm willing to bet the prevelant answer is no. Game companies would see it the same way. Why spend all this money making a good game, when I can throw out 3-4 cheap games, and make 3-4 times the money? Game quality would collapse, causing the same exact conditions as existed in 1982-3: ripe for the market to crash.

I know! Make it based on the number of people who've played it! It's better, but still not good. The average person by this time has 5 games, so I'll simplify and say they've played 5 games. (100M gameplays) Using the 90% of stuff is crap rule, 20 of those 200 games see a high attach rate. I'll say 15% of owners to play each of those 20 games. So 3 million people play game X, or 3% of the gameplays. So I get 3% of the $500 million, which is $15 million. However, if I had sold those 3 million copies, I'd see $150 million in revenue. (I'm aware of the retail overhead, but it would be folly to assume no overhead costs in the rental method would exist. I am cancelling each of them out by calling new games $50 instead of $60.) All these people must play my game for 10 months for me to see the same amount of money. But it's safe to say most won't. Oh, and they're also be more games to split the money across, too. There might be more players to offset this, but we don't know. New purchasers would replace those who lapse.

What about those games who aren't in that top 10%? 20 games have just walked away with a total of $300 million. This leaves $200 million to split across 180 games. At this point, assigning further sales is tricky, so I'll simplify and call them all even, giving about $1.11 million for each game. Setting this to the $50 game, this is equivilant to ~22000 sales. A fair showing, sure, but if it cost $250K to make, they better like your game even more than those blockbusters, as it'll take a little over 11 months to break even.

So how can this be made to work, if it can? Well, yes, I think it can, but it requires saving the "purchase" model. You can purchase a game for, say, an extra $25. This way, when your subscription lapses, you can keep the game and play it. Already, the lost generation is being prevented. And, if we buy one game, that means we've spent $50 that month- we have a game to show for it, and it was cheaper than the current HD games! But... wouldn't this mean that developers will make less, since they're effectively selling games for less? Not necessarily. While someone has "purchased" the game, it can still be counted in the gameplays for each month, assuming that person does choose to keep their subscription active. The consumer sees no further cost, but part of their monthly fee goes to the company that made the game, helping to subsidize the lower selling cost. And, if someone does want to buy a game, they do have to have an active membership, ensuring that even if they jump in for 1 month, they still don't get a steal of a price, most of the money goes to that company, who could then see more later if they decide to sign in a few months later for another new game. And then, in 15 years, those who still chose to spend $4500 still have nothing to show, but if you spent $5000 instead, you have a system with 20 games. It still costs a lot more than buying the system with 20 games in the current structure, but think of all the games you tried playing and decided not to buy. That assumes, of course, that you keep the subscription active for 15 years, which is doubtful...