9. Online Passes and Restrictions
Remember when old PC users converted to consoles because they were sick of constant patches and upgrades as well as limitations like registration codes? Well perhaps it is ironic that these are all things that console gamers have to put up with nowadays. Publishers desire to control the way we game and interact with our gaming systems and it is beginning to hurt how we view them. Online passes are a fancy term used to control how we use the second hand market. The second hand games market is a big issue for publishers as they don't get any money from the purchase of the games, so online passes are a way of controlling that market and denying content to those who bought a game used. I completely sympathise with publishers as it if a big problem for them but punishing and controlling their consumer base can only work for so long before there is a backlash. PC gaming on the other hand has no where near as many restrictions. Great games are often cheap as well as easy to share which encourages players to gift games to their friends. Sharing is ingrained into services like Steam which allows more people to enjoy the games while not placing any restrictions on the amount of content they can or can't have. This is encouraging audiences to share and spend, while console games are still stuck just punishing the customer. Also fascinatingly, Steam are beginning to talk about giving users the ability to sell and buy second hand online games. If they figure out how to make this successful while consoles struggle to come to terms with the second hand market, then we could see a lot of converts from console to PC.