CliffyB: Microsoft Tried to "Have it Both Ways"

[DTWolfwood]

Yes used games are the death of the games industry. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.819542-CliffyB-Microsoft-Tried-to-Have-it-Both-Ways]

The man needs to stop spouting out of his ass.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Cant see Cliffy being happy if the £55 a game becomes the norm for PS4/Xbone. Its hard to justify £40 for most titles, but £55? Also, digital distribution still exists on the xbone so a company can produce a AAA game and make it DD only. But, i know they would still expect £55 for it. But i think with some AAA titles, a lot of money is spent and wasted.

If they really want to block people buying used versions of his game. Make them digital downloaded for £25 and let the copy in the shop sell for £55. A lot of people would get the DD version, developers get more money and wont to worry about used sales as its digital. Its how Steam works, and no one has ever moaned about used games, not sharing/lending because its all digital and those complaints arnt applicable.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

internet pitchfork mob who can only see 6 inches in front of their face,

This from man who doesn't see how pushing to kill used games is nothing more than a pitiful stopgap of an attempt to deal with ballooning game budgets.

Yes, something needs to change. The game industry needs to reign their budgets in. Just because you can spend $200 million to create a 4-hour long "cinematic" experience with no cultural or artistic value in an already crowded market doesn't mean that you should. There's only so much money to be squeezed out of any given market, and no amount of DRM or DLC is going to save you when you decide to spend more than that amount because you totally can't ship your game fully of crappy dialog unless it's all lavishly voice-acted with mo-cap facial expressions.

 

[neppakyo]

Uhh, Cliffyb does realize there's been used games and video rentals since the 80's? You know, NES days? Used games aren't the problem, it's studios wasting millions that is the problem. You can make a great "AAA" quality game on a lower budget, just look at Torchlight2. Awesome game, better than Diablo.

As for digital downloads...

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.

There are millions of gamers just like kamay. I'm one of them too. We have a 100GB cap, shared between five people, so maybe I can download one or two games.

Until ISP's around the world increases bandwidth caps, makes high speed in more areas, digital distrobution is not the way to go. Maybe in 10 years when we all have fiber connections, but not now when there's a chunk still using dial-up.

captcha: bath water. Think Cliffyb has been drinking it

 

[shrekfan246]

Am I the only one left on the planet who likes physical media? I'm proud to look at my bookshelves full of games dating all the way back to the NES and when my friends bring their kindles over and say "look I've got like 100 books on this thing" it seems so lame.

You're not. Hell, I just went out to the bookstore last week to pick up the box collection of A Song of Ice and Fire Books 1-4 + A Dance with Dragons and a few Terry Pratchett novels. Sadly it seems that more and more people are turning digital these days though. Of course, I've been parroting the same thing so much the past few days that I feel like a broken record, but suffice to say that I find digital more convenient on my PC, which is usually connected to the internet, and I like physical disks for my consoles, which are never connected to the internet--Partly because of the way I grew up and partly because practically everyone else in my family has been a collector and hoarder.

But I also fear for when Microsoft and Sony do push their consoles into a more digital future. As much as people like to bandy about Steam having a 'monopoly', it's not actually quite true. Sure, many, many games use Steamworks for DRM, even in their physical retail copies. But GoG has a massive collection of DRM-free games, often including new indie titles. Though I don't know whether they're DRM-free or activate on Steam, Green Man Gaming does the same. And if you don't feel like giving money to Steam even though the games you buy will activate on Steam, you can buy from Amazon or occasionally retail stores as well. Microsoft and Sony jumping into the digital marketplace at this point would be a lot like what EA tried to do with Origin: Stifle competition by pulling your titles from the largest competitor you have to worry about and offer them exclusively on your system. Especially if they kill physical copies, because the console space doesn't have alternative sites like Green Man Gaming or GoG.

TL;DR? I don't see a digital future for consoles going well. When Microsoft can offer all of their titles on XBL and Sony can offer all of their titles on the PSN without worrying about competing in a retail space, what's to stop them from trying to exert complete control over their customers once again?

 

[Jamous]

Bluh. I'm not going to lie, every time this guy opens his mouth something worse comes out... Love how he just dismisses ALL OF US as ridiculously shortsighted.

 

[Wakey87]

I was personly banned from Epic forums by this guy, well, I was threatend to be, so I jumped before I was pushed and never looked back. Needless to say I've never been a fan of anything he's got to say.

 

[deadish]

There is nothing wrong with digital distribution.

MS's version of it, with 24 hour checking in (like we are on parole or something) and complicated "permissions", however is asinine. MS has set back digital distribution by a decade with the mess that was the Xbone.

The industry has a strange habit of blaming the consumer for it's own shortcomings.

This basically sums it up. The industry seem to have forgotten we don't owe them shit.

All I can say about used games is, DealWithIt. The movie, music and book industries have.

 

[Fordo]

Ok, I read The entire Rant from the guy with the boner chainsaw gun, and wathched 26 of the 28 minute long video he posted.

Boner gun is complaining that AAA titles don't have a smart medium to make enough money to keep going.

In the video Boner gun links, Used game hater rambles on for almost 30 minutes explaining that used game companies are bad b/c they take money from publishers.

Both dance around the idea that the real problem is that neither developers or companies like Microsoft have come up with a system which is competitive to the one we currently have: Consumer choice is mainly driven by cost: GameStop provides games and the cheapest cost for consumers.

Showing my age here, remember when Apple first introduced iTunes and the fact every song was 99 cents? Youngins may not, but the firestorm was that not every song is as good as the other and therefore should not cost the same. Also the idea was that 99 cents was too cheap either way because how could the poor music artist make money? The consumer didn't care because it was the simplest way to get legal music and cheaper than having to buy an entire CD for maybe one or two songs you wanted from an artist. Today we still have music and artists make money. No one (the avg. consumer) didn't care about the DRM which hovered on your songs for years in iTunes, it was so much easier than cassettes or cd players.

Everyone talks about Steam being the perfect system, but who can remember how weird it was taking your Counter Strike keys and trading them in for this new Steam platform? Nothing was guaranteed that Steam would be a success, but all it took was for one steam sale to show up on a title you've wanted to play but didn't want to pay full price for to see the benefit. Not often do people mention that Steam is in fact always-on DRM for your game because it does a great job of not cluttering up the gaming experience. It's more convenient to launch steam, have the platform check for updates on my games, buy new hats for TF2 in game, browse Steam sales, than it is to use a browser window.

These two events are important because they show how smart companies can solve problems that benefit both the industry and the consumer.

Boner gun is right. iOS devices stand to reap the rewards from the greedy mess MS, Sony and Nintendo have put the industry in because it's a much larger, stronger, much more stable and reliable base for developers than any other platform on the market right now besides steam for gaming.

TLDR: If publishers don't make money making games for consoles, make them for a PC / iOS. The market is large, there aren't any used games. or BS licensing with Sony/Nintendo/MS.

 

[FightingFurball]

God this just reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPuYGPcvD4

But instead of saying oh god no one will pay it, saying well if it costs so much the people should buy for the price then...

 

[SONICWOLF]

No Clifford, what's got to change is the absolutely ridiculous budgets of AAA games and the idea that every game must cost $60. When games are selling 3 million copies in a month but are still deemed failures, then there's something fundamentally wrong with the way games are being made. Games don't need huge budgets and jaw dropping graphics to succeed, this has been proven time and time again with games like Dark Souls and the seemingly never ending wealth of awesome indie content.

For once why don't AAA publishers take some fucking responsibility for their own self destructive actions instead of blaming everyone else and screwing the consumer over? The current AAA situation is simply unsustainable and if this carries on I don't forsee anything other than some rather large ships sinking.

THIS !! HOLY SHIT ALL OF THE THIS !!

 

[tardcore]

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

Goddamned right somethings gotta change. Game studios need to quit putting themselves in the shadow of giant publishing corps who care nothing about their autonomy, and instead just see them as another asset that can be liquidated if things turn sour. They also need to stop sinking all their money and hopes into a few games with a cast of thousands AND a thousand elephants, where by they need to push millions of game copies to break even, let alone turn a profit. The hard headed arrogance of fucksticks like this guy are what is responsible for game studios (and the game industry in general) going tits up. Not fucking used game buyers.

Now onto the whole "Microsoft wanted to have it both ways" malarkey. Bullshit! Microsoft created a weak, expensive console that offered next to nothing new for the gaming customer except for a ton of unfair and retarded social media and DRM features nobody fucking wanted. They didn't want anything both ways, they just wanted everything THEIR way, and fuck the consumer.

So in short the best way we can help change the industry is to stop listening to jackholes like the Microsoft spin doctors and idiots like Cliff Bleszinski. Fuck him, fuck Microsoft, fuck the kinect, and fuck their little dog too.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Why do discs stop digital distribution? I am a PC gamer yet I buy all retail . I like boxes. And if you want a copy of your game:
1. Get it whilst its cheap on your online retailer
2. Buy a box
3. Print awesome custom box art.
4. IF (and it probably does not) it has a good manual, print it too. Most dont though, so 98% of the time this step can be forgotten
5. ????
6. Profit.

Fixed that for ya.

OT:
I'm honestly starting to think that it's time to find another hobby. There seems to be very little that's good in the gaming world now, and I'm tired of all this shit. Maybe I should take a break from gaming sites for a while, I'm sure that'll make me feel better.

 

[Fordo]

They also need to stop sinking all their money and hopes into a few games with a cast of thousands AND a thousand elephants, where by they need to push millions of game copies to break even, let alone turn a profit. The hard headed arrogance of fucksticks like this guy are what is responsible for game studios (and the game industry in general) going tits up. Not fucking used game buyers.

Boom. This is it. Smaller studios producing more original content instead of mega studios producing the same old crap is preferable.

 

[Something Amyss]

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

[/quote]

We're in agreement there. Maybe if the corporate bottom line wasn't so important to holier-than-thou executives who can't see more than six inches in front of their face, this wouldn't be an issue.

Nah. Gotta be used games.

 

[Something Amyss]

God this just reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPuYGPcvD4

But instead of saying oh god no one will pay it, saying well if it costs so much the people should buy for the price then...

Clearly, the used market has stopped Homer's car from selling.

And what a fine set of clothes our Emperor just bought.

Hail CliffyB! Hail!

 

[kypsilon]

Let the big budget AAA games die, I say. If that's all that the Xbone was going to offer us anyway, I say, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Give us our indie developers with new ideas and a passion for the game rather than the over-hyped marketing pulp churned out by a cash-grabbing machine. Don't get me wrong, I love some of those AAA titles when they're done well, but they can't sustain the industry on CoD clones alone forever.

 

[RJ 17]

While offering few kind words for the "internet pitchfork mob who can only see 6 inches in front of their face," he isn't without criticism for Microsoft.

Hmmmm, and yet he goes on to say...

"Customers can smell from a mile away when you're treating them like children, peeking your head into their bedroom on a regular basis in an attempt to catch them doing something."

So take heart, fellow gamers! We might be blind as bats but we've got the noses of bloodhounds!

God, what a contradictory load of shit. Here's an interesting concept that I bet never crossed Cliffy's mind...maybe the problem is with the developers and publishers and not with the consumers? Publishers that say "If this homogenized piece of crap action-shooter game doesn't sell X copies, we're sacking the studio" while demanding that said studio make the game as friendly and broad-reaching as possible...which inevitably leads to a bland piece of crap that "customers can smell from a mile away" and as such the sales suffer because it's got corporate meddling's stink all over it.

I'm just waiting for the day when it all comes tumbling down, destroy all the corrosion and corruption in the current league of publishers and developers and gives way for the new companies to grow, expand, and take their place. Essentially like how a purging fire on the plains is actually good for the environment.

 

[RoBi3.0]

After the last article quoting Cliffy B., Why the hell are we still giving this dude the time of day?

Maybe becomes he was an industry insider for almost two decades and has developed more then one wildly successful game. Might be he my know something about the industry. Just sayin.


He has a point the only way to change is to offer gamer abetter deal and digital. Obliviously, brute forcing a change by take something away and not offering anything in return is not the way to go.