Damnyouall said:
This has little to do with a spec list. PSP Go features exclusive digital distribution (which is optional for previous PSPs). By buying a PSP Go, you relinquish choice. The choice where to buy a game, and at what price. You will never be able to buy a 2-year old game at Best Buy for 5 bucks. Every time you purchase a game, you lose 100% of your investment, because you can't resell it. So you give total control to Sony and do away with competition, which in turn leads to higher prices.
On the other hand, if the example PSP Go sets catches on and other companies follow suit, then this will kill jobs. For digital distribution, we don't need people to write manuals and design boxes, to work in factories to produce games. We don't need truck drivers to bring them to the stores. We don't need people to sell them in stores. All of those people previously involved in manufacturing, distributing and selling games will no longer be needed.
So by saying "yes" to PSP Go, you say "yes" to killing jobs (in your own country too), and "yes" to less value for money and "yes" to higher prices. |
"Yes" to forcing the middleman to get a real job, where he/she has to produce something to earn a living, because selling a convenience which is rapidly ceasing to exist (physical media, in lieu of digital) is no longer an option. Uh ohs.
Do you realize how large the middleman cut is, that there is *always* a retail cut, considering the bigger picture with used games, and that income could, instead, be used to slash prices on games directly from the publisher?
You're arguing for a model which promotes the user's money bleeding away to so many pockets, that the games industry must either grind to a standstill (development costs becoming as ludicrously high as they are), or... eliminate the middleman, since the middleman is unwilling to accept a deal where they "share" profits with used titles, with the original publisher -- out of greed, pure and simple.
Yep, it'll cost jobs.. in the short term. And those people, instead, have the opportunity to move on to actually creating games, since that job market will expand, at the cost of the middleman job market collapsing in that sector. The only people losing out are the owners/high-stakes holders in the used retail sector. Everyone else would eventually benefit to a large degree.
Extend your argument in the opposite direction, and ADD more middlemen to the picture. Which extreme is more attractive to you, as a gamer? Which one actually makes sense, in the end-all? The extremes *do* represent the endpoints of a linear space of benefits to the end-user, whether you like to believe it, or not.
The less middlemen, the better -- in every industry, everywhere. Once a middleman commodity is outdated, and dries up thanks to better/cheaper means (in this case, physical media, in lieu of digital), intentionally keeping it around only harms those who have to continue to deal with it, and only benefits the "owners" of the original, now-outdated middleman commodity -- in other words, the stockholders of the used game retailers. Everyone else suffers.
Buy a PSP Go, support the people, and the artists making games for the people. Whine about it, support the rich middleman. It really does boil down to just that, in the end. You *think* you're getting a deal on used games at user retailers. You have *no* idea of the deals you could be getting without their existance, because they (the retailers) keep you blindfolded.
Do you really believe that having loads more people-to-pay in the equation makes things cheaper, on the back end? The "monopoly" you're pretending exists... doesn't. As long as Sony/MS/Nintendo/etc. compete, and there are 3rd party publishers, no monopoly can.
