Isn't that their main doorbuster? How can this be a good decision? I wonder if it's more anti-theft than lack of sale? Like it's been bean-counted that they'd save more money not ordering product, than product ordered-sold-shoplifted?
Their main moneymaker is smart phones and accessories, followed by other consumer electronics. And increasingly their main customer base is businesses buying office electronics as opposed to individual customers. In other words, why would they give a shit what the plebs want?
Unfortunately, digital sales are better for game companies in every way: no money spent on manufacturing and distribution, a wealth of data on consumer behavior because they know what every single person has bought and installed on their machine, and no used game market to compete with new sales.
The problem is most of that doesn't benefit the consumer in any way. I refuse to buy digital games, because you never truly own them.
Of course modern physical discs usually just direct you to download 100 GB of updates anyway, making me wonder if there's even a game on there. But that's a different problem.
I refuse to buy digital games, because you never truly own them.
In that regard, physical and digital are really no different anymore (at least for AAAs). Doesn't matter if you can still install the game if it relies on connecting to a remote server somewhere that the company can turn off whenever they want. IMO Ubisoft has been historically the worst for that, but pretty much every major studio is doing that these days.
Working offline modes for games with single-player modes, and self-hosted servers or P2P connections for multiplayer games are something that should exist in nearly all games but are increasingly disappearing.
I feel like I need to point out from a technical perspective, you absolutely can own digital media, it's just that people are rightly noticing almost all major studios now are in favour of making you rent your game.
You're absolutely right that is technically possible to create a digital copy that you truly own. Unfortunately the courts don't treat you as owning digital content, even if it was purported to be a purchase rather than a rental.
This should have been bright letter law: courts have always ruled the clauses buried in contracts are void when they contradict The up front language that a customer should be able to take at face value. Meaning, if Amazon says you are "buying" a digital copy of a movie, the universally accepted understanding is that that means it becomes yours in perpetuity and you are also free to resell it. If their licensing agreements with the studios don't allow them to sell something in this manner, then legally they shouldn't be allowed to purport that you can "buy" the film from them. To allow otherwise is to allow Amazon to commit fraud.
I suspect the same holds true for every other digital purchase: buried in the terms somewhere is a statement that you "own" your purchase only so long as the seller wants to maintain your access.
Yes, in the TOS, but it directly contradicts the plain language verbiage regarding Amazon's offer to purchase the movie. The options presented on the product page are "rent" or "buy" not "rent" or "rent indefinitely".
Under US law, when the technical terms of a contract contradict the plain language of the purported offer, they are void. This was hashed out long before computers even existed, because you have always had swindlers that would do shit like advertise a car on a car lot and then when you sign the actual purchase contract they buried a line in there that says you're buying a Hot Wheels car for $30,000.
The court in this case erred by allowing Amazon to continue using the language "buy or purchase" on the product page as their licensing agreement never gave them the authority to sell the film in the first place. It's intentionally deceptive, as they know what they are offering you is in fact an indefinite rental.
There's nothing immoral or illegal about offering an indefinite rental, the problem is that they represented it as a purchase instead of what it really was
I refuse to buy digital games, because you never truly own them.
GoG straight up letting me download the installers seem to be me owning a game the same as I did when buying it on a physical CD(or 5) back in the day.
And if you want to get nostalgic you can even burn the installers to a CD. Come to think of it I wonder if there's a business selling fake boxes for PC games so you can put them on a shelf like back in the day. They make repros for old console games.
I bet it's part of it. That or they have to lock it up and I guess have someone to retrieve it employed if you're lucky enough to find someone. Getting tired of being light on shoplifting making it a pain in the ass to get anything. I had to track someone down to buy a $15 tool at Home Depot recently, then they have to walk to the front and watch me pay for it. Those stores policy is otherwise to help the shoplifters out the door. I might just start carrying a magnet around in my car for when I want to buy something, I think that's all it takes to defeat most of those anti theft things.
A little while ago I wanted to buy a big tv. I wanted to look at them in person so I went to best buy. There were half a dozen employees standing around the area talking. Eventually I got the attention of one, the conversation went something like this:
Employee: You need something?
Me: I was thinking about buying a huge tv
Employee: ok [Stares blankly]
Me: So uh...
Employee: [Stands in silence]
I tried several dialog options and was unable to advance through the tree. I went home and ordered the same TV online. I still have no idea how you buy something at best buy.
It's the exact same vibe as 25 years ago when I went into radio shack and they harassed me for my phone number at checkout. Best Buy is going out of business. I don't know when, but it is.
The last time I bought something from Best Buy it was an in-store pickup. It said that I should expect the order to be ready in an hour and after waiting several hours I just decided to go into the store. I immediately noticed that there were only like three people working the entire store (including the cashier) on a Saturday afternoon. An lo and behold the product that I wanted was still sitting on the shelf un-picked. So I grabbed it myself and walked out with it.
Fuck em anyway. I went in there to buy the last God of War (shit game, didn't finish), and everything was in a locked case. Even worse, I couldn't find the newly released game anywhere, and I couldn't find anyone to help me.
I left and went around the corner to Target. Finally found the game in an aisle endcap in the back of the store facing the back fucking wall. These places can't even help themselves make a sale. I used to be against digital-only games but it makes sense more and more.
So, Amazon's showroom will no longer carry the only thing I buy there. I guess I'm not surprised, as I've seen their video game shelves dwindle down to almost nothing over the last 5 years.
Their sale prices on video games and blu-rays were often cheaper than online retailers, with the added advantage that you could take it home immediately and not have to worry about it being beat to shit in shipping.
I wouldn't dream of buying a TV, appliance, or computer from them, so I guess I'll just never shop there again.
Best Buy is currently going through what Fry's Electronics went through about 10 years ago, and I don't expect their outcome to be any different/better than Fry's.
It's a shame that consumer demand for physical media has largely melted away, because streaming is not a true substitute for owning a DVD.
There's obviously issues with selection. I can't find Friday the 13th on any of the four streaming services I have access to during the month of October, for example. But more than that, the new trend of editing old content to make it comply with "modern values" or simply discontinuing publication of certain movies and books should have woken up the general populace to the value and actually owning your own copy, but it probably didn't.
True I like being able to watch my copy of The French Connection complete with Gene Hackman saying "Never trust a nigger".
Beyond that there's the simple matter that bit rates and audio/video quality of a Blu Ray are way higher than you'd get from a streaming service. Earlier this year I ripped all my Blu Rays to my media server, and even a 1080p Blu Ray movie is on the order of 30 Mbit/sec and takes about 30 GB of storage. Because the incentives on the Blu Ray ("we have the space on the disc; might as well use it") are completely different than that of a streaming service ("we're paying for all this bandwidth, so it just has to be 'good enough'")
Honestly, a large part of that is the industry's fault for the prices they charge.
Like, the dollar value of a movie is absurd to buy it. One of the worst dollar per hour ratios for entertainment you can ask for, often higher than even the theater which has "the experience" on top of just the movie.
And if you want to buy boxsets of shows, well good luck because a random season of a long running show will still charge you a number that makes it impossible to "collect" all of the seasons. Even if you try, by the time you get close they will change styles and it won't match and will drive you insane.
I'd outright have wall to wall collections of physical media, but that would basically eat my entire income just to own the handful of seasons of Family Guy or Tosh.0 I care to watch.
Last time I went to a Best Buy it was filthy and two registers total were open on a Saturday. They’re circling the drain like Sears and Circuit city did.
Not surprising.
People just want the convenience of streaming. No fragile discs or external storage worries, no finicky media players with separate remotes and no extra wires. Just pay the monthly fees to play current thing and own nothing but the television phone.
I believe a recent ad campaign showed people designing/installing home media systems for customers. In a product market seemingly designed for quick obsoletion, that's probably a decent business plan.
Isn't that their main doorbuster? How can this be a good decision? I wonder if it's more anti-theft than lack of sale? Like it's been bean-counted that they'd save more money not ordering product, than product ordered-sold-shoplifted?
Or, it's just one step closer to commie land.
Their main moneymaker is smart phones and accessories, followed by other consumer electronics. And increasingly their main customer base is businesses buying office electronics as opposed to individual customers. In other words, why would they give a shit what the plebs want?
Unfortunately, digital sales are better for game companies in every way: no money spent on manufacturing and distribution, a wealth of data on consumer behavior because they know what every single person has bought and installed on their machine, and no used game market to compete with new sales.
The problem is most of that doesn't benefit the consumer in any way. I refuse to buy digital games, because you never truly own them.
Of course modern physical discs usually just direct you to download 100 GB of updates anyway, making me wonder if there's even a game on there. But that's a different problem.
In that regard, physical and digital are really no different anymore (at least for AAAs). Doesn't matter if you can still install the game if it relies on connecting to a remote server somewhere that the company can turn off whenever they want. IMO Ubisoft has been historically the worst for that, but pretty much every major studio is doing that these days.
Working offline modes for games with single-player modes, and self-hosted servers or P2P connections for multiplayer games are something that should exist in nearly all games but are increasingly disappearing.
You're absolutely right that is technically possible to create a digital copy that you truly own. Unfortunately the courts don't treat you as owning digital content, even if it was purported to be a purchase rather than a rental.
In this CA case, the court ruled in favor of Amazon because buried in their terms of service it says you don't really own your purchase, even though the website clearly makes the distinction between buying and renting a movie and it doesn't say anywhere that anyone would actually read that "buy" means something other than its common usage: https://www.askthelawyers.com/read-article/lawsuit-confirms-that-customers-dont-own-movies-purchased-on-amazon-prime
This should have been bright letter law: courts have always ruled the clauses buried in contracts are void when they contradict The up front language that a customer should be able to take at face value. Meaning, if Amazon says you are "buying" a digital copy of a movie, the universally accepted understanding is that that means it becomes yours in perpetuity and you are also free to resell it. If their licensing agreements with the studios don't allow them to sell something in this manner, then legally they shouldn't be allowed to purport that you can "buy" the film from them. To allow otherwise is to allow Amazon to commit fraud.
I suspect the same holds true for every other digital purchase: buried in the terms somewhere is a statement that you "own" your purchase only so long as the seller wants to maintain your access.
Yes, in the TOS, but it directly contradicts the plain language verbiage regarding Amazon's offer to purchase the movie. The options presented on the product page are "rent" or "buy" not "rent" or "rent indefinitely".
Under US law, when the technical terms of a contract contradict the plain language of the purported offer, they are void. This was hashed out long before computers even existed, because you have always had swindlers that would do shit like advertise a car on a car lot and then when you sign the actual purchase contract they buried a line in there that says you're buying a Hot Wheels car for $30,000.
The court in this case erred by allowing Amazon to continue using the language "buy or purchase" on the product page as their licensing agreement never gave them the authority to sell the film in the first place. It's intentionally deceptive, as they know what they are offering you is in fact an indefinite rental.
There's nothing immoral or illegal about offering an indefinite rental, the problem is that they represented it as a purchase instead of what it really was
GoG straight up letting me download the installers seem to be me owning a game the same as I did when buying it on a physical CD(or 5) back in the day.
And if you want to get nostalgic you can even burn the installers to a CD. Come to think of it I wonder if there's a business selling fake boxes for PC games so you can put them on a shelf like back in the day. They make repros for old console games.
I guarantee you'd get takers if you could accurately reproduce the old FF7 box for the PC release.
I bet it's part of it. That or they have to lock it up and I guess have someone to retrieve it employed if you're lucky enough to find someone. Getting tired of being light on shoplifting making it a pain in the ass to get anything. I had to track someone down to buy a $15 tool at Home Depot recently, then they have to walk to the front and watch me pay for it. Those stores policy is otherwise to help the shoplifters out the door. I might just start carrying a magnet around in my car for when I want to buy something, I think that's all it takes to defeat most of those anti theft things.
A little while ago I wanted to buy a big tv. I wanted to look at them in person so I went to best buy. There were half a dozen employees standing around the area talking. Eventually I got the attention of one, the conversation went something like this:
Employee: You need something?
Me: I was thinking about buying a huge tv
Employee: ok [Stares blankly]
Me: So uh...
Employee: [Stands in silence]
I tried several dialog options and was unable to advance through the tree. I went home and ordered the same TV online. I still have no idea how you buy something at best buy.
It's the exact same vibe as 25 years ago when I went into radio shack and they harassed me for my phone number at checkout. Best Buy is going out of business. I don't know when, but it is.
The last time I bought something from Best Buy it was an in-store pickup. It said that I should expect the order to be ready in an hour and after waiting several hours I just decided to go into the store. I immediately noticed that there were only like three people working the entire store (including the cashier) on a Saturday afternoon. An lo and behold the product that I wanted was still sitting on the shelf un-picked. So I grabbed it myself and walked out with it.
Fuck em anyway. I went in there to buy the last God of War (shit game, didn't finish), and everything was in a locked case. Even worse, I couldn't find the newly released game anywhere, and I couldn't find anyone to help me.
I left and went around the corner to Target. Finally found the game in an aisle endcap in the back of the store facing the back fucking wall. These places can't even help themselves make a sale. I used to be against digital-only games but it makes sense more and more.
So, Amazon's showroom will no longer carry the only thing I buy there. I guess I'm not surprised, as I've seen their video game shelves dwindle down to almost nothing over the last 5 years.
Their sale prices on video games and blu-rays were often cheaper than online retailers, with the added advantage that you could take it home immediately and not have to worry about it being beat to shit in shipping.
I wouldn't dream of buying a TV, appliance, or computer from them, so I guess I'll just never shop there again.
Best Buy is currently going through what Fry's Electronics went through about 10 years ago, and I don't expect their outcome to be any different/better than Fry's.
It's a shame that consumer demand for physical media has largely melted away, because streaming is not a true substitute for owning a DVD.
There's obviously issues with selection. I can't find Friday the 13th on any of the four streaming services I have access to during the month of October, for example. But more than that, the new trend of editing old content to make it comply with "modern values" or simply discontinuing publication of certain movies and books should have woken up the general populace to the value and actually owning your own copy, but it probably didn't.
True I like being able to watch my copy of The French Connection complete with Gene Hackman saying "Never trust a nigger".
Beyond that there's the simple matter that bit rates and audio/video quality of a Blu Ray are way higher than you'd get from a streaming service. Earlier this year I ripped all my Blu Rays to my media server, and even a 1080p Blu Ray movie is on the order of 30 Mbit/sec and takes about 30 GB of storage. Because the incentives on the Blu Ray ("we have the space on the disc; might as well use it") are completely different than that of a streaming service ("we're paying for all this bandwidth, so it just has to be 'good enough'")
Honestly, a large part of that is the industry's fault for the prices they charge.
Like, the dollar value of a movie is absurd to buy it. One of the worst dollar per hour ratios for entertainment you can ask for, often higher than even the theater which has "the experience" on top of just the movie.
And if you want to buy boxsets of shows, well good luck because a random season of a long running show will still charge you a number that makes it impossible to "collect" all of the seasons. Even if you try, by the time you get close they will change styles and it won't match and will drive you insane.
I'd outright have wall to wall collections of physical media, but that would basically eat my entire income just to own the handful of seasons of Family Guy or Tosh.0 I care to watch.
I remember the early days when Best Buy used to rent VHS cassettes (and players for them). They got out of rentals when Blockbuster went big.
Soon to follow their formal rival, Circuit City, into oblivion.
Last time I went to a Best Buy it was filthy and two registers total were open on a Saturday. They’re circling the drain like Sears and Circuit city did.
Not surprising.
People just want the convenience of streaming. No fragile discs or external storage worries, no finicky media players with separate remotes and no extra wires. Just pay the monthly fees to play current thing and own nothing but the
televisionphone.I believe a recent ad campaign showed people designing/installing home media systems for customers. In a product market seemingly designed for quick obsoletion, that's probably a decent business plan.
The profit margin on disc's was already obscene. The profit margin on digital is infinite
Literally my biggest draw to go into a Best Buy is to look at their collection to see if I can find a good boxset for something I'd like to have.
Now I have no use for them unless its for appliances, which is a completely different market with many better local options.