As I mentioned last time, a serious, as I see it,  problem is developing with the video game software developers/manufacturers.  They don’t feel that you should ever own your video games.  I guess that raises the question of,  “what do I mean by own?”  Specifically, I mean that you can re-sell it.  Currently, you can re-sell/trade your used console video games legally and fairly.  If some of the big boys have their way, though, that will soon stop.

The current mindset of many of the executives at a few of the major players in the industry is that all video game sales should be NEW sales (i.e., all of the profits go to them) not used sales (i.e., they get nothing).  Obviously, this is in pursuit of more profits for themselves.  Now, being a good greedy capitalist pig-dog, I really have no problem with this … in theory.  However, the way that it is being carried out is troubling.

Most of us, I am sure, are familiar with the PSP Go.  It is a brilliant piece of electronics.  The graphics are stellar; the synergy with the PS3 is awesome; it’s slim, lightweight, plays movies, etc.  However, unlike previous PSPs, it does not use UMDs.  Now, it can be marketed (and it has) as freedom from discs (which get scratched and lost), but the flip side is slavery to those, then, who control the source of information.  If you suffer memory card corruption, or much more easily since the memory cards are even smaller than the UMDs, if a memory card gets lost, you have to go buy it again, NEW, for full price.  And then, with no disc, you cannot trade the game when you are done with it or re-sell it.  So, depending on how good you are at keeping track of your stuff, when you are finished with the game you have ponied up $40? $80? and you do NOT have the option of getting any money back out of the game.  I’ll pass on the PSP Go, thanks.

Now, for those of you who think that passing on the PSP Go solves the trouble, think again.  Sony is also beginning to encode their games so that once a PSP game is activated on a PSP unit, it is only fully functional on that particular unit until you pay for a download from them.  EA is also looking at this.  You remember EA, they’re the guys who put out the NFL game every year.  They are also the guys who, when they saw someone else put out a game that was just as good for less than half the price of their game, decided that they didn’t want to cut costs and serve the consumer, they bought the right to the use of the NFL title for football so that no one could compete with them, and continued on their way.

Ultimately, the game manufacturers would like to see console games go this way, too, so that you never get a copy of the game, but instead get the “convenience” of just taking your lower powered home console and log into their server to play.  And, of course, there will never be any troubles with your account getting hacked, or getting banned unfairly.  And, of course, since the producers don’t have to shell out such huge sums of money to actually press the games, prices for games will drop faster and lower than my bank account balance.  And if any of you reading this believe that, I have some autographed photos of the Easter Bunny and Santa that I am selling for $10,000 a pop, guaranteed to go up in value!

Again, I’m a good money-grubbing dollar-worshiping (fill in the euphemism of your choice).  I’m all for higher profits.  But, even should the big boys get their wish and kill THEIR used game market, that does not mean higher profits.  If the used game market did not exist, the video game industry would not be what it is today.  The used market put the cost of video gaming into the realm of the possible for many people who would otherwise have stayed out of it (myself included).  That is when it truly boomed.  If Sony et. al. succeed in their quest, then (worst case) the industry will contract, profits will fall, and many of us will learn that we can get along quite nicely without video games (YIKES!) … or, (best case) someone else will see an opportunity and step in to fill the hole and the current crop of video game producers will get the ATARI treatment.

Take from this what you will (you were going to anyway), but I plan on expressing my view to Sony and friends with my dollars, or lack thereof, that I spend on their merchandise, and where I get it from.

Tags: Buying, console, EA, editorials, PSP, sony, Used Games