The ScooterBlog

In a recent case of the pot calling the kettle black, Kotaku wrote that Next-Gen editor Colin Campbell (doesn’t he dole out suspensions in the NHL?!) wrote that used game sales are "parasitic" and cost the industry a billion dollars. This is my attempt to write that I am proud of my small but important contribution to this effort. Some of us are just not blessed, either by choice or by budget. Here’s the reason list:

• I would much rather support an independent retailer than I would a box chain. My $10 or $15 of profit is better spent for my needs supporting local economy than it is supporting a multi billion dollar company. Not to mention, if I’m buying the game used, someone somewhere in the line of the process has gotten paid, so the whole guilting process does nothing for me.
• Game Developers are finding new ways to make a buck directly, and I don’t mind them. With content going digital, most downloadable content and all of these mini Arcade style games can only be bought new, and that’s money in the pocket of developers. There are few things I appreciate more than continuing support for games and I’ve been faithful in getting updates to many games (Gears of War, Forza 2, Halo 3 are examples) and will continue to do so.
• The quoted numbers of $1 Billion are no different than their attempts to quote a number due to piracy. It’s a number thrown out there that would seem to be nearly impossible to substantiate or prove whether those people would buy new games should the opportunity present itself, which I would venture to say many would not.

Stores that I have worked for and patronized would not even exist if it wasn’t for the presence of used games, and I am willing to bet that franchises would never hit cult status if it wasn’t for the used game scene. It helps the industry and gamers as a whole, bashing it is nothing more than an unwanted cash grab.

So I have discovered a minor, but certainly annoying detail of having a High Definition LCD TV … they sometimes don’t play nice with the older non-HDTV equipment. It’s like you can only live in one of the worlds at the same time!

Basically, here’s the scoop … my wonderful, but yet very affordable $379 32-Inch HDTV isn’t so good at upscaling non-HDTV (480i and lower) content easily, so it lags. On my PS2, it lags by about a tenth of a second. This is not much grant you, but enough to mess with your mind when you try and play a game based solely on timing … like Hot Shots Golf or Guitar Hero.

The good news? It appears like the only system this will negatively affect is the PS2. Dreamcast can be High-Def (VGA Cable), the new systems of course are always High-Def to some degree or another, and even XBox games were pretty much required to be 480p with very very few exceptions (just another reason why the XBox was the Dreamcast 2). And heck, the PS3 can backwards play real PS2 games, so the affects are not daunting.

Older systems than that? Well, that’s why they have emulators (and me getting cables to allow me to play with the REAL controllers!), and those can be on the big screen with laptops and VGA and HDMI cables.

Oh .. and that rogue PS2? I’m going to test it tonight with my rear projection HDTV, I assume it will do much better.

So I finally caved … of course, it helps to sell a ton of stuff on eBay that you’ll never use again to get you to the point of being able to say that you caved. I now own a 60 GB PS3, and it’s the only model I would be willing to touch. The arguments for why have been laid out before, but since I’m here, I’ll do it again.

• Sony has made it clear now … it doesn’t view backwards compatibility as important anymore, but I do! Enough so at least that I was willing to pay $50 more ($450, Game Rush, Northern Kentucky) to get the 60 GB system instead of the 40 GB variety. That seemed like a fair upcharge for the functionality, as well as the extra hard drive space, which will be handy when Linux gets installed on there … which it will!
• I wanted the memory card slots and extra USB ports. These are not important likely in the grand scheme of things, but if I have tons of flash media scattered about, I want the ability to use them without thinking about it (a.k.a. card reader, which would be lost).
• I didn’t mind having first generation equipment with the PS3. These machines have proven to be extremely reliable so far with low return rates, so having the first generation doesn’t worry me in any way.

How many games did I buy this system for? Maybe five or six right now …. after going through the list of PS3 exclusives (I will still play multi-platform games on 360 primarily), Motorstorm, Ratchet & Clank, Unreal Tournament, Heavenly Sword come to mind right off the bat, and Hot Shots Golf 5, just because it’s a personal favorite series.

I’m happy I got it. The 60 GB versions were getting nearly impossible to find in Columbus, and only through the good fortune of Game Rush not pushing them in my old home turf did I luck out and get the right kind. Happy it wasn’t used, happy to have the system, happy to go home tonight and finally get to play a PS3 game on it (instead of using Folding@Home, which is pretty darn cool!)