Don’t panic, it’s just a fable. There’s a new startup in town with a brilliant, revealing, and stupid idea. It’s simple one too: Postal Gamer wants to cut publishers in on used game sales. It works like a hybrid between the Netflix and Gamestop models. When you want to sell an old game, Postal Gamer [...]

It looks like Nintendo has no intention of 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 service.

This news comes on the heels of impassioned rhetoric from both sides of the used games debate. Developers have contended that used games sales hurt developers by locking them out of the purchasing process, while retailers point out that consumers expect their games to have residual value and store credit can be turned toward new games.

So where do you fall? Is the $5 you save at Gamestop worth cutting out the people who made it in the first place, or does the $60 price tag make you less sympathetic for the developers’ plight?

Siliconera has reported that, to market Mega Man 9, Capcom has released a new energy tank drink. Gussied up in a familiar blue, this beverage will doubtless return you from the brink of death during those interminable boss battles (though medical application after trauma has not yet been tested by the FDA, so battle bosses responsibly). All this for about $1.25; Mega Man should be so lucky.

This isn’t the first time an energy drink has been used to market a game, but it’s probably the most trouble a company has taken to hype their downloadable content. Careful, GameStop, the downloadable content fairy is coming to take all your profits.

It’s no secret that the aftermarket trade of video games is a thriving business, and that developers and publishers never see a penny of it. David Braben (developer, Frontier Games) has finally voiced the fear. Citing the short shelf life of new games and the small footprint that new games are given in retail Braben has discovered a solution: ban used games.

The nuts and bolts of the ban boils down to copy protection–some sort of code on the disc or package from the developer–but it’s not difficult to imagine a server activation more along the lines of modern DRM. In fact, games like Mario Kart DS already match a console to a cartridge to create a unique identifier for the player’s online presence. So, even if these program features haven’t been applied to copy protection, the technology is already in place.

It gets trickier and trickier to play the games you buy every year.