Personally the biggest negative in the games industry as I see it is the second hand market. The only people to benefit are the retailers who can sell the same game time and time again with huge margins.
They need to model themselves more on the Video market where stores cannot resell full products. To achieve this they would need to look at the current pricing especially in light of the second hand market.
Steam has been an example of the benefits of digital distribution but this is along side traditional retail and I see that happening for some time to come.
On Live has the potential to eat into the console business long term and if it works as stated good luck to it. It is cloud computing though so as the recent Gmail outage demonstrates it could mean all your eggs in one basket plus it requires broadband the more the better the service which will also hold it back.
@welshbloke, Even though I didn't resell my games (I still have all of my GC, GBA, GBC games), I can see the benefit of trade-in towards sales of new games in US, or benefit of rental to spur people to try out games, and buy those game they rented that they really, really like and have lots of replay value.
I see that Onlive Digital Distribution only value proposition (IIRC) can have a negative impact for game industry, if most of the consumers rejected this move, while publisher are turning games into Onlive exclusive games to get better profit.
I’m very excited to say that we are now opening the OnLive Beta to outside gamers who signed up on our website. It’s not too late to sign up if you haven’t already. We are very much looking forward to hearing from gamers all about their experience with the OnLive Service.
GfK Chart-Track notes the Xbox 360 had a 43 percent sales increase over the weekend in the UK, following the price drop which sent the console's Elite version to a friendlier £199. With Sony's PS3 Slim model expected to hit the region this week, it'll be interesting to compare the percentage increase in sales for both consoles. We'd prefer actual sales numbers instead of percentages, but that's apparently not happening.
Walt Disney Company agrees to acquire iconic comic book company Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. More than 5,000 iconic comic book characters will soon be in the hands of Disney, raising serious questions about the future of Marvel video game titles from Activision, Sega, THQ, and the upcoming MMO from Gazillion Entertainment.
A hacker by the name of aHz-CREW apparently has been able to access my player account. This is separate from the administrative functions of the web site. We encrypt user passwords on our database so the password could not have been accessed that way. We are investigating the matter.
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They need to model themselves more on the Video market where stores cannot resell full products. To achieve this they would need to look at the current pricing especially in light of the second hand market.
Steam has been an example of the benefits of digital distribution but this is along side traditional retail and I see that happening for some time to come.
On Live has the potential to eat into the console business long term and if it works as stated good luck to it. It is cloud computing though so as the recent Gmail outage demonstrates it could mean all your eggs in one basket plus it requires broadband the more the better the service which will also hold it back.