News
99 Cent ROMS
Cordova, TN; April 24, in the year of our Lord 2015--Family
Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family
friendly video games is putting a fascinating idea out into the
public forum for gamers to debate. Ideas for these articles come
from a wide array of areas. I was emailing with Cheryl Gress
from ChristCenteredGamer.com, and the idea hit me. Why can’t the
video game industry do what the music industry did? Why can’t we
have 99 cent ROMS? When the downloading of songs was costing the
music industry money, they worked with the download sites to
charge for songs. That way everyone won. The companies, the
consumers, and the download sites. So why don’t the video game
companies do the same thing? It would cost less than suing ROM
sites.
Complicating the issue is ROMS is it is completely legal to use
ROMS as back ups when a consumer already owns a copy of the
video game. So if you own Bonk on the Turbografx-16, you can
also have a ROM of that game as a back up. That is completely
legal. It could be hard to demand payment from consumers who
already own a physical copy of the game. However the 99 cent
price tag may be an easier pill to swallow. Plus this would give
life to a variety of video games that have been lost in the
history of video games. Steam has proven Personal Computer (PC)
video games sell. Families like to play on computers. Could you
image ROMS being sold on the iOS and Android platforms?
Companies that made the games would receive profits from the
sales, and not need to sue ROM sites. A win-win scenario.
There is one hurdle I can see with the idea of 99 cent ROMS -
the control freak nature culture in too many of these video game
companies. Especially the bigger ones. They need to realize that
releasing a few games every week on their current systems is not
working out. I ignore their retro releases anymore. Their prices
are too high, and they are too slow releasing games I am
interested in playing. Usually I can find a retro physical copy
of a game cheaper than what they are trying to sell it for.
Which is why the 99 cent ROMS idea is so perfect for the entire
video game industry. It would drive down used video game sales
(companies get no revenue from that), companies would get
something for sales of ROMS, and consumers would get immediate
access to thousands of video games.
What do you think? Could 99 cent ROMS work? Would you be willing
to pay one penny less than a dollar for older video games? Do
you think it would help with illegal downloads, and piracy? Do
you think companies would go for it? What is your opinion?
God bless,
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming