Great Job on the new look...I've not gotten a chance to really tool around with all the changes, but I'll post anything that really stands out.

@bardicverse

You're right investing money and not getting it back is losing money. But I thought you meant people taking money from them.

Nope, I was saying that less sales of games = less money returning to the developer/publisher. People who rent without eventually buying the game = less sales. So using the logic if A=B and B=C, then A=C, we can say that People who rent without eventually buying the game =less money returning to the developer/publisher. In other words, game rentals affect developer/publisher profits

That true but don't mistake them losing money for it being any fault on our part.

They are just investing the money badly. Investing is a hard unpredictable business so I don't think they are stupid or anything.

It's ironic how stores like gamestop are driving game developers in the way of digital distribution.

the whole pirate / rental thing is overrated, it doesnt hurt sales anywhere near where it is claimed to be.
i know it, im from the future

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...

Dunno - You're becoming one of my favorite people to discuss things with quite quickly. =)

Trust me, I'm on your side with your points. In essence, Im playing devil's advocate to try and understand how systems like OnLive could work, and if they will have any bearing on the overall market.

My personal view is simple direct distribution, like how XBLA, PSN and WiiWare work - trash the need for an optical drive, make everything downloadable. Install kiosks at all game retailers where people can bring their system or just the hard drive(make an easy access HD like laptops have) and can purchase and locally dload any game they want (if they have a poor internet connection at home especially). This removes the need for shelf space, allows the store to carry every game produced for the systems, removes the need for manufacturing and distribution costs from the publisher, which can be passed down in savings to the customer. Less money spent manufacturing the game, possibly lower game prices. That's how I would see the future of console gaming sales. As for dead HDs, etc, just have adigital database like itunes or whatnot, that knows what you've purchased, so you cqan re-download them should there be an issue with the game data or the actual HD

I'd like to get your thoughts on that, as seeing as you're pretty solid at breaking things down to the core. Maybe I missed something significant here.

It's NOT illegal in Belgium.

What is illegal is buying retail copies of games and renting them out.  As I mentioned in my first post in this thread (which it's apparent no one has read), game rental boutiques in various countries need to buy special rental copies usually directly from publishers at a higher rate.  This higher fee is how stakeholders make a profit from rental businesses.

Edit:  It is also NOT illegal in Japan.

Illegality aside the debate about rentals and used sales always sidesteps one particular issue. The reality is without an official venue the gaming enthusiasts had already established their own forms of networking to accomplish these same goals. Which could not be regulated, and generated no profit for the companies at all.

I think we often forget given the ease of rentals and reselling that before either we had another option. That option was the communal circle. For those too young to be fluent in how this works. Before renting was common, or before stores that sold used games was common. Gamers just formed their own networks, to lend, trade, or buy games. Sometimes we went so far as to agree as to who was going to buy which game.

Hell I would lend out a game to get it back a couple months later after half a dozen other people had lent it down the line. I could lend from people I did not even directly know, and it was not uncommon for me to have half a dozen lent games out while I had half a dozen borrowed games in my hands. Anyone who broke a game simply provided a substitute of equal value. Surprisingly it all worked perfectly well, because nobody wanted to get ragged for not giving a game back. Which basically meant nobody else would lend them any games.

So what I am pointing at is that even if renting and resales were made illegal. The gamer has proven in the past with a little community spirit they can easily bypass any such laws. Say they cannot rent then they just say they are lending. Say they cannot sell, and they will say they are just trading. Give them incentive to function as a group, and they will function as a group. Then you get what happened in my neighborhood growing up. Everyone started to plan their purchases so as not to purchase what the other guy was getting.

By the way the least traded games were Zelda and Super Mario Bros. The most traded games were Spy Hunter, and 1942. It was a very good day when someone offered to straight up trade a Zelda for any other game straight up. Everyone who didn't have Zelda wanted to borrow it. Then for those that wanted to trade you Spy Hunter you always said you better be giving me a two for, because that ain't getting you shit. Before it was all said and done. I had three or four copies of that game. Spy Hunter always had to be traded with something else.