Every so often a clueless company exec lets fly with what he or she really thinks – without considering the ramifications.
Rasmus Hojengaard, the director of creative development at Crytek, is a perfect example. Yes, Hojengaard apparently believes used games should be blocked on next-gen consoles.
“From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome,” Hojengaard told Computer and Video Games.
“It’s weird that [second-hand] are still allowed because it doesn’t work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well.”
In other words, he wants to see used game sales banned, or at least hevaily curtailed.
Personally, I don’t believe the industry has the right to tell consumers what to do with their used games. Yes, pirating a game and selling it for profit is one thing. Buying a game and then deciding I don’t like it, or that I’m bored with it and want to sell it, well that is something completely different. Think about it – would anyone allow Ford to obstruct the used vehicle market because it could potentially affect new car sales!?
“The worst thing that can happen is they [console makers] make something that’s very complex for developers, regardless of how awesome it might theoretically be,” Hojengaard continued. “So getting hardware that allows you to quickly get prototypes up and running, and any kind of scalability they can offer will be great as well, as long as everyone has that scalability and not just a select few.”
Hojengaard also had this to say about Crysis 2, one of the most pirated PC games of 2011 (a rather dubious honor indeed).
“It’s very flattering and upsetting at the same time. Obviously you miss so much revenue, it’s so clear that a lot of people want to play your game but they don’t really want to pay for it, which is unfortunately really disappointing.
“It’s also a little flattering because people are willing to bother download these 10GB files or whatever the game takes because they think it looks great. We obviously want to avoid that this time, but even if we can convert 25 percent of those gamers into paying customers [you have an extra million sales].”
