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High Price Scare Tactics
GamesIndustry.biz has comments from Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, stating that he considers the recent talk about sky high game and console prices nothing but scare tactics on the part of large publishers. From the article: "'I guess they just don't have productive tools like we have,' he went on to suggest."
£35 for a newly released (PC) game is already sky-high. £5 higher and its not going to sell anywhere near as well until it drops in price. I'm not as up to date on the console situation, but I believe the cost of console games is even higher in the UK.
Not that it matters, I never buy games until 6-12 months after they've been released just because of the £10-15 price drop.
Well, duh. When your pony's one trick is looking good, you're not about to go trumpeting the virtue of speedy ponies, strong ponies, or clever ponies, are you?
I mean, c'mon. Take a look at the content of Epic Games' front page navigation box:
This is akin to the VP of 3DO saying, "Of course it's about little plastic military figurines--and anyone who says otherwise is just a jerk with a silver spoon up his ass!"
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The last thing I need is EA dictating what the rest of the video game industry's need. What EA doesn't tell you is that the $50 cazillion budget incorporates fees paid to the NFL for exclusivity player licenses. It also includes lawyer compensation expenses.
Gamers aren't fucking stupid. If only big name companies with a trillion dollar budget can make a PS3 game, this is the end of the industry as we know it.
Hardware is expensive and good developers are expensive - also gaming is growing at such a rapid rate, even with all the expense, so they know that it will sell, and if it's a good game, well worth it in my eyes.
Am I the only one who remembers when Strider for Genesis was and Street Fighter II for SNES was $70? Yes, they were cartridges and you could argue now that were more expensive than CD/DVDs to produce. The best bargain has got to PC games, price usually drops in half in 6-12 months. After 18-24 months they cost $20.
I always thought the difference between the first Metal Gear Solid and its two sequels is that the first one didn't suck.
And exactly how is saying "graphics aren't everything" snobbish? If that's how we're defining the word, here is a list of other snobbish things to say:
1 - Fashion isn't everything.
2 - Syntax isn't everything.
3 - Presentation isn't everything.
4 - Make-up isn't everything.
5 - Superficial nonsense isn't everything.
Have you ever heard anything so snobbish in your entire life?
Open Source MMORPG projects are starting to put control back into the hands of the RPG community. Like MUDs before them, MMORPGs will one day be run by a community of volunteers. If players choose to pay those volunteers then all the better.
The biggest thing holding this back is the creation of art: maps, character models, items, 2d graphics. There's a new project LessShift to develop this art. Will you help?
How we know is more important than what we know.
It seems to be a fairly standard business practice these days. Make suggestions that your product could go up in price and people subconsciously start preparing to pay more. That's also why new technologies are always expensive ("it'll be expensive to start because of economics of scale but will come down in price soon", then end up with $50 games and $30+ DVDs). It works, so why shouldn't they push it a bit more?
Damien
Finally, a post on Slashdot telling people not to buy games is going to in no way have any impact on an international marketplace, ever. God Bless.
Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
With all the new games requiring a dozen programmers or so, will technologies like this bring back the concept of the one or two person commercial game? Artwork is obviously still a major hurdle, but there are many places to purchase models if you need to. And, finally, anyone know if this will be available for mod developers with the next Unreal game, or only to those who fork over the big bucks for an engine license?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
After all, what do you think Steam is all about? It's about killing the used games market, though too little and too late.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Would anyone expect him to say anything else? Epic is shopping Unreal 3 around to licensees. So ... do you think we would say something like "your production budget will go through the roof" or will he say something like "our tools are going to save you money while you make big games"?
This is a comment from a person who obviously never actually plays the games, just looks at marketing material and screenshots.
The difference between MGS and MGS3 is mainly in the minor changes made to gameplay. Camoflage. Food. Survival. The "outdoors" world. These are mostly small, but they have a huge impact on the way you play the game. (There are also the enhancements to gameplay from MGS2, but these are also minor.)
Sure, the graphics are nice, but you could have made this game for the PSX with its crappy graphics and pretty much had the same compelling experience.
Who are you going to trust on this? Some VP from a 2nd-rate development house, or Hideo Kojima?
Graphics are nice. Gameplay is king.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"You know, people are such snobs, with this 'oh, it's not about graphics' thing. That's such nonsense. It's totally about graphics. What's the difference between the first Metal Gear Solid and the latest Metal Gear Solid? Right, it's - wow, the graphics!"
Technically, he's right. Metal Gear Solid (PS1) is inferior graphics to MGS3: Snake Eater (PS2). But, the REAL statement should have been:
"Why did the first Metal Gear Solid sell so well? It was an amazing game and it looked great. Why is Metal Gear Solid 3 selling so well? It's an amazing game and it looks great."
Graphics are important, true. But gameplay FAR outclasses that for gamers. Why do you think Madden games sell every year? They basically look the same every year. What they tweak is the gameplay, the techniques, the challenge, etc. The graphics are hardly improved. KOTOR (xbox) and Super Smash Brothers Melee (Gamecube) weren't anything special in the graphics department (although they are both nice looking). They were amazing games, and sold accordingly.
...when I know of at least one game specialty store that's getting ready to add a "value" section on their walls EXCLUSIVELY of new titles 19.99 and under.
Further, the prices for almost all the non-EA PSP launch titles have backed down from 50$ to 40$.
The writing is on the wall and game prices are going down.
--Moo.
Still haven't bought a PS1 ...lol....I'm waiting for the PS2 to go down to $99 or less and just skipping it altogether ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Why are you "behind" with those releases? Are your friends the kinds of gamers that always want the newest and greatest? If a game is outdated by the time it hits the bargain bin, was it really worth full price? Don't think of it as being behind, think of it as getting a better product (i.e. all the patches already available, you avoid any launch trouble) at a lower price. The only two PC games I paid full price for lately were Doom 3 and HL2 and neither was worth it. By the time they hit the bargain bin the first mods might be in usable states and you'll again get more for less.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The AAA-title end of the game industry is rapidly approaching a cost/benefit barrier that current development practices will not be able to surmount.
Two facts are primarily responsible:
1 - Reinventing game engine technology from scratch for every title is cost prohibitive and slow.
"In the limit, all graphics rendering technologies tend to approximate ray-tracing [+ radiosity, etc]" -Unknown
2 - Recreating game content (art and code assets) to take advantage of improving technology becomes exponentionally more expensive as we approach the asymptotic limits of "perfect" technical fidelity, and simultaneously offers diminishing payoffs.
"They're selling us the same games year after year, with small incremental content updates" -any sports game fan
Therefore, in the future, game technology needs to scale up/down freely with hardware capability and adapt "finalized" content to an appropriate level through pre/dynamic simplification or procedural/simulated detail increase.
This is taking place to some extent already, with limited reuse and extension of game technology platforms and content in similar games and sequels (Unreal, Doom, Half-Life, etc), but the industry remains short-sighted and fails to address to-the-limit scalability.
Current content and platforms are also overwhemlingly monolithic, and there's no hard limiting technical reason why there cannot be increasing modularity.
Imaging playing a game using Doom's graphics technology, Enemy Territory's gameplay, Unreal's networking & mods, Half-Life's physics system, TeamSpeak's voice technology, and Xfire's buddy-list, or any such combination as you like, on any platform.
Sigh. I hope I'm not too old and disabled to play games when computing technology finally grows up.