I guess second hand books, VHS's and DVD's are just piracy as well (read: no, they're not, and people comparing the re-sale of discs to piracy are just plain wrong)

If the good is a physical object, it can be resold. That's the law. Reselling books, DVDs or PS3 games is a right that everyone has. It's a perfectly sensible and long-accepted doctrine, and it's culturally ingrained. You cannot argue against the reselling of a physical good.

Total Biscuit did an interesting video about this. He's got a bit of a bias toward digital distribution as he's mostly a PC gamer, but his argument boils down generally to books/movies having more alternate streams of income than games where games rely much more on initial sales. Also books/movies are moving away from physical also, so I'm not sure that comparison holds much water in the sense that they are moving away from it in similar fashion.

There's nothing debatable about what I posted, I was just describing the facts. Sources of income and whether business are viable or not is irrelevant to the law.

The comparison is that books, DVDs and PS3 games are all physical goods that are completely self-contained. The person who physically possesses them has the right to enjoy their contents.

Most PC games, Xbone games, ebooks and online movie rentals are not physical goods any more. They person who physically possesses their installation media may not have the right to their contents, these rights are assigned separately to physical possession.

Any of the above physical goods can be resold, whether it's a PS3 game or a PC installer disc with an already-used-up steam key (but obviously the PC disc with the used-up steam key has close to zero value, because it is not the game).
If a publisher doesn't want their games/books/movies resold, they can choose to use the second Xbone/Steam/iTunes licensing option. If they want to allow the right of resale, they can package their games up as a physical good.

If publishers want to play hard-ball with Gamestop, they can choose not to sell their products wholesale to Gamestop, and boycott their business. This doesn't happen. EA makes more money by cooperating with Gamestop rather than trying to kill them off.

People often forget that Gamestop is part of "the industry". The developers, the publishers and the retailers all make up "the industry". If physical (Gamestop) and digital (Steam) retailers all disappeared, then a link in the chain would be broken.

Developers -> Publishers -> Distributors/Wholesalers -> Retailers -> Gamers

Physical retailers are going out of business everywhere, and the only ones that are surviving are either big department stores that use games as a loss leader (many department stores sell below the wholesale price!), or specialist games stores that survive off of trade-ins. It won't be long before we don't have the option of buying games from a dedicated game retailer any more.

You can choose whether that's good, bad or meh.

If publishers want to penalise people who buy second hand, then they can choose to make the physical disc no longer represent a license, which has partially happened in console land already -- many current games use a mix of both sales options, where the possession of physical disc represents a license to access the majority of the game, but then some expansions or features are granted via a second license that isn't represented by a physical backing.

There's nothing stopping publishers from selling games PC/iTunes style on consoles if they really wanted to kill off 2nd hand sales, but none have dared face the backlash alone (besides PSN/XBLA games).

Yes you can argue about whether the right of resale of physical goods is a good thing or a bad thing, but that's a completely different discussion to what I was saying.
You can emotively say that the impacts of 2nd-hand sales are alike the impacts of piracy, that's fine if you've got the hubris to back up your asserted feelings.
But you cannot say that 2nd-hand sales are the same as piracy, because that's just factually bullshit.

There are interesting points on both sides if we resist the urge to knee-jerk. As I said earlier,I tend to agree with the property-rights/first-sale doctrine view of things. On the other hand, setting aside Blades' assertion that buying a used game is equal to piracy (which I think stands, if qualified by For everyone up the sales chain: Developer, Publisher, Wholesaler, and retailers not in the used games business, if we set aside additional sales of downloadable content) he makes a compelling argument that a personal policy of buying only new games, even if it means pirating some games, is better for developers and publishers. Of course, we have to simplify even that, because it may not account for the tangential benefits that developers and publishers receive by the existence of physical retail, and a larger install base that normally buys used but occasionally buys the hot new game new.

I tend to think that many developers will eventually settle in one of two main camps -- one will produce smaller games that are less-costly to develop (think Summer-blockbuster vs. wide-release, not Blockbuster vs. art-house film), and the other will supplement blockbuster games with additional income through subscriptions, DLC, and micro-transactions. Of course, even today we see games in a variety of sizes succeeding on the latter model, so its really a matter of pricing scale.

Ultimately though, its something of a personal moral judgement about how you want to best support the developers and artists you love. For example, I listen to a lot of music on Spotify because its a great service, but I also try to see my favorite bands when they come through town (which is thankfully frequent in Seattle), buy some merchandise from their booths, and always buy their albums there. Why? Because its the best way to put money directly in their hands, and for them to continue doing what they do. Technically I've already paid for the streaming rights by subscribing to Spotify's service, but I'm still concerned that the artists themselves can't sustain themselves on their cut of streaming revenue, especially the kind of bands I listen to who don't have a mainstream audience.

stuff

stuff

That was a 2 sentence abreviation of a 10-20 minute video. He's got a few more points than just the bits I said.

How ironic, that you condense both our posts into one word. And the same word at that.

And I watched the video. I was responding to your post and his video.

Funny, Xbox One sounds suspiciously like Xbox Won. A play on words perhaps? I suspect that the reason they are pushing all the features except for games is because they assume that everyone already knows that the platform can run games. They are trying to attract a wider market by appealing to people that are not very interested in games, like the parents of all the gamers who need justification for buying this thing. They want non-gamers to take it seriously as well. Also, by the time fall rolls around, people's TV's are going to be flooded with game ads just in time for Christmas. They are building up anticipation by holding back for now.

One copy co-op on different machines? That's pretty sweet.

I would lean towards Microsoft thinking existing Xbox 360 goodwill would carry them over while they tried to get mom and dad in the living room. I think it's beyond stupid that the launch, which was watched 90% by people who care more about games than anything else, had such a huge emphasis on not-games. And then, maybe worse, E3's message was so poorly managed that Sony came out looking significantly better.

I think they would've been better placating gamers while they're all watching and then do the market broadening stuff later, since those people don't give half a crap about reveals anyway.