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Sony Hints At Higher Priced Games
Sony's Kaz Hirai hints that, in addition to the $600 console, we may have even more expensive games to look forward to. From the Gamasutra article: "I don't think consumers expect software pricing to suddenly double. So, the quick answer is that we want to make it as affordable as possible, knowing that there is a set consumer expectation for what software has cost for the past twelve years. That's kind of the best answer I can give you. So, if it becomes a bit higher than $59, don't ding me, but, again, I don't expect it to be $100."
Games are already too expensive as it is, which is one reason I quit playing them about 2 years ago. I can get a lot more enjoyment out of $60 doing something outside or with friends and family than I can spending hours in the basement mashing buttons.
--Stupid Sig Here--
When people are outraged at the price of your console, tell them you'll charge more for the games too. Sure. I'd like to know where that guy learned marketing.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sony has stated they have no real answer for Halo 3. Sony's tech demos and specs were less than overwhelming. Even Microsoft, who seemed to enjoy rising with Sony to the top during the last console generation, has come out to say that they're siding with Nintendo (alright, not literally, but you know what I mean). Finally, sony announces that they will most likely raise prices a 'bit' above the already high $59.
Someone's smoking something, and if it screws up their logic this badly, I might just want some.
The Sony Playstation S&M: Sony's got the "S" covered, guess where that leaves you?
Do they have any toes left at this point?
Wow! Based on the E3 showing, I thought I'd only be able to watch the much-delayed worse-than-HDDVD Blu-Ray and download from the currently non-existent online service on it!
Wow! I really do get to pay more to do less with Sony! I can't wait.
When you buy a PS3, someone from Sony will come and kill your puppy or kitty. If you do not have a puppy or kitty, one will be assigned to you, and then it will be killed.
If it's a super hit game, then charging $100 on the first day or for pre-release is only good economics -- if there are people willing to pay that much, why not? You can always drop the price later, while increasing it later will definitely sting more. Granted, I would prefer to not see any games over $50, I know that the market is just so high now that if a console is $600 when it used to be $100, then games are probably pushing $100 or even $150 for it! Now if you're dumb enough to buy madden 20XX supreme ultra plus edition for $100, then you deserve to be disappointed if it turns out to be "Yet Another Football Game".
stuff |
Description: This cursed weapon deals +3 damage against wielder's own feet.
Price: Credibility and market share.
Weight penalty: Ponderous, especially to those with foot damage.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So somewhere between $59 and $100. Gotcha. Seeing as games have pretty much gone up by $10 or so every generation or so, I'm betting the PS3 games will be somwhere around $70 to $80. Unless there's twice as much gameplay in those games as every other game being released (doubtful), there's no way a single game is worth that much money.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
...to give them just a little bit of credit, it's better to find this out now than to see the must-have launch title magically appear on the shelf for USD$79.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Given their grave concern that the PS3 isn't expensive enough, it's a short jump to being concerned that the games don't cost enough either.
So, two games will buy a Wii, one and a half get a DS lite. Apparently Sony has taken the "There is only one PS3" slogan to heart, literally. If they sell one I'll be astounded.
This article is flat-out misleading.
He was asked about prices going higher. He didn't bring it up. He didn't say they would go higher. He didn't hint they would go higher. He meerly refused to rule it out as a possibility in an uncertain future.
Considering they will be selling the PS3 at a loss, as is the case with most any console, they must make it up with accessories and games. Blue Ray technology will be very costly to the console, especially early on while its still new tech, assuming ~$1000 for a player based on Samsungs, thats $500-$400 gross loss on the Blue Ray alone. And who knows how much the Cell processor maybe costing them? The cost of the Blue Ray medium itself may even contribute to a price increase.
I admit, I laughed when I first saw rumors of $80 PS3 and dismissed it as Xbox fan's reacting to the new $60 games. Today, seeing near final specs on the PS3, I would not doubt $70 games, though $80 still seems a bit farfetched for anything but the mega-big games. Perhaps as technology improves, the higher cost of games will come down, or maybe Sony will keep them high. But in the beginning, I would be surprised if they keep all their games below $60.
Demented But Determined.
So not only are they charging through the roof for their technologically "superior" console, like SNK before them with the Neo*Geo, but they are going to charge more than their competition for the games as well! Admitedly, even without adjusting for inflation they don't sound like they are going to go the 100+ dollar extreme that we saw with the Neo*Geo home system (at least the NG carts cost almost made some sense due to the relative high cost of making the boards). Is it just me, or is the PS3 starting to seem more and more like some kind of bizzare temporal echo of the failed business and technology mistakes of yesteryear?
To what I'll pay for a game. The economics of making the game don't effect my decision to buy it, it's the publishers/developers job to find better, cheaper ways to make games that sale, it's not my job to cover there bloated budgets. I'd only pay over $40 for a game if I'm REALLY looking forward to it, and NEVER OVER $60. There is a point when I say, you know, I should find a cheaper hobby.
Sony's games are great. But a consumer buys on price, however much s/he talks about quality. Add this to the fact that a large mass of game players is kids, teenagers and students, who typically dont have that much dough to spend.
What made Sony popular was the cheap price of CD games on the PSX compared to the higher priced N64games. Now that there are tons more games available compared to those days. A lot of games are cheaper but now Sony wants to change that by charging more? The price is simply to pay for the BluRay technology which will crash and burn in the mainstream movie media market, as well as HDDVD. They are all stupid. Boycott them all!
I'm as much of a gamer as most people, but honestly, who the hell are they marketing this towards*? The "my parents are divorced and one parent is over-compensating with insane toys" subsect of the market doesn't seem to be large enough to sustain a console. How many teenagers/college students can afford something like this? As a college student myself, I work more than I probably should, and I don't come close to breaking even after tuition and such. I purchased a PS2 not too long ago, and generally don't get any games that are much more than $20. If I ever purchase another console, it's probably going to be a Wii just from an economical standpoint. I don't care if Sony has the OMGLOOKATTHATZ polygons (which, from hardware comparisons, it won't) or if they have a GTA for every city in the country (which, since it's not exclusive to their console, everyone will)...with $600 + ~$80 per game, I could invest in Microsoft and Nintendo and watch Sony weep as their computer without a keyboard fucking tanks.
* -- Don't end sentences with prepositions, kids.
I almost get the idea that in Sony's own world this is somehow being presented to "hype" the console. The wording of these articles are priceless since I was honestly expecting someone (from the article) to try and explain how this is a good thing. (as in: PS3 = Fancy resturant, games = fancy desserts.) I am not sure how continuing to leak information about the high cost of the system is going to help Sony.
Even so, it would seem as if there are some fans who would still buy the system and games even if they continued to raise the price.
If you say the games will cost between 60 and 100 dollars, guess what the "take away" from that statement is.
Of course in a day or two, Sony will realize they should have said nothing, and do some damage control.
Yellow Card, Sony. PR foul.
Get a Wii
Let me just head one line of reasoning off at the pass: I'm sure someone's going to start throwing around calculations involving inflation and real purchasing power. Which are right... ...but they don't matter.
People, by and large, do not factor the devaluation of money between then and now into their price comparisons. For example, consider gas prices - everyone complains about them, despite the fact that they're actually lower (in terms of real dollars) than they were 25 years ago.
Yet you'll always hear the stories about how "I remember when a gallon of gas was fifty cents!"
Video games are the same way. They've been in the $50 range for a long time, and people are therefore acclimated to that price point. It doesn't really matter that $50 for a game in 1995 was more money than $50 is now.
According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005. Which means that the premium XBox 360 is a whole $36 more expensive than the NES (and the core system $63 cheaper!), in terms of real purchasing power. This has not stopped plenty of people complaining about its price.
Of course, anyone who figures real purchasing power into the equation is right, when you come down to it...but it doesn't matter when it comes to what drives the purchasing public to either pull the trigger or not on a new toy.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
The development model is totally screwed up ... for 99% of the games created, they're just reinventing the wheel and adding some shiney rims or something ... there is no way they need to charge more for video games than they already are ... if anything, it should be getting cheaper.
Good thing I already have a PC that does whatever the hell I want it to. Hell, I'll dig out the "old-skool" games (you know, the ones that made up for limitations on eye-candy for gameplay) and play those. Personally, I've always seen the relationship of eyecandy to gameplay to be something of a zero-sum deal: you can't seemingly have both at the same time. If you have a lot of eye-candy, you see gameplay slip. Now, games such as the original Half Life (good gameplay and good eyecandy for the time) are an exception, as are titles like Halo, which is pretty ho-hum on both counts. Console games seem to be effected by this "Proportionality Rule" moreso than PC games, in my experience.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
This won't work because I only have a fixed amount to spend on games. If games are more expensive I'll be buying less of them. You'll only get the same amount of money from me, and I'll be less happy with you if more expensive games don't deliver something more in the game play or length to justify the higher costs.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Don't buy stuff on release day, or even release week or month.
If you can train yourself to not give a rats ass about hype, gaming is cheap, cheap, cheap.
Eventually EVERYTHING ends up in the $20 bin, maybe even in the $10 bin. I remember hearing what a great fantastical game MGS2 was for the PS2, well guess what, I saw it for 6.99 and picked it up. It's pretty good.
Sure I'm playing stuff thats months, and often years old, but fun games are still fun, and it saves me a ton of cash.
Browse the older pages on sites like 1up or whathaveyou, pick up old copies of game informer you see lying around. There's plenty of great old classic games, and just games that aren't brand new. I picked up Destroy all Humans for 14.99 the other week.
Works for consoles too. I completely ignore all the XBox 360 and PS3 hype (and that's all it is), and when I finally pick one up, it'll be for a third of what the early adopters paid.
Yessir, learned my lesson long ago. Paid full price for the dreamcast on 9/9/99, and full price for a couple of games. A year and a half later, the dreamcast was worth 20 bucks and the games were worth as close to nothing as you can get.
Especially ridiculous to me are those who need to have this years madden game. 60 bucks a year, for the same game as last year.
But, this is coming from someone who sort-of collects old consoles (like neo geo cd, saturn, 3DO, TG16) and has six old full sized arcade games, and would rather revisit XMen vs Streetfighter on his CPS2 system, than pay 60 bucks for Tekken A-Jillion.
Just one little bears opinion.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Nintendo has specifically said that they are aiming for a $50 price ceiling for games. When asked.
Sony? "Well, we doubt they'll get up to $100".
There's a reason people are fed up with what's coming out of Sony currently.
I've stopped at a couple of video rental places looking to rent 360 games. Both places (a Movie Gallery and a mom & pop shop) have told me that they won't stock 360 games because the cost for them is too high. Now granted, I haven't done an exhaustive search and I'm not near a major metropolitan area, but it's not a good sign with the usual 360 $60 price point. I wonder if the PS3 games will be stocked at $70-$80...
When did Sony get bought by Games Workshop?
The less likely I am to buy it on impulse. Most games suck, as simple as that. I'm willing to risk $20 against the chances that the game will suck. At the $50 I'm much less inclined to buy a game on the spur of the moment. At $70 almost all of the games would look unappealing given that I can wait a year, buy them used (In which case the publisher gets NOTHING) or both. At more than $70, I'd be inclined to chuck the console and find a different hobby.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I object to PS3 and XBox 360 being termed "next generation". They're exactly the same as what we have now, just at higher resolutions. Resolutions hardly anybody has. Most people I know think they have HDTVs, and then I point out that they have merely EDTV, or a HD-Ready TV. I tell them to truly experience the XBox 360, they have to drop some serious $$$ for something that does 720P and a DTS system. Then they can go spend another $$$$ on a BluRay or HD-DVD player, and basically gamble whether they're getting another BetaMax.
High Definition is such a stupid direction the industries taking. People don't care, they aren't flocking to Best Buy to upgrade. I'm a geek who's into and actually understands all this crap, HDMI, 1080i vs 1080p, and so on, and I don't care. I really don't give a rats ass about high-definition anything, it doesn't improve the experience of TV, movies or console video games.
So Sony and MSFT have hitched their wagons to the HDTV "revolution" that isn't going to take place. They can only force upgrades, a la "buy a PS3 because we aren't making PS2 games anymore".
Now, Wii is different, watching the videos of the guy playing Red Steel, made me wonder "why didn't we have that before?" It looks like such a natural way to play an FPS, it looks like it may even be SUPERIOR to a keyboard and mouse. I'll have to wait and see. It seems like more of a gimmick, and something that will be here to stay. The first time I saw the NES control pad, I thought it was a cheesy gimmick, and could never replace the Wico Command Control I used with my C64. Games are played with joysticks, not stupid little boxes with buttons to move, I thought. I was wrong.
Wii and it's wii-mote are something different, and flunk or fail, actually innovative.
Of course it's all about the games, and a "killer app" can change everything overnight. Halo was MSFT's crutch for the XBox, but that seems like a fluke. It won't happen again with Halo 3. So far I see nothing coming down the pipe from Sony or MSFT that piques my interest. But damnit, I want to play some FPS with that pointer, and I want to be able to cheaply download some of nintendo's past hits. Right up my alley.
IMO, Wii is the only truly "next generation" system. It actually offeres something evolutionary over the last generation. All PS3 and XBox 360 seem to have is high prices, faulty hardware, and "new features" that would cost me 5 grand to be able to use.
I think Sony and MSFT going the high-end route is going to hurt them, and Nintendo just might rise back to the top. They seem most likely to put out the next "killer app" at this point.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"Clearly, we're intent on preventing anyone from actually buying or using this product" he said, "but, just in case, we've also added a small amount of plastic explosive to the power supply and dipped the game controller in anthrax."
He can kiss my arse. I have better ways of dropping $660+ to play one game on the first day of buying a game system. Hopefully they realize they are being stupid right after sales tank.
This is the same company that allows pre-orders for an expansion that it knows is going to be rendered worthless with upcoming changes to the game, doesn't announce those changes until the credit cards are billed, and then claims that everything is okay despite emptying of their online servers. This is the same company who's BMG branch allowed rootkits onto our computers without express or even implied consent, increasing the security threat both from malware and allowing people to cloak hacks for games, and a host of other problems I'm sure. This is the same company that treats its customers like idiots - and then feigns ignorance when people stop plopping more money down. I do have to admit - I'm curious to see which PR guy they send out to handle this, and how they spin things going forward.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
So, let's see...
£425 for PS3 console.
Probably £60 for one game.
Factor in the fact that you won't be able to buy just the console on its own for the first few months, and will be forced to buy a bundle with a load of crap you don't actually want - let's say that's another £50 of 'value added' material.
Total: £535.
As the saying goes, fuck that!
You must think in Russian.
Won't it be hilarious when Sony suddenly prices the PS3 at $300 and floods the market with them.
They must know that competing with PCs is a bad idea (with a $600 tag it is, anyway), and that set-top boxes are a losing industry. So what else can the PS3 be? A glorified modern-day Commodore?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
"High Definition is such a stupid direction the industries taking."
it should be pointed out that part of it is 9/11. What? 9/11? yes, the gov wants to clear out the frequencies used by analog TV and give it to emergency responders as a uniform frequencey for communication. That is why there is a analog cutof date that is in the law.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Another article handpicked by Zonk attacking the PS3 and misrepresenting the price yet again. At least we know an easy way to get a story submission in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I find it interesting that we see these numbers from Sony shortly after Official Xbox Magazine (I think that's who it was) reports that $60 games aren't really catching on and that we may see lower prices soon.
OTOH: We are expected to pay $10 to $15 for a map pack that PC users get for free so I don't feel like we are making too much progress.
O rly? What about Rez and Chrono Trigger and Earthbound? Or by "eventually" are you talking about timescales longer than a human lifetime?
One thing for sure, it's a brick ... HOUSE.
There is one REALLY good title for 360 which will easily give you over 100+ hours of gameplay:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Right now it's only on 360 and PC and it looks AMAZING and so far there are no plans for the PS3 that have been publically announced. Not only does it look good, the gameplay is amazing as well and will have you hooked. This could be one of Microsoft's killer app, at least until Halo 3 comes out. FYI, I am not a fan of Halo 1/2 but it is something everybody else is waiting for.
There doesn't seem to be anything equivelant that Sony has lined up, except maybe Final Fantasy which has, quite frankly, been a terrible game and I think that after 10 or 20 sequels, Sony needs something different.
I'd like to see what Nintendo puts out thought, with Red Steel and other games which utilize the new controller.
Nah, Sony managed to do that all by itself, Microsoft in this case is innocent. But I somehow get the feeling that this guy has a problem or has a problem with his employer, every smoke he has blowing so far was worse for his employer.
Imagine the possibilities!
You: Hey baby I got a PS3!
Drunk Woman: No they are about C cups, stop staring at my boobs please.
You: It's only $600, see I'm loaded babe.
Drunk Woman: Buy me a drink then.
You: Sure (calls over bartender) Apple martini for the lady and a Jack and Coke for me.
Drunk Woman: Thanks for the martini babe! (makes out with bartender)
You: (Go home, j*rk off, play Katamari Damacy 3 on your HDTV in 1080p and 7.1 surround sound until 7am when your blackberry goes off and your boss tells you to come into work)
Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths....
Gradually starting to look that way - stupidly overpriced console, overpriced games, hype about being the best next gen platform around...
I wish them the best of luck with that (this coming from someone who's been a massive ps1/ps2 fan over the years)...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You don't want people to get the impression that your stuff is "expensive". Expensive, in the consumer context means that they think your product costs more than it should. Doesn't matter what the actual price is, just that they believe it to be more than it ought to be.
Well that impression can get formed on inital pricing, even if you lower it later. That was one half of the equation as to why MS kept the 360 price low, even though it's clear they could have gotten more. They didn't want people getting the idea that the 360 was "expensive" they wanted them to see it as "cheap", meaning costing less than it should. Even though it probably would have sold out at a $1000 pricepoint and achieved scaricity (which was something they wanted) it would hurt sales later. Why? Well many people would have the idea formed that the 360 was expensive. Never mind if they dropped the price to $200 two months later, they would have the idea that it was expensive and they can't afford it.
Excuse me while I laugh my ass off.
As i said in a previous post - i wish sony the best of luck with that.
However, history shows they're not going to be very successful, if that's their strategy. And unless they get the numbers, third party developers won't give a fuck about developing for the platform (especially considering that it's going to be a royal pain in the ass to code for by most accounts).
Enjoy your 2-3 $100 games per year :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Is that Halo 3 will launch when the PS3 does. Now that may not happen, 2007 is the stated launch date, but I could see it. There's been quite a bit of time to work on it, I'd say there's a reasonable chance it could be made ready to release on short notice. So suppose MS does do that, the PS3 launches or is about to launch and they go "Hey guess what? We decided to drop the 360 price... Oh and look what we found in our back pocket, it's Halo 3 and it happens to be on sale now." That would be a major blow to the PS3 launch. Sony would need a game to compete, so to speak, the killer game that people are waiting for that makes the $500-600 worth it. Otherwise, maybe they decide a 360 and Halo 3 are more worth it.
The problem isn't if they have something specific as a Halo 3 response, the problem is if Halo 3 (and the Wii launch) are able to take enough of the wind out of their sales and really cripple PS3 adoption. Consoles are very much a feedback cycle. The more people that own them, the more interest there is in making games for them (because of mroe sales). More games drives more ownership and so on.
Already the game industry is a bit skeptical of the PS3. Between the shifting information, the delays, the price, and the slow dev kits, there's concern about it. If MS and/or Nintendo successfully deal a major blow to the launch, that could really screw them over all because it could convince devs that the PS3 isn't worth porting to, or at the very least isn't worth going exclusive on. That alone could be enough to ensure that it isn't all that successful, and given the amount of R&D dumped in it, they need a deceant success to see black on the project.
This isn't a doomsday scenario or anything, but it's a real concern. MS is not stupid and they know a thing or two about crushign competitors. Don't put it past them to go full court press and try to fuck over Sony's launch in every way possible.
There exists a strange group of people called "Early adopters" who will go to amazing lengths to have the latest and greatest. These folks will gladly shell out $600 for a console and $70 each for games. And, if your intial run of consoles is small enough, they will buy them all. Perhaps Sony knows this...
Here's my take on Sony's strategy.
I. Soak the early adopters for as much cash as possible.
II. Follow the launch with a rapid and drastic price drop for both consoles and games.
III. Profit.
After all Sony may have made it's share of mistakes, but they've had one or two small successes as well.
...they are using all the hype of their outrageous prices to gain interest and curiosity as to WHY it should cost this much. Then, when a majority of people have put a price on what is SHOULD COST in their heads the pricing structure will change making the people who wanted a ps3 and the games(despite the price) even happier and the ones who think its insane would then be out looking for the damn thing themselves because they've already suggested "sony should be selling this shit for normal prices". Either way... all the talk about high prices might not be so bad...as long as it changes of course.
Sadly, it appears I have another reason not to buy a PS3 on arrival -- and maybe ever. Weve already seen an increase in next gen games prices with the 360 -- I would expect similar from Sony, but even TALKING about it seems to imply a greater increase than what we currently have -- and nobody is happy about those costs either. Games are getting too damn expensive -- this will only feed the rental market.
Who do they think is going to buy this thing and its associated games? Im in my early 30s, with lots of disposable income and a gaming appetite Ive fed since I was four, yet I will NOT be buying this. Kids are going to suck $60-$100 a pop for games? In an industry that is exceeding the revenue of the movie industry? Yeah, right. We are now approaching the cost of a full system for a single game. Remember when Nintendo was $100? How about the Atari 2600? We are now approaching that cost for a single game and I FINALLY ask myself: Is it worth it? From what Ive seen -- NO. Theres nothing out there coming out that impresses me that much. NOTHING. And there is too much other content out there competing for my time and dollar. Its got to be pretty seriously special to command that kind of scratch.
As a audio-video phile I love the whole Blu-Ray concept, but this is just too much. Sony is offically on my shit list. Ill wait for the $149.99 version with the $20 games. Not that Im cheap, but the price is right.
Remember FFXI?
"We're going to jack you around, but we aren't going to tell you how much we're going to jack you around."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
People always talk about Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field that mysteriously makes him able to sell anything. It looks like someone at Sony has one of them too, but they use it on Kaz instead of customers.
In what alternate dimension does repeatedly trumpeting to the media how you're overpricing your system and your games become a good marketing decision?
Do these games come with spinning rims or is it just the console?
The same technique can be applied to video games, as long as Sony isn't expecting to be the market leader. If they are going after the hardcore gamers who will pay a few extra dollars for the best, their technique might work. After all, if there are enough audiophiles to support SACD, there must be enough hard core gamers to support PS3.
No, I will not work for your startup
You know what? You're absolutely right.
Sony isn't Sega, it's a cross between Sega in 1994, Nintendo in 1996 and MS in 2000.
The PS3 isn't a Jaguar, it's a Neo Geo.
And a lot of people will be willing to spend $600 on consoles this year. They just won't spend it on Sony's.
Most people I know think they have HDTVs, and then I point out that they have merely EDTV, or a HD-Ready TV.
Isn't the only difference between an HDTV and an HD-ready TV the existence of an internal tuner? How would that make a difference as far as game consoles are concerned?
Rob
But I'm not great fan of sony either. Damn their cleverly worded camera ads...
So, I'm stuck. I'm not sure what to do here.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Sorry Sony, you've already lost. Over $59? Yeah, I bought your PS2 but things are looking bleak for your PS3. I'm not sure who's going to kick your ass, but my vote goes towards the Wii. Plus, at this rate Microsoft will beat you as well. Welcome to dead last...
Opinionated and willing to burn karma on this nonsense....
_I_ _own_ _Steel_ _Battalion_
For the uninitiated, it's a $200 game you basically justify by telling yourself (Or significant other...but who am I kidding?) you're paying for the controller it comes with (Which consists of a three-foot-wide control panel with 44 buttons, 5 toggle switches, two joysticks, a radio tuner dial, a gear shift, and let us not forget the three foot pedals...also, most of this is lighted), and not the game.
I, however, despising the Xbox entirely, was forced to grudgingly buy one JUST for Steel Battalion.
So, I'm not really bothered by this, despite being broke most of the time. I mean, they're going to be GREAT goddamn games. A quantum leap in graphics and gameplay. And frankly, if the profit-per-unit goes up, chances are more developers are going to be able to take risks on edgy or niche titles.
Look at Steel Battalion. It cost $200, and is really a game only a mecha otaku could love. But they took the chance and made it because it was manufactured in limited quantites, and sold for a shitton.
Even without a fancy controller, I'd gladly pay upwards of $100 for a great game that hits my strikezone dead center, something that really resonates with my interests. At $60, it might not be reasonable for a game to be made for such an audience, see what I'm getting at?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Yes there is a PS3 with an SKU or $600.
However the article implies that is the lowest cost model which is not the case.
$500 is already really expensive anyway, why pretend that model does not exist? It just makes you look ignrant and fanboyish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PS3 *will* sell, just not in US. Their target audience is Asia. The buying behavior in US is just different from those in Asia. People in Asia *will* spend $600 bucks US on a mobile phone every half a year. And we are not talking about 2 out of 1 million people will do that. A LOT people will spend that much money on luxury items. People in Japan will wait in line a night before a good game release. People in US think PS3 is expensive does not mean it will not sell elsewhere.
Well, yeah, sure. Some gamers (Myself among them) are willing to pay very high amounts of cash for high quality gaming. guess what: We have PCs.
Better games, more games, upgradable, does whatever *I* want, and has a keyboard.
If sony is really trying to appeal to the PC gaming crowd, man they have no idea the amount of trouble they are getting into.
"can't run, can't hide...oh well, return 0"
I agree. And best of all, once you let yourself fall far enough behind, it stops feeling like a sacrifice.
I've never owned a game console in my adult life, mainly because I work out of home and I've always been afraid I couldn't resist the temptation to play games all day when I should be working. Having finally decided I'm willing to risk it, I bought a PS2 in January. I now have six years worth of games to play through, and I rarely have to pay more than £3 (about $6) on eBay, including postage. It's not like I'm sitting at home with no games to play waiting for the price of Metal Gear Solid 4 to drop. (Heck, I haven't even started MGS 2. And when I do start MGS2, I'll be starting with MGS2:Substance; I won't have to re-buy the game just to get the extra content.)
Of course, it's much easier to give this kind of advice when you're in your mid 30s and don't have a ton of time to play games to begin with. When you're in high school, college, or even your early 20s, the value of a game isn't just in playing it; it's in hanging out with your buddies while you play it, and swapping tips, and competing for bragging rights, and so on. Paying extra for a game when it's first released gives you a social advantage, and that's something people are always willing to pay for. It's the nerd equivalent of buying a Prada jacket (or whatever it is the cool people do to impress their friends. I wouldn't know.)
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
Actually, the summary on Slashdot is highly incorrect. If you read what the guy says on Gamasutra, it's
A) in response to Activision's making a fuss that games should be more expensive, since apparently Activision's development costs are too high to be covered even by $59, and
B) all that the Sony guy basically says is along the lines of "well, we can't go much higher than $59, because people expect games to be between $59 and $39. We can't suddenly price a game at $99, because noone would buy it. Even if we could slightly increase the price, it would be at most a very small increase, not what Activision wants."
Basically that's all there. It's _not_ about Sony wanting to raise game prices, it's Sony telling Activision "dude, put down the bong, we _can't_ sell your games for $99." I.e., pretty much the opposite of what the Slashdot summary says.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now I can understand someone being mislead by the wrong Slashdot summary, but, no offense, commenting on the wording of an article would imply you bothered to actually RTFA first.
Here's the short summary: Activision wants higher game prices to cover their huge development costs. Sony guy answers to that along the lines of "well, we _can't_ start selling games for $99, because people expect games to be between $39 at the low end and $59 at the high end."
Basically, no, he doesn't think he's hyping the console, he's not trying to justify a price increase, or whatever the highly incorrect Slashdot summary would want you to believe. He's just saying they _can't_ increase game prices, and anyway not by the huge ammount that Activision wants. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
here are two things that are absolutely sacred right now on this site: Apple and Nintendo.
Did you miss the 500 stories and thousands of comments on how lame the name "Wii" was? No? How about any dicussion of the Macbook line, with dozens of people complaining about how hot they run. Or anytime Apple does something questionable or unpopular, and there's 20 group thinkers critisizing Slashdot for supposed group-think bias, saying "now if this were Microsoft, you'd all be up in arms."
Criticize either and you're automatically modded flamebait or troll. Compliment either and you're +5 Interesting and Insightful. And god forbid we talk about their rivals in a good way.
Sounds more like you miss the old days of Slashdot, where any crazed, Dvorak style crabassing would be an automatic +5 Insightful.
I object to PS3 and XBox 360 being termed "next generation". They're exactly the same as what we have now, just at higher resolutions. Resolutions hardly anybody has. Most people I know think they have HDTVs, and then I point out that they have merely EDTV, or a HD-Ready TV. I tell them to truly experience the XBox 360, they have to drop some serious $$$ for something that does 720P and a DTS system. Then they can go spend another $$$$ on a BluRay or HD-DVD player, and basically gamble whether they're getting another BetaMax.
I have to agree with you there, and I own an XBox 360 and a few HD TVs. My grandmother was looking at TVs, and kept picking out ones in the paper and saying things like "Oh, isn't this like your big screen? But it costs $500-$1000 less!." Everytime it was HD Ready, and the upgrade would have made it cost more than any of my TVs. This makes it difficult for the average consumer, especially when the sales staff at many of the large chain stores have no clue themselves (I had some questions about an HD unit in Best Buy, and received answers that didn't even make sense in regards to the question.)
In regards to BluRay and HD-DVD? I can wait. I have a Toshiba DVD player that up-scales, and yes, I understand it's not true HD. But it still looks great.
rm -rf
They're already pricing their console in the "people who don't care how much it costs will still buy this" range. Why not go the same route with the games?
a) They know they aren't going to be able to come to market with it being cheaper than the Wii and it's games (although possibly comparably priced).
b) They know they aren't going to be price competative with the Xbox 360 and it's games(although to a lesser degree).
c) They have out and out stated that they believe they have the clout to charge whatever they want and people will pay it (see the UK rep comments a while back).
This is only the logical extention of that belief.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
XBox 360 also has higher priced games, and so did the XBox, until MS brought down the licensing fees in order to allow their games to compete with the PS2's pricing. Now that both will be higher, maybe Nintendo will win out? I know I don't want to play more for games. Hell, as it is I wait for games to come out used to buy them so I don't have to pay full price, it's just too expensive. I'd never get all the games I wanted at that price.
Twinstiq, game news
It won't even feed the rental market. The games are at the price point where most rental stores aren't going to shell out to buy most games. Sure, you'll be able to rent a handful, but anything outside of the absolute top sellers you won't find. And forget about being able to rent the entire game system like we could do with the PS2 and Xbox when they first came around.
You say: Sony guy answers to that along the lines of "well, we _can't_ start selling games for $99, because people expect games to be between $39 at the low end and $59 at the high end."
The way I read it, Sony's rep says, to quote from the article:
Both the /. summary and the article have that word "suddenly" in there; the Sony guy uses it twice. In your paraphrase, the emphasis would seemingly need to be on "start" instead of "can't," seemingly. Because it sure does sound like Sony's saying it's going to happen eventually; they just don't think the market's ready now.
(The Nintendo counterstrategy is worth thinking about again. Yeah, production costs for these new games are climbing, and a big part of the costs are to do with HD development supposedly. Companies are more and more conservative about the types of games they release because of that -- another WWII shooter, anyone? Except, whoops, the Nintendo platform is supposedly going to cost significantly less. I don't remember Nintendo talking about developers with pitchforks demanding $100 games, either...)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Face it, Slashdot is to Sony what Fox is to Democrats. Not exactly fair and balanced.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
I'm sorry I don't have any mod points for you. That post was comedy gold.
Not that anyone else cares, but I'm planning on returning to buying a Nintendo. I bought a PS2 for several reasons, most of them were FF PS1 games and then the FF & KH PS2 games. I've seriously thought about buying a game cube so that I could play the 4-6 fun games that I know Nintendo has and each of the games could be found in classics sections ranging from $15-$25 depending on store. The other reason I've been thinking of returning to Nintendo is kids/family games. My kids have been happily playing my old N64 and love the 2 Zelda games for it. Heck what's the price of a game cube & acc & 5-6 games? Is it $200-$300? I think that might be the family christmas present this year.
How about the other part of the article, where they put it in context regarding Activision's request? Sure, if it were a quote out of the blue, it would be one thing, but put into the proper context it's something completely different.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sony's flak is answering a question about X-Box 360 prices and those for the PS3. He didn't actually mention Activision, but here's the paragraph you mean:
Hey, Your Mileage May Vary as they say, but I don't see where that sentence about Activision lays the land out any differently. Kaz Hirai says, in so many words: 'They might be a little higher than 60 bucks, but we won't suddenly double the price.' I notice he's not responding to the other developers who say the things are already too pricey, either... No hint of his saying "Yeah, we're going to be a lot cheaper than 360 titles," or in any way softening the idea that HD titles are pricey to turn out.
It sure reads like he thinks the price of games is going up in the next gen machines, inevitably, but that he doesn't think consumers are ready for a big increase to begin with...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Well, let's put it like this. Regardless of whether the original article actually mentioned Activision (the Gamasutra article is just a quick excerpt from the real thing), I still read it as:
1. He's been asked explicitly about prices. It's not like Sony came up with a PR announcement or anything. It actually makes a difference if you see it as an answer, and not like something separate.
2. In that context, it's pretty much just a mild evasive answer, nothing more. Ha basically says (A) "well people expect games to be priced between 39 and 59, so it's not like we could go much higher" and (B) a bit of evasive corporate speak that can best be summarized as "not burning the bridges". He says that he can't exclude that sometimes in the future the prices might go up, but even then don't expect to see big jumps.
In the end, if you think about it, that doesn't really say anything. In the end, (A) is just common sense, given that he can't push games prices much higher than the XBox even if he wanted to, and (B) is just an evasive maneuver that again doesn't say anything any economist couldn't have told you.
Of _course_ he can't promise that the prices will stay fixed for ever, because there's this thing called "inflation". Sooner or later the prices _will_ go up, but not by much. So I wouldn't be surprised if he just doesn't want to be on the receiving end of a "but Sony promised the games will never be above 59$!!!" backlash in 2010. Or worse yet, some class action lawsuit where 1000 idiots sue Sony for damages, saying that they only bought their PS3s based on this guy's promise that games will always be priced the same. So he does what corporate PR usually does and explicitly states that he makes no promises.
Plus, there's also a possibility that he doesn't want to go on record as being the guy that flat-out caused Activision or whatever to break all ties with Sony, because that again can come back to bite him in the ass. So whether Activision was explicitly mentioned or not, if he's smart, he'll know better than to go on record as saying anything that sounds like a definitive set-in-stone "nope, we'll never budge, you can't negotiate that with us." The old Nintendo did that lots, but Sony tends not to. So he'll give you a definite "maybe".
I mean, whop-de-do, unlike a thousand other corporations which do the same thing. Making sure they burn no bridges and don't go on record as making any promise is pretty much Business 101 these days. Read the canned statements corporations give all over the place, from interviews to when they show up for each other's announcements, and all are the same pattern of vague and explicitly avoiding any promises that you haven't publically announced already. If you as much hint at a date or price or not-yet-announced product, you can get your ass kicked sky high.
And if this guy made it to his current position at Sony, he's smart enough to know that already. People who talk without thinking tend to not make it too far in your average corporation.
Mind you, I'm a nerd. I'm not particularly fond of such corporate gobbledygook either. But, eh, it's a fact of life. No point blowing it out of proportion when it's just a standard evasive maneuver.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
### Now, Wii is different, watching the videos of the guy playing Red Steel, made me wonder "why didn't we have that before?"
Because all those virtual-reality helmets and equipment tanked in the consumer marked some years ago.
### it looks like it may even be SUPERIOR to a keyboard and mouse.
In terms of precision it will most likly be inverior (turning is done 'absolute', like with a joystick, not 'relative' like with a mouse), it might however offer a better 'feel' for the gun, which would be nice, but I don't see professional eSports players switching to Wii controller anytime soon.
### I want to play some FPS with that pointer
I actually want to play Mario and Zelda *without* a pointer, the Wii controller looks definitvly interesting, however its use in games that have basically no use for it, is something that I found not so exciting. Beside from that, first person shooters have been done to death, adding a new controller won't make them any more interesting, once you are over the "new and cool" feeling you are stuck with the same old fps that you have already played the last five years. That of course isn't the controllers fault, there are probally some great new things that you can do with the controller, so far however, I haven't seen any interesting games.
### All PS3 and XBox 360 seem to have is high prices, faulty hardware, and "new features" that would cost me 5 grand to be able to use.
XBox360 starts at $300, Wii at something like $250-200, since the XBox360 could even drop in price there really is not such a big difference between the two, it however of course depends if Microsoft actually drops the price and if the Wii is actually costing so much.
I see the main success of the Wii at the moment in the VirtualConsole, since that seems like a save bet without to much that could go wrong. If the controller however will turn out as a success is still somewhat doubtfull, it has some potential, but there is a lot that could go wrong and the first reviews so far havn't been all that exciting.