One of the biggest talks in the next generation of gaming has been the policy of used games. It seems that both Sony and Microsoft are going to support the sharing of disc based games.
It wasn’t the case for Microsoft a while back when they first announced the Xbox One with its strict policies. They mentioned that they would not make any money from the used games policies, and they were in fact made by game publishers. After weeks of humiliation, they decided to remove those policies and it got them back in the running to be the next best console.
The gaming publishers have always been a huge factor in the gaming community, and they are what keeps the industry running. Major publishing companies Activision, Ubisoft, and Bethesda had some interesting questions when they were asked about used game policies.
Check out their statements below:
Publishing CEO of Activision Eric Hirshberg says, “We don’t have any announcements today. We’re finding out about the first-party policies in real time along with everyone else. Forgive us if we haven’t worked through all the details yet.
“The only way I can answer your question is by looking at history. Historically Activision is one of the companies that hasn’t charged for used games and hasn’t done things like online passes and whatnot.
“Our strategy as a company has been to try to make great content that people will want to buy and that they hopefully don’t want to sell. But that’s not an announcement or a future-facing statement. That’s just an articulation of how we’ve approached it in the past.”
Sales and Marketing Senior VP of Ubisoft Tony Key answers, “We understand that used games provide a value to the person that’s buying this disc. For us, we just want to figure out how we all can participate in making that a good thing for everybody.
“When we have another person with a game from one of our brands, what we have to figure out is, how do we bring them into our family? We have nothing to announce about used games right now. We’re still trying to get our heads around what the first parties are really saying and what they’re going to do.
He goes on to say, “There’s a lot of new information out there. We knew maybe a little bit more than you did [before E3], but we learned a lot of new things as well. We understand that it’s a passionate issue and it’s a big decision. We see both sides of the argument. We’re going to tread carefully before we make a decision that so many people want to know about.”
Pete Hines, Bethesda’s VP of PR and marketing states, “It’s one of those things where we just need a minute to figure it out before we dive into what these policies are and how they’ll work and what both of the consoles will do.
“What I would say is that we’ll absolutely chime in once we’ve had a chance to wrap our heads around it. We need to ask more questions about what they mean by this and how that works and whose relationship is with whom.
“It’s more just like we want to make sure we know what we’re talking about before we start making statements like, ‘oh, we’re absolutely doing this or that.’ That’s the main thing. Ultimately I think that the answers are probably pretty simple, but it’s a matter of thinking before you speak.”
“You just have to appreciate that, in this climate, we’re reading some of this stuff too and going, ‘what?’ The notion that we know everything way before everybody else is not always true. There’s plenty of stuff that we know, but there’s some stuff where we’re waiting to hear on this or that and then they say it in public.
He continues, “Oh, so that’s the thing we were waiting to hear. I wonder how that plays out? What’s the fine print on this general statement that they just made? How does that affect us? How does that affect our relationship with these guys and our customers?’ There’s more to it, and we want to make sure we understand it before we start spouting off.”
What do you fans have to say in response to these statements?