I think post-scarcity sales - anything easily and almost-freely reproducible like digital content - defy the very concept and meaning of ownership - we're talking about transactions with limited demand and infinite supply. But, yeah, I can only assume we'll see deep sales from publishers like we do on Steam once they…

That's how capitalism works in a post-scarcity environment - you can't really compare it to non-digital goods. Console games will become cheaper without used games, just like PC games did.

The upside is that there won't be pressure from MS on devs to incorporate Kinect support to move camera units since they will have already reached everyone - that should mean it's less gimmicky and used for games where it makes sense. That said, the original Kinect was a trainwreck of uselessness and I have no…

Clearly, the next generation is going to be much more download-oriented than this one - that's why people are comparing it to Steam. We should all be expecting disc-drive-less 'slim' models halfway through the next console cycle. And, yes, America has a lot of areas with poor high-speed saturation, but they also have…

I cannot fathom how anyone can claim a higher level of music appreciation and stomach the utter dreck that is The Logical Song. And Oasis were pretty unremarkable.

Those bands all suck, sure, but they don't suck remotely as much as freaking Supertramp.

But they have XBL sales all the time, and an on-sale section that changes weekly. That, and publishers would be more likely to support sales if they weren't undercutting the remaining 'new' copies at the retail store - that's how they can do it on Steam.

They would be if publishers weren't dependent on first-month sales of games before the used market overwhelmed them.

I'm assuming you gave your uncle the Eye of the Beholder manual so he could get around it's look-up-a-word copy protection scheme? DRM has been a part of gaming for decades.

Calling it "blatantly anticonsumer practices such as used-game blocking" is a pretty ridiculous, and certainly shortsighted - we've seen the PC thrive as a place for lower-cost and increasingly-eclectic games precisely because the big developers could afford to take greater risks on games that didn't have to move all…

I'm in my early 30s and I'd never even heard of them until this blurb - I looked it up out of curiosity, and the appeal of that makes zero sense to me. I have a hard time imagining something like that have the lasting cultural nostalgia of GI Joe, Transformers or TMNT and the childhood obsessions of people around my…

It seems to me that many people don't have much of a sense of the impermanence of living - maybe that's tied to youth to an extent? - but want to hang on to the things they've loved, and bristle at the thought of having that sorta-forcibly taken from them. We do a lot of things to deny our fear of death!

But how much of your life do want to spend replaying your old games?

If the consoles expect cross platform games, and they do, then you can expect cross platform DRM.

I know change is scary for everyone, but we've seen PC games thrive under Steam - reducing the power used games have over the industry is great for allowing publishers to discount games and it promotes niche genres and other 'long tail' kinds of games that aren't hinged on first month sales. The trickle of post-launch…

It's certainly in the Heroes of Might & Magic vein, but it does a lot of cool things that series never did - you could meaningfully affect the world map, for example. There is a race that gets bonuses in the snow, and one of their high-level units leaves a Path of Frost in its wake, which changes the movement and…

Obviously they will still sell $10 activation codes when you put a used game in the system. As long as they are making physical media, there will be an aftermarket.

This is the most exciting game news I've heard in forever. Awesome!!

Blackface minstrels never get enough credit for bringing blues, ragtime and gospel to a wide white audience. Yes, it was really racist, but the performers largely were huge advocates for the music they were performing, and it really set the stage for cultural cross-pollination of the early 20th century.

I have an fantasy that an intrepid secret dial-up hacker is reading this trying to figure out what the West is like and whether or not they should believe the propaganda.