Ok, for the record this really isnt directed as a personal attack, We are both entitled to opinions which that is all we are really exchanging here. I am breaking this into quotes simply because it makes it easier to read and a lot of the points you make are valid and make for good examples as the views you expressed are certainly shared by others. I do not wish to start a flame war, so I will post my opinions replying to these statements and beyond that I will agree to disagree on any points herein, because this post is entirely too long for my part.
As for price increases? Actually yes, there have been. Mid 90s in the US a PC title would top end at about 30-40$. PC titles now are topping out at about 40-50$. Same is true of console titles, Generation 6 titles new were topping at 50$ and generation 7 has seen console titles start pushing the 60-70$ mark.
Publishers such as Activision are only looking at this from a statistical economic standpoint. They see a 100 man dev team from blizzard per year generates 1 billion in profit from consumers, and automatically think every 100 man dev team under their umbrella should be generating the same sort of profit ratio, regardless of what they are developing and regardless of the value to the customer. Thats why you see Activision chomping at the bit to justify charging an equal sub fee for the call of duty series as what Warcraft charges. Even though the content value to the players in a shooter is generated not by the developers by writing narrative, creating unique AI sets, creating new technologies, etc, but by the players in head to head competition.
Whats worst about all that is that there is still no new effort added by the publisher from what they are wanting to charge for. They are simply now wanting to charge for what they have been giving away for free for no other reason that they see another company doing it.
Consumers are setting the dangerous precedents here and saying its ok to pay for something we used to get for free when it took next to no extra effort for the company to give it. When you plunk down 1$ to add on that nifty little hat that took a developer an hour to develop and when 10,000 other people did the same thats an insane profit, because it might have cost 100$ to pay for all the costs associated with developing it.
This is a majorly bad precedent to set. Have you noticed, its not Frictional games, Majesco, JoWood, and other minor publishers struggling to stay afloat who actually have reason to worry about proft margins who are out there trying to push the boundaries of how much your going to pay for a game. Its the EA, Activision, Take two, and other well funded, profitable and comfortable corporations that are leading the charge of finding new and profitable ways to maximize how much you will pay them with the least amount of effort on their part. And why do they do it? Only because people willingly bought into their last attempt to sucker people into paying more. Quit accepting a higher price tag for less return because it not only hurts you it hurts all gamers and helps major corporate gaming to crush smaller upstart companies.
No, not really. I am simply looking at the trend that has been blatant over the course of the last decade. I do respect there has been a recent surge in big name corporations getting their hooks into used gaming. In the US.. the only one of note is Wal-mart, which most the other corp used resellers were firmly in existence. Wal-mart seems to be the only new large player in this arena. Question here is. Should the players have to pay for the fact other corporations are screwing the publishers?Keava said:Fan of conspiracy theories? I ask seriously, because you seem to mistake two different things. Over last years the used game market grew to the point where it's not just person A selling a game they got bored with to person B at a lower price. Big retailers came to join the fun and leech the money on products they already sold once without having to pay a single cent to the producers of that product.
Not at all. I fully support the notion of people getting paid for the work they do. However, EA, specifically in its sports arena is not a good example of this when all they really do is release one version of a game every console generation, Do a few minor system tweaks, update rosters and dump money into marketing for each years incarnation and call it a day. Fact is EAs sports division is one of the most profitable examples of game development in the industry, specifically because they dont have alot of overhead by simply reselling the same game they released the previous year with no real development, at full price, so No Im not worried about EAs profit margins when those Margins are wide enough to swallow hundreds of small developers that have a legit reason to decry what cuts into their profit margins. I'm Sure EA is doing this for the goodness of the industry as a whole and not to take their already insanely profitable franchises and make them even more profitable without actually doing anything to deserve the extra revenue, and not out of a desire to create monopolies and crush competition.And yet there is a whole lot of you that think's creating games is some sort of charity business and companies, especially publishers, should not make money. Sorry to burst your bubble but if EA doesn't make enough money they won't invest it into new titles, which means either there will be less games produced or the quality will drop down. You want that? Keep buying used games and boycott the DLCs/online passes, or just pirate everything. Both cases those evil, sinister companies won't see your money. After all thou art a true rebel against the corporation dominance over the lives of simple mortals.
Well your mileage may vary there. Part of what your looking at is localization and importation costs that have little to do with the games themselves. Actually this is a good point to bring up because developmental costs have actually decreased over the years. Part of the reason why is because people accepted the notion that 10-15 hours of game content is an acceptable amount of content to warrant a full price tag. With such, Game publishers are now fairly content to release only that much content, which takes dramatically less manhours to produce than a 30-50 hour content limit. This is a perfect example on how when the consumer gives approval to a bad idea with their wallet, the publishers will use that to their advantage.Game development costs rise up every year and i haven't noticed any major rise in prices lately. Over those 20 years i play i even noticed a drop. Back in 90ties PC game here was usually 150-170PLN (that's about how much i paid for Baldur's Gate i think) which is about 50-60 $, now they are closer to 120-130PLN so ~40$.
As for price increases? Actually yes, there have been. Mid 90s in the US a PC title would top end at about 30-40$. PC titles now are topping out at about 40-50$. Same is true of console titles, Generation 6 titles new were topping at 50$ and generation 7 has seen console titles start pushing the 60-70$ mark.
All this is not seeing the forest for the trees. MMOs in the EQ/WoW days justified their costs based on the sheer magnitude of content that was available and how long one would be playing. Any first rate MMO is typically going to take you several months to about half a year to work through the core games content. If you can do it all in 2 months time which is not likely, your coming out ahead. Question is.. are you going to get 6 months daily replay value out of a shooter? a platformer? a puzzle game?MMOs also proved that if your multiplayer sucks you will go down fast. Most companies that jumped on the MMO bandwagon with unfinished products struggle to keep them running. If EA or any other publisher can prove that their multiplayer will be worth the fee i see no problem. Sign me up. If it will be crap, i'll live without the online world. The market is varied enough to let me choose what i want to pay for and last thing those big 'money milking' companies want is to loose customers fast.
Publishers such as Activision are only looking at this from a statistical economic standpoint. They see a 100 man dev team from blizzard per year generates 1 billion in profit from consumers, and automatically think every 100 man dev team under their umbrella should be generating the same sort of profit ratio, regardless of what they are developing and regardless of the value to the customer. Thats why you see Activision chomping at the bit to justify charging an equal sub fee for the call of duty series as what Warcraft charges. Even though the content value to the players in a shooter is generated not by the developers by writing narrative, creating unique AI sets, creating new technologies, etc, but by the players in head to head competition.
Whats worst about all that is that there is still no new effort added by the publisher from what they are wanting to charge for. They are simply now wanting to charge for what they have been giving away for free for no other reason that they see another company doing it.
Consumers are setting the dangerous precedents here and saying its ok to pay for something we used to get for free when it took next to no extra effort for the company to give it. When you plunk down 1$ to add on that nifty little hat that took a developer an hour to develop and when 10,000 other people did the same thats an insane profit, because it might have cost 100$ to pay for all the costs associated with developing it.
This is a majorly bad precedent to set. Have you noticed, its not Frictional games, Majesco, JoWood, and other minor publishers struggling to stay afloat who actually have reason to worry about proft margins who are out there trying to push the boundaries of how much your going to pay for a game. Its the EA, Activision, Take two, and other well funded, profitable and comfortable corporations that are leading the charge of finding new and profitable ways to maximize how much you will pay them with the least amount of effort on their part. And why do they do it? Only because people willingly bought into their last attempt to sucker people into paying more. Quit accepting a higher price tag for less return because it not only hurts you it hurts all gamers and helps major corporate gaming to crush smaller upstart companies.