Gamer 2.0 writes: "With the NBA season underway, it's time for the virtual basketball season to get underway, as well. EA's pushed hard to build upon the solid foundation they had with last year's game with the new DNA and NBA Live 365 features to revamp the foundation of the gameplay for NBA Live 09. So does NBA Live 09 make the necessary steps to ensure that it's the contender that it had the potential to be with last year's entry?
The big, hyped new feature for NBA Live 09 is the DNA attribute system that attempts to simplify those numbers that try to define what makes up a player's skills. It's nice have and seems to do its job well, but can still be a bit more complicated than a lot of people will care about. This happens because during a game, you'll see a DNA pop-up next to the score box for every shot that's made, letting you know whether that's a usual move for your player or not, along with showing DNA updates at the end of the game before you can exit back to the menu. The new NBA Live 365 feature works with this to provide daily updates to every player's DNA based on what happens the night before along with any roster updates that happen, which works as expected and kind of shows that rosters don't really change as much as you'd think. It's certainly nice to have whenever you want the latest update to start a new dynasty or the newest rosters whenever you want to get online, but it's not the greatest feature to have ever happened to sports games."
Techtorial: Amazon has updated its warehouse giving away big discounts to used games with prices starting from 22 cents going up.
Publishers insist on devaluing used games at their own peril; a strong secondary market supports a healthy primary market, and packing games with one-time-use codes for certain content erodes that relationship.
I'm not convinced that there's a major problem with this policy. Do you think this will dissuade people from buying games at all? People who buy used still get the core game; new buyers simply get an added bonus. If the used buyers end up loving the game and want to pay for the extra content, they can. If they bought the game used for $40 and end up paying $10 for the extra content, they're still saving money.
And if the policy does in fact drive people to buy more games new, couldn't one argue that including codes in new games is important to new game sales?
Personally, I prefer this option to other measures to curb second-hand sales, like excessive DRM or increased prices.
That's my only real issue with this policy; the fact that they claim it's for "server maintenance" or whatever BS excuse they are coming up with. As it was said in the article, when the first guy trades it in and the second guy picks it up it all balances out. I wouldn't really have any issues with it if they weren't lying to us. Just tell the truth, you are charging because you are tired of getting hosed out of money on used game sales.
The video game market is so huge that it shocks me that some Publishers are complaining about lost profits, and going so far as to try and discourage people from buying a game used.
Stephen King has more used books circulating around than almost any other author, and I have never heard him complain. If people are making games as an art form, then isn't the point for people to play them any way they can?
Amazon.com has bundled "NBA Live 09", "The Bigs" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" Playstation 3 video games into 1 $20 package. That's around $7 per game and approximately $30 discount if you would buy these games separately.
