Capcom has reissued its official statement regarding the supposedly non-erasable save data for Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D -- but is it telling the whole truth?
Claire was furious when she couldn't find the 'Erase All Data' option in the menu.
Over on the Capcom Unity forums, Capcom has reiterated the official line regarding Resident Evil: The Mercenaries' save data. If you haven't heard it already, it's this:
"In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset. The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability, encouraging fans to improve mission scores. The save mechanic ensures that both original and unlocked game content will be available to all users. Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision, and we hope that all our customers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer."
Capcom staff member "Snow" added to the statement thus:
"There was no intention of lessening the experience of the game. Essentially, RE Mercs was treated like an arcade fighting game. You unlock characters, levels etc and they just stay unlocked as they would in an arcade machine. There was no hidden motive to prevent buying used copies. It's not some secret form of DRM. It's simply the way we designed the save system to work with the arcade type of gameplay."
Fair enough -- but the fact remains, people who purchase the game preowned will be unable to start their characters from scratch or unlock the levels themselves, and it could be argued that this levelling-up and unlocking experience is part of the complete game package that becomes inaccessible to preowned customers.
Here's the main problem with Capcom's statement: the thrust of its argument against erasing save data is that it's saved directly to the 3DS cartridge, where it "cannot be reset." 3DS game cards are internally very similar to DS game cards, which use either flash memory or EEPROM chips to save data -- and the defining characteristic of both of these storage solutions are that they're erasable -- one of the "E"s in EEPROM even stands for "erasable." But even if Capcom is using some sort of proprietary unerasable storage media, data is still being written to the card in order to save player progress. One means of "erasing" data is simply to write empty data over the top of old content -- or creating a save file with relevant skill numbers, unlocked levels and the like set to zero. Capcom's explanation doesn't seem to add up, especially as it doesn't provide any technical explanations as to why the data "cannot be reset."
GameStop told us earlier that it will be accepting trade-ins of the game, but UK retailer HMV announced earlier that it will not be accepting second-hand copies for its "RePlay" preowned scheme in order to "avoid any potential customer disappointment for those purchasing a preowned version." (Source) Reports also emerged earlier today that EB Games in Australia had pulled stock of the game from its shelves -- though this may be due to the fact that the chain had broken the street date as much as the controversial save system.
Capcom seems to be sticking to its guns with its story at this time. Watch this space for any further developments.
Source: Daily News from GamePro.com
Wednesday, June 29, 2011