Slashdot Mirror
Gamespot Goes to Subscription Model
-PS-Sangloth writes "Gamespot, arguably the best video gaming website will expand in July to a pay service(Gamespot Complete). It seems that while review scores will be free, the actual reviews for new PC games will cease to be available to non-payers 7 days after the review was written. This is a real pity, I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash), and Gamespot has good, hard, objective reviews. Read what they said at
Gamespot Complete."
If you can't afford a couple bucks a month, how can you afford spending $40/50 a month on new PC games?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Gamespot has been one of the best gaming sites for a long time. It seems to an inevitable switch, since the (deserved) decline of advertising based websites. Isn't there any non ad based revenue that can work without subscription fees? I for one don't have money to waste just to read a website.
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
Can't they just go to the /. subscription model? Many of the sites I've used for years because they were free are now charging: BrainBench, Mind-It, and others. At least I know /. won't stoop that low.
2. Unlimited high-speed downloads
3. Unlimited streaming video
4. A version of the site with no invasive ads--no banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, superstitials, prestitials, or interstitials
Hey, these are nifty features.
Let's hope they will offer more than just PayPal as their subscription service :->
...why they had to do this, as a business trying to stay alive in the "new economy".
I don't read GameSpot often, but I've enjoyed many of the reviews and walkthroughs that they've offered in the past.
The subscription costs ($4.95 a month) aren't unreasonable. I pay that without blinking various computing and gaming magazines whenever I'm in the newsagency browsing for some literature on the train.
I hope that they can offer enough subscription only services to make it worthwhile for subscribers, or they surely fade away.
Taffyd.
But, there will always be sites like the New York Times that provide unlimited free access to all the material. As long as this happens, sites that offer limited material will have a tough time. In order to stay competitive, the SJ Mercury has extended the free viewing period to 30 days, which is a much more reasonable amount of time. If Gamespy wants any chance of remaining in the picture, they should either charge a minimal rate for subscriptions, like Slashdot, or extend the length articles are freely available to at least 30 days.
Just as Napster, Delphi, KaZaA, and the rest of these so-called "desperate" companies have shown, when it comes time to pay up, it's always easier on the consumer to just switch to another provider.
<a href="http://www.gamespy.com">GameSpy</a> anyone?
If this progresses, I can see broadband sales suffer. The only reason I got broadband in the first place was because of bandwidth intesive sites (like Gamespot's streaming video, massive MP3 downloads). If all the big-bandwidth things go "pay" then there'll be little reason to pay thru the nose for a breadband connection.
I'm already paying enough for broadband service; I can't justify the expense of paying for content.
Alot of gamers are in college or below, and have no money. I make 6$ an hour, there is no way I would even spend 2$ a month on this subscription service. And I am sure that 99.99% of others agree with me on that. Is that .01% of people who actually pay going to make them more money than the 100% of people that would otherwise just deal with the ads?
If gamespot charges, now I will just go somewhere else. Until it is a proprietary service, and gamespot only offers it, will I pay. And I still probably won't pay either! This is just like fileplanet. Either pay 50$ a year, or wait in line for an hour. I just run an internet search on the file and get it elsewhere, its not like they are the only ones with it.
This is a real pity, I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash)
So you don't have cash for $24.95 (the yearly subscription) but you have for $40+ games?
The fact that they are losing money atleast means one good thing and is they aren't accepting money from publishers for good reviews.
The pricing and what you get for it looks pretty decent in my opinion. Lets face it $4.95 a month is how much a computer magazine would cost at a newstands, except this magazine is online and updated daily instead of montly. Sure you don't get something you can hold in your hands and read while comuting, but you do get something ad-free and that's something printed magazines can't boast. Plus let's not forget ads often bias publications to write good things about their products to keep that advertiser. So in all I can see Gamespots model as a good thing, now I just hope it works in a medium where people expect things for free.
aus.music.scrapbook
Oh geez! I have to wait seven days! Now now now I want to know if I should dish out the money for that game now. Never mind that the game costs $50 and needs a $150 graphics card, along with other beefy hardware to run well. Never mind that I could just wait a few days or read reviews somewhere else...
Some things are not newsworthy.
True, but you could just share passwords...
Of course, there are ways to get around that too. (there are also ways to stop people from pirating internet-only games effectively, I shelled out cash for quake3 when it came out, and recently purchaced a 'real' copy of starcraft for the first time)
I wonder how long it's going to be before someone comes out with a nice p2p web content pirater, for reading all these new for-pay sites (total fark, salon premium, gamespot, the economist, etc)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...if they manage to do something so ugly with ads that I can't make junkbuster filter it out. No reading old reviews? Sorry, but I can't say that bothers me. Many review sites suck bigtime. But read 3-4 reviews and the scores from the rest (well worth for the cash the game costs) and you'll have a good idea about what's good, what's bad, and if it's a game for you (not to mention who got the better lunch invitation). Now ads... I'm glad I'm a geek and block them out, surfing nekkid is hell, I do that at times at the university and things keep popping up and down and dance around the pages and whatnot. Not to mention the [BLINK]blinking ads[/BLINK]. How strange that it's disabled here ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
well they're pretty cocky. For that price you could subscribe to a real dead tree magazine of much better quality with access to all past reviews on their website. Sorry but you can't charge more than a real magazine...
"I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash)..."
What abject lusers... Not even a debit card??
get the fuck out...
Is it me or did I hear about this like 2 days ago?
:(
Fine mod me down as off-topic
Easy start going to gamespy & their affiliates. The reviews are normally a little more in depth even, it's doubtful they'll ever want to charge you for reviews, & their is more than reviews you can access.
So why use gamespot if they want to charge you?
Anymore I just use Gamepsy & Gamefaqs for all my gaming needs...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Game Spot is far from objective. I find that GS is ONE of many review sites that can't be trusted to give a non corporate influenced reveiw.
How many of you were tired of them trying to shove they're stupid GameSpy Arcade down our throats?
Follower of Set
FWIW I preferred Gamecenter. The thing I hate most about Gamespot (after the annoying CPU hogging flash ads) is the large fonts and beige-on-black colour scheme. How bout a stripped down version or configurable display options via a dynamic stylesheet driven by user prefs.
Anyway - what are some good alternatives for gamespot? I mostly use gamespot to check for news on the latest games for PS2 and to read reviews of older games that I'm looking to buy. What other sites are frequently updated and provide similar depth of content?
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
This is a real pity, I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash),
Unlike poor slashdot reader like me, aren't keen gamers are supposed to have some cash to spare?
You can read the latest slashdot news in a snail speed 386... Probably, you can't play the latest game with my Celeron...
I'm sure many of the people complaining about the price are already buying real, printed on dead trees, game magazines.
;P
And as someone already pointed out if you can't afford $5 a month for a game magazine (either online or print) you're unlikely to be able to buy games.
I also would like to point out that gamespot is providing real content unlike Slashdot which is made by its users.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I make 6$ an hour, there is no way I would even spend 2$ a month on this subscription service
That's $24 a year you are not willing to spend on the subscription. That's less than the price of one computer game and if you aren't willing to part with a fraction of a game's worth then IMO you don't buy enough games to make the valuable gamespot worthwhile to yourself. You may as well get the information elsewhere.
But if you are willing to pay a fraction of a game's worth a year to get a valuable service then that is what Gamespot is looking for.
Use all have to recognise the difference between buying a subscription and a tangible product. With the subscription you have fun for that year or whatever and then thats it, games over. Buying a game for $40 gives you the pleasure of playing that game ... forever. And don't give me crap about once you beat the game the fun's over, if you are selective the fun never stops. Good examples of old games still very playable would be Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Diablo2, and others.
:). As a final point I just reinstalled X-Wing after like a year of not playing it. (This time I will beat it!)
Heck, Diablo 1 is still a great game to pop on a zip disc to play on a Uni computer when all you have is a spare second, just install it on the zip, crack it and truck it around
Paying $40-$50 on a great game is not a problem when you know you will be enjoying it for years to come. Paying $24 to read reviews that you can read elsewhere? Unless you have a great income, and personally love Gamespot, I would say the answer is a hearty NO.
Gamespot is one of the most well-rounded review sites on the net. It always has been. I've relied on screenshots, reviews, and short movie clips of games to see what I may or may not purchase. Still, the definitive source of what is good/bad are the reader reviews. It would be hard to accumulate reader reviews if readers had to pay access to them. Another example is Slashdot. Each article posted is so much more fun to read with all of the replies by readers. It's what makes the site good. I always go directly from a Gamespot review to CJAYC's site, www.gamefaqs.com. The boards and rankings are hard to ignore.
Well, at least they don't cram a worthless cdrom down your throat and charge $9.00 instead of the normal $3.95 cover price. Every now and then I get the urge to pick up a magazine that I'm not subscribed to. That means searching the newstand for a non-cd edition of that magazine so I don't have to feel like I almost could have bought a game for the price of 30 minutes worth of reading. However, as time has passed it has become increasingly impossible to find a gaming magazine that doesn't try to justify doubling their marked cover price by giving me a cdrom full of stuff I could have downloaded for free if I'd had any interest in it.
:-)
I look at it this way... if I do want to download something at least the only people competing for bandwidth with me on gamespot are other paying subscribers. And, I'm not getting stiffed $4 for a cd I don't want
You are clearly very lucky, having only ever been involved with honest people in the industry. It is a fact, at least in the UK, that magazines grant high review scores to games in return for "exclusive" coverage.
The real question is who cares what happens to Gamespot? They give any old crap an 8 or above. Look hard and you can find some good reviews online: at joystick101, gamecritics, or eurogamer. And they're all free.
are cached on google.
Now they suck as bad as /. !!
Those evil bastards are trying to make money! Don't they know everything should be free!?!?
Never mind the $4.95 a month, its only $19.95 a YEAR. That's the much better deal.
I've been subscribed to their fast download service (which was also $19.95 a year) and it's been great. Two clicks to download all the latest files and more importantly their excellent video reviews and previews as fast as my modem can carry them. Those are something you can't get anywhere else and are more than worth 20 bucks a year.
sigh... It's almost to the point where the comments can be written with only the headline.
:)
Myths:
1. Nobody will pay for content
2. People don't trust on-line transactions
3. "I'll never pay for anything on-line"
4. I don't have a credit card therefore I can't buy anything on-line
Colloquialisms for "pay" that ALWAYS replace the word "pay" when describing an actual transaction of less than $100:
1. Plunk down
2. Shell out
3. Fork over
Example: "Before I [colloquialism] [$amount] I want [impossible amount of value]"
The reality is that the economy of the Internet will include many billions of dollars of purchases, and that these purchases not only will happen but are happening already. If people want to have any influence on this, then they HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS ECONOMY. "Vote with your dollars" appears in almost every group of comments. Fine. Everyone should not abstain when it comes to electronic commerce.
The Internet costs money. It always has, and it always will. It was never, is not and will never be free as in soda.
These articles are almost always on the same page with "Quake|Everquest|Neverwinter LXVII Almost Here!" and "Will E-books work?" articles, both of which routinely contain at least 200 comments with something along the lines of "Ooooh GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" and the electronic equivalent of waving a handful of cash in the air.
The truth:
1. Free on-line content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
2. Even on the Internet, you get what you pay for.
Having read through the information on their site, I think that's probably the best subscription model I've seen launched so far. The balance between "what you'll get for free" and "what you'll have to pay for" seems pretty much spot on, and by keeping ALL of their new content (with the exception of downloads and video streams) free to view for seven days there will still be plenty of reasons to visit their site without a subscription (and for new subscribers to see why they should sign up).
The price is right too - $25 a year or $5 a month allows dedicated fans to make a big saving but still lets new users try things out for a month or two before making a bigger commitment.
Provided they get their payment model right (there need to be alternatives to paying my credit card) I reckon they could be on to a winner. That said, I probably won't be signing up but that's because I hardly ever visit gamespot as it is. Hopefully GameSpot fans will react differently.
I started not to look at GS for PC Games reviews after reading the review for RTCW.
Seems to me that GS is more focused on Console Games. And the people that review PCGames and VideoGames does not have the same criteria when isuing the final Score for a game.
I can't imagine why GS does not talk about the kick and the 'hand' in RTCW. No other modern(2001-2002) game has this very usefull features.
Anyway, I only GS now for downloading demos with wget. I that point of view is really usefull.
For news a Reviews there is always bluesnews and GameSpy(with all that Casino ad)
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Check this out for a possible solution to this type of problem: www.pico-pay.com
This type of model won't work. I have my own thoughts on the process. So lets say that we have decided to pay for GameSpot. Then we find that CNet has gone to subscriptions. Then New York Times. and on and on...
How many subscriptions are we going to pay for? It may only be a few here and there, but in the future (when more sites go the subscription route) its going to be tough to figure out which sites are worthy of subscribing to.
Thank God that MaximumPC is only a buck a month!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Gamespot's reviews are crap. They always give top scores to games from their sponsors, no matter how bad they are. Try to find an Electronic Arts game that's under 60% - you can't. In fact, there are almost no games under 50% (which should be the _average_ score). The only good reviews (and honest scores) are the ones written by the readers.
If Gamesdomain had a section for reader reviews I wouldn't bother to read Gamespot at all.
ever used robots.txt? apparently not, you can block parts of the site. Enough said....
You do realize that, don't you?
The authentic CmdrTaco's user ID is 1. He doesn't appear with any "editor" designation. This troll has cleverly appended "(Editor)" to CmdrTaco in order to convincingly masquerade as him.
GET A JOB !!!!
If I were you, I'd read this page. There are methods of blocking parts of a site, yes, but robots.txt isn't one of them, at least as far as Google is concerned.
My journal has hot
I read some game reviews before I decide if I want to buy a game, and download a demo, if available. :) This is, sadly, where Microsoft's Passport comes in. If you just think of the concept that you can have one login for multiple sites, it's a great idea. It could work well for micropayments etc. But then there is just the thing that I don't like the current passport solution from Microsoft. Call it biased, M$ hater, whatever. In my opinion, a true passport system should work the other way around than the current solution today. :) A passport system could be provided from a number of companies which services and serveres were verified and on a "positive" list. The standardization should be at the interface between the website and "passport" servers where the user could be signed up to the service he/she chooses and information and payments etc, would work from any of them. :)
But as in many other cases, it's a question how important the information of the site is to me. And game reviews are not that important to me so I would choose to be without the information. It would be the same for many other sites.
In the "old" days before the internet, one would have to rely on magazines to provide you with information, but today you just consult the web. So I can see(with the failing income of banner ads) why sites need to have another source of income to survive. I guess that some people will sign up for it if the information the site offers means a lot to them which is fine. I just hope they don't expect that they can maintain the same number of visitors that they are used to and that it has been included in their calculations.
Another topic is you accounts, I have enough accounts as it is and my guess is that if I would subscribe to another one, I would most likely forget one, I don't need another password.
The standardization here is done at the wrong level, unless you want to rule the market.
The problem is that you need a centralized company that verifies the "passport" companies as well as the websites.
The whole thing would not be impossible to do and it could do the web a lot of good, including sites like Gamespot where my guess is that more people would pay for the reviews if they didn't have to sign up for yet another service but could choose to buy the article they wanted to read.
So lets get started and form a council that can define the standards for this.
my sig
like videogamereview.com or epinions? How can they compete with a subscription?
Either of those methods will cause Gamespot's entire Website to not be listed in a Google search at all [...] There are methods of blocking parts of a site, yes, but robots.txt isn't one of them, at least as far as Google is concerned.
Wow. Did you actually read the document to which you pointed another so snootily? You, sir, have no idea what you're talking about. I quote:
Emphasis theirs. But I'd like to repeat their use of the phrase "or a specific section" one more time: "or a specific section". Although the example on the referenced page is a blanket exclude, Google does partial excludes just fine, thank you -- through meta elements embedded in HTML or as the result of robots.txt rules.
Anyway, the real issue for Gamespot would be the yanking of snippets and cached pages from Google -- which is readily accomplished by following the instructions Google itself presents on that page. I've done it myself; it's *no big deal*.
I curse you for forcing my use of the +1 bonus to point out the wrongheadedness of your posting -- which seems to be stuck at +1 for each and every post, too. :p
Sure. I'd pay the same for an equivalently good gaming magazine, why not pay for GameSpot? GameSpot is even cool enough to give away their content for 7 days. I don't expect them to run their business as a public service; I don't run mine that way. Vince Broady's [GameSpot co-founder] announcement is well phrased and perfectly reasonable. And, unlike a game magazine I buy or cable TV I pay for, it won't be 50% ads... they're removing ads from the pay site.
I look forward to the new GameSpot.
-m
I read through comments on subscription stories and laugh. People bitch and moan about paying and give alternate places to go for the information. Worse yet, some people make comments to sound cool like "Man, another site I have to adjust Junkbuster for" or whatever. Those are the most irritating.
What I find is funny that I am annoyed by people who block ads or complain about having to pay. The irony of it is, I have a TiVo and I skip through commericals like mad. Makes me wonder if I should stop paying for online content too. (BTW, $20/yr is far cheaper than my subscription to Playstatioin Magazine. AND the information on Gamespot is far more up to date than what's on paper.)
Yes, more and more services will move to subscription and each one will charge you. Why is this such a shock?
Do you buy one magazine and get ten others free? No. Do you buy any product and expect the rest for free?
The plain truth is that this is where the internet is moving, data costs money and people generating the data have families to feed. Dont be such a stick in the mud, embrace it, say goodbye to all those annoying adverts!
A few £$ here and there isn't going to hurt, especially if its something you enjoy.
Yes you can block robots using a robots.txt file from certain areas. MOST robots I've encountered do follow it also. (This is my job, I should know...) You will also want to specify the meta tags, but from my experience some robots don't care what you have in the meta tags due to abuse.
I never look at their reviews anyway -- I go to http://www.gamefaqs.com/ instead. Those are user-provided reviews. For each game, they give you a table of reviews, reviewers, and scores. The scores are from 1-10. Before buying a game, I generally read the review with the lowest ranking score, the review with the highest ranking score, and a few reviews around the average. Folks there aren't afraid to say "this game sucks!".
Great, so we get to see all the 8.5 scores for games, even though the tone of the reviews usually indicate the game should have been like a 6. Ever notice how even a horrible game never goes below 6 or 7 something?
My experience with GameSpot has been that a) reader review scores of a game have been more accurate than the score given by a professional game reviewer, since most of us aren't as hung up on minor details if a game plays well, and b) most all of the salient points of the official reviews are repeated many times in the reader reviews.
I know that *I* won't now or ever be sending any money GameSpot's way. As others have said, the content is available free on a bazillion other sites, so why pay?
Not to mention that this is turning into a general trend on the internet, paying for content that was previously free. Just yesterday it was announced that a game I've been playing for free over the internet for the past couple of years is going back to a subscription model. I won't be paying, because there's just too many other good games out there that are free (and, frankly, more important things I really should be doing with my time, like finishing up my master's degree, not spending untold hours on a game).
Plus, they say the GameSpot cost is only $4.95/month. Slashdot is roughly $5/month. Salon premium, $6/month. On and on. When they say "it's only $5," that doesn't account for every other site that you visit wanting your $5, too. It adds up. I won't be paying for any content, because I believe in the essential "free-ness" of the internet (which I'm already paying $25/month to access). There's too many folks out there who would like to be competition for these sites that are willing to do it at no charge.
ROFL! They're gonna charge people to read payola puff piece "reviews"? That's RICH! (I guess they will be too.)
No thanks!
Haha you've got to be kidding! Gamespot is one of the biggest "softball" review sites out there. They gave great reviews to games that totally suck.
The players reviews are better, but the gamespot reviewers are just laughable.
Hmm ... unless you're talking about a game like Dungeon Siege, where people either love it or hate it (me). In that case, one side or the other tends to get drowned out (it rarely ends up in the middle ground). A single number isn't enough - it really needs to show the voting bands (or at least the standard deviation) - so that you can see that 40% of people had a combined score of <= 3 and 50% had a score of >= 9. This would give a much more useful indication.
PayPal charges a business or PayPal Pro payee either 2.2% or 2.9% + 30 cents for each payment that is received. So, if you sent a business such as Gamespot a 10 cent payment via PayPal, you'd cause them to have to pay 33 cents to PayPal if they wanted to accept it, leaving them 23 cents in the hole!
(I don't know about Amazon or any of the other e-pay services, but I wouldn't be surprised if their fees were similar.)
It will take the formation of micropayment services that are able to accept fractional/flat rate fees on transactions (such as a flat 10%, at least on transactions of under a dollar) for micropayments to become viable. And it will take a lot of people being willing to use micropayments for that to become economical. So, micropayments present one of those "chicken or the egg" problems so common to new advances. Not insurmountable, perhaps, but tricky to get started without a boost from someone.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I usually buy 1-2 games a month. I'm really stretched for time, there are games that I've bought in the past few months that I haven't played.
With IGN, I don't buy Gamecube games that suck. I avoided Spy Hunter because of their review. I later played it at a friend's place, I'm glad I didn't buy the game.
If you avoid 1 bad game purchase every 2-3 years from a subscription to a online gaming mag, it's paid for itself.
Alex
Indeed. It is, however, surprisingly difficult to spread ideas without *someone* footing the bill though. Short of standing on a street corner and crying out your ideas to the world (sometimes a pretty cool method), there are few other mediums available for distribution that do not require at least a small premium. Hell, even paper flyers cost money.
Idealism is a wonderful thing but will quickly wither and die if it does not have some roots in reality.
It has been shown over and over again that most sites can not survive on purely advertising revenue alone. It just doesn't work.
So I would assume that Gamespot has been losing money and they decide that they need a way to remedy this. They create a very fair model that does not take away all features from non-pay users and is basically just asking the high end users to pay a nominal amount (compared to the costs of games and magazines).
Of course people here think it is outrageous but they aren't telling you to pay. If you don't use gamespot much, like me, don't pay... and you still will get something useful from them. If you use it a lot you can still decide to not pay but I would be interested to see your comments when the slashdot story reads:
"Gamespot closes down due to lack of subscription revenues"
The problem with subscription based sites lies in the fact that there would be to many for me to afford if all the sites I went to choose that business model. Lets look at a scenario. I pay $44.00 a month for broadband access. I have 5 favorite sites that I would hate to do without and at least 10 more I do like to visit occasionally. If each one went to a subscription model like Gamespot; I would have to pay $118.00 a month just to get my "basic Internet channels" that I like to visit. This doesn't even take into consideration sites that I may visit once every couple months or so for information. Take britannica.com for instance; I used to visit there very occasionally for information; but now you have to subscribe to see more that a couple sentences of an article. I can't afford this and I don't think there are enough people who can to make this a viable business model for web sites. I don't know what would work but I hope they find something cheaper than this.
"I miss the days when a simple banner ads could cover the bills."
They couldn't. That's why all the dot-coms went out of business.
Most banner ads pay 5 cents per click (or at least they did then). On average, 1 out of every 100 people visiting your site clicks on the banner. You do the math.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
There are other great gaming sites out there that will benefit from this, sites like MobyGames.com, a sort of IMDB for video games and comptuter games. The thing i personally like the best about MobyGames is that all of the information is contributed by gamers, not by paid editors. It's truely a game site by Gamers for Gamers. Because of their nature, I can't imagine that they would ever become some sort of subscription site.
I cannot believe so many of you /.ers sit here in defense of a PayPerView Internet...if only MS has started this trend you would all be reacting differently.
/.ers realize where all this is headed in the near future.
/.ers favorite companies. AOL and MSN begin to buy up all the subscription content on the internet. They put this exclusive content under their high speed Ineternet unbrella and offer a simple way for users to enjoy all the content they offer for one monthly fee - which also includes your high speed access, email, modem rental etc etc.
./ers who said ITS ONLY $5 a month we are all owned by MS and AOL. Think its not going to happen??? Take a look at Cable TV??? Are you happy with that monopoly??? If so keep on subscribing to these sites.
The comparison with print media does not hold true. A magazine subscriptions may be the same price as an online subscription which is even updated more often, BUT you don't have to pay $40-60 a month in GAS just to go pick up your magazine.
They will mail it to you for FREE in a neat little package that arrives on your doorstep. If we all had to pay Fed Ex Overnight Air charges for our subscriptions each month how many do you think we could afford?? Suddenly your $5 a month becomes $20. 2 magazines $40. and for that much cash I can find something better to spend my money on.
Also who says these subscription models are AD FREE??? BULLOCKS! Maybe they get rid of the pop up and other annoying ads but banners are here to stay. Anyone old enough to remember that dawn of CABLE TV??? They promised Ad Free TV...since you payed for content they didn't need Ad money. That remains true only for premium movie channles which usually charge an additional $8-10 on top of the already outragous cable franchise fees.
SO - let me put this in a way that might make you
After a sucsessfull subscription model infultrates 80% of the web, business businesses begin to struggle again...this time because there is not enough money to go around. Users can't afford a monthly access bill and more than 4-5 subscription fees - leaving 1000s of sites to perish.
YET help is on the way, and it's every
Now 80% of the Internet's content is held in check my AOL and MSN. If you want something you must subscribe. Sure they will both offer a subscription fee for users that have antoher ISP but you will still make montly contributions to AOL and MS to surf the web.
So thanks to all the
All I care about is good reviews and gamecritics is the Siskle and Ebert of games. They are by far the best review site on the web/print.
:(
Its a shame they are small and can't cover the same quantity the big crappy sites do
See!! they're doing it too! they're going subscription, so why wont you bastards accept a subscription base slashdot?!? - Taco.
My biggest gripe about Gamespot (other then large flash ads that make browsing a bit slow) is their screenshots. They have by far the largest screenshot collection but NOT THE BEST. Their screenshots are virually worthless, because they are compressed to the point where they just look horrible. If I'm paying for reviews I want crisp and high-rez screenshots (read: FiringSquad style).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Now they got streaming downloads and video reviews. Huh? Guys you're gamer geeks. You sound awful giving a video presentation, plus the sound editing is always way too low. And they have WAY too many screen shots posted. This can't be good for bandwidth costs, and plus it isn't anything I really want.
What I really want is just the info. Text pages of game reviews. The rest of what is on most web sites is unecessary.
"This is a real pity, I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash)..."
:-P
Condolences Mr. Lebowski, your revolution is over.
The bums lost!
I suggest you do what your parents did. . . Get a job sir!
I think this definately applies to all you to poor to pay for a website that you love.
I think it's more a matter that you just don't want to pay, which I can understand, but come on man don't delude yourself if that's the case.
When i pay to access the internet I want internet and everything that comes with it. I know that's not right, but that's the thought that goes around or people that don't know any better thing that the internet comes for the price that they pay their ISP. .NET .NET network and you get people to pay an annual affordable fee to access those 5000 sites i think that might be something that will get people to pay for it.
Somebody else has said it and i will reapeat it: I'm not going to pay every side that i visit any amount of dollars because it will cost too much. A thought just popped into mind: I guess this is where the
or something similar should come in and show it's power. If you get ( just a number ) 5000 sites under something like a
I hope Gamespot does survive, but you realize that once all the good reviews from people are pay for, there will be nothing there to see.
Another point. The way i see gamespot is kind of like a big advertisement site for games. Why don't they get all the game owners to actually PAY THEM, for having their games over there.
Just my 2 cents of contibution.
Someone justify to me why I should pay for no new content? I mean if the articles would read themselves to me maybe I would pay. Also it's only video game oriented information they provide. While maybe to some this information might be crucial to one's survival, to me its trivial and not worth really anything.
If you can't support yourself with ad based revenue then cut costs. I'm sure the person who reviews only fighting games can start reviewing some racing games. Fire some aritists and cut down on graphics, which in turn reduces bandwidth.
I can't find a reason why subscription based services will suceed when no new content is being provided. Why don't they instead decrease content, cut costs and stabilize themselves. Then provide new content to those who want to pay for it? Sell me something worth buying, not something that you first provided for free and now you deam worth my money since you can no longer afford to provide it.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I'm going to do everyone in the "Internet business" a favor by answering the most buring question on all of your minds since 1995:
Q: How do I make money off the Internet?
A: Unless you're running a porn site -- you dont!
When will these stupid asshole learn?
Amen! This guy is exactly right! Sure you may be able to afford the $5 (or whatever) the subscription cost. But, the big question is SHOULD you be signing up to the subscription sites? Eventually the whole web will become a "pay-per-view" channel owned by MSNBC/AOLTIMEWARNER.
I'll give you about a day after this subscription model comes out until someone utterly mirrors the whole damn site. It wouldn't be too hard to make a web crawler that consistently crawls through all of the GameSpot pages and mirrors them elsewhere. And then, ironically, the mirror could charge another subscription fee, albeit a lot cheaper than actually using GameSpot :-) Or they could take out the ads and replace them with their own.
There aren't any sites I'd be willing to directly pay for. No micro-payments, no nothing. Sorry. If nothing else, managing usernames and passwords is too much of a pain in the butt for more than a couple of sites; and I refuse to allow the Evil Empire to manage my account information for www.brideoftheburro.com.
As web sites go to a subscription model they effectively disappear from the Internet, leaving only an event horizon: their home page. Usenet as mediated by Google, is a viable alternative for a lot of what makes web sites worth visiting: information, reviews and discussions provided by real live users. It will be interesting to see if that happens.
- Rancher Dan
www.pico-pay.com which uses an advertiser-funded micropayments system, saving the users from having to pay any money.
this is the exact same reason that i left IGN... i used to be a hardcore IGN visiter, but as soon as they screwed us all over with their "pay to view everything" crap, i left for gamespot... well, i guess ill have to just leave gamespot for someone else. its a pity.
Back when Gamespot first started putting advertisements up they posted an "appologetic" note explaining that they needed to make money like everyone else, and that there are only two ways to fund a site that have been shown to work, advertisements and subscriptions.
That last bit just isn't true. Some sites make some or all of their money selling stuff. Besides the obvious candidates like Amazon, a lot of smaller sites sell things like themes t-shirts and mousepads to bring in some cash.
More importantly, some sites function off of donation based systems. Instead of asking you to subscribe for a service site unseen, they effectively show you what they've got and then ask you how much it's worth.
I've donated to Sluggy, and I've doanted to Adventurers. When The Gaming Intelligence Agency ran out of money eight months ago they asked for donations, and I gave them $20. Not because of the services I expected to recieve in the future, but because of what they'd already given to me. If they had asked for donations again I would have given again based on the quality of the service for the eight months at their site.
If GameSpot asked for donations I might give them some money, but I certainly wouldn't give them $20. They haven't done enough to earn it, and I see little reason why I should give them $20 or $25 now on the gamble that eventually they will get better.
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Actually, i've used my debit card at most places on the internet w/o a hitch.... Works fine at cdnow, amazon, animenation,ebgames, etc. I haven't had a problem at all... So don't say they're worthless. -shoptroll
Insert Sig Here
i have a problem with paying to download demos, trailers, or previews. why does this entire concept just sound stupid?
My view is why would I pay Gamespot when I can get virtually the same info from another site for free? It remindes me of IGN.com, and they bitchslap you with ads, even as a subscriber.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The only good reviews come from independent game review sites. The best one of those is Avault, hands down. I can't imagine why anyone would even bother with the advertiser sponsored corporate sites... their reviews are always skewed to their advertisers.
On sites like Avault you find far less adverts, and if you look at what few actual game adverts run and compare them to the review on Avault and then the others as well as what comes up in user reviews around the net I think you will see why they are independent and why that is good.
Sure, they don't give away as much crap, and they may not have quite as many reviews (though in the past year or two they have really), but their design is easy, they lack massive adverts that dominate the page, and their news is usually more current than anyone on the net.
As to a subscription model... well, if that's what it takes to stay in business, so be it. However, I will point out again that most gamers are not very old and have limited credit histories let alone cash... I doubt that this will work for a game oriented site anyway.
The truth is that ads just aren't providing enough revenue to keep these sites going. You can see the trends. I worked in the internet advertising industry for a little over a year (before my employer went out of business). Many of you would be SHOCKED by how little these ads are now worth. Non-subscribing users are operating at a LOSS right now. The ads do not even cover the bandwidth costs, much less the production costs.
A year ago, my favorite gaming sites were Gamespot, IGN, and Daily Radar (no particular order). A few months ago, I found Cloudchaser (had nice,up to date news and rumors). IGN is now a subscription service (with free "teaser" content). Gamespot is going to the same model. Daily Radar is dead. Cloudchaser is now dead (link says they merged with another site which in my opinion is not very good).
There are a bunch of other free sites (GamerWeb, Gamers.com, GamePro, GameSpy, GameCritics, GamesDomain...). To be honest, I haven't been that impressed by their content (just my opinion). Their reviews don't come out until WELL after the games are out and they don't offer movies of upcoming games.
When IGN went subscription, I was annoyed. I didn't sign up because I could get almost everything they offered from Gamespot. Now that Gamespot is doing the same, I have come to the realization that I'll just have to pay for the content I like.
These sites are businesses. They are trying to stay afloat. If the free sites are good enough for you, fine. However, I'd expect to see more of your favorite sites either go subscription or out of business. You have no "right" to their content just like you have no right to a magazine's content. I hope the subscription model works for these sites because I like their content.
There's a certain amount of betrayal involved here. It was free now it's not? Huh? Has their information changed? I now have to pay for, say, videos now? Bluemountain pulled the same crap. Their core service was free for the longest time, but now you have to pay for the same e-card and the same service. Call the guy a leecher but I tend to agree with him. Don't expect to pull the ol' bait and switch tactic and expect people to be happy about it. Sure they have a right to make money, but it's tough when you've already set the value of your service as "free". At least you paid for cable from the outset.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Didn't we just have a jillion articles about how crooked reviewers are? Didn't we agree that you'd have to be insanely gullible to buy a new game based on hype and a paid-for review of an early beta? That the best idea was to wait a couple of months, and purchase the (fully patched) proven best, based on reviews by (slighly more impatient) friends and family. What's the darned fire hurry to gamble on a premium priced pig in a poke?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.