1.5 Million Bought Dead Space, 3 Million Played It
- Thread starter John Funk
- Start date
I'm going to assume you're not being serious. Fallout 3 was available for torrent for the 360 about 2 weeks before it was launched.jamesworkshop said:
As far as game sales, for years I've been saying eye candy is nice, but I want story and plot (sort of the same thing but different) to go with it. One of my favorite games is Gun and I beat it in 9 hours. Another of my favorite games is Fallout 3, which I rushed through and beat in about 30 hours. I paid $20 for Gun and full price for FO3, and I don't regret either purchase (though I miss my beloved Gun...gave it away a couple years ago).
You can't assume that companies would make the full amount of sales of people actually playing their game. Piracy is not the major factor in this. It is used and rental sales, because frankly I agree with many others in this thread that a lot of new games are not worth the full $50 (pc)- $60 (console) asking price.
Also one last thing.... Where in the fook did you buy NES and N64 games for that much? When I was a kid brand new NES games cost between $10-$30. The expensive ones were never more than $40.
Does he not think gamers have friends? I have my profile on a memory card because I go between multiple people's 360s and play their games too. Also people have siblings and other family members who may play it.
Out of the 3 million, I bet barely 100,000 were pirates.
Out of the 3 million, I bet barely 100,000 were pirates.
Yeah... oh well, glad I rented it though... and I like how we started having a MadWorld discussion in the middle of a Dead Space thread...la-le-lu-li-lo said:
I think back to the World of Goo guy when I read this, when he was hit with around 90% rates of his game, saying pretty much that 'it's disappointing, but it happens, and we're still getting good sales.'
That's a tiny guy in the industry, having his own hard work robbed from under him, pretty much realising that piracy is just a bad thing that won't go away, and appreciating the decent people who paid a fair price for his labours and creativity.
In contrast, one of EA's suits, upon reading that maybe, each copy of Dead space sold, was played by a 'player 2', seems to be having a fit that they didn't all pay up front first. Note this is including other people playing on the same system, games loaned to friends, rentals, preowned sales, and of course a certain amount of piracy. Not even close to 90%, however.
Maybe the next generation of consoles should have a credit card slot above the second joypad port.
Thing is, I'm all for people protecting their work from piracy, so long as it doesn't affect honest customers negatively. When you start complaining that customer's friends might see or play the game without paying, then you and me have a problem. I'm assuming the big movie companies aren't complaining that people invite friends around for movie night yet?
That's a tiny guy in the industry, having his own hard work robbed from under him, pretty much realising that piracy is just a bad thing that won't go away, and appreciating the decent people who paid a fair price for his labours and creativity.
In contrast, one of EA's suits, upon reading that maybe, each copy of Dead space sold, was played by a 'player 2', seems to be having a fit that they didn't all pay up front first. Note this is including other people playing on the same system, games loaned to friends, rentals, preowned sales, and of course a certain amount of piracy. Not even close to 90%, however.
Maybe the next generation of consoles should have a credit card slot above the second joypad port.
Thing is, I'm all for people protecting their work from piracy, so long as it doesn't affect honest customers negatively. When you start complaining that customer's friends might see or play the game without paying, then you and me have a problem. I'm assuming the big movie companies aren't complaining that people invite friends around for movie night yet?
While I don't know about the PS3 given how differently it operates online, I do know that pirated Xbox 360 games require modded consoles, and anyone that connects to Live with a modded console to play a pirated game is practically begging to get their console and/or account banned. It's much more likely that these are used/borrowed copies of the game than pirated ones, which is probably one reason he didn't presume that the numbers were due to piracy.Summerstorm said:
I think you woefully underestimate the amount of work that goes into making a game using a commercial game engine. These are not 'game in a box' toolkits, they are libraries of code that still need to be learned and linked together. Using one of these engines means you don't need programmers with the very specialized knowledge of fully implementing a physics system from scratch, or optimizing shaders for different video cards, but it doesn't make up the "majority of the work". Not even close.Therumancer said:
Also, we don't allow signatures here. Please don't add your own by hand.
Not only could it happen, it is happening.Shibito091192 said:
What do you think Xbox Live Marketplace, the Playstation Store, and WiiWare exist to do? For that matter, take a look at Steam. One objective of digital distribution is to remove the resale/rental market, and replace it with convenience.
I think you woefully underestimate the amount of work that goes into making a game using a commercial game engine. These are not 'game in a box' toolkits, they are libraries of code that still need to be learned and linked together. Using one of these engines means you don't need programmers with the very specialized knowledge of fully implementing a physics system from scratch, or optimizing shaders for different video cards, but it doesn't make up the "majority of the work". Not even close.Therumancer said:
Also, we don't allow signatures here. Please don't add your own by hand.
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Well, I've personally noticed that when I see games using a commercial game engine they tend to play in very similar ways. While not truely universal I suppose, if you play one third person shooter done using say Havok, chances are your going to find another one using the same engine is going to be very similar.
At the very least I feel that if they are going to be using a commercial engine and don't need the amount of work to develop a physics engine or whatever, then they should not be charging the same amount as a game that had all of this done from the ground up.
I will endeavor to control my signature reflex, I tend to hammer out the "Therumancer" stuff at the end of messages automatically due to habit and don't use automated signatures when they do exist because of it. Sometimes when I go back in a message to change something right before posting I double sig.
But still given that your "red" I will make an effort to stop doing it, ingrained habit.
Not only could it happen, it is happening.Shibito091192 said:
What do you think Xbox Live Marketplace, the Playstation Store, and WiiWare exist to do? For that matter, take a look at Steam. One objective of digital distribution is to remove the resale/rental market, and replace it with convenience.[/quote]
Well actually I think the idea is to reduce costs and gouge money to be honest (even if this wasn't directed at me). When such things first came into existance the idea was to lower prices by removing the need to create physical packaging and actually distribute/ship products. Things like "Steam" were seen as the future because of this. However in reality what we saw happen was games being released via digital download for the same exact price that they cost retail. It was not cheaper for me to DL "Warhammer 40k: Dawn Of War II" via Steam, all it did was prevent me from getting a physical copy and simply by being so connected to the internet (a problem with the physical copies to) made me dependant on those service's eternal survival because unlike other games if I want to play them 10 years from now there is no guarantee of still being able to DL it.
A comment on digital distribution in general.
When it comes to XBL Marketplace, and similar services I can understand the point for the simpler games a bit better than things like "X-Box Originals'. I fail to see the point in paying as much, if not more, than a used copy would cost me for a purely digital copy that is dependant on their service to replace, and doesn't come with things like an instruction/referance manual.
Truthfully if the industry wasn't so bloody greedy and actually released this stuff at a much lower price (as seemed to be the original idea) I'd think Digital Downloads would be a good idea. But right now it basically seems to be a way to charge more for things, with less espense, and of course to undercut the used software market.
In threads like this one it seems that the industry is under the impression that if there were no used games (or whatever) the market would have doubled for a game like Dead Space. Quite to the contrary, people that bought the game on the cheap might not have had the money (or felt it worthwhile) to buy such a game for full price. If they want to tap that market they need to lower the price accordingly down to the used/rental prices at the same rate that they fall in the market normally. They should also (to be fair) reduce the price further to reflect the lack of their packaging/distribution costs as was the original idea.
While a side note, I also feel that DDL and services like XBL, PSN, Wiiware, or whatever have a nasty tendency to make developers lazy along with making the producers greedy. Instead of taking more time to release properly finished products for consoles they increasingly seem to take a "meh we can patch it later" attitude. Not to mention doing things like putting stuff on the discs and then charging you to unlock the full game and calling it "extra content". I have no objection to things like FO3 expansions, but when it's things like a promised multiplayer mode, or simply letting you use something they already put into the game, well I feel things are going too far.
I think this kind of thing is rapidly getting to the point of Game Informer's old jokes about EA Sports charging players extra money to download air for the ball.
Sooo.... if I share my system with another user, who has his own id... and who logs in to play the game... it's then counted twice...
As an aside, I am amazed that seemingly nobody in the games industry has gone to economics 101 and studied the demand curve. Or maybe they just imagine that their customers haven't. Either way, missed sales are equivalent to number of people playing the game.
I mean, did they even ship more than 1.5mil copies of the game?
As an aside, I am amazed that seemingly nobody in the games industry has gone to economics 101 and studied the demand curve. Or maybe they just imagine that their customers haven't. Either way, missed sales are equivalent to number of people playing the game.
I mean, did they even ship more than 1.5mil copies of the game?
I thought the article was going to talk about how they might force players to authenticate their copies of the game to ensure that all 3 million of those players paid some money to EA to play it. And it's something I could see EA pulling, too. For example, you get one free authentication when you buy a copy of the game, and then anyone else who wants to play the game (on their own X-Box account) would have to pay $10 or such to get their own account authenticated to play the game.Milkatron said:
Ugh... I should shut my mouth, an EA rep could be reading this. >_<
I rented it and enjoyed it a lot. But I got pretty much the full enjoyment possible out of it for my eight bucks, rather than spending sixty for the distinction of owning it and watching it depreciate in value. Some games are still very good, but just make better rentals.
