The No-Used Xbox 720 Rumor, and Why It’s Complete Horseshit

Image courtesy of Reddit

Thanks to pageviewkakke, tons of Xbox 720 rumors have been popping up lately, ranging from the believable to the absurd. If you read the latter — the one indicating that Microsoft wanted to eliminate used games from playing on their next console — don’t worry too much. If you interpret that as a complete used lockout, the concept makes no sense from a technical and diplomatic perspective.

First, the technical. To completely lock out a used game from playing, you need two things: something that uniquely identifies an individual copy of the game, and a remote, unified service to authorize copies of a game to run. Translate that into real-world terms, and that means every disc of a game would need some serial number or unique identifier embedded into the media. That number would then need to be bound to a console or account on a remote server that tracks all the various associations. Then, the server could either reply with a successful association, or disallow play because the identifier has already been claimed.

The idea may work in theory, but it’s so riddled with real-world problems that there’s no way such an idea would fly. How do you deal with false positives? What if someone accidentally plays a game they didn’t mean to claim? On top of that, such a server would need to handle a massive amount of requests, and constructing a network beefy enough to manage that would be incredibly expensive. That’s not to mention what would happen if a service like that ever went down — nobody would be able to play anything.

But let’s look at this from a business perspective. Despite what the Internet thinks, publishers probably don’t see every used game sale as a lost new sale. However, from their perspective, if they pick up one more new sale because of a system like this, they’re better off for it. From Microsoft’s perspective, having a used-proof system would give them leverage to make more demands of publishers. Something like “we’ll only carry your game on our used-proof system if you put more content in it than on competing versions.”

That said, and while this is blind faith on my part, I believe that publishers are aware of the intangible benefits of the used market. First off, you have the possibility recouping direct revenue. Electronic Arts has started to strongarm this proposition with the Online Pass, and while they haven’t announced any revenue figures for that initiative, I’d wager they’ve recouped whatever labor cost went into the idea and then some. DLC is also a huge factor. Thanks to digital distribution, you can only get that content direct from publishers. I played Namco Bandai’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West used. They got no money from that, but I did like it so much that I bought Pigsy’s Perfect 10 after finishing it. No used means I would’ve never played the game at all, nor bought the DLC.

There’s another intangible benefit to the used market as well – brand familiarity. As much as gamers like to bitch about sequelitis, it exists for a reason. Games are expensive, and nobody wants to pay full retail for an unknown on day one. Most gamers — myself included — experience potentially new franchises via the used market. That’s why sales of an initial game in a series are crap, but pick up when the sequels hit.

I’m experiencing this first-hand with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. The game is amazing, absolutely amazing, but I got it from Gamefly precisely because it was an unknown. After playing it, I plan to get the DLC as well (and that’s material benefit to Konami) as well as any sequel should it ever exist. Killing the used market not only removes a risk-free entry to a new franchise, but also eliminates future sales in that franchise. Publishers would need to rely solely on pre-release marketing to convince gamers to pony up cash, and that’s becoming harder and harder to do especially when competing with annual auto-buys like Call of Duty or Madden.

I know that, and you know that, but do publishers know that? Cynics the Internet over like to think they know more about the industry than those in the industry and claim they don’t. I believe they do, though. These are smart people with years of experience, and I can’t imagine a world where the people making those decisions haven’t considered those angles, especially when the hard data paints that exact picture.

So yes, publishers don’t like the used trade, and they have reasons not to. But it’s such an ingrained part of the business from retail to user experience that you can’t rip it out without altering everything else. The PC has survived the change thanks to Steam Sales — you can’t take out a cheap point of entry without replacing it with another, easier one. The only way to eliminate the used market on consoles is to do the same, and brick-and-mortar sales of games are still too vital to do that.

In a decade, the story may be different, but for now don’t worry – the next Xbox will play used games just fine.

SHARE THIS POST WITH YOUR IDIOT FRIENDS: