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Besides game rentals, which is Gamefly's bread and butter industry, they also make a decent amount by selling used games. Their sales are regularly featured as some of the best on the 'net over at CAG. They don't really sell new games, so until physical copies of games disappear (which may only be a console generation away), they should be fairly resilient. This change just makes them more profitable, but again, they are in a dying market, so unless they position themselves to survive it, as GameStop is trying to do by making some purchases of game streaming services, they won't be around in 10 years.

But what is the rest of the coverage besides recycled PR anyway? Personally I just try and get a sense of a game I'm interested in and then stop looking at coverage on it. I just want to see the basic idea of the game and what mechanics it uses, as soon as I'm interested then I cut off coverage because I don't want anything spoiled, not even the introduction. In other media I also avoid trailers because of how much they will spoil the actual movie for example. The way a game starts is meant to draw you in and intrigue you, and if you hear a lot about it beforehand, it doesn't have the same impact when you actually play the game.

There have been situations with games such as Super Smash Bros Brawl where they drip feed you with information, every day you see a new character, or a new move, or a new item you will be using in the game. By the time the game comes out I'm sick of it already and I don't even want to see it anymore. Or sometimes development time will drag on and paying attention to a game's coverage is like torturing yourself, such as with Dragon Quest IX or Duke Nukem Forever. In that case, coverage will often turn me off of a game, and if I already know I want to play it, what's the point? I've got better things to do.

Nowadays I just listen to a few podcasts where people don't talk so formally about their experiences and they often talk game theory which is much more interesting to me compared to regurgitated PR. I would recommend A Life Well Wasted, The Brainy Gamer, Gamasutra Podcast, In-Game Chat, Irrational Behavior, Mobcast, and Retronauts. If you also like those, you might like Geekbox, RebelFM, 1up Oddcast, Weekend Confirmed, Player One Podcast, Joystiq Podcast, Gamers with Jobs, Drunken Gamers Radio, IGN GameScoop and CAGCast. Hey, it makes work and commutes go by fast.

On Cheap-Ass Gamer, a video-game deal discussion forum, their "swear replacement" is the Shaq-Fu symbol. IE: I don't like you. Go SHAQ-FU yourself!

I've seen it so often that my mind automatically re-substitutes the swears. Browsing through piles of old Genesis games makes for an interesting experience. "NHL 92, Madden 91, Fuck You, Sonic 1..."

Thanks for posting. When I saw the headline my first thought was "Yes, if by 'new gameplay mechanic' you mean one that an entire game was built around in last year's PAX 10."

And I've never seen a game at discount, have you? Nor have I ever seen a game as heavily marketed as a DVD.

Are you serious? Walk into a GameStop or Best Buy and look through the game aisles -- there are rows of older games that have been discounted from the initial price. Check out http://www.cheapassgamer.com/, they have deals on games all the time.

I find it hard to believe you've never seen a game as heavily marketed as a DVD, either. All of the really big games have huge advertising campaigns -- Rock Band, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy... I use MythTV to skip over commercials when watching TV and I still catch bits of game ads all the time.

They do adjust the price. There's entire sites dedicated to price drops. In essence, the games are priced at 60 dollars because someone is dumb enough to pay it. They might blame piracy, but only to keep their cash cows ignorant of their discounting practices. Game companies have almost every incentive to charge everyone the highest price they'll pay. I say almost, because it's discriminatory to charge Bob Megabucks $60 and Jimmy Cheapskate $30 for the same product, and generally illegal.

So instead, they use discounting to create a legal price discrimination. Games cost 60 dollars at release, and the people willing to pay $60 complete the transaction, they reduce the price and capture the next bucket of consumers. The cost accounting "oh well, retailers get a cut, and so does " is a sham, a cover for this truth of the industry. Think about it: if retailing took a $12 cut per game, and production cost $10, Platinum Hits games shouldn't exist in the market place at $20. And yet, even though they have the same retail margins, the same marginal costs of manufacture, Gears of War, Mass Effect and Forza 2 are all sitting there at $19.99. I'm glad at least that the "high game budgets cause high prices" canard has been dispensed with. Fixed costs like game programming and design determine whether the project is done at all, not the price point that maximizes revenue.

The only reason game companies don't adjust the price starting higher is the fear of consumer backlash: if you price a game higher than the norm at launch, you risk fewer sales before discounting starts, and possibly fewer sales a month later when the price drops. Retailer purchasers get antsy about a high price point unless your game is destined to succeed. Additionally, many games today exhibit "network effects"; high sales of Halo 3 cements demand for Halo 3 via network multiplayer. It might be worth skipping a higher MSRP to capture bigger multiplayer audiences.

Cheap Ass Gamer is entirely devoted to video game deals. Steam deals, especially $5 ones, will show up on their front page as soon as its announced.

Not affiliated with them (him, rather), just a user since 2005.

The battery for the NVRAM probably died. That's why it's losing your saves. People have replaced batteries before.

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/archive/index. php/t-17949.html

That's just not true. I posted this recently, but it deserves a repost. As of the June update the 360 was backwards compatible with 27% of the top 300 games (32% of top 100), and about the same percentage of the entire Xbox catalog. To be fair, 8 of the top 10 are BC and almost half of the top 50, but it drops off rapidly from there. They seem to be trying to hit the megahits and only mostly succeeding at that, with a lot of games along for the ride. It would be interesting to see the stats again with the August and December updates.

If the PS3's backwards compatibility is anything like the PS2's it will be quite good, but there's a good chance it won't eliminate the need for the PS2/PS1. There are quite a few games that aren't backwards compatible (even some PS2 games have issues on the slim PS2).

the Xbox360 can play most Xbox games

If by "most" you mean 27% of the top 300 games, then sure.

You know, over in the http://www.cheapassgamer.com/ forums, we have a word for the type of price break this guy was going for. It's called a "scam".

He's attempting to take advantage of the fact that Verizon CSRs aren't the sharpest, and that if you repeat the word cents enough and show someone a weird value in dollars, they're liable to call it cents. He -knew- it wasn't really 0.002 cents/KB, or else he wouldn't have gone through that whole (apparently useless) effort of having them note it in the file.

Yes, Verizon's employees are being rather uniformly dense, but he's being extremely disingenuous about this whole thing. As was noted earlier in this thread, the prices are posted on Verizon's website. Were I him, I'd take the $36 offer and thank my lucky stars I managed to put something over on Verizon.

• Drive bys with BB guns in Kentucky.
• A riot for spots in line in Burbank.
• Read - 10 to 12 people robbed in PS3 line (dubious, but possible). [Via Digg]
• Read - Sheriffs shut down another California store for rowdy behavior.
• Read - Police break up NY SonyStyle store fight.
• Read - Brawl breaks out at another Wally when manager plays musical PlayStation chairs. Seriously, what an idiot. [Thanks Kyle D.]
• Read - Shots were apparently fired at a Texas Wally. Pics here and here of the 5-0. [Thanks, Jason]
• Read - Two armed, masked robbers overtook a customer in Springfield. [Thanks, Jason]
• Watch - North Fresno / Merced had stampede-riot insanity. [Thanks, Jonathan]

Actually it looks like the started monday. (11.06.06) I believe this thread was the first: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php ?t=114295 Quote from the post: "I went to Best Buy this morning for a job interview (got the job, but it's seasonal) and I saw about 7 people waiting outside. I went inside and one of the workers told me that they had been there since Monday. Do these people have no lives? The awesome thing was, as I was waiting outside, I saw a bunch of people coming to Best Buy and picking up Gears of War. A few people made some funny remarks. One guy is like, "I hope you guys brought enough food!" Another one said, "Where is the line for PS4? Is it on the other side?""

Actually, they have been lined up sense monday. (11.06.06) I believe this is where it first appeared. http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php ?t=114295 (someone saw them on the way to a job interview.)

As a cheapass gamer, I wouldn't say that Nintendo systems are cheap at all. Sure, the hardware is less expensive, but most of the best titles take forever (or longer) to hit the bargain bins. If you own more than five games, the Nintendo probably cost you more.

One of the upsetting things about the DS was that it basically looked like a big chunk of ugly plastic compared tot he PSP - it was not exactly something cool to be seen with, or at least that was how I felt when I was roaming around the airports at Cristmas......this was alleviated by the fact that I was playing Mario Kart :)

The DS Lite looks like it will change all that - the hard core gamers are saying that they are getting one to replace their existing one because the screen is much improved, but everyone knows it's really bacuse it just looks swish compared to the old one and is no longer so strangely bulky. Now lets hope that Nintendo get their skates on and announce a US release date sooner rather than later.

Used for $45? I got a copy of GTA San Andreas in perect condition for $21.

Umm, you realize that GTA:SA retails for $20 new? Cause, I'd say that paying more for a used copy is, well, stupid.

CAG is, as usual, your friend.

I have to agree with this totally. The games are there to play, not collect. It's highly annoying to have to look at paying ~US$80-100 for a game that is only regarded as excellent because it's hard to find.

What drives me nuts is these idiots that are all about Rhapsody and Rez etc, until they are suddenly reprinted and cheap and then they don't want to know about them.

Personally, I'm highly excited that copies of older PS1 games that are normally stupidly expensive may become much cheaper and easier to find. GQDs prices are still pretty high, but once the games circulate for a while they should drop in price to a more affordable level. I really want to get into some of these harder to find games, and I'd much rather be playing originals, even if they are reprints, as opposed to torrented isos.

For much comedy read this thread : http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php ?t=75380&page=1&pp=20&highlight=gamequestdirect

Best quote from it :

Quote
Originally Posted by Camwi
[Can someone please explain the whole "Rhapsody ordeal" that I've heard mentioned on here before? It seems to have pissed a lot of people off..]

everyone wanted it because it's rare, then it un-rared, now they are stuck with a game about singing fairies made for 12 year old girls.

I use websites to check for the big points, sure. IGN can tell me if a game will make my computer crash or if it's got so much slowdown that it's going to make my GBA burst into flames.

The major websites tend to reflect this occasionally childish view, though, and the print magazines can't help me to find a game that I'm interested in if it's a new release or if it's months old and I don't have that issue anymore.

Talking to my friends does work. I know what their tastes are and whether or not I'll like the game if they do. Hell, I don't even need to talk to my real life friends. Asking people that I've met through message boards can work wonders too. I'd trust the userbase of Cheap Ass Gamer more often than I would XPlay or GamePro.

I wonder why more people don't think of doing it my way instead? Reviews aren't everything, despite what fanboys say. :)

My point is that the article claims that XBox Live games are hosted on customer systems. When Live was announced and there was pricing involved, Microsoft had to justify that. One of the ways they did so was to say that you were paying for high performance servers to run, which guaranteed a certain level of service.

Yes, the broadband-only requirement keeps modem users from serving games, which is a Good Thing. Yes, the fact that you will be kickbanned from XBox Live if you connect with a mod chip is a Good Thing. Neither of these things require a centralized service and both can be run by publishers.

The out-of-game invites was what I meant when I wrote "Basically it's paying for developers who are too lazy to impliment Jabber as a standard presence protocol for online gaming." If they implemented an open standandard (or even a closed standard like Oscar) to provide between-game communication they could provide decentralized presence and allow out-of-game invites.

You said that the 4 factors of your purchasing decision were quality, security, invites and voice. I attacked the quality factor, but none of those need to be exclusive to XBox. Microsoft just has its online shit together more than other console platforms.

As for the $50 I guess I got ripped off when I paid $70, I probably should have checked Cheap Ass Gamer before buying. I know I felt ripped off when they announced that Crimson Skies would be bundled with the starter kit a week or two after I bought mine with Mech Assault.

...can be bought cheap, too. Go to Cheap Ass Gamer; it relies on different users posting the deals they have found, but it seems to be a very effective system. The availability of some deals depends on your area (and the brick & mortar stores you have access to).

I hate to slashdot them, but a really useful site is Cheap Ass Gamer. It relies on people posting deals, but so far I've had no problems with them (I got Rygar for the PS2 for $10+cheap shipping). It can save you a ton of money.