CliffyB Thinks Used Games Are Bad, Sony is "Playing Us"

[Dominic Crossman]

Lets say he's right, and Sony are secretly going to screw us with DRM wise, consumers will cry out with rage that Sony where lying and switch over to Xbox one as they where a least honest about screwing us.
That being said I think that's unlikely and the guy who's game credits are for multi-platform/Xbox exclusive games is scared all his business is going onto the rival console. (barring fat princess which if not mistaken was next to unheard before PlayStation all-stars)

I'm totally alright with calling Cliffy B "Dude Huge."

I only buy games I'm going to want to play more than once. If I knew I would buy a game and trade it in after only a single playthrough I just wouldn't bother with such a purchase. So you better make damn good games, that's all I'm sayin'

Oh, by the way? I never played any of the Gears games more than once. Go figure.

Also this^^^
But you know what, I did play gears of war 1&2, multiple times, and I bought those games.

But then you get a game like remember me, with I completed on it's hardest difficulty 2 days after getting it, and you expect me to pay £42 for it at blockbusters.
Na-na-na-na never gonna happen.

I actually like my blockbusters attitude towards rentals though, if I like the game and can buy it full price minus the cost of the rental.
Did that with ratchet and clank: full frontal assault (Q-Force to us Brits) and I now own the game with paid dlc netting them even more cash.

 

[FalloutJack]

I love it when dumb people try to explain business economics to us poor unwashed masses who just don't give fuck. Seriously, there was all this talking and all I heard was "BLAH BLAH BLAH WE WANT ALL YER MONEY, GUYS!". Hey genius, we don't care about your numbers. You want us to support your industry? Try selling something that ain't crap or do a little dance or SOMETHING! But don't just stand there, telling us we have to give more money to your organ grinder already. It's embarassing.

 

[oldtaku]

You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing

Well then make some better games cheaper like the indies do instead of spending all your budget and polygons on loving modeling the crotch on a space marine's power armor.

If it's a choice between cheaper games and your games, Cliffy, I'll take the cheaper games, because a Gears of War game has never been worth $60, and I've never paid that much for one.

 

[NKRevan]

WHile I don't fully agree with Mr. B here, I think some people are a bit ignorant when it comes to the whole budgets thing.

The budgets for games have not exploded just because dev studios want to do that or because they don't know different. There are a lot of factors, including, the people buying the games, who expect high end graphics. Yes, the Escapist may go ahead and tell me that no, graphics are not a seller, but anyone who says that is fooling themselves in regards to the mass market and the mass market is where the money is.

Fact is, to make a AAA Core Blockbuster game these days, you need a massive amount of people. With the industry being made a better place to work at, these massive people require a lot of money to be payed. That's not even going into middleware, which you need unless you want to stretch development time and thus costs again.

Cliffy B is, IMHO wrong, that used game sales don't have a place in the industry at all. But saying huge dev budgets are only the fault of developers/publishers is ridiculous. Do realize that the market expects standards and those standards have become increasingly expensive to meet.

 

[Duol]

If this is such a problem (Personally I think they're just being whiney bitches) then I'm happy to pay more at release for games so long as I can demo them first, have access to all future content (don't lazy out because I already paid) and actually produce good games with reasonable length single player content then sure.

Until that time, they neeed to stop being such pricks. If they can't make that kind of game for a 60 dollar price point then stop making them. They seem to assume people want 80 dollar games for 60 dollars. Well that's true of everything, everyone wants a 200k Ferrari for 10k. Doesn't mean it's happening because it's a market they have found they can opperate in. If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

 

[Sansha]

This is a different tune to the Cliffy B who let Jazz Jackrabbit go freeware in the mid-90's.

 

[sXeth]

Guy who made microsoft's biggest (second biggest?) exclusive franchise spewing crap on Sony. I see no bias here!

S'far as used games go, I can't say much for it. Gamestop here abouts ends to give you basically a non-discount on them anyways (I had them massively confused why I wouldn't buy their used New Vegas for 5 bucks less then the full one once). We've already seen publishers doing their damndest to try and curb the used market, so the console maker jumping behind it is just a poor marketing move for them.

 

[spartandude]

"Dude Huge claims that it is impossible for used games and game rentals to co-exist in this world of massive marketing and production budgets."

all i got from this is "we dont know how to budget our games so everything else is the problem"

I mean the Witcher 2 isnt exactly a break away blockbuster selling game yet with so few sales (in comparison to AAA games) they managed to give away a FREE expansion and still call the whole thing profitable. Dark Souls only recently sold 2 million copies over the course of a couple of years and they got a profit long before that.


also

. If you're worried about the used game market, make a game that people won't want to sell back to the store so there won't be as many used copies to go around.

this, while this is obviously difficult to do its not impossible, in the area i live all shops that stock used games have so far never seen someone turn in a copy of Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword... ok thats an exaggeration according to a manager of one of the stores 2 have been traded in

 

[Xannieros]

Well, used games and rentals have worked so far... They haven't crashed gaming. Only thing that's changed now is there are huge budgets and overpaid CEO's.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

But then again, maybe he should just can it, and have a look at Nintendo's stance on used games [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124927-Nintendo-Says-Used-Games-Arent-An-Issue]: make games that are so good that people will want to keep them forever.

Ya know, there is a reason why Nintendo can say that while pretty much no other developer/publisher can say the same. Nintendo knows how to keep the game budget in normal numbers while their games keep selling 3+ millions even if they are considered as "bad" by Nintendo's standard. Well, there are also exceptions where Nintendo give an unlimited budged to a team (Retro and Miyamoto when they were making Metroid Prime).

I wrote this quite a few times and people ridiculed me for this, but I will repeat it.
Nintendo using current gen tech for their consoles is the healthiest business practice for gaming. I LOVE seeing a beautiful game. I LOVE hearing the huge numbers for the hardware power. However, making high end consoles and selling them at a loss is a cancerous business practice that is killing the console manufacturer and the industry.
Game budgets keep rising while you can't justify a game looking like a PS3 game on the PS4.

Investing in marketing huge amounts is bad because you need to sell more and earn it back, but you can't justify a small marketing campaign if you invested 5M in making the game.

Currently at work, will probably edit this post or write another one to clarify if anything isn't clear.

 

[luvd1]

Wow, can we now called devs+publisher whining, entitled weiners? Your budgets are high coz you want them high so you can feel like big boys, but it's just so you can have lots of money to play with. You can't blame the customer for your egos. Assassin creed may have thousands working on it but that's their fault. Bigger is not better.

 

[Caiphus]

But he has a hot wife! How could he be wrong?!

 

[RaikuFA]

I have two words to for Mr. Bleszinski;

Dark Souls

This discussion is over, Cliffy.

Dosen't count, it's a game from Japan and those are bad according to Cliffy B. The guys an idiot.

 

[JetFury]

Not every game has to be filled to the brim with graphic power. The gaming industry did well enough and survived before the ps3 and 360 came along. I would argue this past gen alone had many a bad title in spite of technological edges.

Maybe if he spent more time crafting a rich story and less time on Marcus's bandana I'd take him more seriously. That guy is a douche

 

[MrBaskerville]

There´s a very easy solution for the AAA industris problems... Don´t spend a billion creating small inconsequential details that no one ever notices. Smaller Dev teams and smaller budgets, that´s the way to go. If they can´t afford to make insane stuff like Assassins Creed 4, then don´t, do something on a smaller scale or with lesser graphics... It really isn´t that important anyway.

 

[Gothproxy]

My take on this (and it's incredibly easy to mock Cliffy, but I won't) is that he says "The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs," but WHY?

Games don't have to cost millions of dollars and take thousands of developers to make. That's one of the things people realized when SquareEnix said that "Tomb Raider" was a commercial failure. FAILURE?!? It got great reviews and sold 3.4 million copies in the first month. That's really, really good. But SquareEnix needed to sell 5 million to make its money back. Why? It could have saved a boat load of money by not putting in the crappy multiplayer that no one asked for.

Why do all these AAA titles need such huge budgets for "life-like" graphics? There is a saying that playing a game for the graphics is like watching porn for the story. It's stupid. Stop spending money uselessly on the latest engine and put some of it into the story and gameplay mechanics. Then you will have a game that most people will gladly pay for new just like Nintendo feels. Stop spending movie blockbuster budgets. If you want to do that, MAKE A MOVIE! Otherwise you sure aren't going to get your money back.

Also, why does it cost so much, Cliffy, for these big AAA titles when all they really are are cut-and-paste copies of the previous iteration? CoD, Battlefield, Gears of War....blah blah blah. They seem the same, year after year, so how can you say you are spending more money if you are being eco-friendly and recycling your games?

Anyway, if game developers would make great games with the gamers in mind and develop them with great story and cool gameplay, they can spend less, make more and stop bitching at the customers.

And Cliffy, to be clear, used games aren't going to cause the next generation to die.....it'll be all the fed up gamers leaving your systems in droves that will.

 

[wulfy42]

None of this makes sense...and the whole discussion is stupid.

Why?

Used games have been around forever...way back to the original nintendo days there was video stores that would buy and sell used games (this was before gamestop etc). I know, as a kid I worked for one briefly putting fliers up around town. It was the first such store that opened in my town...and it was awesome.

The point though is back then there were FAR less gamers.....a much smaller audience to sell games to, so used sales would obviously take a much larger percentage of possible sales away (especially since games often were much shorter, and didn't have as much replay value then etc).

Now the argument seems to be "We are spending way more money and time on creating these games, so used games are bad".

Well first of all, you are also CHARGING way more for the games then you used to. The price for a new game has gone up and up over the years. Meanwhile, the number of people buying games...that has also gone up and up over the years.

The real solution is to make buying used games obsolete!! How? By reducing the price of the new games constantly after release so that used games can not be purchased for less (or much less).

Also, release as many games as you can in digital format...for a reduced price. This both ensures the game won't be resold...and again ensures that the cost will be less then used games sold in stores. Still offer physical copies, but charge an extra $10 for them (so $60 for physical copies and only $50 for digital).

Then drop the price of new games by about $10 every 2 months until 6 months after release when the price hits $30 (half the original price....digital copies would hit that price in only 4 months).

This would basically mean that used copies of games would have to be sold for $20 to make sense for anyone to purchase them..which would mean places like gamestop wouldn't give you even $5 for them....so almost nobody would bother selling them.

Used game problem would be solved...and people would actually be HAPPY about it...because over all we would still be getting the games, but cheaper...and new!

Meanwhile the companies making the games would actually get all those profits instead of gamestop etc.

The system is broken right now, it's true, but the solution is NOT to remove all ways for gamers to get games at a reduced price.....the cost of games is insane at this point already...and since you can often get digital copies...there is no excuse for not offering digital copies at a reduced price (no cost of creating a disc, no shipping, no instruction booklets, no profit lost to distributers/stores etc).

Digital format should be the new norm, and prices should drop to help motivate people to use it.

Used games would naturally dry up over time if that happened, and nobody would really object if they could still get the games at the same price as before...only they didn't have to get used copies.

As far as actually getting money for trading in your games, well honestly the amount you usually get from gamestop/bestbuy is paltry..and usually not worth it. You could sell it through amazon etc....but I would personally rather save $10 initially, or eventually get new games at half price (only $30), instead of being able to sell my games back.

I have not bought a used game in awhile...mainly due to just having too many games already and only picking up new ones that I'm really waiting for etc (and way to many games on steam). If all the used game stores went poof, I wouldn't even notice. Even so, I don't think forcing people to now buy used games is a good solution at all. There are way better ways to handle the problem, that will make everyone happy.

 

[JetFury]

We should flood cliffyBS Twitter calling him entitled. He actively does it himself.