We talk quite a bit about the evolution of video-gaming tech on this blog and I sometimes offer my thoughts on how I feel it's playing out. Quite recently that is a topic that has had all the air sucked out of due to the release of google Stadia, all anyone wants to talk about nowadays is 'cloud streaming' and how viable it is for the future. but I feel that there is another, much more pressing, issue to contend with when it comes to assessing the future of gaming hardware. Something that I alluded to recently, in fact, and that is the war, intentional or otherwise, on the second hand economy as waged by console developers.
Second-hand markets are huge fixtures in any economy, as they permit the resale of goods from a consumer, allow for premium items to be made affordable and, incidentally, provide jobs in this particular area of industry. For gaming, the second-hand market has been around since the beginning of the home console era; back when Video games cost $60, (they still do, but accounting for inflation, that price was a whole lot more prohibitive then it is today) the rental industry became just as important for the growth of the gaming market as retail stores themselves. Most folk couldn't afford to keep up with the exorbitant prices of the latest software and so they would rent games for a weekend, pressuring the players of the day to be as good as they can be to make the most of their money.
As gaming moved to steadily become more attainable for players, (Or, more accurately, didn't move. Inflation did the bulk of the work.) so too did the second-hand market move from 'rentals' to 'buying the game preowned.' This was made possible because of the way that video game software was shared using CD-ROMs, a piece of kit that could be feasibly reused indefinitely. Once someone was done with a game, they could sell it to a second-hand store who could then resell that game for a lower price, prolonging the value of the game. This was great for consumers, but not so much for the studios behind those games. Obviously, publishers make nothing from second hand sales and in some cases they can't even track purchases made through such retailers, for it is fully within the discretion of the retailer themselves to track and share that data. Many would just see this as a necessary consequence of selling reusable products; but when there is the potential to make money, people will find a way to bend what is into what they need it to be.
In this instance the name of the game was taking something that was inherently reusable, disc based software, and make it unreusable, forcing all sales to be made brand new. (Or driving customers to piracy. The Yang to their Yin.) One of the most notable methods for achieving this, and most contentious, was when some publishers (>cough< EA and Activision >cough<) thought it was completely acceptable to introduce an 'Online pass'. This was a service in which every copy of a game would come attached with a one-time activation code which was the only method through which players could access that title's Online content. This would mean that people who picked up the game second-hand would be locked out completely or, as was often the case, would have to buy their 'Online pass' as DLC. (Profits that would go directly to the publishers.) This caused quite the uproar as people easily saw through this transparent attempt to smother the second-hand market, and games companies were forced to scrap this method going into the future for fear of gamer backlash. And so a potential anti-consumer trend was nipped in the bud, but it wouldn't be long until another took it's place. (Thanks to Polygon for that lovely graphic below)
Recently this issue has come up again through the natural evolution of software and the way through which everything as become increasingly 'digital'. You see, nowadays one of the biggest innovations of tech that is specifically pushed by publishers and console developers is the distribution of purely downloadable games. Internet speeds and harddrives sizes have ballooned to the point where one no longer requires a disc to make everything function, and that means every single console of the modern market now boasts a digital downloadable version to accommodate for this evolution. (To be fair, the PC market has already settled on this approach for a long time now.) This is slightly more convenient for the consumer, who no longer has to shift through physical discs to play their games, and a whole heck of a lot more convenient for the publishers, as they don't have to deal with disc/case manufacturing costs and retailer fees.
This relates to the second hand market in a very obvious way, games that are directly downloaded from dedicated stores cannot be resold. On PC this isn't the case, as the concept of a 'dedicated storefront' for personal computers is redundant and therefore purchased games can be resold through their 'activaiton keys'. (Usually through Steam.) Download a game through the Microsoft, Playstation or Nintendo store, however, and you're stuck with it for life. (Unless you mange to ascertain a refund which is particularly difficult on some platforms.) The more that the industry moves towards the 'downloadable' model of gaming, the more potential business is drained from the second-hand market.
I believe that this is one of the key driving factors for one of the latest trends that we've seen popping up with home consoles, that of Disc-less entertainment systems. Whilst we have yet to see such a system materialize itself on the market, early discussions have started ever since leaks started coming regarding the development of Xbox's next console, Project Scarlett. Initial reports claimed that Scarlett would be an entirely disc-less system, thus requiring all of the games to be directly downloaded, causing some mixed opinions amidst gamers on this topic. Since then, however, it has come out that there is actually an entirely separate development effort ongoing for a second console that would be a powered-down version of Scarlett for folks to sink their teeth into: Project Lockhart. Lockhart would presumably be at a much more affordable price than Scarlett and, in recompense, would be much cheaper to produce for the developer and much more profitable, what with every title being purchased directly from them. It's not hard to see how such a concept might pick up steam with other companies in the future.
One of the big concerns for my part, when it comes to consoles like these, is figuring out just how they will work from a retro angle. Perhaps it's foolish to be thinking about how consoles like these will operate 20 years from now, but I'm the kind of guy who does like looking at how old SNES consoles run all these years after the fact. I wonder if these systems will end up becoming little more than useless paperweights once the online services for them are discontinued and everyone moves onto the next big console. I know that right now Microsoft still go out of their way to support the online features of the Xbox 360, but eventually that will become untenable for them as they develop new Netcode and some things are bound to be left behind. I'm already constantly searching the news for the day that Microsoft announce the end to 360 support, so that I can quickly buy a hardrive and snap up all those hundreds of downloaded games I still have on there. Is that going to be how things will be for project Lockhart and future consoles?
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