Aardvaarkman said:
rob_simple said:
True, but it is the company's purpose to give it's customers what they want, or else lose sales.
Not really. A company's purpose is to make money. There are plenty of companies that do that by persuading people that they want their product, even if it's not really what they want. There are entire industries built on false wants disguised as needs.
Hell, there are entire companies that aren't even customer-facing. There are companies that make products which are sold because of regulatory requirements, etc., not because they are desired products. Does anybody really want to have their car serviced by a mechanic? No, but it's something that has to be done, or your car will die.
You can't apply the same psychology to different markets like that. In terms of luxury items, I think there was a time when what you are saying was true, but consumers are becoming more and more informed on their purchasing decisions, and companies aren't doing nearly enough to keep up; especially in the gaming world.
Even as recent as the PS2, they used to get away with releasing games that flat-out didn't work; it was a common occurrence and we just had to roll over and let it happen. Now we're starting to see real shit storms with things like Aliens: Colonial Marines marketing deception, Sim City's busted always-online DRM and the Mass Effect 3 ending scandal. Of course you could argue in some cases that the results we see are only small, and also that the complaints aren't always justified, but as consumers, gamers have made it clear they're not afraid to say what they want and what they don't.
Game companies can continue to ignore that of course, they can continue to do what they want and they'll still manage to wring money out of a good wedge of their customers, but that is only going to work up to a point. You only have to look at the number of publishers/developers declaring losses or shutting down altogether to see that there's a big change coming, and the AAA industry has no one to blame but itself.
It's pretty much exactly the same thing that happened with the music industry: for years stores like HMV charged exorbitant fees for CD's because we had no choice but to pay them for what we wanted. There were no real alternatives until Napster came along and changed everything, because suddenly we didn't have to bend to their whim.
Then, just like with major game companies blaming the used game market today, the music industry blamed a lack of morals in the general public as the reason no one was buying CD's for ridiculously inflated prices anymore, willfully ignoring all the success places like the iTunes store were having by charging reasonable prices for goods.
I can see the same thing happening with AAA gaming: the industry is going to collapse in on itself eventually, and then all the indie developers, the little guys who still remember that gaming is about the games, will pop up and start reaping the benefits held by respecting your customers and giving them what they want at fair prices.
Personally, I'm looking forward to it.