03-15-2012, 07:05 AM
(03-13-2012, 02:37 PM).Luke Wrote: Well I guess it's the Orange Box for me if I want to buy Portal and still be able to play it offline. I can't believe Valve could be that asinine about copy-protection! That's just one more reason for me to invest in a PS3 instead of newer PC hardware.
(03-13-2012, 03:30 AM)Dazz Wrote: The WiiU and PS4, sure - but the UK's leading system to my knowledge (besides the Wii) is the 360. Not only that, but our retail stores are already closing, because of their lack of contracts with games companies such as Nintendo, EA, and a few other big publishers.
So yeah, fucked.
Forgot how much of a monopoly M$ has in the games industry, and the point you just brought up is going to suck for you guys in the UK. Even though I prefer ordering my games online, personally, it's quite convenient to just pick up a recent game in the preowned corner of a retail store, so I can't imagine having only Ebay and Amazon as an option.
It may not be such a bad thing if the specialized game retailer that has been at the top of the pile for a long time closes down. We have two major store brands GAME and Gamestation, both are owned by the same company but operate pretty differently insomuch as, they both sell games, but gamestation seeems to take a better approach to trade-ins (by that I mean they offer you SLIGHTLY more when you trade a game).
The point is though, these two brands are owned by one company, and it's very easy for them to set prices which influence the price throughout the rest of the UK and every other store which sells games. There might come a time when supermarkets start stocking a wider range of video games and we can go and pick up copies while we go shopping at a fairer price since these stores bulk buy and could certainly use them as a loss leader.
What I really want to see though is places that supply tabletop gaming (like warhammer 40k, Game of Thrones war game, lord of the rings war game) selling video games in the future, it'll help expand the market of these stores, allowing them to move into bigger premises since most are in tiny little stores, and it'll hopefully raise the profile of tabletop gaming.