Here’s a question: do you really, really think that if monetizing a mod would be allowed, the mod makers will make absolutely no money out of their work?
(I know, we’ve had a similar discussion over DLCs …)

I hadn’t considered rental. I’ve actually never understood rental or how it fits into the industry as a whole. I presume you get a much cheaper service than this, but the only new-games renting I ever did was from blockbuster for about £7.50 for three days. £7.50 was too much for me.

Don’t get me started on switching-off-servers. EA’s approach is truly the most disgusting thing I know of in the industry.

I am very concerned that one day both PSN and XBLA will be switched off, and literally hundreds of games will be lost forever.

It seems that while PC gaming is getting cheaper fast, console gaming is getting a lot more expensive.

I generally buy new games when they’ve dropped down in price to avoid the new shiny buying regret. I’d say less than 10 purchases a year are week of release games for me, only the really “can’t wait” stuff. I get plenty of games in the £10-20 price range that may be a year past the hyped launch but are still as good that day as day one (maybe patched or moded to be even better). My focus on single player experiences (and some social multiplayer) rather than competitive multiplayer means I don’t need to worry about finding people to matchmake a game with too often.

That isn’t to say I’ll let my gaming vocabulary grow stale and not sample as many new releases as possible but I have to do it on a fixed budget. Rental provides that ultimate service and, unlike second-hand games, channels most of my cash straight back to the publishers. These DLC deals and store linked pre-order bouses hit me directly and make my version of the game far for the definitive one. It’s not like I can magic up more money or get an additional job to pay for all the games, my only option without rental would be to seriously cut back on my gaming and not spread the wealth to the second tier games that don’t justify a £35-45 price tag.

Another thing that gets me about people going after second-hand and rental markets is how games ownership has already changed. No one buys and EA sports title any more, the auth server will be shut off a couple of years down the line and prevent the peer to peer multiplayer gaming from working. Even if you buy a copy it is only a rental of the multiplayer component for most console titles. The same with digital purchases that only work as long as the platform is going (is there a guarantee that in 10 years time when I get out my old PS3 or 360 there will be a 360 Live or PSN server to talk to and auth to play my downloaded titles? All my console purchases from 10 years ago still work on the 10 year old hardware I brought to play them on but in the digital domain this isn’t guaranteed).

One reason people buy expensive items that don’t degrade is the ability to push them down the chain later in life to recoup some of the expense. A £35 console title will only cost me £35 minus the value I get from selling it once I am done unless I’m a collector. With this move the value of the game is being reduced and yet console titles in the shops are moving up to £40 flat (£50 SRP).

Favourite Paul moment: Use of the phrase ‘paradigmatic shift’.

Favourite ian moment: ‘This reminds me of a documentary i saw a couple of years back saying mother Teresa was bad.’