Further attacks on used games :P

[owsf2000]

Here's some more assaults on the used game market. And basically another step down that slippery slope we've been watching with more and more important things being given as DLC.

Essentially, online play is now considered an add-on for the game. It comes with free vouchers with a new retail game but otherwise you have to pony up 20 bucks if you bought it used and thus don't have the voucher that game with the game.

I can't wait until until end bosses come as DLC, but I guess we'll have to wait until "bonus extra bosses guarding rare powerful items" are added as DLC first.

I'd want to blame Game Stop for causing the Game Industry to lust after the used game sales, but the blame lies entirely with the game industry being dicks and GAMERS ACTUALLY THINKING 5 DOLLARS OFF RETAIL MAKES AN AWESOME FUCKING DEAL. We know Game Stop is being a bunch of dicks with their pricing, we have the power to make them stop by not buying it.

Additionally, I think I know what the next gen for consoles will probably do. It won't be digital-only media. Even if that's what the console makers want (so they can charge insane prices for a virtual product without any physical alternative for people to complain about) there's just no way in hell the bandwidth will be there.

Instead, I can see them attempting to pull what Ubisoft is pulling with the always-online-to-play bullshit. "It's the next logical step." I'm tagging this as "game prediction" to hopefully find the post again easily 4-5 years from now or whenever the new generation launches. We'll see if I'm right. I pray I'm wrong.

*edit*

I was going to fix that "game" typo up above, but decided to leave it to make another unrelated point. I used spellcheck to quickly find typos without pre-reading the post. That's how it slipped through. That's why game developers that make a conversation heavy game, like Ar Tonelico II, should have more eyes reading their scripts. (Those are the types of typos you see littered throughout the game.)

Comments

[maverynthia.livejournal.com]

You do realize the NIS didn't even care enough about ATII to give it a proper JP track either right.. NIS has sloppy and bad translations, but they don't care..

[alessar.livejournal.com]

QFT: "We know Game Stop is being a bunch of dicks with their pricing, we have the power to make them stop by not buying it."

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

(If I cared at all about online play in general, I'd be more up in arms about this, but) this is bullshit. This trend toward "we'll give you X for free if you buy new but you have to pay out the nose to get X if you buy it used or if you rent it" where X is either the very ability to download DLC or, in this case, potentially core fucking gameplay[1] is very troubling.

Also, I like how the first comment on Kotaku is "People care about playing a SOCOM PSP game?" It doesn't matter what the particular game in question is, you dumbass, it's the principle of the thing. It's like when there was the big thing about UK banning Manhunt 2 a few years ago, and people were like "who cares, it's Manhunt 2 (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/2007/06/21/)." Uh... wait.

"I can't wait until end bosses come as DLC, but I guess we'll have to wait until 'bonus extra bosses guarding rare powerful items' are added as DLC first."

I guess we won't have to wait long then, because that sort of thing has been DLC since forever.

And as for your second point about games still having crappy translations... well, I thought we were mostly past that hurdle 13 years ago when Final Fantasy VII was released[2], but I guess not. For what it's worth, I still remember at least two direct references to zombo.com (http://www.zombo.com/) near the beginning of the first Ar Tonelico (which I have yet to finish/restart, sadly), which I feel pretty safe in saying were not in the original Japanese version. It stinks of the old Working Designs localizations where they put in all those references to ABBA and such. They pretty much didn't actually translate it so much as just completely rewrite it, adding in whatever stupid, dated pop culture references (or memes, I guess you'd call them these days) they felt like. Kind of like how "over nine thousand" is a thing in Scribblenauts (it generates a useless DBZ-style scanner thingie), except that that wasn't even a translation thing. It was just a bone thrown in for 4chan/youtube 'tards for some reason.

[1] - Actually, I know next to zero about SOCOM. Is multiplayer something that is, or used to be, a given about this series, is it one of those "mostly single player but with a crappy multiplayer component tagged on" games? Not that that matters because either way it's still bullshit.

[2] - Unless you count things like Aerith/Aeris or Barrett's Mr. T-speak. (Or stuff like this, (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=197341&topic=49439468) which I don't even remember. Hmm, maybe FFVII isn't such a good example after all. Also this (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodBadTranslation), just for the heck of it.)