^^^Apparently, I'm mis-understanding something. Still, why would I buy DLC at a store if I have to download it when I get home? Why not just cut out the middle man? It's cheaper and convenient. All of the major consoles have an online store.

-anyway, to kill used game sales, package each game with a code that makes online play available for new games, only. Tie it to the gamertag/psn ID. After a game has been on the market for 10-12 months, lift the new game restriction. Everybody wins.

Digital distribution will kick the shit out of gamestop and they know it :)

They might as well include a DLC code for the final boss (so you can beat the game) while they are at it. If you think that idea is outrageous, remember that Epic brought up this idea! These plans aren't going to work. They are just going infuriate a lot of gamers and they are going to leave. If they pull this shit with console gaming, I'm gonna say sayanora to console gaming and find another hobby (I always wanted to try amateur game design. That would be the opportunity to do it). I don't want to pay $60 for every game that interests me just so I could get a DLC code for the final boss fight or whatever. That is a joke.

Sure peer pressure may influence some gamers to buy a game brand new for the online play DLC code. But peer pressure doesn't always work. If anything, if you spend "too much" money on gaming, you'll often invoke jealousy from your more casual gaming friends who will tell you, "what are you rich to spend that much on gaming?" If I bought all these games for $60 and tried to influence my acquaintances to do so too to play online, they'd think you are "rich" and talk shit about you behind your back (this is why I don't consider them friends. lol). The gaming industry doesn't understand the psychology of the casual gamer. A gamer who spends a lot of games is seen as someone with "no life".

Yeah sure among hardcore gamers, you are the outcast if you are too cheap to pay $60 for a brand new game to play with them online. But when it comes to the vast majority of 360 and PS3 owners (let alone Wii owners!), hells no. You are seen as a loser if you spend too much money and/or time on videogames.

Game publishers just don't understand the business. This is why the gaming publisher are losing so much money. They think we are all these hardcore gamers and so they cater to hardcore gamers only. They don't understand that there is a stigma involved to investing so much into video games.

They need to change their business models if they want to make money. What should the business model be if they want to make money? Make A LOT LESS videogames. Right now publishers who are losing money like EA, they have a handful of profitable games and a shitload of games that lose them money. EA needs to cut way back on those games that are losing them money. Oversaturation is killing the game industry just like it did in 1983/1984. Not GameStop.

What's so bad about it?  You can get the complete single play campaign if you buy it used.  If you take the game online, you enter a password that comes with the game or you register (and since you're playing online, you have the internet) the game and there ya go.  The developers get the new game sale so that they can make moner for their hard work.  The cheap guy who buys used gets a complete game for the used price.  After a few months (or when the game is out of production), the online restriction gets lifted.  Hooray!

And nobody is entitled to video games.  The developer makes them to sell at a particular price.  Buying them used saves the consumer money, but the developer loses out on the sale unless it's a new sale.  Why should Gamestop make so much money re-selling a used game and the devs get nothing? 

And don't worry about how other people see you.  Life is too short.

Oh Boo Hoo.

"Our business practice which makes pirates look like angels is getting hurt, instead of hurting us developers should be hurting the consumers to make up what they lose because of us."

I wish people would stop shopping at GameStop and they just roll over and go down.

OT: I get DLC pushed into my face by all the new things liek the Cerberus Network, or the EA thing they have, or GFWL plenty enough. Dunno what they want with that.

This idea isn't going to work. Like I've said, it would work for hardcore gamers. But not the vast majority of gamers for the reasons I explained. The peer pressure card doesn't work with the vast majority (unless it's Call of Duty or something like that). In fact peer pressure has a reverse effect with average gamers. Hardcore gamers are just a small segment of the game buying public. This plan isn't going to make the game industry anymore money. When the average gamer sees that some moderately-popular game requires a DLC code for online play, they're just not gonna bother buying the game and then when online play is avaialble for everyone a few months down the road when sales died down, they've already forgot about the game and moved on to something else.

These game publishers, they don't understand their audience. If they did, do you think they'd be losing so much money? Their business model is broken. Like I've said, oversaturation is killing them, not GameStop. How the hell are you supposed to get average gamers to care about Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Prototype when they only buy a few games a year for their console?

What pisses me off the most is that instead of punishing Gamestop, it's like Gamestop is getting rewarded.  Gamestop has DLC like weapons and armor for Mass Effect 2 or characters like Stone Cold Steve Austin in Smackdown vs Raw 2011 (which sometimes is not even advertised) that no other store has.  It's like making the guy who abuses your child a pie.  I just don't get it.

What is always interesting is the correlation between lack of used titles and huge game sales.

For example, how often do you see a copy of Mario Kart Wii, Halo 3, or Modern Warfare 2 at game stop?

Gamestop is just as much at fault as developers are for creating bad games that get resold quickly.

Trust me, neither do I. I can honestly claim that any developer who has dealt with such a thing with GameStop has absolutely zero right to complain about piracy. Zero.

-It probably won't work because it's all in my head, too.  Nobody has actually tried this.  It's just an idea.  But with used game sales, pirating, and services like Gamefly gutting the sales of games and cutting into profits, something is going to have to be done.  Games cost more and more to create and developers need to profit.  There's a reason why so many studios are closing nowadays.  I've been gaming for a long time.  I don't want to see my beloved hobby go downhill.

*edit*  looking at my gaming collection, I own a TON of used games.  I buy new most of the time but I do support used games.  I guess I'm part of the problem.  I'm a hypocrite.  I admit it.