CliffyB: Microsoft Tried to "Have it Both Ways"

[RicoADF]

That guy is a prick. No getting rid of used games will not solve the issue, if their so stupid that their not able to budget accordingly then that won't fix the issue. All it will do at best is put dumb companies on life support while they screw their consumers for more money. If AAA companies like EA need to go out of business for the industry to grow then so be it. It's normal for companies to rise and fall, others will take their place. We have an amazing indie industry ready to grow with smarter ideas into the next Rockstar etc. This is just greedy corporations trying to keep control and people like 'cliffyB' support them because it help THEM and/or their too dumb to see the issue. No other industry on earth treats the consumer like the gaming industry, no other industry treats their consumer like criminals, while stealing from them all the time, and no other industry has removed the right of resale of the product or licence. And no games are not special they don't have magic rights just because they have a licence, movies and music also give you licence to watch/listen to them when you buy their disc, and yet everyone agrees you have the right to give away the copy of Avatar you no longer watch.

 

[UberNoodle]

Cliff, when you were actually making games, we semi-cared about your existence. Nobody could make cookie cutter shooting games about gruff and burly (yet soft hearted) men, like you could, at least not with as much projection, I mean, machismo. But you see, anybody could have made those games. Your presence was as disposable as the characters in the game. So, now that you're on early retirement, you've made this 'Fox Contributer' style transition to gaming industry pundit, and we don't actually want you. Go remake your space rabbit game, or make a 'spiritual successor' to Gear of War, like Gizmos of Gore or how about, Tools of Conflict.

 

[UberNoodle]

Digital games may be cheaper? I call bullshit. There's no precedent.

Just look at Ubisoft's UPlay, EA's Origin, and MS's XBL. New releases on those platforms are the same price as physical media and most older games (the ones no longer available on physical media) are still their full release-day price.

Apparently Wii U game downloads from 3rd parties have reduced in price over time. Is that true?

 

[mechalynx]

WOW, just WOW! Lemme break this down for you, Cliffy. It is up to the game industry to cater to the market, not the other way around. If the market (read gamers) considers the terms of sale unappealing, they will turn the seller down. That is the reality. You are in the business of "want", not "need". I may want your game, but you're the one who needs me to buy it. And at the end of the day there are only so many hoops people are willing to jump through for a few hours of escapism.

 

[Mr. Q]

At times like these, I wish someone would make a YouTube clip of Alan Rickman from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves of him saying "SHUT UP, YOU TWIT!" It would be so perfect anytime CliffyB opened his mouth and proved to the world once more what a colossal twat he is. -_-

 

[Gorrath]

Hey Cliffy, we've got a chicken and egg problem here. If they want us to embrace digital, they have to give us an incentive first. You alluded to that in your statement and it is correct. The best incentive is a cost reduction for digital purchases. If the on-disc game is 60 and the digital version is 40, we'll eat that 40 dollar version up.

The other thing you can do is stop expecting to sell umteebazillion copies of JustlikeCoDbutnot 4. Instead, you can produce quality games with lower budgets that aren't attempting to 'broaden the audience'. They do this with movies too, by down playing elements and watering things down to get a PG13 rating. They reason this works for films is that people can't trade their watered down screening of notagoodhorrorflick 5. They CAN trade in their eight hour, bland-as-hell, tacked on multiplayer JustlikeCoDbutnot 4.

If you want to hurt used game sales, make games we'd actually like to play more than once!

 

[spartandude]

when will these AAA publisher/devs realize that the market isnt here to please them, they are here to please the market

 

[rasputin0009]

He is right about how DLC and microtransactions will become more abundant in this next gen. But I don't believe it will be because Microsoft failed to choke us to death. It's probably because they make a lot of money while costing very little.

I love DLC because it's just more content of the game I love. But I don't appreciate Day One DLC. I know how development works where parts of the team aren't doing much on the main game for the last month before release so they start working on DLC. But could you release it a week after the initial release? And not announce it 6 months beforehand? That'd at least give me a false sense of satisfaction that I'm playing a fully fleshed out title. Also, follow the Blood Dragon route more often. That's the way DLC should be done.

I think microtransactions are fine. As long as it's hats or skins or camos or whatever. But if it has anything to do with actual gameplay (Deadspace 3), fuck you. Fuck you and your mother. I'm okay with Battlefield 3's "Pay $10 to unlock all the multiplayer unlocks immediately" because the game is pretty balanced and there's not actually that much difference between what you start with and what you get later. And it doesn't take very long to unlock everything anyways. It's not pay to win. You could argue that the unlocks shouldn't be there in the first place, but I'll argue against that the unlocks help push you into exploring different ways to play the game. And the false sense of achieving something is pretty good, too.

 

[TheNarrator]

I'm a PC gamer, but I can see the appeal of (current and past) consoles. It's usually small and portable, it works without a hassle, it works without installing your games, and apart from a TV, it's not dependent on any external factor. You can bring it over to a friend's house, along with a few discs, and you know you'll be having a good time playing together; it's much easier and more guaranteed to work than setting up a PC LAN party.

Going digital simply isn't the way to go for consoles, IMO. PC already does that, and it does it better, because it's an open platform, which enables competition. Sure, Valve has a near-monopoly, but that's because they offer the best service by far. If they'd stop doing that, they would lose their position. And despite their near-monopoly, there's still enough room under the big tree for a few smaller, more niche services to flourish. And because of the low cost of games and advances in hardware, it's probably even cheaper in the long run than console gaming these days. The "hassle free and independent of any external factors" properties of consoles is what makes them attractive, removing that just makes them crap PC's.

 

[D.L.390]

I point to Nintendo's stance on this and say "pretty much that".

Just make better games.

 

[kamay]

Digital for me just isn't doable for the amount of games I like to play (I don't do multiplayer so I have more time for other games). My download bandwidth is capped at 80gigs a month and is expensive to upgrade. I download a game like Bioshock Infinite and guess what, 30% of my monthly bandwidth is gone right there. That maybe not seem like a lot but with the general browsing of myself and other people in my house I'd get pretty darn close to breaking the cap. I like to play more than one game a month plus I also have a library of physical games dating back to my NES days.

Digital is fine for little indie games or people who don't have a cap, but the next gen games are probably going to be sitting at the 15-24gig range. Also my internet is fast but I really don't want to wait 1-2 hours to download a game, there's a Game Stop within a 5 minute walk of my house and 3 within a 5-10 minute drive.

 

[Maurice Harding]

"When I see studio after studio closing and the aforementioned alluded titles failing I know something's got to change."

The development costs and the prices that the consumer is expected to pay. That's what has got to change.

Exactly! They're wasting millions in marketing and huge development teams to shorten development times. At the same time as soon as the focus goes "broad audience" you can see that in most cases there is absolutely no real challenge in the game and the mechanics are just downright insulting to real gamers.

And no 50 Million marketing budgets are not necessary to market a game for "gamers". Real gamers read about new developments themselves and are going to buy good and interesting games.

state of decay fastest selling game on Xbox live and its on its why to aut sell minecraft.
marketing budget for state of decay $0.000.000.

 

[GonzoGamer]

"...Day One Digital will (hopefully) be cheaper and will have so many added bells and whistles that consumers (with reliable enough bandwidth) will have a hard time refusing the tasty downloadable edition over the disc based one.

Except Jim already covered why Publishers are afraid to make digital cheaper than disc - the fear of reprisal that will come about as a result of undercutting/undermining retailers such as gamestop. According to Jim, there is still too much money being made from Brick & Mortar sales for publishers to ignore. They're depending on gamestop etc to take preorders, sell consoles, and digital copies. They're not going to risk gamestop ordering less titles due to more enticing digital day one sales overshadowing them

That would also explain why Gamestop get's the best retailer specific pre-order dlc. If everyone is so worried about gamestop, why not put all the cool pre-order dlc on the digital download version? That's something they could've been doing for years. We already know that MS will spend millions to make dlc exclusive to their console for a short period of time.
And yet they still manage to get plenty of gamers to believe that used games are a real problem and have to be stopped. Not that I'm a fan of gamestop specifically but I think the used game market was a good thing before they gouged the hell out of the prices.

 

[uncanny474]

On the one hand, what he's saying makes perfect sense, and sounds like it may actually be right.

On the other, it's CliffyB who's saying it, so I'm tempted to assume it's wrong just on that basis.

 

[JPArbiter]

Clif largely raises good points, but the thing that irritates me the most is the "Pitchfork Mob who can not see six inches beyond thier face"

it is not the Customers responsibility to worry about or ensure the survival of industry. our job is to get the products we want, and we are going to do so in the manner that is going to get us the most value for our dollar. if AAA games are on life support cause they are not making enough profit from thier wares, maybe thier production costs are too high and they need to start slashing budgets.

this can range from hiring actual voice actors instead of big names, to scaling back the scope of projects, limiting cut scenes for more in game exposition, etc etc etc.

 

[Riobux]

Remind me why Cliffy B is still relevant. He's left Epic Games, and as far as anyone is aware he's doing...Something? It seems all he seems to be filling his time with is being a Shock Jockey as he insults consumers and publishers to fuel his ego-machine.

 

[Username Redacted]

Someone really needs to sit CliffyB down and calmly explain to him in the simplest possible terms what cognitive dissonance is and why it's annoying to deal with someone (him) who doesn't understand this concept when they pop-off.

I am also continuously amazed at how much this man talks as I would have thought it would have been a lot more difficult to be as prolific in their spouting of garbage as him when they're choking on Microsoft's dick.