@tommygun6644 Well Unreal Tournament is what launched his career. That was a very awesome FPS that went head to head against Quake 3 and came out on top in my opinion. I always enjoyed how he kept in touch with gamers, posted on forums, played on line. Cliffy had a visible role to play and he filled it well. Besides he is a talented developer. You don't deliver stuff like Gears and UT by chance or luck. I would expect him to be an asset wherever he goes.

@BahamutZERO @SecularSage MS or Sony will store most of your purchased games on their servers. You only install the games you are actually playing and uninstall those you are finished with. That 's how Steam works.

@RustedTruck650 @Poordevil Right, reselling your games will be out. Once you buy a game it will be yours for good. That much is for sure. But you will be able to get games at less that full retail price. Especially older games, meaning not newly released but months or weeks old. Prices and price drops would depend largely on how well a game itself sells.

I don't see why MS or Sony would lock out older games. They would sell them new at discount prices. There is no way every game would sell for the same price as a newly released title. That would be unreasonable even for MS or Sony. There would be sales on older titles and cheaper games available just like we have on Steam. But they will have the games market corralled for their consoles, which is what they are going for. How many times have we heard, it's the software not the hardware where the console money is made? That they sell the hardware at a loss and make it up in software sales. Having control of game sales is key for them in order to maximize profit.

@Alecmrhand I don't suppose imposing the policy all at once would fly, but I do believe Sony and MS love the idea of selling all the titles on their consoles digitally from their respective online stores. Steam has shown how profitable it can be and MS and Sony are all about increasing profit, that is their prime directive. The stage is already set. The way the consoles go online and you buy games and DL to your console's hard drive. Where else can this be leading other than selling all games online and locking out strays? Call me crazy, but that is how I perceive things to be heading.

@flamingboard @Poordevil I wasn't meaning to post on how the pricing would be handled, only to put out my idea as how this 'no used game' policy could work. I was pointing out how digital only saves THEM money not us. There are some obstacles like needing to be online and having a decent broadband connection. But that is really all. I think this is where Sony and MS are headed. I don't think it is a rumor, I think this policy is on the way. Steam has shown that digital only will work and that it generates mega sales. You don't think Sony and MS see that as a good thing and want to get on board? The writing is on the wall.

The way this will work is all games being sold digitally. No more hard copies. You buy exclusively on line from the Xbox or Playstation store. Hard copies are a major expense. No more dics, no more dvd cases or paper manuals, no shipping and handling and distribution to outlet stores. All that is eliminated and we just buy direct from Sony or MS by downloading our games to our console hard drive.

Not being able to buy used games does not mean that we will have to pay full price for new ones, or that older games will disappear. The price for a newly released game will drop quickly unless it is selling like hotcakes, and older games will be available at discount prices. If they do go through with this "no used games" crap I will just wait until prices drop to something reasonable, like $30 or cheaper. Steam sells games cheap all the time, you just have to be willing to wait for a sale. There is no way they can sell every game for full price, they won't be able to move enough copies. There will be sales on all games and price drops on newly released games that don't sell well.

Alex St. John one of the pioneers of Direct X predicted this long console generation back in 2008. " And the thing that's interesting in this era, that I think is significant, is that Sony and Microsoft severely overextended themselves. Burned themselves. Burned more money than they could ever hope to get back on these consoles. Even if the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are wild successes, they will never get their money back. Billions of dollars. Billions of dollars. And, to say that they will have—for one, to say that they will be eager to do that to themselves anytime soon, is highly improbable, which means that this generation of consoles could be in the market as the only generation of consoles available for a very long time. "

His opinion about games being art mirror mine exactly. First "art" has to be defined. Then if the definition is broad enough to include media such as movies, music, comics, or maybe even custom cars that have been sculpted and painted for show, then yea, games can be recognized as potentially an art form. I think some developers, especially big name developers, will shy away from declaring games an art form because it puts them on the spot. It could be erringly reported that Udea considers himself an artist, and whenever he builds a game he considers it to be a work of art. Hideo was asked the same question a few years back and he was unequivocal in his denying that games were or could be an art form. He wasn't interested in being held to that high of a standard. Who can blame him?