The Malgorian Blog

I suppose I can sum up my feelings on the topic pretty simply. There's no way a billion dollar company merging/swallowing another "smaller" billion dollar company will have no negative impact on the industry as a whole.

The more concessions you're willing to accept, and especially the ones you offer yourself to get the merger to happen, shows the more likelihood you're fully aware of the damage you're going to be doing to the rest of the industry (ie: your competition). And of course it's very safe to say that the ultimate payoff will always exceed in spades whatever cost you'll suffer from the limited time concessions.

Take into account just one concession Microsoft has offered. They promise, if the merger goes through, that they will make sure Call of Duty is available on the Playstation for the next 10 years (or was it for the lifetime of sony's current machine, the PS5?) What does that really amount to? A handful of games over the next 10 years. After that, once the merger has been cemented and there's no longer any way to rationally separate the two again, ALL of the negative effects of the merger can happen in full force. The promise is basically another way of saying "Heeeey, no problem. Let us have this really big thing and we won't deliberately try to bankrupt the competition for a good 5-10 years... but after that shit gonna be real."

Really, any concession that's time based should immediately be thrown out as no concession at all. It's just kicking the concerns further down the road until it's impossible to fix the damage.

In short, mergers of billion dollar companies really shouldn't be happening imo.

For those who don't know, OpenIV is a modding kit/system for Grand Theft Auto V. Very popular thing apparently. (I say apparently since I give no shits about the franchise to be honestly.)

Basically Take Two suddenly up and changed gears and C&Ded them after being pro-modding for years.

Yeah, Take Two's official stance is "oh noes, hak0rz online" and they're totally still behind single player modding.

Of course, OpenIV is essentially about single player modding. The hackers in Grand Theft Auto Online are still going to be there.

Personally I expect to see Take Two announce their own Creation Club system for Grand Theft Auto V and VI (Which is also due out relatively soon) similar to Bethesda's recently announced paid-mod program (attempt 2).

They're likely trying to kill off GTAV before VI is released so people will actually attempt to buy VI. Also probably trying to kill off the modding (regardless of what they say) to prevent people from simply backporting any new gameplay announced for VI back into V.

Regardless of their intentions[1] they've managed to royally piss off their fanbase. If you check GTA V's steam page now you'll find the reviews have become Mostly Negative almost overnight.



[1] I still expect to see them attempt a paid-mod program by Christmas if Bethesda's latest attempt doesn't tank like the first one did.

I really feel the urge to rant about the video game industry at times. Ask Kane. He hears enough about it from me on IRC. But when it comes time to actually sit down and WRITE the rant, the willpower drains from me. Does this mean I've accepted the way video games have become? That bloated, frankensteinish mutation of what I use to love?

Certainly not!

The problem, I'm thinking, is that I've just stopped caring. About the modern game industry that is, not games in and of themselves. I'll be playing my backlog of games well into retirement.

I've actually come to the conclusion that the PS3 and 360 are going to be the last consoles I buy. I'm not threatening it'll be the last. It's just stating a fact. There's too much crap going on with them that I don't agree with or believe in for me to invest a penny from my wallet or a second from my day.

The first victim of my apathy is the 3DS. The Vita will likewise be staying at the store. I don't have even a inkling to invest in a Wii U, and with the various BS I'm reading into the predictions/leaks of the future xbox and playstation... I'd rather they burn in a fire. It would be more humane than for me to bother playing them.

On another note. I do have a PS3 now. I've logged about 6 hours on it since I bought it 2-3 weeks ago. And I've already had it crash once. Lost about 45 minutes of gametime that I'll have to redo when I pick up the controller again. Maybe tomorrow.

On the other hand I've been playing Minecraft several hours a day in those last few weeks.

One of the lastest pieces of information making the rounds about the next generation xbox is that it will refused to play used games. Since digital downloads are never "used", you can only assume that this would be referring to physical disc games. I can see 2 ways they'd be able to do this. Only one would require an internet connection.

I hate both ways, and while it's no longer necessary to affect my decision about buying a "720" (since I am already passing on it regardless.) and such a thing would make me pass on it.

If developers are so pissed they're losing sales to used games that are selling for 5 dollars less than new, perhaps they should turn their focus directly onto the retailers that are manhandling the new product so that it ends up being in the exact same condition as the used product they are selling. Seriously. The shrink wrap is probably the only difference between a new and used game in Gamestop for recent releases. And I've seen "new" limited editions gutted far more horribly than the used counterparts at Gamestop.

So either buy gutted, possibly damaged game for full price...

or

Buy gutted, possibly damaged game for 5 dollars off - with an extra 10% off if you have your edge card!

In both cases you can pay the retailer an extra 3-4 bucks for "disc insurance" in case anything goes wrong...

Gee. I wonder why so many people are willing to buy used at that insane price.

Personally, if the game isn't factory sealed, it ain't new. If it ain't new, I ain't buying it for NEW prices. If it's not new, expect me to not give a fuck about it until it's at least 50% off. There are very very very few exceptions to this rule for me. And I haven't come across one of those exceptions yet.

For the record, Gamestop has lost over 1000 dollars of sales from me in the last two years based on me refusing to buy a game from them because they gutted all available copies. In each case I brought the game up to the counter and asked of they had it factory sealed. In each case, if they said "yes", it would have been bought. (I have bought many games from them for them actually having a sealed copy in hand as well, but it's been like a 70% failure rate on their part.)