As PlayStation and Xbox move toward a more digital future, Nintendo could become the last major platform where physical games still truly matter.
As PlayStation and Xbox move toward a more digital future, Nintendo could become the last major platform where physical games still truly matter.
Yeah right. Nintendo was the one who came up with “virtual game key cards.”
Xbox and Playstation were already making discs that purely just triggered a download long before Nintendo. Nintendo just made this explicit, which is at least commendable.
Virtual Game Key Cards are actually better than digital in most ways. Rather than the game code being tied to your account, it’s tied to the card. So you can still easily sell or lend it. It also does not require a Nintendo account to use (if that matters), just an internet connection.
For now. The problem is the mechanism exists to pull it back without your consent. If the download isn’t hosted anymore, or they start binding keycodes to accounts, you’re SOL.
Don’t build in the mechanism at all. Give us the full drm free files on physical media. The community will do the rest because we can’t trust corporations to preserve their history or respect their devs time and efforts when they could sell it to you again after they pull it from your library or remove the download hosts/store servers.
Yeah, but many modern games only work after a day 1 patch anyway, so what’s on the disc won’t count for much. Not to mention you still need a working console, and those stop being sold long before digital storefronts are closed.
I don’t think DRM free is realistic either, piracy is just too big of a problem on the release of a new game. Eventually the cracks will arrive, but that window before is important for making a profit. Most consumers are as amoral as corporations. They don’t care about who makes what they are using, nor do they care about the ethics behind where they got it from.
I disagree with the last points. If true, indie games would make next to nothing, but that hasn’t been the case. In most cases, those of us who choose to pirate, it’s often because price locks us out or we eant control of our owm single player experience. Many in the pirating community will buy a game that they believe to be worth the cost.
Games that include free demos are often much less pirated.
If you build something from passion and heart it gets pirated much less than something looking to solely make a profit. Pirating is a policy problem more than a theft problem.
Perhaps chasing profit isn’t the path forward. And if DRM free didn’t work, I’d imagine GOG wouldn’t be viable as a business at all. One person could purchase a game and host it for free for anyone. People choose to instead support developers anyway when they beleive the game is worth it.
Basically, don’t choose authoritarianism and profit. Choose passion and vision and giving back.
The vast majority of indie games make nothing. The price locking you out isn’t really a valid argument. If the developer lives in an expensive place and needs to charge X to break even, then that’s what they need to do to have a commercially viable product.
New games on GOG often have DRM, because it’s the only way they can compete with Steam.
I hardly see DRM as authoritarianism. No one compels you to play a game, its a luxury. Games are products and need to turn a profit so their creators can eat and create new games.
Until Nintendo inevitably shuts down the switch 2 eShop in the future
Yes. It allows selling and trading for however long the eshop is up. Bad that it has a time limit, but better than not having the option at all. Once they announce its shutdown collectors can buy the (presumably) cheap game key cards to install the games on their consoles. Hope they have a lot of microsd express cards!