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Hi All, I noticed this on Kotaku…
In June, the Belgian Entertainment Association (representing game publishers, of course) managed to convince Belgian authorities to outlaw game rentals. On the grounds that renting games made a sizeable dent in game sales. Part of that deal was that, from June, video stores couldn’t buy any new games to rent out, but could keep on renting out the ones they had until December. Well, with December approaching, Belgian paper De Standaard has confirmed that, come December 1, Belgians won’t be able to rent video games. At all. Bet the publishers are happy with that one! Pity about the, you know. Gamers.[/quote:0c2d7bd16e]
I was wondering what people here though of a move like this, and how would they feel if it became the norm in their respective countries.
Personally I don’t rent games much but am happy in the knowledge that I can rent them should I want to. I also believe that a move like this could promote more piracy on the consoles.
Anyhow, lets hear what you think.
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I think it’s ridiculous, until every publisher make sure demos are released for all of their games, there should be the facility for renting games to try them out. Even the movie industry encourages rentals, and they’re the worst for anti-piracy measures, so I’m really kind of stumped as to why they’re doing this, does anyone know if publishers don’t get royalties from game rentals?
The same situation is starting to happen now with the likes of Gamestop and xtravision selling second-hand games. Sure, the industry loses out on cash from this, but so does every other one, maybe if prices were lower to start with people wouldn’t have to go bargain hunting for games they really want.
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I would love to see the figures on the Belgian games industry and the impact renting was having on Belgian publishers and developers.
don’t know how much publishers get from game rentals…
I guess publishers just want to move towards direct to customer electronic delivery and cut out all those intermediaries.
Aphra.
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It’s a dumb change, for the reasons already given.
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Games, like all entertainment media has already set a course on the distribution channel and like music, movies etc., games will be distributed over our broadband pipes with some DRM attached. I think, it would take a very well thought out business plan and lots of guts to even consider setting up a traditional bricks and mortar store to sell games (CD, DVD, BluRay). The only reason we still have disks is the footprint of the executables and penetration of large last mile BB pipes. The games companies need distribution channels and visa verse. Some large publishers are going with the ‘our distribution channel is better’ approach (for buying their games only), others are adopting lets bet on a few channels and see which one brings in the dollar bills. Its going to be interesting to see which ones win and become defacto; by lets say late 2010 early 2011.
The great thing for most of us – is we wont have anymore issues with scratched CD; but we will need a mechanism for backing up our original game files – guess which publishers are building large data centers at the moment…answers on a postcard please :wink:
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Its a move to make sure publishers get every single penny due to them.
To play "devils" (publishers) advocate they do fund the project, and the game would not be on the shelf if not for them. They are entitled to a cut of all money made from the game. I guess some of this money will eventually filter down to the developers through royalties. So in that sense its good.
Personally, I think its a bit too much control for my liking. If I want to rent a game, see how it goes, and then maybe buy it as it is a quality product, and let it sit on my gamer shelf of quality, why should a bunch of belgians stop this from happening. They could argue pull down the demo, give it a spin, and make your decision from that point on.
Undecided, I guess at this point.
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