THQ Using Online Pass for Homefront Multiplayer
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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Oh, so THQ sells the game to the retailer (making money).strangeotron said:
The retailer sells the game to make that money back, plus an income.
The retailer then begins to buy games from customers to sell the game back at a (barely) lower price so that the retailer doesn't have to buy as many new copies from THQ, thus losing THQ money.
And your solution is to sell the game at a lower price. The game that cost millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to make. That may or may not even see the 'black' because of retailers involved with the used game market cutting short their income flow. THAT is your solution?
I don't think you'd last long in business.
Retailers can sell the used game lower then THQ can put it out. Even if THQ sold the game for 75% of the cost it is now, the used game retailer only has to drop it lower. They take the game at crap trades, which means anything they make above that trade is pure profit. Which means that they can go lower then the studio can.
So THQ's idea is this MP pass. Which, for some players, will guarantee at least some income.
It's smart. It's reasonable. It's good business.
Not sure, but I agree with it. I mean, you rent the game for what? 3 days? (unless you use Gamefly or whatever) So why should I have access to full multiplayer if im not buying the game? This may put me in the minority, but I planned on renting to see if it was any good anyways, and if it is good, Ill buy. If not, I wont. and If I like the game, but not the multiplayer, I can buy it used for cheap and not worry about it.The Red Spy said:
This make sense to me.
This assessment is 100% correct. When you buy a car from a dealership, you are buying the inventory the dealership has already purchased. As a matter of fact, without shops like Gamestop to sell their wares, the videogame industry would not be where it is today. It's also a fair assessment if you were to say that Gamestop pays the MSRP or very close to it, for each individual product, and most of the their money is made from selling accessories and other second or third party items for those videogames. This would also include used games.strangeotron said:
On the other hand, can you blame the companies for wanting to make more money for their products. Companies want dedicated systems so their games run flawlessly and the customers are happy, this is not an easy task. If they are not charging an online fee to play, then they are not having the influx of capital to keep those systems running efficiently.
Anyway, this is a moot point, I am going to buy this puppy on Steam as soon it's available for sale, perhaps even pre-purchase.
As a matter of fact, as far as profit margins are concerned, they are a company that makes what they make by the shear number of products they sell, rather than gouging every individual, and I'm basing that on this particular graph: http://kotaku.com/352790/gamestop-brings-new-meaning-to-gross-profit
Edit: Game publishers have a habit of only publicly tracking sales on a product that either just came out or is doing excessively well over a long period of time. The profits of a game publisher always makes the bottom line within a company, but you stop hearing about a product usually within a month of it's release with a few rare exceptions, like CoD:Blops for example. We see likewise emulation of this in it's sister industries, music and movies.
I am surprised by how much support these guys are giving this, with the two or three who oppose this. For a consumer who buys used, this might not be that great, but they are buying that product at half the price (sometimes) for the same product that someone paid doubled of someone who bought new. I guess this is also fair to those who buy new. They get something that the used consumer would've normally gotten for free. Plus, THQ gets (some) profit they would've never seen.
First of all, I never equated secondary sales to piracy. I never even mentioned piracy.strangeotron said:
So don't pull that out. It's a waste of time.
And don't try to equate home purchasing with game sales. It's beyond silly.
When a home is made, the builders get paid into the black. All available income is made, and the deal is finished. Software developers and publishers have to sell thousands, or even millions of copies in order to break even, let alone turn a profit for their product. They want to ensure that not only will this product be paid for, but that funding for future projects is made. Your analogy is very poor. Not even remotely a parallel.
Think about this:
You said that if THQ can't cut their retail prices, then 'hard luck'. Is that right?
Well if game retailers can't survive when THQ, and many others, try to circumvent the used game market to ensure they see black: Hard luck.
You wail for the struggle of the brick and mortar retailers, but not the businesses that make the industry exist in the first place? Quite frankly: If I had to choose to there being a Gamestop and there being THQ, I'd choose THQ. If retailers can't cope with developers that actually want to make money (Heaven forbid a company wants to make money), then they need to rethink their business model or pack it up.
I have nothing against used game sales.
But I won't cry foul when the developers and publishers try to get their due.
Yeah, pretty much that. PC version didn't get shafted this time, that's a first.uppitycracker said:
Ehhhh... feels like a slippery slope. What would they be charging for next? It kind of reminds me with what airplanes are doing, sneaking in hidden charges. I think that if they want more money, they should just raise the price of their game instead of doing the sneaky things such as releasing an unfinished game and then making bank on the DLC later, or making you pay for online, etc.
Sorry but no. Publishers need money to pay the developers. The average multiplatform game costs over 30 million to make, and that's not counting ads, commercials, and everything the publisher does to market the game. It's not as draconian as some DRM we've seen on the PC, nor is it as bad as EA's project $10. Buying the game used hurts developers a lot more than it hurts publishers. Publishers generally have more money than developrs as the can affords to pay millions to different developers for multiple projects. So you bought BFBC2 for half price. Why should you get as much content as the gamer who: A) bought it new and is therefore supporting the developers and publishers by making sure that they get money off of their creation, and B) paid twice as much as you did? You gave money to the retailer, %100 of it to retailer, and all they had to do was hand out store credit and place a sticker on the used game case. Most of the time you see a used game trade in and a just released game you'll see a used copy of the same game for five dollars less. Why the hell should the retailer get more money off of the game percentage wise then the developers, publishers, manufacturers, etc?strangeotron said:
Finally! Someone is making sense.strangeotron said:
I don't care, nor should I if THQ (or whoever) makes money from me reselling a game. As a consumer it's not my responsibility. As a consumer I'm not interested in making the company a profit. As a fan I might be, but a lot of people confuse consumer with fan.
The industry, in this example THQ, must maintain their profits, of course. But it's not the consumer that has to take crap like this in order for them to make an extra buck. They need to find a viable business model, not to cry foul because people resell what they bought at a high price, trying to recuperate some of the money.
And as for Baby Teas argument ad infinitum about buying used: you shouldn't care. Don't confuse consumer with fan. The industry (whenever did such a nebulous term become so common?) is not some precious flower that we must care for and nurture. It's a business. That means than when I buy a game I make a transaction with that business. When that is concluded, as a consumer, my involvement ends.
If THQ has a crummy business plan and needs "potential profit" to stay afloat they are doing it wrong. Even if a million people buys the same copy in some huge chain of resells and THQ only made the original sale it's not a loss for THQ. It really isn't. They just failed at doing their job.
As a fan I might want to see a company do well. As a consumer I don't care. And as the industry treats me like crap I have even less incentive to care what happens after I purchase a game.
At this point it would seem things like Online Pass are here to stay, so systems like this one certainly take a more reasonable approach than simply cutting off multiplayer entirely until you fork over that $10, so I can get behind this sort of move. Not that it would have ever impacted me in the first place, it's not like I actually have the option to buy use on the PC, heh.
Also I haven't really been sold on Homefront at all to begin with - what I've seen about the multiplayer sounds interesting but I don't actually buy games for the multiplayer, so I am decidedly on the fence over whether I'll acquire it or not. This move won't be driving me away though!
Also I haven't really been sold on Homefront at all to begin with - what I've seen about the multiplayer sounds interesting but I don't actually buy games for the multiplayer, so I am decidedly on the fence over whether I'll acquire it or not. This move won't be driving me away though!
What the hell are you talking about? I can't buy Homefront second-hand on the PC because nobody sells used PC games anymore, and that has absolutely nothing to do with things like Online Pass - the used PC games market died out years ago when stores started assuming that anyone returning opened software must have copied it, so they would only allow you to exchange things, never return them.strangeotron said:
Online Pass is therefore effectively irrelevant to PC gamers, since we'd be buying it new whether or not they bundle one-use activation codes in the box. As for your assertion that moves like this provide disincentives for buying the game new... that is also crazy talk, the entire point behind such techniques is to make new copies of a title more attractive than the used copies that will start showing up the same week that new copies hit store shelves - it does nothing at all to prevent people from selling the game on, they can and will I'm certain do just that, same as always, because (and this is key here) they're the ones who purchase new games and then sell them back once they've used them.
Seriously, from the perspective of people who always buy new (the ones Gamestop and its ilk rely on to provide the 'initial influx' of games so their glorified pawnshop model works), things like this change nothing. The only people that systems like this impact are the ones who are buying used, and here's a newsflash for you that you apparently don't get despite people telling you it OVER AND OVER:
[HEADING=1]People who purchase games used ARE NOT customers of the publishers that release games.[/HEADING]
THQ doesn't care if a move like this leads to a total dry up of ALL used sales, because when you buy your games used you are not their customer - they didn't receive any money from you, there is no commercial relationship established, you are a NON-ENTITY to them. The only time they make any money is via new sales, or if they can find a way to monetize content that people who've purchased the game used will want to buy.
This is therefore a (fairly reasonable when compared to other implementations) move to make sale of new units more attractive, and potentially make some money from the used segment instead of no money at all from the used segment - unless such a move discourages sale of new copies of their games, they literally cannot lose. All the people inclined to get angry and start talking about how they're never going to buy a game from THQ again, yadda yadda? Those are the folks who aren't buying games from THQ now, because there is no reason to get mad at publishers for moves like this if you were going to pick up a new copy - new customers are not negatively impacted in any way by things like Online Pass. All the sound and fury these news articles generate is effectively irrelevant to the publishers because the complainers aren't their customers.
In case I've been too subtle, I'm strongly implying here that you only care about this because you were never planning on buying the game new, but somehow don't quite grasp that publishers don't care what YOU think because you never buy anything from them - it's the only logical reason to be so upset and/or nonsensical in your arguments.
QFTteh_gunslinger said:
I am always amazed at how many people are willing to line up for a royal reaming from Big Business.
The fact that self-labeled fans seem to think their mental loyalty means anything to large publishers must be some sort of mass delusion. Keep supporting The Man, man and someday you really will be a part of the process. As their fuel source.
(Yes the preceding was hyperbole. I'm trying to make a point.)
Sorry, you said you bought it at half the RRSP. You should've specified whether or not that meant you bought it used. But in your case you have nothing to complain about. The publishers still got some of your money as profit. BFBC2 was a big success selling 6 million in a year, of course it can afford a price drop. But my point still stands. Also price reduction is an ass backwards idea. You have realize that off of a brand new game, only $27 of the $60 goes to publishers. The retailer takes $15. The retailer already takes more than half as much of the $60 than the publisher does. $7 goes to whichever console company it is that owns the console you're buying it for. (Which is why PC games tend to be arounf $10 cheaper than their console counterparts). The rest goes to distrubution and other business aspects. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2068-Project-Ten-Dollar <---this video proves all that.)strangeotron said:
So cutting down costs would be counterproductive for the publishers. They'd make much less off of their games. And the video game industry is too competetive to be not making any money off of your product to be lowering it's costs. So in the used game market when the publisher gets non of the profit when their games get sold, publishers have found a way to get some money off of used game sales. Homefront's model seems to be the best, and most reasonable model for this as opposed to the infamous Project Ten Dollar from EA. By lowering the costs of the games in this market, you put your business at risk. It usually takes $30 Million to make a video game of quality these days. You'd have to sell around 1.1 million to make that back. To lower the costs would mean to increase the difficulty of breaking even. It's already rare to sell 1.1 million copies of a game quickly in the video game market. Knock even $10 of the price and you'd have to know the profit that publishers would make to $17.
Now watch this, and you'll realize that lowering the price is not an option for anyone that isn't a major video game company.
Now at a $17 profit selling around 1.1 million is no longer the break even point.
The would only make the publisher $18,700,000. They would need another $11,300,000 to break even.
They would need to sell another 664,706 (or 664, 705.88 whatever) to break even. That $10 drop in price alone makes the break even point jump from 1.1 million to over 1.76 million sales needed.
Now how many games from smaller companies do you know can sell that much in a reasonable time? Not many. Selling just under two million copies of a game these days without it being an established IP or coming from a reputable company is damn hard. That's why lowering the price of brand new games won't just rise sales.