This is the real reason behind it.  They'll never admit it, but it is.  They get no revenue at all from the very active used game industry.

Soon, forced internet connection to play your single player games! Yay!

owait...

It's happening sooner then you thought because the leak of the PS3 master key is an unfixable break in the DRM on the PS3. Sony's response is to accelerate this... though don't kid yourself that it wasn't already in the works. The 3DS and the PSP 2 are both going the same route.

There's too much money in used games for them to let Gamestop keep the market.

I wonder when the pirates come up with there OWN "steam" servers to crack the codes...

I would be shocked if they didn't.

Pc gaming is pretty much the test platform for the gaming industry. Think about it.. everything you see in modern console gaming was common place for pc games during the last console generation. The things that are common place or becoming commonplace for PC games.. like required internet checks or subscription based account checks etc will be popping up on the next gen of consoles.

Its rather amusing when you look at console gamers list of reasons consoles are better than PC.. because everything on the list is due to be removed/changed entirely. They simply don't realize that PC gamers deal with the crap first.. then it migrates to consoles. So when pc gamers complain about DRM etc.. console gamers say things like " lol thats why pc gaming sucks" or "thats why pc gaming is dying". Oblivious to the fact that what they are making light of is their own future.

Sup.

I'll just leave this here, seems it's the right place.

What fact is that? How many things can you name of the "crazy BS PC publishers come up with" that made it onto consoles? The only reason they didn't bother with serial numbers before is because the consoles themselves are physical forms of protection (which is why pirates needed to mod their consoles to play pirated games).

I think you'd have more luck arguing the other way, instead. If it wasn't for Xbox Live and its achievement system that inexplicably became popular, maybe Steam would never have picked it up, and the whole Steamworks craze with integrated achievements, etc never would've happened. As it is, achievements became pretty much a staple for new releases and Steamworks became the #1 thing for publishers to go for since it already has all the support developed for them to use, and is free.

Pay to play games for one, DLCs , digital distribution etc etc.

Xbox live wasn't the first achievements system.. many pc games and console games had some form of this prior to xbox live.And if you think achievements is a major reason publishers choose steamworks your simply beyond logic. Its a large distribution channel and free drm...

Regardless the point remains.. consoles will see account based subscription checks for their games, internet checks etc, just like they jumped on pay to play games, and DLCs. People keep trying to lure me into a childish pc vs console battle and its not gonna happen so get over it. Point is and remains.. when publishers do things that annoy or abuse PC gamers its only a matter of time before console users have to deal with the same crap.

Why console makers have waited so long is beyond me, although i could very well speculate it involves the acceptance of internet requirements, while its been commonplace for PC gamers for years they need to get people to accept it more on consoles before implementing internet based checks. The Modding of consoles to play pirated games is nothing new. The original playstation saw this issue.

There is no rule.. its simply common sense and respect that you don't use my words to further your agenda when its not pertinent to my line of discussion. My other issue with you quoting me was you made it a point to say "this post isn't targeted to anyone" yet you quoted me. Which is it?

Further more I never stated anything of the sort, passive aggressively or otherwise.. you're  reading into my words what you wish. I simply used examples of what people with the certain mentality I found amusing would/have say/said.

And yes popularizing and pioneering are very different however my response was to the fellow who was attempting to make it a point that xbox live was the first to implement it and PC games followed suit. Which makes it an issue of pioneering not popularizing.

Now if his point was forming mass appeal and not pioneering then he was  arguing an irrelevant conclusion since he suggested that i would be better off arguing that console publishers come up with stuff and PC games adopt it afterwards.

Lastly this whole line of discussion is silly. The point i was attempting to convey was simply that the various issues PC gamers have with drm etc will soon be an issue for all gamers. Yet a number of people attempt to turn this into  yet another my phallus is bigger than yours discussion of a particular choice of electronics. Rather than paying attention to the point of my words they simply cherry pick certain words in order to circumvent the entire point of this thread and start a verbal confrontation on something irrelevant to the topic.

Xbox Live was the first *integrated* achievement system where you had one account and achievements for every game linked together in a single score. Nobody had been able to do that before because the PC market was so fragmented and the Xbox 1 was the first console with good online connectivity.

Steamworks came out after that, and largely mimics it. Steamworks isn't about DRM, Steam itself provides that. Steamworks is about XBL style centralized achievements and some other features.

Consoles waited so long because they were making money by being simple, and didn't have an effective means to do anything about used game sales (which is what this is really about). Now that consoles are generally also online (which wasn't true in the past), it's a more viable thing to try and do. Expect it to be standard for the next hardware generation.