Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The PS4 Doesn’t Have The Xbox One’s DRM
PS4 will not put any restrictions on used games, Sony’s PlayStation boss Jack Tretton said today. Gamers can buy PS4 games, trade them in, lend them to friends or keep them forever. Loud cheers. He was drawing several points of comparison, obviously, to the Xbox One.
“In addition to creating an amazing library of new titles on PlayStation 4, we’re focused on delivering what gamers want most, without imposing restrictions or devaluing their PS4 purchases. For instance, PlayStation 4 won’t impose any restrictions on the use of PS4 games.”
The crowd of reporters and gaming industry people at the event cheered at the sight of a slide promising no restrictions on used games.
“Yes, that’s a good thing. We believe in the model that people embrace today with PlayStation 3 and continue to demand. We just heard you there. When a gamer buys a PS4 disc, they have the rights to the game, they can trade in the game at retail, sell it to another person, lend it to another friend or keep it forever.
“In addition, PlayStation 4 disc-based games don’t need to be connected online to play.”
More cheers.
“Or for any type of authentication. If you enjoy playing single-player games offline, PS4 won’t require you to check in online periodically. And it won’t stop working if you haven’t authenticated within 24 hours.”
Friday, January 18, 2013
6 Video Games Every Libertarian Should Play
Until recently, popular storytelling was an essentially top-down art: Novelists told readers how characters thought and felt, playwrights determined what they said, and movie directors subjected captive viewers to their own individual visions. The story you saw was the story someone else imagined, and audience interaction was limited to throwing tomatoes at the stage, or scribbling in the margins of a book. Even popular sports were basically passive: Fans might follow along in great detail, but the plays and their outcomes were determined by the actions of an elite few on the field.
But for the last 40 years, video games have begun to change all that. Games were built around interactivity: Players got what they wanted, not what someone else gave them. And as the technological firepower that makes video games possible has grown cheaper and more abundant, those games have increasingly focused on complex choice architectures designed to let players make their own stories. Game designers still build the playing fields, and some are more constrictive than others. But the arc of game design has bent toward expanding player choice. You are at the center of the experience, and you make it your own. The star of the show isn’t some writer or actor or player on the screen. The star is you.
It’s probably too much to argue that video games offer players freedom from the iron grip of the author—after all, games still have designers, and the old stories weren’t exactly forced upon their readers. But the rise of video games as a popular art form is surely a sign of the way that the broad universalized stories of yesterday have fractured into an array of niche narratives, each designed to serve an individualized interest.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Next Generation, Issue Number 27, March 1997
The March 1997 issue of Next Generation magazine:
http://pinterest.com … /106186503685885739/
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Sony Sold 525,000 PS3s Last Week
The week of Thanksgiving marks one of the most important retail milestones for sellers of things. We’ve got a ballpark figure for how many people brought the new Wii U. (Around 400,000.) And Microsoft bragged about all the Xbox 360 units they shifted into people homes, too. (750,000 for those guys.) So, what about Sony? They’re right in the middle.
The consumer electronics giant divulged that they sold more than half a million units of their home console, owed largely to the attractively priced bundles on offer.
As for the Vita, the gaming handheld sold 160,000 units. That’s a lot less than the 275,000 DS units Nintendo said that consumers bought last week. When another company’s least-shiny, most outdated portable outdoes your shiny new one, you might have a problem on your hands, Sony.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Game Informer, Issue Number 56, December 1997
The December 1997 issue of Game Informer:
http://pinterest.com … /106186503685708896/
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue Number 86, September 1996
The September 1996 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly: