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Disc Activation Tech Could Boost Sales By $6 Billion
A US study conducted on behalf of the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) has found that new point of sale disc activation technology could increase annual sales by $6 billion.
‘Benefit denial’ is the concept of denying shoplifters the ability to use stolen goods by shipping them to stores in a disabled state and only activating them at the point of sale.
The study, which was conducted by Capgemini, found that retailers, movie studios, game publishers and others could annually see as much as $6 billion in increased sales and an additional $800 million in cost savings and cost avoidance if the technology is rolled out.
"It is intuitive that, if we can utilise emerging technology to reduce the shrink in the DVD, Blu-ray discs, and videogame categories and eliminate barriers erected to deter shoplifting, consumers will have easier access to the products, additional retail channels will carry these products, and costs will be eliminated from the supply chain," said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of the EMA.
Capgemini VP Mark Landry added: "The study projects that benefit denial technology will enable retailers to increase revenue from sales lifts from open merchandising, reduced out-of-stocks, new distribution channels, and legitimate sales replacing sales of stolen merchandise. The revenue enhancements would be spread broadly among retailers, studios, publishers, distributors, and replicators."
The EMA will now investigate the cost of deploying benefit denial technology for DVDs, Blu-rays and games. It said that if the results are positive the technology could be rolled out to stores in the fourth quarter of 2010.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
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Here's my immature comment for the month.
D-D-D-Debacle Maker!!!!!
Here are some of the possible issues with such system;
1. Machine breaks (like you said)
2. Used game market or game exchange with friends
3. Terrible clerks
I want to extend my point on number 3. I'm having an hard time trusting the cashier at McDonald's drivethru. They always manage to get my order wrong. Also, I can't count how many times, the clerks couldn't figure out the debit / credit terminal. Some of them don't even know how to change the paper for the printer. I don't want to be mean, but these are facts. Some clerks are in training, some are stoners, some are just plain not good at their job. It can also be just an attention mistake, which happens and I can understand that. However, I don't want to get back home with my new game, only to find out that they didn't do their job correctly. In Canada and it's worst in worst in Europe, the games are really expensive and I want it to work when I get home.
I work in the gaming industry and I totally want a system that would protect the games I have been working on. I also want my company to make more cash, because I'm getting direct benefits out of it.... But I would rather have a system that relies on me to activate. I know it's not easy since we can't consider all user to be connected online with their consoles, so that's limiting the possible options.
I personnally don't have the solution for it, but the way I see this... this will mostly benefit the retaillers and not the costumers... and I'm not even sure about this, because this could make them lose the pre-owned market.
And to make matters worse, it could be a PS3 game and you've already planned out your day so that you can play the damned thing on the same day you bought it.
-Drive to store
-Find game behind glass case
-Find clerk to open glass case
-Wait for clerk to give you their attention
-Wait for clerk to find the important clerk with the keys
-Wait for clerk to find the game you're pointing directly at
-Wait in line to pay for the game
-Pay
-Drive home
-Turn on PS3
-Wait for it to boot
-Download PS3 update
-Install PS3 update
-Wait for system to reboot
-Put new game into PS3
-Wait for all of the licensing, marketing, publisher/developer screens to load
-Agree to download update to your brand new game
-Wait for PS3 to return to home screen and begin download
-Wait for the download
-Get some coffee and make a snack
-Check on download
-Install the newly downloaded update to your brand new game
-Drink some coffee and eat a snack
-Wait for all of the licensing, marketing, publisher/developer screens to load
-Press X to start.. Oh, this one actually requires me to use the start button...
-Press Start to start
-Play Game before midnight (hopefully)
I swear, the first time you introduce a circumstance that I have to interrupt this already unnecessarily lengthy process to play a game on my PS3; I'll sell the damned thing and start playing games on my iPhone.
You forgot that sometimes, the games have mandatory hard drive installation. I just bought Ghostbuster and I had to take 4 gb off my drive for it. Devil May Cry 4 took forever to install. My worry is that I always prefered console games over PC games so that I don't have to worry about installation, graphic cards compatibility, having enough ram, etc... Having a DRM on my console, knowing that we already have to install them, update them and deal with bugs that we didn't have to back to one generation of console ago (PS2)... it's just too much. Ideally, the protection system should be invisible to the user.
I always copy games to the HDD on my 360 before I play them to improve performance and cut down on noise & heat. Whenever I encounter a PS3 game which requires or offers an HDD installation, I generally take it for the same reasons.
I don't understand. Is a significant portion of intellectual property theft physical? This won't stop anyone from torrenting movies or games.
Absolutely, Surely once a disk is active it's just to as easy to rip and post on Pirate bay as anything other medium with DRM.
Talk about Shutting the gate after the horse has bolted!
Grognard66 has hit the nail right on the head (in my view).. see below.
It's nothing to do with DRM or torrents though, it's about loss of stock through theft.
That's true.
The way stock works nowadays, I know - my industry, is retailers don't pay for most product. They consign. The publisher makes a percentage only after something is sold. If the item's stolen, the publisher looses money right along with the retailer.
maybe the boost of $6 billion includes sales of the disc activation machine! It'll be like microtransactions in games; "do you want to activate the second chapter? pay $5", or something.
Before i am judged to be a lunatic; this is a joke.
well guess what we don't need any disks
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OTOY/news.asp?c=14038
by the way retail is on it's death bed
We may not need them but certainly the overwhelming majority of people want them.
to bad the used game market,rented game market and pircay on console are storming the retail these days. LOL with publisher making more on webbase games,mmo's,soical gaming and DD.
the days on retail are numbered LOL
The problem is that people want physical discs.
Which is too bad; because I hate them as well. For the "benefit" of having said discs, I get slow, easily scratched media that I get to load into my machine & wait for it to come on. To combat to speed issue, I fill my machine with RAM to compensate, making it worthless to have in the first place.
I wouldn't mind physical media if the industry didn't have such a "hard-on" for caddy-free, spinning platters.
What about already activated "Pre-Owned" stock ?
Exactly. This is the real loss-leader, and they will do whatever they can to stop used discs from getting sold, so that's probably a feature of this, although I can't think how — presumably you would need an expensive piece of kit to unlock this, and why would shops lock it again if it wasn't in their own interest?
I don't think this would really hurt the rental/used market since the article implies that the activation would take place at the point of sale and not on the DVD/Blu-Ray player. Netflix, etc. would simply activate all the discs they purchase before renting them out.
I seriously doubt retail theft is much of a factor in the DVD marketplace given how cheap discs are these days, maybe it's a bigger problem with more expensive Blu-Ray movies. Either way, this seems a moot point considering the easy alternative for people who don't want to pay is to download an illegal copy online.
If this system is not invisible to consumers and does not roll out smoothly (no consumers who purchase movies legally mistakenly getting unactivated copies so they have the hassle of returning to the store) all this tech will do is drive more people online and away from brick and mortar retailers. Sounds like a technology in search of a problem to me - this might have made sense a decade ago, but how many people are going to be buying movies at stores anyway by the time this technology becomes ubiquitous?
Don't forget that they think every stolen/downloaded copy would have been a legitimate sale had they been able to prevent the theft in the first place. I bunch of BS, for sure; but that's how they see it.
And I think you were onto a point; but fell just shy of making it. If they roll this out, and there is any level of hassle for the legitimate consumer; they will be pushing some of these people to get their media illegally instead.
When will they figure out that a consumer wants the easiest path to satisfaction? If it's perceived to be easier to wait 2 hours for an illegal download than it is to mess with mutliple trips to the store; that's what people will do.
whichever random criminal gets hold of a disc activator can now charge his friends to activate all of their stolen games and dvds! It creates a fun little criminal economy minigame.
hahaha...
but you've got to use the new lingo..
This would create a fun little criminal economy metagame.
Sounds good, except when the activation machine breaks.
And it would probably screw over market stalls.