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TheMightyEthan
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Oooooooooohhhhhh.... I get it finally. So the point is that you can get a full $60 for a game at retail launch from a large chunk of people. Then if you release it again on digital later for full $60 you can get another chunk of people to buy it. I'm not sure why that works but I can see MS wanting to milk it twice at full ERP.

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“The customer has the choice of going to retail on day one if they really want to buy a particular title, or to wait a couple of months and buy it full price from the Xbox Live marketplace."

 

Oh gosh, don't make me choose

 

Or I could, you know, buy it a couple months later used...probably at a markdown.

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Yeah, I mean, from a business perspective it makes total sense if you can sell it that way, but you don't just come out and fucking say it. And that bit Jack quoted just shows a complete disconnect from reality. I just, I don't even know anymore.

 

Though I guess it does kind of blow away the rumors that the 720 won't have any physical media, unless MS is planning to completely rethink this strategy (which the statements would not seem to support).

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Yeah, I mean, from a business perspective it makes total sense if you can sell it that way, but you don't just come out and fucking say it.

 

But Ethan, you're forgetting something. This is the games industry. You can call your audience scurvy-ridden pirate crybabies, fuck 'em in the ass without the lube, charge them for such a pleasure then sell them a follow up stuffing a few weeks later, and all you've got to do to make it all right is diminish the power of the consumer's complaints by writing them off as no more than the cries of a self-entitled minority.

 

Ok, I may have exaggerated just a tiny bit there but you know where I'm coming from. It'll work because the general consumer, as we all know, is ignorant to the minutiae of the industry's news. John Doe will pay full price at retail on Day 1 and Jane Roe, spending little time in games stores and making use of digital distribution, will come along months later and buy it at home, not even considering if she could have purchased it cheaper.

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Apparently Nintendo, on the other hand, is working on getting their shit together: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/26/wii-u-retail-games-will-be-sold-digitally-at-launch/

 

It's kind of amusing that MS, the first to really have a viable online console experience, is now falling behind Nintendo, who has pretty much had the most half-assed online services possible.

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Its the prices that kill it for me. Anyway, Nintendo doing it with one game is great, but Nintendo should put ALL of their 3DS games they've ever launched up their on the store that day when NSMB 2 comes out. I can't see it being supported that well unless they really get behind it.

Edited by excel_excel
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What makes it different from what MS is doing is that it's day-and-date with the retail launch. And the biggest thing to me is it's a marked shift from Nintendo's previous approach to online of "do the minimum we can to be able to claim we have an online service."

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I'd be more likely to download retail games from Nintendo than the other two as their games always stay closer to RRP anyway. Just a shame there won't be a HDD in there. Means another cable, another box under my TV and a pause while the game icons load up. It's annoying enough on the 3DS with the difference between the games on the console and on the SD card. a HDD must be 10 times worse.

 

The main thing that would stop me is if the games were tied to the console rather than my personal account as they are now with the 3DS which is so annoying as it means I lost my copy of excite bike when I had to replace my 3DS. That is just a completely ridiculous situation to be in nowadays.

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Depends on the media. There's some damn fast flash media (like that used in SSDs), but a class 10 flash cart is only rated at 10 MB/s and USB 2.0 is rated at up to 60 MB/s, so for that stuff the USB connection isn't the bottleneck.

 

*Edit* - Flash wins hands down in read latency though.

Edited by TheMightyEthan
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I find it odd that MS are sticking so rigidly to the 6mth delay games on demand model. Sony have gone day and date on digital. Nintendo are obviously planning the same for Wii U. I prefer digital to physical but I don't prefer it enough to wait 6 months and then pay more than I would for the physical copy.

 

If Sony and MS go ahead with their "no used games" plans, specialist retailers will mostly die out, or will become truly specialist (as opposed to the current mainstream specialism they currently display). At that point I'd expect MS to go day and date on digital since they no longer have to worry about mollycoddling their retailer partnerships.

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