Persistent readers may recall that we reported on David Braben’s declaration of war against the used-games market. In case it’s just too hard to click the link, the short version was that he recommended tying purchases to particular consumers so they couldn’t be passed from person to person.
Although Baben hasn’t been heard from since then in gaming news, Nintendo seems to have listened. The upcoming Wii Speak peripheral will come with a “Wii download ticket number.” The peripheral amounts to a glorified speaker phone, but will at last bring voice chat to the Wii. The catch is that the peripheral won’t interact with most games except through the new Wii Speak Channel.
The more cynical among you will already have worked out that, without this number, Wii Speak owners won’t be able to download the Wii Speak channel for free. However you may not have guessed that the channel won’t be for sale at all, so that download number is your only access to the essential software.
Even if the download number doesn’t tie itself to a particular console once used, secondhand buyers will need to ensure that they’re getting the number with the peripheral. Otherwise it’ll be a useless hunk of plastic.
Just when you thought consoles were safe from intrusive DRM.
Edit: Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that the code is consumed by a single use.
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Tags: 1up · DRM · Nintendo · Wii Speak2 Comments
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This was actually announced this way before he ever made that comment, still rather unfortunate and foolish though. The WiiSpeak channel should be a free download that works with any USB mic.
[...] shutting out the used games market after all. Although the Wii Speak peripheral will come with the previously reported activation code, evidently you can get a replacement by contacting consumer [...]