Tag Archives | Gaming

GameStop Accused of Selling Played Games As New

Posted by Jared Newman on April 10, 2009 at 11:49 am

gamestopsignThe world’s largest video game retailer could be in hot water thanks to some investigative work by Kotaku’s Brian Crecente and Michael McWhertor.

Speaking to unnamed GameStop employees and retailers around the US, the popular game blog has exposed a practice in which employee-played games are getting mixed up with unplayed copies kept behind the counter for security purposes. The Federal Trade Commission told Kotaku that this practice could be illegal.

According to GameStop’s written policy, as confirmed by several employees, company staff are allowed to check out store merchandise for up to four days of personal use. When receiving new games, GameStop “guts” several copies, putting the box on display and leaving the disc behind the counter so it doesn’t get stolen. Kotaku reports that these new discs tend to get mixed up with the “check-out” copies that employees take home.

In all cases, customers are told that they are buying a new copy of the game, and they pay full price as a result.

Though some managers offer “Shop Worn” discounts for games that have been gutted or checked out, this is specifically against company policy, which says these discounts should not by applied to “new, used or checked out games.”

GameStop won’t comment on the matter, and the FTC won’t say whether it is getting involved.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem purchasing new games from GameStop (it’s their used game trade-in prices that set me off), but a glance through Kotaku’s comments section turns up several customers who swear they’ve bought new games that don’t look untouched.

The graceful solution for GameStop would be to start selling any unsealed games as used, even if they’re at a lesser markdown than typical used prices. After all, the customer can’t return a game as new once the plastic comes off, even if the disc never leaves the case. If GameStop can’t assure that an unsealed game is unused, the company should treat itself the same way.

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Thanks Amazon, For Doing What the Xbox 360 Doesn't

Posted by Jared Newman on April 9, 2009 at 10:38 am

amazonlogoAmazon has been dipping its toes in a few new video game ventures lately. The latest from the online retailer, in addition to trading used games and offering downloadable computer games, is the sale of Xbox Live Arcade downloads.

The new service allows customers to purchase a download code for games like Braid and Marble Blast Ultra, which is then redeemed on the Xbox 360 console. Visitors can also purchase games as gifts and send the codes to their friends.

Cool stuff, but why buy this way instead of on the console itself? Simple: Microsoft has a silly download policy that doesn’t let you pay exact change. Packages start at 500 “Microsoft Points,” equal to $6.25, and since most games come in $5 or $10 increments, buying a game through the Xbox 360 sticks you with unused points. This is supposed to encourage future downloads, I imagine, but it strikes me as underhanded. What other retailer requires you to pay extra for a product in exchange for store credit?

All online game stores do this, but to a lesser extent. The Wii Shop Channel requires purchases in $10 increments, but some games actually cost that amount (more often than not, you’re stuck with extra, though). The Playstation Network lets you pay exact change, but only for purchases greater than $5. Sony’s plan is the most justifiable, in the same way that some store owners require minimum credit card purchases to cover the transaction fee.

Kotaku has a rumor that Amazon will duplicate the service for the Wii and Playstation 3, but the retailer won’t comment. Customers should be able to pay the exact amount for their downloadable games, but it’s too bad they’ll have to jump through Amazon’s hoops to do so.

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Will Wright Leaving — But Still Working With — EA

Posted by Jared Newman on April 8, 2009 at 2:44 pm

willwrightFans of Will Wright probably know about his bizarre hobbies. At times, he’s built Battlebots, collected Soviet space program relics and enjoyed a bit of illegal street racing. Those pursuits are probably easier when you’re a legendary game designer, the creative force behind Sim City, The Sims and Spore.

Effective today, Wright is taking his mind off computer games, at least partially, to pursue other creative endeavors. He’s leaving megapublisher Electronic Arts to run the Stupid Fun Club, which he founded in 2001 as a way to build competitive robots and experiment with other non-gaming ideas.

“The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,” Wright said in a press release. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms. In my twelve years at EA, I’ve had the pleasure to work alongside some of the brightest and most talented game developers in the industry and I look forward to working with them again in the near future.”

While it’s certainly big news, the headline has more gravity than the story itself. Wright’s comments imply that he’s not totally leaving game design. Furthermore, MTV Multiplayer reports that EA has an equal stake with Wright in Stupid Fun Club — a third investor has a smaller share — plus first rights on any games that emerge from the venture.

If Wright is taking some sort of hiatus from game design, I’ll miss his creative influence on the medium. At the same time, I’m excited to see what happens when he tries to entertain the masses with his other hobbies.

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Iraq War Video Game: Appropriate?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 7, 2009 at 12:33 pm

fallujahQuick, think of a knee-jerk reaction: A game based on the war in Iraq, insightful culture or crass cash-in?

Okay, now let’s think about it a little bit.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Konami is preparing a video game based on the Iraq conflict, called Six Days in Fallujah, but it wasn’t the publisher’s idea. The concept comes from a group of U.S. Marines who survived the Second Battle of Fallujah, which occurred in 2004 and left 38 troopers and an estimated 1,200 insurgents dead. Raleigh, N.C.-based Atomic Games, a company with experience designing combat software for the military, will design the game.

The marines want their story to be told through video games, and that goes a long way towards legitimizing the game in my book. One marine named Mike Ergo tells the Times that video games “communicate the intensity and gravity of war” to people — young ones, likely — who aren’t learning about it on TV or in the classroom, and aren’t as tuned in to books. (Ergo says we live in an age where the imagination isn’t what it was.) Video games it is, then.

But does that mean games are the best medium for Six Days in Fallujah? Put aside the idea that video games are more of an entertainment platform than film and books, because that’s debatable; even watching Saving Private Ryan is entertainment on some level, an escape into another world. I’d also like to ignore the knee-jerk detractors, such as the veterans calling for a ban on the game because that’s just ridiculous.

The real issue that Atomic Games will face deals with the very nature of what games are. Like binary code, video games do not play well with gray area, and that’s where so much of real drama lies. Bioshock, hailed as a pillar of artistic game design, places its moral stock in a simple decision with clear-cut ramifications — kill the Little Sisters and steal their powers, or save them for a delayed reward. Mass Effect transforms your character into a Paragon or Renegade based on your actions, but there are no facets to the character’s personality. For game designers, moving beyond “good and bad” hasn’t been easy.

So Atomic Games has the unenviable challenge of portraying the gray areas of war. I hope they pull it off, but I won’t rush to judgment.

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Silly Sony, PSPs Are for Kids!

Posted by Jared Newman on April 6, 2009 at 12:52 pm

pspslimThough I try to abstain from fanboyism, I’m addicted to the console wars. And I’m not talking about insults flung around by loyal customers; only official company statements from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony will do. The more ridiculous, the better.

Spin factor is always high, but the latest remarks on the Nintendo DSi by SCEA director of hardware marketing John Koller are even more satisfying, because they’re false.

Here’s his statement, in part:

“If Nintendo is really committed to reaching a broader, more diverse audience of gamers beyond the “kids” market that they’ve always engaged, there isn’t much new with the DSi to support that. Significant gamer demographic groups are being ignored … Compare that with the PSP platform, where we have many blockbuster franchises from our publishing partners launching this year, representing a wide variety of genres and targeting diverse demographics.”

I want to focus on the idea that the DS is for “kids,” while the PSP is apparently for everyone. Let’s put aside anecdotal evidence, such as the recent release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS, because then you’ve got to subjectively compare entire game libraries.

Instead, let’s look at what Sony’s Koller said to Edge magazine last September as he explained why the PSP was losing support from third-party publishers. Koller himself said the PSP’s demographics had shifted younger since launch, and publishers weren’t grasping that fact because they kept putting out mature games that sold poorly. To wit:

“When we launched the PSP it launched at a 28-year old, heavily male, New York subway [demographic], and that slowly trended down. Now we’re in the mid-teens with a lot of tracking even younger than that. Our research shows that in the next 12 months young moms actually are set to have the highest propensity to purchase the hardware and software for their young children.”

Isn’t this the “kids” demographic Koller was alluding to this weekend, or was he trying to say that Nintendo DS owners are primarily young goats?

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Happy 20th Birthday, Game Boy!

Posted by Jared Newman on April 3, 2009 at 1:02 pm

gameboyThis month marks 20 years since the Game Boy’s release in Japan. Though the handheld’s actual birthday is April 21, and the US release followed in August, now seems as good a time for reflection as any.

After all, the US launch of Nintendo’s DSi handheld on Sunday will mark the true demise of the Game Boy moniker; by eliminating “Slot B” from the new device, Game Boy Advance games will no longer be playable. How’s that for an arbitrary factoid?

Anyway, the Game Boy family — if you include the Pocket, Light and Color editions — is currently the second-best-selling video game device of all time, trailing only the Playstation 2. Further, 1UP’s Jeremy Parish points out that the Game Boy brand was Nintendo’s “backbone” during trying times; the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube may have failed commercially, but handhelds always kept the company afloat.

Parish writes that the Game Boy subscribed to Nintendo’s “good enough” policy. Better technologies were available back in 1989, but somehow the handheld with the pea green screen took off, even as more technically impressive competitors, such as Sega’s Game Gear and Atari’s Lynx, languished. When Nintendo strays from that policy, Parish argues, the company fails.

I think that idea is not as true as it used to be. For the Game Boy family, slight modifications through the years — a slimmer figure, a little color, a boost in graphics — were good enough to keep the handheld in demand. Meanwhile, the Virtual Boy tanked, and experiments with connecting to Nintendo’s bigger consoles never took off.

By comparison, Nintendo’s current success is due to a change in philosophy, Now, we’re looking at “different enough,” with two products that were initially questioned for breaking the mold. Dual Screens? Motion Control? The industry doubted those ideas until they started steamrolling the competition. The focus is now on calculated risk, which I guess you could say is “good enough” for Nintendo.

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Skepticism Catches Up to Cloud Gaming

Posted by Jared Newman on April 2, 2009 at 3:34 pm

cloudgamingWhen OnLive revealed its plans last week for a streaming computer game service, it was hard to pick out the criticism with all the buzz in the air. Admittedly, I didn’t bother to question the service’s technical feasibility (I’m still fixated on whether OnLive can really compete on pricing), but now that the dust has settled, there’s plenty of skepticism to go around.

If you missed it, OnLive is supposed to stream high-end PC games to practically any computer with an Internet connection. It does this by handling all the processing on its own servers, and then sending packets of compressed data to the player. A day after OnLive’s unveiling, former Acclaim creative director Dave Perry announced a similar service, called Gaikai.

Shortly after OnLive’s big reveal, an article in Eurogamer challenged the service on processing power and compression abilities. At one point, the article claims OnLive would have to run games at 1,000 frames per second to achieve its claims of 1 ms latency. A video encoding specialist literally laughed out loud when Eurogamer described OnLive’s plans. Still, OnLive is supposedly using new technology, so I’m a little wary of Eurogamer’s argument myself. OnLive founder Steve Perlman told the BBC that Eurogamer wrote “a very ignorant article” that improperly conflates framerate and latency.

Now, a new nugget of doubt has arrived. Crytek, the company behind PC gaming’s gold standard, Crysis, said its own research found that cloud gaming won’t be feasible until 2013. OnLive is scheduled to launch later this year. “They have to provide fast bandwidths and connectivity in order to allow such technology to excel,” CEO Cevat Yerli told GamesIndustry.biz. “So as it was dependent on somebody else, we decided to wait.”

On a related note, Business Insider’s Eric Kangel wonders whether cloud gaming will die if Internet service providers adopt bandwidth caps. Certainly, the dollar per gigabyte model that Time Warner Cable is testing in some cities could make the cost of OnLive and Gaikai spiral out of control.

All of this reinforces what skeptics have been saying all along: Successful tech demos and a bundle of licensing agreements with publishers only go so far. Eventually, cloud gaming will simply have to prove itself in the field.

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Nintendo of America Prez Says No to Microtransactions

Posted by Jared Newman on April 1, 2009 at 5:28 pm

nintendo_ds_liteWe recently gave Sony the what-for over its views on the iPhone (not a PSP competitor, a marketing exec said), and thanks to Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, it’s Nintendo’s turn to squirm under similar questioning.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also shows no worries. In short, he says Nintendo’s network of 18,000 DS developers can make better products than the “home-brewed” offerings at the App Store (Um, but what about all the pro developers praising the iPhone?). As with Sony’s argument that it makes hardcore games for serious gamers, I don’t think brushing off the competition is the best strategy, but I’ve already said my piece about that.

Instead, here’s something new: Asked about the iPhone’s recent support for microtransactions — the little extra gaming items you can buy on top of an initial purchase — Fils-Aime said Nintendo is against them. The quote, in part:

“Having talked to a lot of consumers in our market, the consumer wants to pay just once for their overall experience. I’ve heard complaints when consumers buy maps or extra levels. From a Nintendo perspective, we believe selling a game that is fair to the consumer and charging them once instead of multiple times is the best business model.”

As one of the developers in the PocketGamer story cited above says, the pressure is on to keep iPhone games cheap, so naturally there will be lots of in-game content for sale as devleopers try to bring in more revenue. The DS and PSP aren’t shackled by those initially low price points, and with Nintendo’s apparent commitment not to nickle-and-dime the consumer, I’m curious to see which business model will prove more successful.

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The Big Sony News Tomorrow? It Ain't a PS3 Price Cut

Posted by Jared Newman on March 30, 2009 at 3:17 pm

playstation3The boy takes the longtime girlfriend out to a fancy dinner and says he’s got a surprise for her. Excitement builds. She’s waiting for the engagement ring. Instead, he pulls out season tickets to the Yankees. This is a scenario I’ve surely seen in a movie, TV show or commercial, but wouldn’t you know, I can’t recall a specific example.

Anyway, I’m reminded of this as the gaming world eagerly awaits Sony’s “global announcement,” reportedly set for tomorrow. Kotaku writes it this way: “Sony dropped Kotaku a line to let us know that something is going down on Tuesday, March 31st. Could it be the long-rumored price cut is finally upon us?”

The excitement, so palpable in those anticipatory words, had to be crushed later in the day. No, Sony tells Joystiq, a Playstation 3 price drop is not in the works. We’ve heard Sony deny the PS3 pricing rumors before, but there’s such finality in the way spokesman Al De Leon delivered the news this time. “SCEA remains focused on the long-term momentum of PS3,” he said. “With the industry’s best software lineup this year, combined with our most aggressive marketing campaign to date, we remain confident in our approach and the value we’re delivering with PS3.”

What’s the big surprise for tomorrow, then? Probably a price cut for the Playstation 2, from $129.99 to $99.99. Joystiq and Kotaku are both calling this one with help from a well-placed KMart source who has access to the store’s price database. Whoopie.

Business Insider also throws out a couple other possibilities, such as a streaming video service for the PS3 (Netflix or otherwise) and a successor to the Playstation Portable. Maybe a big game reveal is in the pipe as well. Whatever. It’s hard to get enthusiastic with all these price cut rumors floating around.

That’s why I’m done. No more writing about PS3 pricing on the word of analysts, retailers, game publishers or other blogs. The thrill is gone; my heart’s just not in it anymore.

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Sims 3 Goes Back to DRM Basics

Posted by Jared Newman on March 27, 2009 at 4:21 pm

thesims3Electronic Arts, architects of possibly the biggest Digital Rights Management disaster in PC gaming, are abandoning their wicked ways and going back to a less intrusive copy protection process.

The Sims 3 will use a simple, disc-based authentication system, similar to the one used in The Sims 2. Players won’t have to go online to validate their copy of the game, so presumably there won’t be any control over the number of installs.

A letter from Rod Humble, Executive VP of EA’s Sims Label, says the company has heard the requests from customers. “We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future,” he said.

Humble doesn’t make specific mention of Spore’s DRM, but anyone who followed that fiasco could perceive a reference. The game originally came with three installs and no easy way to deauthorize computers, but EA eventually caved to the outcry and added two more installs and a deauthorization process. Meanwhile, angry players launched an Amazon bomb, and software pirates helped make Spore the most illegally downloaded game in history.

Obviously, this demonstrated that even the most DRM-shackled games can and will be pirated, and as publishers go to greater lengths to stop it, customers will only get more irate. That’s a sad reality, but at least EA is no longer taking it out on legitimate copy owners.

One more thing: The move by EA is part of what seems like a wave of anti-DRM sentiment among publishers. Earlier this week, Microsoft and Steam introduced less burdensome authentication processes, and yesterday Ubisoft released a batch of old games to the Web site Good Old Games without any DRM at all. Perhaps the days of punishing the consumer for pirates’ transgressions are slowly coming to an end.

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