There is a strong difference between lewdness, a free usage of your body that was given to you at birth, and a company selling a product they invested millions of dollars into.

Let me give you a point of reference to work with:

Lets say you go out and create the first car that runs without ever needing gas. A major car rental company buys about a thousand of them, then opens up a huge transportation company that connects everyone to anywhere they want to go. They charge a price so low for people to commute around, that a lot of people cant see there ever being a reason to buying one of your cars for themselves. You invested millions into researching and designing your car, but are only somewhat profitable. This company used your own product to make them lots of money, while only offering you minimal sales

Truthfully, I think it would be a stupid idea to try to move to a pay-per-play system only for games. People are attached to their physical objects, so the first barrier, which is possible, is getting things to go online only. The second barrier would be for them to give up any "ownership" of the item. I do not see this barrier happening. If I like something, I want to be able to buy it. For gaming, I tend toward many of the longer games. If I found an RPG I liked from a rental, I would buy it. If I were told that I have to keep paying to play it, and couldn't play it as I wished, when I wished, I wouldn't even bother. I would represent lost revenue.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not against the idea of a timed rental, as long as I still have the option to purchase. And I don't see it as being in anyone's best interest to move to rental only. The current preorder system is good- retailers sell new copies of the game to unsuspecting buyers, unbeknownst if it is any good or not. If that new game sucks, 25,000 preorders become 23,000 single rentals and 2,000 who might be willing to pay again, but not enough people will stick around to make the game as much as those sales would have. Or, say a new game is really popular. I'll take Halo in this case. If Microsoft were to say that Halo 4 would be pay-to-play only, how would it do? I'm sure its first month or so would be great. But things would die off. Gamers would lose the ability to just decide to pick up the game and play it for a bit for fun without paying, so it would not be played. And, worse yet for Microsoft, some people would decide that paying for both the game and Live isn't worth it, and cancel both in the process, resulting in the double hit of less money from that person for the game AND Live revenue.

Perish the thought that this takes off, gamers will lose even more in the end. Companies will sit around and leech off of their couple of big games that suckers (yes, that's what I think they are) keep paying for them. They have no incentive to make a new game, since the new game won't see as much revenue as their current ones. And if it's a fan of a company, that company releasing a new game would cause a lost revenue stream from one of their other games. Again, I'll go back to Halo. So H4 was pay-play. So is H5. H5 would kill the revenue stream for 4, thus making it just not worth doing at all. Or even Nintendo. The next Smash Bros is a pay-play. Fine. Then Metroid Prime 4 is released. They stop paying for SB? for MP4. New games will spread the market too thin, to the point where it just won't be worth developing a game, and this will cause horrible stagnation.

Of course, there's the issue also of getting these systems to the consumer. I don't see stores wanting to sell a system with a horrible margin for themselves when they can't attach anything onto it for more profit. This would kill off stores like Gamestop (what you think of them is irrelevant), and many other stores that do look at margins, like Best Buy, would also not carry them. Thus, it would shrink the market from the getgo, ignoring the further shrinkage of people like myself who would be opposed to a rental-only case. Sure, you could argue that it would be done later, when the market is half a billion worldwide. But costs will be so out of control by this point that it couldn't support a market of half that size.

Which brings me to the cost issue. A lot of us here tend to buy more games than the average consumer. So what would this pay-play cost? $5/week seems like a number they would like, even if it's expensive compared to the current Netflix. This means that over 13 weeks (3 months), we would pay $65 for a game. But how many other games have come out in that quarter? For us at this site, who play a fair number of games, something else would be released that would catch our attention, and we'd start playing that instead. That is, if we've not already beaten the game. Or if we didn't switch games, more than 1 game that we'd be interested in could come out, and we might forget about one of them, resulting in no money at all for that developer for it. And I'd say that it's safe to assume that the casual player wouldn't be interested in the game after 3 months, letting the rentals lapse before this period of time passes. In either case, the company gets less money from us. But why do we lose out? In addition to potentially forgetting about a game, it means we'll be less inclined to remember why a game was good. We won't "have" said game, and with it now being buried in a list of games, will be less inclined to do so, let alone pay again to do so. And sequels? We won't hype ourselves with its prequel to remember what we liked about it, unless the leadin time is so short that one could even ask why bother, if a new one will be out so soon. And the older games that a company no longer deems worth has having up, we lose all access to. I'll take away, say, Kid Icarus 3. Not enough people are still playing it to make it worth keeping up. We all will lose, because now NOBODY can play this game again.

I'm sure that the companies don't care much for the rental stores, and I would even welcome them in starting a rental system themselves. But if that ever becomes my only option, that company gets no more of my money. The revenue from the purchase stream is just too great to throw out the window in hopes of a longer but smaller rental stream which won't be maintained. Oh, and don't get me started on having to maintain all those older games for the handful of people who would want to keep playing them.

Hollywood took movie rental places to court when videos came out. Hollywood lost. Game companies tried it as well. They lost too.

@bardicverse

I think we were talking about whether or not you can loose money you never had to begin with.

I think you can't.

You seem to think you can.

i can't remember the last time i rented a game.

@Dunno - Definitely excellent points. I wasn't implying that it could move to rent online only, just as a removal of the Blockbusters, etc from the gaming market.

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.

@liquid ninja - You are leaving out a very important factor. Developers HAD the money to begin with. They invested the money in producing the game. They (or the publisher funding them) spend millions of dollars to create a game. If they don't make back their money, they then lost money they invested. Your homeless guy didn't invest any money into exposing himself, which is why I said your argument is flawed.

It is illigal now in some countries (like Belgium). I think other countries are going to follow.

It's also illegal in Japan which is why that country has a huge maket for used games.

@bardicverse

Losing money on investing is part of investing. Losing is really spending in this case.

Do you lose money on lottery tickets?

@liquid ninja- If you invest money and don't make it back, you lost invested money, thus it is still losing. This argument is becoming pointless.