I’d like to add a rule to this: “Achievements do not count as a good reason to revisit a game.”
EDIT: At least not for the purposes of this discussion.
Point taken.
is DLC a valid reason? or even a title update/expansion pack?
Those things, generally speaking, add stuff to the game proper, and are a valid reason to pick a game back up.
Por exemplo:
-Halo 3 released several map packs to extend people’s playtime. They even gave one away for free. Cold Storage was balla.
Gimme Marvel vs Capcom 4 with Cell shaded graphics and without stupid comeback mechanics!! (fuck X-factor)
used market brings income to the game industries. a BIG PORTION of the gamebuyers NEED to get some money back to buy NEW GAMES. 60$/50-60€ for a new game is simply to high to effort for your typical student. heck even with an average income and a family to supply it’s difficult to buy more then one game per month. on top, many 60 bucks games only feature like <8 hours of gameplay.
further the “used copy = one new game not bought” is not true. not even for the release day. there are games one is not willing to buy for full price. asura’s wrath for instance. it’s <8 hours where you play like 40 minutes in total. absolutely not worth 60 bucks from a gamepoint of view. for a game I don’t absolutely want I wait till I get a cheap copy.
also, how much do you think does the developer gets for a sold game? 1-2 bucks. the publisher gets a bigger share and it’s still not enough to feel the loss of used copies much in comparison. games generate so much money, it’s ridiculous. it has overtaken the movie production by far. games for 60 bucks are heavily overpriced. do you think they NEED to be 60 bucks because otherwise it would not make up for the production? no it’s simply because they’re greedy or how could you explain that so many games get cheaper a few days / week after their release.
to get more from a release they need to improve the future of the medium: online distribution. this way you can’t even sell it to begin with. but to make it appealing it needs to be CHEAPER then a physical copy and the price needs to drop after a while. if you look up the PSN you’ll find new games and older games for a whooping 69.99€ (you’ve read that right). a physical copy of the same game costs around 55€ NEW. how can sony / publisher / whoever even justify that? you have NO multiply middleman (for sony releases at least) and NO shipping cost / storage cost / export costs etc and it’s way more expensive. and that price stays for at least a year.
and to be honest, game companies that sh!t on their costumers and include day one DLC or unlockable content or any sort of bs, I’ll gladly buy a used copy to actually don’t support them.
what you my friend want is the digital age. and when it comes, it’s going to leave companies like EA and Ubisoft behind with their BS marketing and acting as the middle men between the gamer and the developer. Jim says it better then I could ever word it(let along type it).
Mike Z made a great move by making Skull Girls a Digital Release., and for the price of the game as well.
Holdon, you guys want to be able to buy and sell used games AND you welcome the era of digital distribution?
nothing about wanting really, it’s an inevitable thing to happen. the physical medium will be nearly extinct within the next 10-20 years
I think you mixed up the “want” clause and the “welcome” clause.
I agree that physical media is on its way out, but if you value the used market (which I do not), then it wouldn’t exactly be welcome. Downloadable content, price control, and strict licensing agreements will soon be the norm.
You can thank retailers for that. Say if Wal-Mart takes wind of a Publisher selling the digital version cheaper than a box copy than Wal-Mart will threaten to not stock the game because they feel that the publisher is undercutting them.
doubtful.
music online cost less then offline [d’uh dem words] and they still sell them there (I bluntly assum, we don’t have wal-mart here; at least you get it here in every electronic store). a big selling company doesn’t care if it’s somewhere cheaper (at maximum they’ll even the price), if THEY sell it but not store XYZ THEY are making the profit.
also 55 <> 70 is a big difference. they could start at 55 online and 54.90 offline. sony and microsoft (not AS much) just messing up big times. In fact they’re holding us back 10 years of digital evolution.
also an excerpt from the article I often ask myself:
there is no answer to that. games could sell at 39.99 new [and even way less, but this is at least a more resonable price] and would generate massive income. in fact, while it would hurt very few publishers (0/ activision) it would help tremendously to sell more games overall, helping the entire branch. there is no need to actually worry as it’s as simple as it can get: make good games and your games will be bought.
I don’t see how you couldn’t o_O
I value used games because they are easy to come by and have little risk in their purchase and i can gain so much from their purchase then i can choose to keep it if i like it. it’s convenience. If i could download games for a cheaper price say half of what the normal MSRP is today so $29.99 then I would be willing to spend that much for a digital copy of a new title having not needed to leave my house in order to buy a game has far more value then one would think.
sure i wont be able to abuse use games, but on the flip-side things will be better as we’ll get more game demos and trail versions of games(the ones they let you play the full game for a set time limit or the ones like Skullgirls) so it wouldn’t really need for used games anymore at that point. I’ll be giving my money straight to the developer who made the game rather then the huge middle man corporations more often then before. I can live with that and I welcome the digital age.
I wanna tattoo this on my arm. So much sense that I can’t contain myself. This is a point the gaming community as a whole pissed on for years now.
SF2 with it’s 8 characters was fine as 60$ but a fighter with dozens of characters is not? Why, because your parents aren’t doing the buying anymore? Piss off.
exactly!!
I’m just mad that 60$ games are 60€ over here, which == 79$. Fucked up. As if 60$ wasn’t too expensive already.
Just wanted to say this is also the perfect explanation for gamers thinking that games cost more now than they did back in the day. They never bought their precious 8 and 16-bit games until they were available at flea markets years later for the same price as a pack of boiled peanuts, so they really have no idea what they’re talking about.
I was going to type something like this. I remember Double Dragon 2 and Wrestlemania for the NES being $59.99 back when they came out. Hell, I think Simon’s Quest was $49.99 when I got it for Christmas (I was with my folks when they bought it). So comparatively games are cheaper now than they were.
…3rd Strike
Agreed. Current Marvel is too broken…in desperate need of an update to fix.
I’m just fed up with the Developers/Publishers whining about their games not selling. They don’t hand out games to distributors for free and say “Pay us back if you happen to sell them before the price drop”, the games are paid for before they leave the warehouses. Never hear about how much money stores are losing on games that price drop within months of release if it flat out doesn’t move at $60.00