Physical vs. Digital

I created this list in response to a Reddit post once, and I thought it would be worth keeping around. If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you probably know by now that I don't have a very high opinion of "digital distribution" when it comes to video games (i.e., games that are sold without any physical medium, just downloaded over the internet via your account). But to prove that I don't think it's completely useless, I have a list of the pros and cons of each. I may update this list as new information comes to light.

Note that this list was created in the Xbox One subreddit, so some of these items may be specific to that platform.

Physical Discs

Advantages

• You can loan, rent, share, sell, or give away discs, to anyone at any time.
• You can return the game to the store if it doesn't work, or if the purchase was accidental. [Though Microsoft will be allowing digital returns within 14 days and under 2 hours of play soon.]
• You can play them on any Xbox at any time, no matter who is signed in.
• Installing is faster, since the bits are installed from the disc instead of downloaded over the internet. (Though large day-one patches that have to be downloaded may negate this advantage somewhat.)
• If your account is stolen, hacked, or banned, you still have your games.
• If Xbox Live goes down at any point in the future, your ability to play your games won't go with it. (The ongoing support of 360 games suggests this won't happen anytime soon; though history shows it has happened before.)
• Prices in physical stores tend to decay over time, as retailers try to move inventory.

Disadvantages

• If the disc is lost, broken, or stolen, your license to play is gone.
• Can't simultaneously share a single copy with more than one person.
• Have to change discs to change games. (While this may not seem huge when you're physically at the console, it's much bigger if you're away from the console, like with the streaming to Windows 10 feature.)
• In order to play the game on any console (e.g., visiting a friend), you must bring the disc.

Digital Downloads

Advantages

• No physical item to lose/maintain.
• One copy of the game can be played on two consoles simultaneously — the one you're signed in on, and the one you've chosen as your "home console". (Although this isn't strictly endorsed by Microsoft as a way to share with someone outside of your household, they have so far turned a blind eye to this "game sharing".)
• Not having to insert the disc to play. (The Windows 10 Xbox app feature of being able to remotely connect to your Xbox, start a game, and stream it to your PC or tablet, makes this even more convenient, as the disc doesn't have to be in the drive already.)
• You can purchase (and in many cases, pre-purchase) games, and the console will automatically download and install them, instead of waiting for you to insert the disc before it can install.
• If you sign in on any console, you can download and install the game and play it there (without having to bring along a physical disc).
• Any console that has the game installed already, you can play it on when you sign in (as long as you're connected to Live).
• Some titles you can purchase once and have the ability to download/play on multiple platforms (Xbox "Play Anywhere" titles that can be played on the Xbox and PC).

Disadvantages

• You cannot transfer the license to another person, temporarily or permanently.
• Officially, no refunds — all sales are final. (Some have managed to get refunds from Microsoft on some occasions, but it can be dependent upon a roll of the dice as to what customer support person you end up talking to, and whether or not you've had to ask more than once.) [Though Microsoft will be allowing digital returns within 14 days and under 2 hours of play soon.]
• The license to play is limited to at most two consoles at any one time — your "home console", and the console on which you're signed in. It cannot be shared with someone (other than you) on a third console, unless you sign in there yourself, too.
• If you reassign your "home console" to a friend (i.e., use this feature as a form of game sharing), you can't play your own games if your internet connection goes down.
• If your account is stolen, hacked, or banned, you lose access to your games.
• Microsoft can revoke your license to play at any time. (Some people got lucky enough to "buy" a digital game for a deep or complete discount from the digital store due to an error on the website, only to find the game purchase revoked when the error was corrected — even though the item was downloaded, they could no longer play it. Xbox Fitness content that was purchased, was inaccessible when Microsoft discontinued the service.)
• Prices for digital versions do not decay over time as quickly or as frequently as their physical counterparts. (It's not unusual to see an item of downloadable content never go on sale from its original price.)

For me, it's all about simplicity and freedom — the ability to share my content with my family any way I choose, without having to manage my licenses via some external party. As it stands now, if I wanted to put an Xbox in what we call the "teen room", no one there would be able to play anything I bought digitally. (Unless I made that my "home console" — but then no one would be able to use anything I bought digitally on the main TV in the family room.) Consoles in my house are not personal devices. They are shared, family devices; and anything that restricts my ability to share content with my family across those shared devices isn't a convenience, it's a hindrance.

Updated May 2017 to include Microsoft's new policy on returns of digital games.

Another service bites the dust.

Over three years ago, Microsoft discontinued Xbox Live service support for the original Xbox. I hoped at the time that people would start to sit up and take notice about how tenuous digital content is, that whether you paid for it or not, it would take very little for a company to take it away, and you'd have no recourse. And people did, since Microsoft made the misstep of taking down some services a little early — although the matchmaking service was still operational, the content servers weren't, and people attempting to re-download some of their DLC for one last hurrah at playing them online, weren't able to.

Unfortunately, the notoriety didn't last, and people moved on, happy with their 360 service, and with the previous generation all but forgotten.

Now, it's time for another service to get shut down. Microsoft has announced that the Games for Windows Live service will be shut down in July of 2014.

The timing of this announcement was rather coincidental, as I had just decided to rebuild my laptop. I had not yet gotten around to installing all the games back on, but this notice was a good reminder.

Now, Games for Windows Live is not a terribly popular service, and there aren't a ton of games available for it, so I have to wonder if this will make too many people upset to begin with. But the thought of losing access to full, paid-for games really sours me on this idea of trusting some company to manage my game library.

It seems that the community in general has a pretty short memory as it is. If you read the comments on the announcement article I linked to above, there's one commenter that asks the same question I started asking as soon as the Xbox One was officially announced: "How long until the 360 XBox Live shuts down once the XBone is released?" The response from the site's "Community Manager" is just that it's "Different" and goes off on a tangent as to why shutting down Games for Windows Live is no big deal, like seeing the 360 get shut down is not an issue worth discussing. And yet, only three years ago, that issue very much came to life when the original Xbox service was shut down.

Indeed, I still hear arguments that the all-digital(-ish) Xbox One was a much better system when it was first announced. I just cannot understand that, how someone can actually be ok with letting a company decide when you're done playing and take away everything you've paid for. Anyone who argues that "they won't do that" are just putting their heads in the sand, because not only would they, they have and are doing that very thing. The best argument I've heard is that the promised "family sharing" feature, where you could share your library with up to 10 friends, was the best feature the Xbox One had, and everything else was worth it. I don't agree; I think the price they were asking for that feature was way too high, giving up way too many other things — let alone that I think the way they described that feature was way too good to be true.

As for me, I just have a few games that I now need to get moving on, if I ever want to play them again: Fallout 3 and all its expansions, Viva Piñata, Batman Arkham Asylum, the Age of Empires III collection, Microsoft Flight, and Game Room.

Part of what's kept me away from playing these games a lot so far, though, is that my laptop is my most capable machine, and that's not saying much. The last time I played Batman, I had entered a point where there was so much activity on-screen that my poor laptop was pushing maybe 5 frames per second — not the kind of performance that lends well to playing an action game. I had hoped that I would be able, some day, to have a machine capable of playing these games better, but now there seems like there's no chance of that (unless someone wants to donate to me a gaming PC within the next 11 months).

Of these games that I do have, most of them are digital downloads that I bought when the price was more worth what I felt (and what is being proven) was a lesser value. The only game I have on disc is Fallout 3 (not including the expansions, which I purchased digitally). When I installed that, though, it included the Games for Windows Live client (which Windows intercepted and redirected me to an updated version online — no telling how long that will remain available), I had to enter the 25-character key printed on a sticker inside the box (and let it activate online) when I first launched it, and the update was delivered only when I signed in to Live. It makes me wonder how functional even the disc-based games will be once the service is shut down.

As for the digital downloads, the Games for Windows Live client manages those; and although you can specify the directory it uses for downloads, they are not in a format that makes it obvious for making backups (a lot of GUID-named CAB files and TMP files). It does not seem possible, at the moment, to download any of my purchased content in order to make a backup before the service goes away and takes all my content with it.

If this is the future, I'll stay in the past

Microsoft's been doing a sort of "fire sale" lately by slashing prices on digital games and content. I can only speculate on the motivation, but I wouldn't doubt it's probably a combination of two, maybe three things: (1) getting people to use up their Microsoft Points before they convert everyone to cash; (2) encouraging people to buy stuff digitally, to get people more comfortable with the idea while they continue to figure out how to get rid of the physical media; and maybe (3) to make people believe the narrative that an all-digital, no-used future will result in lower prices.

In any case, I have taken advantage of some of these. I have a decent balance of Microsoft Points gathered through searching on Bing, so I don't mind using some of my "free money" on these throwaway games (and by "throwaway", I mean that once I'm done with them, I might as well virtually throw them away, because I can't do anything else with them).

But one purchase in particular only served to highlight why an all-digital world still has its problems.

I purchased the game Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, on sale for the bargain price of $5/400 MSP. But when I tried to download it, it would get to the 10% mark and then fail with the disappointingly-terse message, "Can't download C&C Red Alert 3". I tried several times, on both Xboxes in my house (the main one everyone plays on, and the one with the defective DVD drive that I keep in the office as a media streamer and XBLA console), with the same result every time. I had purchased two other full games, plus downloaded a beta and re-downloaded another XBLA game (Happy Wars had an update that required deleting and re-downloading), all without error, but yet this one game still refused to download.

I checked the Xbox Support forums and added my experience to a post I found from way back in December '12 with the same problem. Then I took to Twitter to chat with @XboxSupport. They took me down the standard script of checking everything on my side: unplug the hard drive and try downloading to a USB stick, deleting and re-downloading my profile, clearing the hard drive cache, rebooting my networking equipment, connecting my console directly to the cable modem to bypass the rest of my network, sacrificing small rodents, and sprinkling holy water on the network cable. Their final suggestion was to try a different network.

Now, I don't know about you, but an internet connection isn't something I can just swap out at-will. On a daily basis, I'm on two different broadband networks: my home ISP, and my work. I don't imagine many places of business would look too kindly at an employee bringing a game console to work with them, and I haven't been with my current employer long enough to want to risk finding out. I could conceivably ask neighbors to borrow their network, though with the virtual monopoly the big ISPs tend to have, it's a good bet even if I found someone willing, they'd probably have the same ISP anyway. Either way, the thought of having to pull my console out of the entertainment center and unthread all the cables just so I can download a single game wasn't very appealing.

One suggestion that came up in the forums from another user was to tether the Xbox to a smartphone and use that. I suppose it's fortunate that: (1) we joined the smartphone generation in recent years, (2) and that we pay for tethering (so that my wife can use her tablet without having to buy it a dedicated cellular connection), (3) and that my wireless provider doesn't implement ridiculous bandwidth caps and overage charges, (4) and that I can get a strong enough signal in my house to actually use cellular internet (many people in my neck of the woods have such issues, and I usually end up connecting my phone to my Wi-Fi because the cell signal is pretty poor), (5) and that I was unable to repair the Xbox now in the office and had to buy a newer "slim" model for the family room, with its built-in Wi-Fi adapter; because I was actually in a position to try that. If any one of these conditions weren't met, I'd be out of luck.

It does, in fact, work; and all one has to do is resume the download to get from 10% to 11% complete, then disconnect and reconnect to one's broadband connection to finish the remaining 89%.

But it does raise a few questions. Is it not enough that I'm expected to have an internet connection to use digital content, but I should have two, just in case one for some reason isn't compatible with some piece of content? Also, shouldn't Microsoft be invested in making sure I get my content, regardless of what ISP I'm on, if I'm trying to give them my money? (In other words, why am I and others being asked to jump through these hoops to get what we paid for?) And, how easy would it be to get a refund if I was completely unable to get the content (despite the fact that their purchase page says "there are no refunds"), or would I just be out that money?

If this had happened with a physical disc, where the disc was damaged and unable to "deliver" the game bits to the console, I would just have to go to the store and let them swap it with a working one. (It's happened to me before, when my mail-order copy of Halo 3 got scratched up in transit.) For troubleshooting, maybe they'd try playing it on a second console, which they'd have right there in the store. I wouldn't expect to have to go through as many hoops to try and get a working copy in my home.

The Xbox One: Initial thoughts, not altogether positive

The new Xbox has been revealed at a big event on Microsoft's campus in Redmond. It will be called the "Xbox One", coming out later this year.

The reveal announcement demonstrated some of the new capabilities of the new system. It has the ability to watch live TV, respond to very natural voice commands, instantly switch between tasks (like flipping back and forth between a game, TV, and/or web browsing), and even "snap" two applications side-by-side (much like Windows 8 "metro" apps), with the demo of watching Star Trek on most of the screen with IE on the right quarter browsing for tickets for the next Star Trek movie. It also showed how you could view an on-screen guide, much like a modern digital cable or satellite box. Also included was watching a sporting event on ESPN, and having a notification come up when a player scored that added points to your fantasy sports league (although as a background app or simply as part of the new ESPN app, it wasn't clear).

They then made a brief run-down of the system specs on the console (nothing surprising), the controller ("40 design innovations", basically coming down to "pretty much the same, just some things a little better"), and the new Kinect (which appears to be very much improved over the original).

Then, there was an announcement about Microsoft's cash cow, Halo: Stephen Spielberg is directing a live-action TV series. Not quite the Halo movie we've been hoping for, but still a pretty good deal.

As expected and previously announced, there wasn't a huge focus on games at this event — that has been promised for E3 next month. They did announce that there were fifteen first-party games due in the first year, 8 of which from new IPs. The games they did show included a new one from Max Payne and Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment, a new Forza title, and the previously-announced Call of Duty: Ghosts, the last of which being a somewhat more detailed talk about all of the new tech that the Xbox One makes possible in making a much more visually-appealing game (including comparing screens and models from Modern Warfare 3 to Ghosts). Unfortunately, no real game play was shown — although they did claim we were watching videos rendered by the game engine, they were all cutscenes. While they could be real-time rendered cutscenes instead of in-game video, it would be hard to stand behind that claim.

Ultimately, it looked cool, but nothing groundbreaking. We cut the cable cord nearly five years ago, so the Xbox One's ability to watch and control live TV from your cable feed is completely useless to me. The upgraded controller could be nice (although not a reason to buy a new system). The upgraded Kinect is impressive, though again it's not something I currently use that often even when it's marginally convenient (it's still faster to shut down the 360 using the controller or the freaking power button on the box than it is to navigate the menus by voice, and much faster than trying to use gestures). And while snapping apps side-by-side is convenient, it's hardly necessary when I have a smartphone and laptop within relatively easy reach, and the SmartGlass apps that make those devices useful, even if they're not "integrated" in the same box.

What worries — and even angers — me, is the information that's coming from off-stage. This is what we've found out from the press interviewing Microsoft executives and representatives:

• The Xbox One may require an internet connection at least as often as once every 24 hours
• The console will support larger friends lists (up to 1,000) and external storage
• The hard drive is built-in to the console and cannot be removed or upgraded by the user
• Game discs transferred to another user will require some kind of transaction with Microsoft before the content is playable

Keep in mind this is now Microsoft officials responding to questions, not rumors from "unnamed" or "inside" sources.

The internet connection requirement (if true; the person making the statement didn't sound entirely sure, though it does give the impression some requirement exists) is annoying and disappointing. The last time we had a sustained internet outage, one of my kids was annoyed that he couldn't play his browser-based game on his laptop, but my younger kids were happily playing on the 360. This seems to question whether that scenario will be possible with the Xbox One.

The larger friends list is long overdue, though I do hope it comes with some management features — I want more friends, but I want to be able to categorize them somehow. External storage is pretty standard, though there hasn't been any clarification whether it is limited like it is on the 360 (you can only have 32GB of any device usable at a time). This only slightly mitigates the next point, that the internal 500GB hard drive cannot be replaced. Either they have high confidence in their hard drive's failure rate, or they just don't care. I would have liked to see the PlayStation 3 option finally implemented (put in any hard drive you want) rather than a repeat of the 360 option (buy only these limited-sized, "official" hard drives at over-inflated prices), but this just seems like a giant step backwards (the original Xbox — which I can now no longer refer to as the Xbox 1, so thanks for that — had the same fixed hard drive feature).

The game disc transference makes me the most angry. What they have said so far, is this: when you buy a game, you must install the contents to the hard drive (once games start using all 50GB of a Blu-ray disc, that 500GB storage space is going to disappear quickly), and that disc becomes locked to your ID. If you take the disc to a friend's house, you can use that disc and install the game on their hard drive and play it with your ID for free. But, they cannot play it on their ID unless they pay a "fee" (which has been explained as the retail cost of the game) to "unlock" it.

Essentially, this makes all games subject to the same restrictions as Xbox Live Arcade games and DLC — the original purchaser can play it anywhere, but they cannot share, trade, or sell it to anyone else (except anyone on the purchaser's original console, at least in the case of the 360). And we already know how I feel about that. It places unnecessary restrictions on the content that can even prevent family members in the same house from using content. And now they want to do that for all games, including the ones on disc. Essentially, the "install from disc" step becomes identical to the "download from Microsoft's servers" step.

Even if you accept that and consider letting multiple people install from one disc instead of the internet, where each additional person just pays Microsoft to unlock it, consider Microsoft's idea of "retail price" does not actually mean "what you pay in a retail store" (unless you include Microsoft's own physical stores, where game prices seem to follow the same resistance to change as they do in their Arcade).

Oh, Microsoft is promising that they have designed some way to actually trade games. If you believe this, then at best it will be a simple license transfer tool that lets you move the license with the physical disc you intend to sell/give/trade/etc. Or maybe it will be as simple as letting them have your original registration key, which, once they use, will inactivate your copy on your Xbox One. (Could be most friendly to third-party resellers like Play N Trade, who could just insist games you bring in for trade include the registration code.) Worse, they will require some payment for the privilege. At worst, their "more details to share later" will be as meaningful as "we're working on making the 360 backwards-compatible with all original Xbox games".

Funny, the 360 was "designed" to be able to play traded and resold games, too. I like how that works better.

This week, my son decided he wanted to find a copy of Star Wars: Battlefront II for the original Xbox. See, his cousin had loaned him his copy while he was staying here, and he played it and loved it. But you can't buy the game new anymore, so he's searching for a used copy. It's not easy, considering the game is long out of date, and major resellers aren't carrying games for that system anymore. But once he does find a copy, he is all but guaranteed that he'll be able to play it on our original Xbox (and the 360, where it happens to be compatible). Now I have serious questions as to whether that will still be the case for the Xbox One, either when it is the "current generation" or when it has been long past its "end of support" life.

Families share everything, except DLC

I bought Minecraft on Xbox Live Arcade, primarily for the kids. Being a downloaded title, it is playable on the Xbox according to certain rules:

1. I can play it on any Xbox, so long as I am signed in to Xbox Live.
2. Anyone in the family can play it, on the Xbox in the family room only.

My son has expressed interest in having some friends over on New Years Eve for a Minecraft party. We do happen to have a spare Xbox, although its DVD drive does not read discs. I have it in the office, where I play the occasional Arcade game.
To fuel my son's party, we basically have three options:

1. Let him use the living room Xbox, which will allow him to play but leave me with the one that doesn't read discs (so, no Halo).
2. Let him use the office Xbox, with at least one person signed in as me (so, I don't get to play anything, since you can't sign in two places at once).
3. Use the license transfer tool to transfer the Minecraft license only to the office Xbox, so he can play on that without signing in (except I don't know if it's possible to transfer a single license, and I wouldn't be able to transfer it back to the family room for the rest of the family for a few months).

Now, if the game was on disc... Well, then it would be unplayable on the broken Xbox. But that's beside the point. There's still no easy way for me to just let my son play an arcade game on an Xbox I didn't purchase it on, without me signing in on it.

Save money: buy discs!

In my rants about DLC and how it ends up being such a raw deal for customers, I like to make Forza 2 my poster child. I bought the "Platinum Hits" edition of this game, new, from Best Buy, for the retail price of $20. The game came with a disc that included all DLC. I used that disc once, to install the DLC to my Xbox, and have never had to remove it from my DVD binder again. On Xbox Live Marketplace, the total cost of those DLC packs totaled $25. So, I ended up buying all the DLC and the game for less than just the DLC itself.

What I found interesting as I was writing this was, when I looked up Forza 2 on the Marketplace to see if the prices are still consistent, I couldn't find the DLC packs anywhere. Which means someone looking to buy that DLC now, wouldn't be able to. Unless, of course, they found a disc copy. Heck, I could even sell them my disc copy.

Since then, I've made two more purchases that just go to show how completely french toasted DLC pricing is.

A while ago, I purchased the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition. Again, I bought this new, and it included all DLC packs. While I don't recall the exact price I paid, I'm reasonably sure it wasn't over $30 (Amazon is selling it now for $25). On Marketplace, Dragon Age: Origins is available as a digital download for $20. Awakening, the largest of the DLC packs, sells for $30. (That's right; even in Microsoft's own economic world, the DLC costs more than the actual game.) The remainder of the DLC packs totals up to $53 (and that's if you buy both "Feastday" DLCs in a bundle, saving you a whole buck). I only had to install the DLC from the second disc, which was not only (I'm sure) faster than downloading, but also didn't count against any bandwidth cap — and it left me with a physical product I can loan, trade, or resell later when I've finished the game.

Today, a new game is added to the ranks. I walked into GameStop and asked for Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition. They said they didn't have a used copy, just a new one. I said I was ok with that. I wasn't sure if the included DLC would be on disc or as download codes, and I didn't want to risk getting codes that were already used. Turns out, the DLC is on a second disc. Like Forza 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, all I had to do was install the content from the second disc, and then go on about my business. Like Dragon Age: Origins, this game is available as a digital download for $20. Each of the four DLC packs are also available for digital download, at $10 apiece. When you consider the game alone probably originally retailed for $60, and now you can get the game plus all DLC for that price, it doesn't seem like that bad a deal. When you consider I paid half of that for all of the same content, that I can have the exact same experience (minus the oh-so-difficult addition of pulling the disc from my DVD binder and putting it in the tray), and I have a physical product that I can loan, trade, sell, or even put in a replacement Xbox without having to "transfer licenses"; the DLC seems like a very bad deal indeed.

There's a reason I get so worked up about DLC and why it actually makes me angry to hear people talk about going all digital as the inevitable future: because for us lowly consumers who aren't made of money and don't think three games should exceed the cost of the console itself, it sucks.

In case you forgot, Games on Demand sucks

A few months ago, Microsoft was getting ready to release a new Xbox disc format. Supposedly, the new format provides some more room on a game disc for developers. But, as they typically do before a new feature release, they wanted to get some volunteers to test it in the field before releasing it to everyone at large. So, they took sign-ups for a preview program. I like getting new features early, sometimes just so I can get my update before the servers are hammered with everyone else trying to get theirs on release day; so I signed up.

I was surprised that the disc they sent me to test was no less than Halo Reach. Although I already had a retail copy since its launch, my disc had developed a small crack on the inside hub, so I was happy to be able to use this alternative disc and not risk using a damaged disc in my Xbox.

It worked well enough up until last week, when 343 Industries released an update to Reach. I was surprised when I tried joining another player and saw a message telling me that they had an updated version of Reach. I received no notice to update, nor did the game kick me offline for having a non-updated version of the game. I soon discovered that, while the "format preview" copy of Reach was similar enough to allow achievements and online multiplayer, it was different enough that it did not get the same update distributed to everyone else.

I went back to my retail disc, updated the game, and started hoping again that the disc wouldn't shatter in the drive.

The next day, I was surprised to get an email from Microsoft. They apologized that my "format preview" disc would not get the update, and to make amends, they sent me a copy of the downloadable version of the game.

Not only did they give away a AAA title for a feature preview test, they apparently considered it important enough to continue supporting long after the preview program was over.

Although this was an unexpected pleasantry, it did call something to my attention.

Here is a portion of the Xbox Live Marketplace page for Halo Reach. You can see the price is listed at $59.99, the retail price of the game at launch. This copy of the game does not include a disc or case (obviously), or a manual (but you can download it online). It also does not permit you to resell, trade, loan, or borrow the game. Nor does it let you play it on any console in your own home except the one you first download it to, unless you sign in to Xbox Live on that other console; i.e., you can't give the disc to a roommate or other family member for play on another console unless it is connected to the internet and you sign on there.

Here are a couple product pages for the physical copies of the game, from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart. The game is being sold for $35.95 and $39.96, respectively, with the ability to get free shipping. It comes with a disc, which can be installed to the hard drive or USB on your Xbox console, but the disc is required to play the game. The game can be resold, rented, traded, borrowed, or loaned, and it works on any Xbox in existence, anywhere, online or not, playable by anyone.

To add insult to injury, Amazon also has the Limited Edition of the game for $54.99, which includes an exclusive DLC code for the Elite playable character, some in-universe collectibles, and Dr. Halsey's journal (notes about the creation of the Spartan program), in an ONI "black box" case — for $5 less than the digital download version.

It just underscores what I've said many times before. Digital downloads offer a less valuable product, at a price that doesn't change with the free market.

Trash-talk the almighty EA and forfeit your games

It's been a while since I've had a good rant about DRM, but sure enough, EA has come through with yet another reason why DRM is all about taking control away from consumers. A user on the Dragon Age forums had the gall to compare EA to the devil -- specifically, he was asking if gamers had sold their soul to the EA devil. Maybe more than a little inflammatory, depending on your point of view. A forum moderator decided it was ban-worthy, though, and banned the user from the forums. However, the moderator banned not only the forum posting privileges, but all access to EA's servers. This resulted in his copy of Dragon Age 2 to be unable to authenticate with EA's servers, preventing him from playing his legally-purchased, single-player game.

EA has since admitted this was an "error", apologized, and has made the necessary corrections to restore his access. However, it doesn't change the fact that we now know EA can disable your game, intentionally or not.

It's not bad enough that game companies want to lock down all access to a purchased copy of a game to one and only one person, even to the exclusion of other people in the same household. No, now they have the ability to block you from playing your game at all, merely for criticizing the company. (If the report is accurate, the criticism in question was really quite tame for the internet.)

Perhaps EA can be said to be following well-estabilshed precedent. Amazon.com — upon finding out copies of certain books were submitted to their Kindle store by people who didn't own the rights to sell them in the first place — remotely deleted all purchased copies from users' Kindles. In a software patent suit (which is its own kind of evil), TiVo complained that the DVRs Echostar sold to customers infringed on their patents, and a judge ordered Echostar not only to stop selling the devices, but to disable the devices already in the homes of customers. A similar case forced AOL to remove an MP3 player from their software (and push that removal down to customers via an "update") when sued by Playmedia. [source] Sony, when it learned of the (rather remote) possibility of someone using the "Other OS" feature on the PlayStation 3 console to hack the system and gain complete control of the hardware, released an "update" that removed this feature from all existing consoles.

In light of these examples, maybe EA's "accident" wasn't so bad. After all, the gamer still had their copy of the game, and there are likely hacks either in progress or already released that would let you get around the "phone home to play" requirement and let you play this purely single-player game when a connection to the mother ship is not available (either by banning, bad network connection, or EA's decision to turn off support for the game on their servers' side). However, to the honest, paying, and perhaps not incredibly tech-savvy (or at least not enough to know where to find — let alone how to make — a "don't call home" patch) customer, the result is the same. You don't buy a product you can use anymore; you buy the promise that you should be able to play the game for some "reasonable time" — a promise that can be broken at any time with no recourse.

And if that doesn't bother you, I have some promises I'd like to sell you….

Controlling the Market

The Xbox Live Marketplace is anything but a free market. I know I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. It's also extremely unfortunate. Microsoft is generally a developer-friendly company. They have released tools for developing on Microsoft platforms and systems for free, including providing a channel for independent developers to distribute and sell their content on the Xbox 360 itself. But when it comes to running the business side of things, they can be ruthless, inflexible, and anything but accommodating.

Witness a recent release of content for Left 4 Dead 1 & 2. Once again, a developer who seeks to give away its content is refused the privilege. To prove the point and drive attention to the unfairness of the whole issue, Valve announced not only the release of the DLC for free on the PC, but they put the full games up for sale on their own store for under $7 apiece. Coincidentally, $7 is the equivalent for the price that the DLC was selling on the Xbox Marketplace. Although I don't play on the PC often and even have doubts that my machine will even run the games, I decided to buy both games on Steam — voting with my wallet, as it were — and save a couple bucks in the process.

Is it any surprise that Valve negotiated to get Steam on the PS3, so they can control their own distribution?

Not only are DLC prices an issue, but the ability to distribute updates is, as well. While Microsoft cites a desire to ensure the integrity of the Xbox system as a whole (Xbox Live included), the lengthy certification process has proven a barrier to deliver even free updates. Not only has Valve commented on this, calling the system a "train wreck" that's often considered the reason Team Fortress 2 updates have been few and far between (bordering on non-existent), but other developers are suffering.

Developer Uber Entertainment released a game for the Xbox Live Arcade this summer, Monday Night Combat. This game that is one part tower defense and one part class-based third-person shooter is what Uber considers a "service based model of a game", meaning they intend to continuously update the game to balance classes and fix exploits, and do so quickly. However, their most recent title update was submitted to Microsoft, where it languished in certification and the deployment queue for over a month, before Microsoft decided it was fit to release.

In news that should surprise no one, the game Samurai Warriors 2 — which I picked up for myself $6 over a year ago — still has the extra character pack available on the Xbox Marketplace at its original price of $30 worth of Microsoft Points. I only bring it up now, though, because I can finally say that the copy I borrowed from FireMedic41 over two years ago, I finally returned this fall.

EA not learning from Ubisoft's mistakes

It wasn't that long ago that I was writing about Ubisoft's abysmal DRM scheme, that makes their games unplayable if your internet connection isn't perfect (or if their servers go down). Well, it seems EA isn't learning from that mistake, as Command and Conquer 4 suffers from the same problems, where a hiccup in a network connection in a single-player game causes an expulsion of the game (and associated progress loss).

What is amazing to me is how the EA blogger that broke this news then goes on to justify this, by saying it's not fair to call it a "single-player game" since it's constantly uploading stats and downloading unlocks.

Excuse me? It's not fair to call a game that you play by yourself a "single-player game"? Oh, he thinks we should call it an online-only game, "which it basically is". Yeah, it basically is because of the obnoxious DRM installed with the game.

Oh, but wait. EA has a perfectly logical explanation: It's not DRM. See, it's a service. You can install the game on multiple computers, create multiple "Commander Personas" (save files?), play the same save from any computer, and even run the game without the game disc.

Really? Funny, I can do all of that with, say, Diablo 2 (well, with a "nocd" hack to play without the disc). If I want to play my saved game on another computer, I can copy the save files on a USB stick. No internet connection required.

Yes, EA. If you require me to connect to your server to play the game, that is DRM. You do get points for adding features to the service, but the service is still DRM. You can't just redefine it away.

Ubisoft proves piracy pays

Computer software publishers have a problem. Ideally, they want to get as many people as possible to be able to purchase, use, and enjoy their software. But, because a computer program is a set of digital instructions that can theoretically be copied indefinitely, they want to ensure that the only people who are using said software are those who have paid for a legitimate copy and not just copied the bits.

As time and technology have moved on, companies have tried more and more aggressive methods of protecting their product to try and prevent people from using an unpaid copy of their programs; and those who circumvent those methods, the "pirates", have become more adept at defeating those methods and distributing the fruits of their labors, i.e., free, unprotected versions of the software.

Where I've noticed it a lot lately, since it's my hobby, is in the realm of videogames. EA had been taking a lot of bad press for implementing what were seen at the time as tight restrictions, limiting the number of installations and requiring their games to re-authenticate with an online server every few days before allowing any play. Other companies have had their own DRM schemes that people seem to alternately complain about and accept as the cost of doing business, whether it's the "stealth" install of device drivers like SecuROM that try to authenticate your disc or the requirement of logging in to an online-enabled account.

The current bad boy of DRM, though, is Ubisoft, who has one-upped the DRM policy on their newest game Assassin's Creed 2 by having the game require authentication with their servers not just on installation, nor periodically at launch, but continuously during game play. If the game at any time loses its connection to the server, it immediately kicks the player back to the main menu, causing the player to lose any in-game progress since their last save (a problem exacerbated by the fact that the game apparently doesn't allow you to save at any point, just at designated checkpoints).

Even the most cursory analysis reveals several fatal flaws in this approach. First, requiring an internet connection at all means taking this game traveling (or attempting to use in a home without an "always-on" broadband connection) is pretty much out. Second, home internet services are not 100% stable. I've had my Comcast cable internet connection drop during an online gaming session within the past month — briefly, but long enough to kick me out of the Xbox 360 gaming session I was playing at the time. Third, users on a wireless connection are even more prone to interference that can disrupt their connection. Again, I've had my wireless router hiccup more than once in recent memory. My PC doesn't usually take too long to reconnect before I'm surfing off to the next web page, but if I happen to be streaming a video at the time, then restarting is typical. That's an extremely minor annoyance in web surfing; but if it meant losing progress in a challenging videogame where I've struggled to reach the next checkpoint? That goes way beyond "annoying" and well into "return game for refund" territory.

That alone should cause people to hold a tea party in protest. (Keep in mind that this is a single player game, something one would rather expect to play offline.) But those issues only address the customer's side of the connection.

This weekend, Ubisoft's DRM servers went down, which meant, no matter how stable your own internet connection was, the game was completely unplayable. No one who owned the game was able to actually play it, because the game couldn't contact Ubisoft's incommunicado servers.

Except, of course, if you pirated it. See, the DRM, much like any other DRM in existence, was cracked within days of the game's release. (Most of the time, it's just a question of whether the crack is going to be released after or before the game itself.) And those who pirated the game were playing a version that did not require contact with Ubisoft, and therefore were completely unaffected by this fiasco. (More or less; the crack is still in progress in that a user can launch a game without the server, but there are still issues when the game attempts to check during play. It appears to be more of an issue with Assassin's Creed 2 than with Silent Hunter 5, which has a similar scheme but "phones home" less frequently.)

The problem, which has been noted time and time again and is summed up nicely in this recent Penny Arcade comic, is that companies like EA and Ubisoft attempt to combat piracy by implementing stronger measures to force the software to only work when they want it to. However, these stronger measures not only completely fail to deter pirates (who often have a cracked version of the same software within the same week of the product's retail release), but they also drive potential paying customers away — frustrated by these "piracy protection" measures that effectively prevent them from playing the game they legally purchased, they will either not buy the software, or they will seek out the pirated versions themselves, which offer a superior product by not failing to work when some irrelevant criteria check fails to pass. The companies take this increase in piracy as a call to action to combat it with even stronger DRM measures, pushing more people to piracy to avoid them.

And sadly, it's the law-abiding, paying customers that lose.

You don't buy DLC, you rent it

It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when I wrote about games disappearing off the Live service. It seemed not to make much of a ripple on the internet, as they were "just" a handful of arcade games that no one seemed to care about. I wondered then what it would take to stir up enough anger that people might actually start to care about digital distribution, how it takes away their rights and privileges, turning "buying" into "leasing" under terms that only the network owner controls and can change at any time "for the good of the service".

On Friday, Xbox Live's Major Nelson dropped a bombshell, announcing on his blog that Microsoft was discontinuing Xbox Live support for all Xbox 1 consoles and games. Officially, it's so they can evolve the Live service without being restricted by features the original games couldn't support. It still seems to me they should've been able to work around this, by versioning the service and system calls. Windows has been doing this for decades, after all, where the same API behaves differently depending on how it's being called. But then, it's been theorized that Windows's instability is partially a result of its attempt to support old software as well as new, so I don't fault them for wanting to shrug off the old to move forward. I still question whether it's entirely necessary. Necessary or not, though, it's the move they're making.

Last month, I wrote about the problem with dedicated servers, and how games that rely on those servers become useless online when (not if) the companies that run them give up support. I mentioned that games that don't do that benefit from the fact that Xbox Live uses peer-to-peer and can continue to be played online indefinitely. Unfortunately, Microsoft just negated that argument. The Xbox Live service was responsible for matching those peers, and now, even without a dedicated server reliance, all games are going to be useless online. Sure, LAN will still work (which means certain LAN-tunneling programs like Xlink Kai or XBConnect can be used to emulate the service), but it's not quite the same.

But wait, there's more — or rather, less! Microsoft, being the forward-thinking company they are, decided to get a head start on the end-of-life process and pulled all the Xbox 1 content from their servers immediately. That means any downloadable content, such as the maps for Halo 2, was no longer available. As you can imagine, this greatly interfered with Bungie's suggestion to play a few rounds of Halo 2 for "old time's sake" before support goes away, as all the matchmaking playlists require all the maps (they're all free at this point, after all). See, users who don't have them available, because they've either deleted them to make room on their hard drives for "current" content, or they've replaced their consoles sometime (the maps are bound to the console when installed and won't play on another console without re-downloading/reinstalling), can't get them. Now, Bungie happens to have enough "pull" with Microsoft that they've talked Microsoft into granting an "exception" and putting Halo 2 maps back online, which is great for them, but not so much for people who might want one last crack at an online romp through, say, Crimson Skies.

Where I hope this makes people very angry, is that the Halo 2 maps were not always free. When they were first released, they were at a price; which means people paid real money for this content. In a couple months, it will no longer be available. (Other games had for-pay content as well, but Halo 2 is the best-known and still the most-played original Xbox game, and the one most likely to stir up a fuss.) So, content that people have paid for, on a game that people still play (either because they haven't upgraded to a 360 — and I do know someone who hasn't — or because they happen to think Halo 2 is a good game, and it happens to be playable on the 360), a game whose name has been practically synonymous with the word "Xbox" since its launch, is going to be taken away.

Is it enough for people to get mad about yet? Will we stop hearing the chant, "The disc is dead! Long live DLC!" Or is it "ok" because Halo 2 is such an old game; that people have "played enough" that they don't "need" that content anymore; that sure, it was a rental, but it was for a "long enough" term that it doesn't matter; and there "aren't enough" people affected to "worry about"? (And did I use enough "scare quotes" to accurately convey my "opinion" on "that"?)

Download now, play next week!

Interesting DRM-related goings on in the PC world. The distribution network Steam is offering the ability to not only pre-order games, but pre-download them as well. Since downloading a full game is not an instantaneous process (and is expected to be even worse on a big game's release date), you can download the code early, but be locked out of play until you are able to activate your copy with their server, on the game's actual release date.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, as far as it goes. They have enabled that for the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2, and they also had it available for the much-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, whose official release date was Tuesday of this week.

Although the official retail release date was Tuesday, some retailers started selling copies early (which was quickly and "unofficially" copied by GameStop in those areas). So, if you elected to buy a physical game disc instead of the "convenience" of a digital download, there's a chance you could've been playing it early.

Wait, it gets better. When the official retail release date rolled around and people lined up outside retail stores to buy their shiny discs, those who bought the "convenient" digital copy found that it did not activate when midnight changed Monday into Tuesday. In fact, the digital copy would not unlock until Thursday, a full two days later. There was some more confusion as the unlock date was pushed even further out until Friday, but it seems to have been pulled back now to Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, people who bought their shiny discs will have had their fully functional copies for over a day and a half (assuming no issues with DRM).

Wow. So, apparently, in the digital download future, we can not only buy games that we don't own, can't resell, rent, or trade, may not be able to back up and will lose at some uncertain point in the future, but now you can download games and not even get to play them!

I'm sorry, how exactly is this a good thing? Oh right, the publishers directly get your money, whether you get to play the game or not; so it's good for them.

Wait... That's not really progress...

If you buy a piece of content, such as an Arcade game, off of the Xbox Live Marketplace, it is tied to two pieces of information: the gamertag that made the purchase, and the console on which that purchase was initially downloaded. Those two bits of information are encoded in a "license". That license is generated and stored on Microsoft's servers, and a copy is stored with the content (possibly encoded within the file itself, maybe in a separate file; its exact location isn't important).

When you go to access this piece of content (i.e. play the game, or select the downloaded map from the in-game menu, or watch the video, or whatever the "content" is), the console reads the license and checks to see if either of two conditions are true:

• 1) Is the gamertag in the license currently signed in and connected to Xbox Live?
• 2) Is this console the same console as the one in the license?

(note that a valid, active connection to Xbox Live is required to validate condition 1)

If you have, or have ever had, more than one console (either you own more than one, or you've replaced it via a store warranty instead of a Microsoft repair), you may have purchased content on multiple consoles, and so you have licenses that have different consoles stored in them. If you are the only game player in your household, this might not be a problem, as no matter where you are, you will always validate against condition 1 and be able to play your content (as long as your internet connection is active and Xbox Live isn't down).

However, if your internet connection goes down, or you have other family members in your household, you may find that some of your legally purchased content doesn't work right — either it's unavailable, or it only lets you play in "trial" mode. This is because condition 1 can't pass (either you aren't logged in when your family/housemates are, or you are unable to log in), nor can condition 2 (it was initially downloaded to some other console).

To mitigate this, Microsoft created the "License Transfer Tool", which lets you transfer all your licenses' console registrations to the same console. Using the tool, you can move everything to your new/current console, updating the console ID stored in the licenses on Microsoft's servers. To update the copy of the license on your actual console, you have to re-download each piece of content individually — however, when you select to re-download a piece of content you already have, your console just updates its copy of the license, which is a very quick download. It's still tedious if you have a lot of content to re-download, since you have to do it one at a time, but at least each download itself is typically less than 15 seconds.

Finding all your content used to be a royal pain in the neck. You could go into your Xbox dashboard and page through your download history, but, since everything (every preview video, every game demo, every seemingly inconsequential bit) is stored there, it was tedious to page through and find it all and download it all one-by-one from the console.

Now, the last page of the transfer tool on the web has a link to your download history, and you can add items to your queue straight from there. Each piece of content is labeled with what it is (demo, video, arcade game, add-on pack), making it much easier to tell at a glance whether it's something that needs to be queued, and an "add to queue" button is right there on the list. The queue is still limited (to a couple dozen items), but if your Xbox is on and signed in while you do this, it will be downloading the licenses faster than you can fill the queue.

Note that Microsoft insists this is not for everyday use, for moving content back and forth between consoles at-will. To enforce this, they only allow the tool to be used once every 12 months.

I had been resisting doing all of this for a while, but my kids were bumping up against some arcade games that were showing up as trials again recently, and I decided to bite the bullet and do it (again; I had done it once before, the harder way, well over a year ago), and I marveled at the improvements in the process. Now they can play all the games I've downloaded.

Sounds nice and easy, right?

Well, it occurs to me that, with every Xbox I've gone through (I think I'm on #5 now), and with some licenses that have transferred and some that haven't, whether I've used this tool or not, the vast majority of my games have not had any issues whatsoever going from Xbox to Xbox.

Why? Because they're on disc.

While they did make the license transfer tool much easier, it's still many, many, many times harder than it should be. Why can't you move your Xbox Live Arcade game to another console and let another gamertag play it? For that matter, why can't you take a game to a console that's not connected to the internet? There's nothing stopping you from doing that with a disc.

Maybe they did make a bad situation better, but it's still a very bad situation.

Used game sales fuel new game sales

Here's an interesting tidbit. According to this article, Game Crazy noticed that a not-insignificant percentage of new game sales were paid for by trade-in dollars. While publishers whine and cry over used game sales hurting their bottom line and doing everything they can to stop it, here's a data point that shows that because people are free to sell back their used games, they then have the money to go buy a new game.

Granted, this is coming from a store that deals in used game sales, so they have a bias in putting out information that favors their business model. Still, facts are facts. I know people who do this very thing, trade in several games and buy a new game with the proceeds. I couldn't guess the percentage, but it's still interesting to add to the discussion.

The whining from the publishers, of course, is based on a faulty premise that is often applied to piracy (in fact, I contend a lot of anti-used measures are implemented under the guise of cracking down on piracy), that every used game sale (or pirated game) is a lost retail sale. In a way, it's saying just because some people were willing to spend [some lower price X] on a used copy of the game, the same people would've been just as willing to spend [higher amount Y] on the exact same game, new. It's absurd. Why not extend that to say if they were willing to spend [Y], they'll be willing to spend [even higher amount Z], and start charging $150 per game?

Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft continue to show they just don't get it. In their quest to eliminate used game sales and gain complete control over distribution and the market itself, they continue to show they just can't compete. Microsoft continues to release games via its "Games on Demand" service at price points higher than retail, and Sony just announced that they have abandoned any plans to let users trade in their disc-based games for digital copies for their new drive-less handheld, the PSP-Go.

"Digital distribution is the future," goes the common refrain in public forums on the topic. So it would seem, the future involves getting less product (no disc, no manual) for a limited time (many, many stories of games getting lost in hardware shuffles) with less rights (can't rent, loan, trade, return, or re-sell) for more cost. Where, exactly, is the progress here?

I demand my Games On Disc

Microsoft is rolling out an update to the dashboard, and included in this update is the launch of a new service, called "Games On Demand". It replaces the Xbox Originals program that was available, where you could buy some Xbox 1 games, download them to your hard drive as if they were a (multi-gigabyte) Xbox Arcade game, and play — in fact, all the Xbox Originals games are being moved to this Games On Demand service. What's new is, they are also adding Xbox 360 games to this service. (They are also allowing direct purchases of these games, in real dollar amounts, using a credit card, instead of requiring the purchase of Microsoft Points first.)

It's probably not hard to guess what my opinion of this service is, considering I've complained about trading out physical discs for digital downloads on more than one occasion. Whereas some might find this "convenient" or a "sign of the future" that they can just download and go, I find it a sad harbinger of the further removal of our rights as customers. So far, the games they are releasing on Games On Demand are older games, not current releases, so the level of scrutiny will be a little lower. But I have to wonder how many times it will take for someone to wait several hours for a full DVD to download (when they could have driven to the store, bought it, and returned home in less time, probably — in any case, it certainly won't be quite "on demand", especially compared to, say, Netflix, which goes from "click" to "play" in under a minute) before they give up on the service. How many will find themselves unable to play a retail game when their internet connection drops, because their license information got screwed up in the last repair. How many will suddenly realize they can't trade in this older game. How many will complain when the first bit of retail content is removed from Microsoft's servers due to a licensing issue, and that retail game they bought is no longer available. When will the majority of the consumers realize that this "iTunes model" of digital content is no good here?

I may not have to worry. It looks like Microsoft is trying very hard to shoot this program in its own foot. Gaming blogs are already noticing that the games are way overpriced, compared with the open market on the same games on disc. (They haven't yet reported on the connection, though, that the prices are perfectly inline with their other annoying fact, that the DLC for these games is still on Marketplace, still at its original price.)

Microsoft also continues to provide way undersized and overpriced storage solutions. $150 for 120GB of storage? You can buy hard drives measuring two TERABYTES in size for two thirds the cost. So, users will be more inclined to keep their old 60GB and 20GB hard drives; and if they don't have the disk space for a digital download, it won't happen.

DLC - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

One of the arguments in favor of digital distribution is that you don't have to keep track of a physical medium. There's no disc to lose or get damaged. However, the digital copy is stored on a physical storage device — typically, a magnetic high density storage device ("hard drive" for you laymen). In some cases, you have the option to make a backup to a CD or some other storage medium (which brings you right back to the "disc to lose"), but otherwise, you're at the mercy of the selling company and its continued existence, and any promise they might have of letting you re-download a game you purchased.

One of Xbox Live Arcade's selling points has been that you can do just that — re-download anything you've ever bought at any time. It's one of the reasons they've insisted you don't need anything larger than a 20GB (or 60GB or 120GB) hard drive, because you can always delete something and re-download it later for no charge.

For the most part, that's true. And that may still be Microsoft's intent. But you know what they say about intentions — the road to hell is paved with them.

First, Yaris disappeared. Understandably, no one got very upset. Not only was it a horrible game, it was also free, so no money was lost.

Then went Lost Cities, and now go Double Dragon and SpeedBall 2. These are games people are actually paying for, and now, due to expiring licensing deals or other corporate politics, they are gone. The "delete and re-download" promise is broken. If you don't have a memory card or an unsupported device for extracting (and later re-writing) data for your storage device, you can't make a backup onto a PC or a CD-ROM or other offline storage. Even worse, if your console is repaired or replaced, you can't use the license transfer tool and re-download licenses for content that no longer exists, meaning the one copy you hopefully still have is only good for that one gamertag to play while connected to Live, until that copy fails and/or that account is suspended or terminated. Then, that's it, it's gone forever.

So to what high-profile Arcade game does this need to happen before people take notice? What if Namco Bandai went into bankruptcy or its IP was purchased by another company, which forced its titles, including Pac-Man C.E., to get delisted from the Xbox Live Arcade?

At least in that case, I'd be safe. I could still play it. I have it on the Namco Museum Virtual Arcade. It's a shiny disc that I can put into any Xbox 360 at any time, online or offline, and play it signed in under any account.

You want how much for that?

Nearly a year ago, in my rant on digital downloads, I mentioned that part of my fear would be that, with the single entity in total control of the market, there would be no market pressure to decrease prices, and as such, prices would not decay over time.

It's time to throw another example onto the stack. After having borrowed Samurai Warriors 2 from FireMedic a year ago, I finally got a copy of my own (my kids still play and love this game). I managed to find a copy on eBay for a very reasonable $5.50 — a quick search just a moment ago show the prices tend to range from about $15 and up for new, sealed copies, and two "Like New" going for $17 and $30. Doesn't seem like an unreasonable price for a game released in September of 2006. Mass Effect, for reference, became a Platinum Hits release at $20 at the beginning of this year, and it was released in November of '07.

On 16 April of last year, the Live Marketplace launched the Xtreme Legends add-on. It adds a few extra characters and stories, but its price was a little steep at 2400 Microsoft Points — $30 for those playing along at home. I'm not sure how much the original game was going for at that time, but my guess is, being almost a year and a half after its release, it wasn't anywhere near a full $60.

If you've followed the link to the Xtreme Legends content above, you'll see that it is, at the time of this writing, still on Marketplace at its original $30 price tag. You can currently get a new, sealed copy of the game for half that cost. You can get new, sealed copies of better-selling, more recent games for less than that cost.

It only proves my point that downloadable content does not depreciate.

An apologist might point to the current "Deal of the Week" promotion (where they offer a piece of DLC for a deal each week this summer) as a counter-example. I say, it means nothing. For one thing, the "Deal of the Week" is for Gold members only, so it's partially subsidized by Live membership fees. For another, this price drop is temporary — in each case, the price goes back up to its original cost after the week is over. And for a third, the sale item is generally one of their more popular items, rather than a slower-selling item for which a price drop would really benefit.

I don't know if the person selling me this game bought the DLC or not, but of course it doesn't matter, because as we all know, you can't resell DLC, either.

Nice game you're downloading; shame if something were to happen to it...

I've ranted against the move from physical to downloadable distribution before. It's still a subject that I get very passionate about. I've avoided blogging about it, though, because otherwise I'd turn this into one big "SAVE THE DISCS" blog, and I'd much rather talk about games than stupid stupid marketing decisions, but I came across something that really got my blood boiling again.

This Ars Technica article describes an experience attempting to buy the infamously-DRM-riddled game Spore in downloadable form. In a nutshell, when you purchase and download the game, they maintain a record of this transaction and allow you to redownload the game for reinstallation at any time — for six months. You are given the option to extend this "protection" interval to two years for the price of $6.99. After that (with no option to backup the installation files to a CD), it is gone forever.

As the author points out, this means if you intend on getting a new computer beyond two years from the date of the game's purchase, or if your hard drive ever crashes and needs replacing, you're out of luck as far as the game is concerned.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Digital distribution has never been about customers' "convenience"; it is and has always been about control — seizing control of the distribution, sale, and after-sale. They eliminate manufacturers and shippers and the money paid to them, they eliminate retailers and their cut of the profits, and they eliminate the customers' ability to re-sell their used games on any market. They also eliminate borrowing and renting from the equation (unless people start getting in the habit of lending out their whole PC). Every player of the game must play an individually-purchased copy, with 100% of the profits coming right back to the publisher/distributor (with the savings passed on to their executives' bonuses). Any additional restrictions that might cause a person to have to pay for the same game twice is just icing on that cake.

Downloadable Content and Forwards-Compatibility

It's just been revealed that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith won't support GH3 DLC. While I think that's a bad move, because it makes GH:A just a niche side-product, it got me thinking (a dangerous pasttime, I know).

We're starting to see the potential of DLC, how it can extend the life and interest of games for a long time. I think EA/Harmonix is the poster child for this. While I may not be interested in what they offer every week in Rock Band, I do keep an eye out to see what they are offering each week.

But how long should we expect this extra investment to carry? Is it reasonable to expect DLC to be forwards-compatible with future versions of the product? (Or new versions to be backwards-compatible with the DLC, however you want to look at it.)

I've seen the comment made (by myself included) that current Rock Band DLC should be compatible with Rock Band 2. But it could be impossible, depending on how different RB2 is from RB1. Just hypothetically speaking, if RB2, say, added a fifth instrument, and you had a five-person band, what would happen if you tried to play a set that included a RB1 song, which only has four instruments? Force one band member to sit out? Unless they re-encode all DLC to be RB2-compatible by adding the fifth instrument, it would be pretty pointless; and that's a lot of work I don't see any company willing to do for free for existing content.

Additionally, why would DLC for a specific game be treated any differently than the included content for that same game? Sure, if the content isn't compatible, I'm going to miss playing Boston's "More Than a Feeling" in RB2, but I'll also miss playing "Foreplay/Long Time". What would I reasonably expect Harmonix to do about that? They'd have to distribute all the RB1 content on the RB2 disc with all the new content, provide some way to hot-swap discs (or use the HD-DVD player to load both discs at once), install the RB1 content to the hard drive, or release the RB1 content as DLC — and that's assuming the content would even be compatible with whatever RB2 does.

I can see why Activision/Neversoft is getting a lot of flak about GH:A, seeing as how what they're releasing is essentially a content pack for an existing game (GH:A hasn't been advertising any big features or innovations over GH3). If Rock Band 2 turns out to be Rock Band 1.5 and has the same lack of compatibility, they'll deserve a lot of heat, too.

I think the reason that some of us hope for more is because the content is a little more personal. This is music many of us have grown up with and enjoyed, to which we have an emotional attachment. Having a chance to actually (pretend to) play those songs we used to just listen to is something we're hesitant to let go of.

But if Rock Band 2 has the innovation, I know I'll buy it. Of course, how much innovation is required to offset losing all the old songs is another question. I know of some must-haves, like online bands (although if you ask me, that should be a patch to the existing Rock Band), but I'm afraid that's more of a case of "I'll know it when I see it".