Pre-OWNED

You. Yes, you. You’re a thief. Well, you’re a gamer, and that means that you probably have some pre-owned titles on your shelf. And according to Sony, that makes you a common crook, unworthy of fully-featured games because you’re too tight to cough up for a sealed copy.

We’ve learned that Sony thinks this way from their recent treatment of Socom: Fireteam Bravo 3 gamers. Apparently, if you buy this PSP game second-hand, you can’t go online unless you stump up $20.

Now, I’m all for measures to stop piracy. Sony have indeed confirmed that illegal downloaders of this title won’t be able to access the online features at all, for any sum of money (other than the price of an actual copy of the game...). This is a good thing.

It is crucial that companies take measures to stamp out piracy, and more importantly, to establish that it is both illegal and damaging to the industry. But should second-hand game owners really be lumped in with the download bandits and punished, too?

Well, no. Despite what the likes of Sony, Microsoft or Activision may tell you, the second hand games industry is actually very beneficial. While it is certainly true that fresh copies are sometimes overlooked for pre-owned games which are $5 cheaper, it is also true that the availability of quick trade-ins fuels the new game market. If all stores stopped accepting trade-ins tomorrow, you could expect to see a huge downturn in new game sales by next week. One of the reasons that downloadable games haven’t yet quite taken off is because you’re stuck with a duff title if you make the wrong choice.

Take away the trade-in schemes and you add a sense of caution and slight uncertainty to every gamer’s next purchase. All but the most established franchises would see sales drops, and this would only further stifle an industry not exactly renowned for breeding innovation in recent years. After all, why buy an interesting new IP when you won’t be able to trade it in if you don’t like it?

Single player games would be hindered, too. There’s less incentive to buy a six-twelve hour offline adventure if you can’t trade it in when you’re finished. Slapping some wonky online multiplayer onto every title is not exactly the brave new world I want to embrace either, and will only serve to undermine the single-player experience if developers are forced to divert their attention.

All in all, the second-hand games industry was created out of necessity. It is there to help cash-strapped gamers fund new purchases. It’s there to give niche franchises a chance to gain momentum (after all, you might try a quirky-looking game on impulse if it’s only $10, and you might buy the full-priced sequel as a result). It’s there because we need it to be. No-one is suggesting that the second-hand book market, or the pre-owned car market, is akin to piracy. They’d be laughed out of the country.

It’s time, then, that the games industry treated the second-hand market with a little respect and realised that it does more good than harm for gamers and developers alike. Sony’s ruthless strategy of charging pre-owned buyers for online access is simply greedy and unfair.

Pre-owned buyers are legitimate purchasers, too, and if games companies want to pursue anyone, it should be the greedy stores which perpetuate the second-hand market, making miniscule offers to gamers and slapping second-hand titles on shelves at huge mark-ups. After all, games companies do own the rights to their titles, and if they stipulated that titles require a small percentage of sell-on money if they are re-sold, the stores would have little choice but to stock them and pay the compensation. After all, if Sony required ‘sell-on contracts’ with stores before allowing them to stock Gran Turismo 5, what choice would they have? This would be the fairest compromise for all.

Fairer than shutting out and victimising second-hand buyers, that’s for sure.

When The Music Stops

Plastic-axe shredders are a fickle bunch, it seems. No sooner than the Guitar Hero franchise exploded into multi-billion dollar sales, churning out titles quicker than Nintendo re-releases portables had the rhythm action genre suddenly died, like an exploding star that fell in on itself.

Harmonix this week announced that Viacom, one of their complex-legal-license-partners for Rock Band, had asked for a refund ofa bit of bonus money they’d handed them. $200 million, if you want the precise figure. The reason? Flat-lining music game sales that had seen RB’s revenues plummet.

This is obviously a problem, not least for the company being asked to repay almost a quarter of a billion dollars that were bonuses – not loans or agreed finance – but for the games industry as a whole. The games economy is too reactionary, throwing money at anything that looks popular then quickly cutting off the cash supply when players have lost interest.

Case in point: ‘casual’ Wii titles. There are literally hundreds of the things. Baby Shopper Party, Family Potato Farmer, Dress My Kitty and such drivel. Not even I'm sure if those are real or I just made them up. It's gotten that bad. So bad, in fact, that last month, Best Buy, a large American department store, announced they’d no longer stock ‘casual’ or ‘mini-game’ titles. The market, it’s clear, has become oversaturated.The games economy simply isn’t set up to take the kind of hits that result from these sudden changes of plans. Activision blew, it’s rumoured, over $100 million on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Luckily, the game shifted ten million copies a second, roughly, but imagine if it hadn’t. Imagine if the games-playing populace had already moved on to the ‘next big thing’? Only a couple of years ago, Halo was the shooter of choice. Stretching back a couple of decades, the likes of Doom and Quake were the top trigger-happy titles.

Times change fast, and every shift only hurts the industry when the big guns and the little guys bet on their game making big bucks and lose. Activision will undoubtedly give Modern Warfare 3 an even bigger budget, and it may well pay off, but if gamers have moved on by 2011, they’ll be in big trouble.

 It looks highly doubtful that Final Fantasy XIII, out next month, will recover the multi-multi-million dollar development costs from the four years it took to make, what with the slightly cold reception it's received from its initial reviews.

The games industry, then, needs to calm down and get better at predicting the tastes of tomorrow rather than aping the top titles of yesterday. Brain Training clones soon saw that market stagnate, and the landslide of shooters we’ll see over the next two years may see the same thing happen to the FPS genre – MAG, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, MW3, New Call of Duty Spinoff, Killzone 3, Spec-Ops: The Line.The list goes on and on. If racing, or action titles (like Uncharted 2 and Assasin’s Creed II) become more popular, for example, all those FPS developers will just be shooting themselves in the foot.

As with the fall in popularity that rhythm action games have suffered, no doubt due to the sheer volume of plastic-banding titles released recently (GH:Metallica, GH: Greatest Hits, GH: World Tour, GH:5,GH: Van Halen, Band Hero, Rock Band: The Beatles...), if the gunfire ceases, it sure won’t be pretty. Games developers need to learn the Guitar Hero lesson before it’s too late.

Have handhelds had it?

Gaming on the go is big business. Nintendo have sold over 120 million DS consoles, and Sony have shifted a not-too-shabby 60 million PSPs. This is the largest number of handhelds that have ever been sold in a single five-year period. Clearly, setting lap times on the loo is here to stay.

But whether it’s going to remain in its current form is another matter entirely. Over the coming years, the handheld market is going to see a huge period of change, the likes of which could see even the mighty Nintendo ousted from their multi-billion dollar market-leading position.

The cause of this looming upset is undoubtedly the Nokia N-gage.


No, really. This may sound ludicrous, but the success of Apple’s iPhone, with its App store full to bursting with cheap, accessible games, can be traced back to Nokia’s failed handheld-meets-mobile.


Nokia’s doomed device was the first real stab at a games/phone combo, and although it failed spectacularly, it set a trend that was to have far-reaching consequences for the handheld games industry. The beauty of a gadget that can just as easily call your gran as it can zap alien scum is that it can be bought very easily. Want a DS? That’ll run you £100. A PSP? £130. Don’t even mention the PSP Go’s absurd price tag. But an Apple iPhone, or a similarly powerful smart phone?

 Certainly. Just sign on the dotted line, sir.

Monthly phone contracts may be expensive in the long run, but they allow adults with a regular income (so, anyone who isn’t a starving freelancer like myself) to walk into a phone shop tomorrow and pick up a snazzy new gadget. A gadget, like an iPhone or any one of a number of similar superphones, that will download and play cheap, accessible games on the go. No lining up in funny-smelling game shops, no wrestling with an overweight brat for the last copy of Halo Theft Turismo 7. Just hit ‘download’ and play until the train arrives.

Now, Sony have tried something similar. The PSP Go is a download-only console, which should pack the same kind of advantages as Apple’s efforts. But it became a flawed device, destined for failure the moment Sony decided not to also make it a phone as well – even a bad one.

PSP Go can’t be bought for £0 up front on a contract (a staggering £250 up-front, actually), it can’t go online anywhere – so no downloading Tetris while you wait in traffic – and the thing simply won’t go everywhere you do, because it isn’t a phone – it isn’t an essential.

The iPhone’s App store may be teeming with rubbishy tat titles, it may be devoid of most traditional big-hitters – think Call of Duty, Halo, GTA – but it’s cheap, and it’s easy. Whilst most seasoned gamers may well stick to their pricey, inconvenient consoles with their tiny selection of downloadable titles (that goes for DSi and PSP Go), the general public – the mass market – will buy titles on their phones and play cheap and cheerfully on the go. This emerging demographic will soon be much bigger than the traditional handheld market – which isn’t exactly something to be sniffed at as it is.

Backing this up, mobile phone development last year shot up – to 25% of overall games development, from 12% the previous year. Worryingly for Nintendo and Sony, that’s more than twice the support that DS or PSP receive (Source: Game Developer Research: Game Development Survery 2009-2010)

Time, then, for the traditional handheld companies to adapt, or be left behind – at home, or worse, on store shelves. Portable gaming needs to be mobile, too.

Why Nintendo's Next Console isn't DS2

Rumours. You have to love ‘em. From Rockstar’s gentle teasing in GTA game manuals to the dark-room-dwelling crackpots who spew spurious nonsense because they know someone who knew a guy who passed Microsoft's headquarters once, the games industry is built as much on rumours as it is on actual announcements.

Which is why the recent 'New Nintendo Platform' leak is such big news. Yes, it may well be a load of tosh perpetrated by bored geeks, but - as is so often the case in an industry brimming with speculation and quieted whispers - we might just be on to something here.

DS2 is most people's first guess. It's not a bad one either. The original handheld released in 2005, making this its fifth year, and the thing's already seen three iterations - four if you count the DSi on steroids that is the XL. In normal videogame tradition, this means that the game is nearly up for the creaky old handheld, especially if the rumblings of a Sony PSP2 are to be believed. Nintendo don't want to kill DS sales, which are still absurdly strong, but they don't want to be left behind, either. And then there’s Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Falling by the technological wayside is really the main issue. Nintendo aren't going for graphical clout this generation, as we all know. But a DS would surely be shamed by a PSP2, especially if the latter throws in a touch screen and motion sensors for good measure. And the iPhone is already cutting sharply into Nintendo’s target demographic.

But Nintendo will release a Wii HD instead, except with a catchier title. Why? Well, the Wii is in a similar predicament. Increasingly ignored by third-party devs at a time when HDTV adoption is skyrocketing, the little white box is starting to show its age. Nintendo won't want to stilt Wii sales but they won't want Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's resurgent PS3 to steal its thunder, either. In fact, when Xbox 360 gets its controller-free camera, Natal, and PS3 gets Wiimote-alikes this year in the form of its new ‘Arc’ controllers, the Wii will face its sternest test yet.

Going HD would go some way to drawing the three systems onto a level playing field once Wii loses its greatest advantage - its novel controller. Iwata recently hinted that HD alone wouldn't be enough for the Wii's successor, which is why there'll almost certainly be more to it than that. An HD Wii, with Motion Plus built into controllers and another new way to play - be it a Natal-esque camera, or some crazy new idea? It'd maintain Nintendo's advantage at a critical time, stop Microsoft or Sony from making Wii feel outdated, and draw third parties back to the console.

As for the DS? Well, that's simple. DS2 is already here - it's called DSi. Nintendo's newest dual-screen has four times the memory of the DS, for example, and twice the processing power. Nintendo have even promised DSi-enhanced and DSi-exclusive titles at some point down the line. The recent announced of Pokemon 5, the next true sequel to Diamond/Pearl, could fit the bill perfectly. With the hidden technical improvements of the DSi, there's simply no need for a new DS altogether when so many people are walking around with a more powerful DS in their pockets already.

Imagine this at this year’s E3: new, exclusive DSi titles announced to seamlessly transition the DS to a new generation without stifling DS sales - whilst remaining fully backwards compatible - and a Wii HD to keep the home console fighting in the face of fresh competition. This very much could be where Nintendo goes from here.

But for now, keep it quiet. I might just be a babbling crackpot, you know.

-- Alex Evans, February 6^th 2010