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Cheap Games a Risk To the Industry, Says Nintendo President
Recent comments from Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime indicate that the company is worried about the effect of inexpensive mobile games on the industry.
"'Angry Birds is a great piece of experience,' he said, 'but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that for one or two dollars I think create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be $2.' Taking one last dig at the mobile competition, Fils-Aime added that he 'think[s] some of those games are actually overpriced at $1 or $2, but that's a different story.'"
While low-priced mobile games might not be good for Nintendo, it can still work out well for indie developers. 2DBoy, makers of World of Goo, released some statistics about launching the iPad version of the game.
It's hard to compete with value for money, isn't it Nintendo?
Disagree != mod troll.
Can they just move upstream and make game good development environments that 'everyone' can use - with the licences for nintendo things like mario - and sell these to the developers for a few hundred bucks? maybe new customer can use the tools to create and on-sell the games for $2.
either that or make games for the mobile platform that are better, and similarly priced, and go for volume?
Cheap games a risk to nintendo profits.
I'm so so so so so tired of being fed this crap by rich people that we need to prop them up in order to support industry and economies.
In related news, youtube is a threat to the television industry, and people who are so insolent as to make and release their own music for free are a threat to the music industry.
Planning/marketing departments of corporations are filled with mba grads who have been taught to shove a product to public from the maximum price they think they can pay. and hence, depending on their self-judgment, they decide what the selling price of any product should be. since all corporations employ the same mindset, all look to each other, adopt similar price points, and then start thinking that that is a correct price point.
products are produced/sold up to that point. more products are not produced and sold, because that would decrease the 'optimum' point. naturally, as a result, as you can understand too, the 'mass production/competition aspects of capitalism, goes out of the door.
what we are seeing here, is the retort of a corporate man, who is used to corporations determining the price points (even unknowingly) instead of public. had there not been internet, this industry would - if we take gaming for example - just continue forcing a 'reality' which says that a 'decent' game should be worth $40-60. thanks to internet, even if the industry doesnt want to, competition enters the scene. corporate world, naturally, is unable to understand or stomach the situation and is threatened.
however, while gamers can get competition thanks to internet, the situation is to the contrary in almost all other sectors, ranging from auto industry to healthcare. corporations are determining what gets sold from what price range, and because majority of the corps do it, after a time it becomes the 'industry norm'.
Read radical news here
The cheaper games are and the lower their budgets, the more risks can be taken. If the leading talents of the industry can make more interesting games because of this, I will welcome this development.
Salute Sir, I am releasing a new game next week. In your honor I will price it at .99 cents, enjoy.
Got Code?
We cannot compete with that! 2 bucks doesn't even cover the overhead for our beancounter and legal department that the games have to pull besides their own weight! Plus, state of the art graphics and animations are expensive, and since our games are hardly innovative in any way (seriously, usually we just improve graphics and increase the version counter), we cannot compete with games that rely on innovative gameplay and new, fresh ideas which are cheap but risky!
Is there some way we can outlaw those cheapskates?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Big corp. executive not happy with decline of prices, blames competitors.
When I read the headline I thought "Hmm good. Nintendo might be doing something about all the bad shovelware they grant a license to. Browse your local game store. For every Twilight Princess, Dead Space, and Super Mario Galaxy 2, there are dozens more cheap movie knock-offs littering the shelves like "Hannah Montana The Movie", "Pimp My Ride", and "Big Momma's House 2 -- Even Larger" Guess I was wrong.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Please revise this to say that Reggie is president of Nintendo OF AMERICA. Satoru Iwata () is still President (& in most cases executive producer of most good in-house games)
I mean, Angry birds isn't a deep game.
I wouldn't price a game like say, Dragon Quest IX at AppStore or DSiWare pricing, but the big draw to me as a gamer to the DS or the PSP is the idea that I can have a game that isn't a simple flash concept executed over 40 or 50 levels.
That being said though, if you look at all of your purchases and transactions in terms of maximizing value, either in terms of gameplay or money in either context as developer or gamer, you're really depriving yourself and the person you're engaging in the transaction with. If you're so stubborn you won't pay more than $5 for a game on a portable you're missing out. If you're so stubborn you can't come down on price, you're missing out.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
For being so staunchly capitalist, big corporations sure hate the free market. Huh.
When an exec starts to talk about games as being a 'piece of experience', they've lost the point of it all and gone over to the dark side.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It's $1 because it's WORTH $1!
What effect does shovelware have on the integrity of the Wii? Most of those dumb games like "M&M(tm) Party Smash" certainly aren't worth $20-30. I mean, Nintendo isn't the patron saint of good games. Actually, scratch that. They make good first party games, but they take a good idea and exploit it in an Activision-esque manner that makes people sick of things like "Mario Bathroom Bash".
NO industry can compete with [spit] COMPETITION! This is a flagrant violation of our far rights of existence and profit, as guaranteed under The Established Corporate Interests of the United States of America!
Big-name games that cost $10 million to develop and have $25 million marketing budgets aren't going to be $1 any time soon, the market just isn't large enough to sell 50 million+ copies, at any price. Only 50 million Xbox 360s have been sold, for reference.
The console makers set the licensing fee that publishers pay per disc, AFAIK it's a flat fee, so disc games will never be $1. Do you think Wal-Mart would bother stocking $1 games? They might set up a RedBox-style machine that spits out discs, but the shelf space used for the traditional route would no longer be feasible.
Publishers are running scared because they know the future is in digital distribution, and precedent is being set, while they're still on the fence twiddling their thumbs, for $1 games being the norm. This is problematic as $1 is a suboptimal price for many games, especially high-quality games with a massive advertising budget. The main reason it 'works' in the mobile phone space is due to the mechanics of toplists and how they're self-influencing. Console makers could halt this simply by eliminating the ability for end users to browse and download games via toplists. They could be replaced by alternative, possibly more complex lists.
For downloadable games with low (under $200k) budgets, it's alot iffier if a $1 standard is bad or not, as the market is definitely theoretically large enough to make it sustainable. When cellphones start coming out with analog sticks and buttons (like the PSP phone) and still have $1 games then I might start worrying.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Oh, the irony! It burns! Nintendo thinks cheap games are a risk to the industry? I guess that means the Wii is one of the biggest threats to the industry ever created.
When I was 15, games were $40. 20 years later, I buy games for $40. Why? Because the people buying the games accept the price as what a game should cost.
The game industry is an interesting study on inflation. While they should cost much much more on equal, games do not. But, the cost of developing all the tools to deliver a game are very cheap now, so that offsets the cost.
Nintendo appears to be upset that their licensing fees and resale values are not following inflation. Instead, the tech industry always bucks inflation and is constantly cheaper.
I do not know why, but, it's a very observable event.
Nintendo seems to have developed a pricing problem all of its own of late, which has nothing to do with $2 phone games. I'm pretty sure this has contributed to Nintendo's current profits slump, at a time when the company should be using its large installed base for the Wii to really rake off the cash.
The company just seems to have some really, really odd ideas of what a game should cost. It's most notable in the Wii's online store, where in the UK, direct, unmodified ports of 25 year old arcade games (many of which are hardly timeless classics) often tend to be priced in the £6-£8 range. Things are mildly better in the US, I believe, but the prices seem out of whack.
I absolutely don't want to hold up the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network Store as paragons of value for money, but they certainly offer a better deal than Nintendo's online shop (and have much more consumer-friendly terms of service as well, which link games to an account rather than a console). Compared to the classic game packs you can pick up on Steam and other PC services such as GOG, Nintendo's pricing looks positively extortionate. If Reggie wants to talk about games that would be over-priced at $2, he should look at the stuff like Exed Exes and Commando in his own online store - which he's trying to sell for four times that price.
Things aren't much better on the boxed-game front either. As we get further into this console generation, the general quality gap between Wii games and games for the other consoles and the PC is widening. There are a few honorable exceptions, but most of the Wii games released these days tend to feel short and shallow. And yet despite this, and despite their increasingly painful graphical shortcomings (with most Wii games still struggling to match the best the PS2 had to offer), the games tend to be priced at roughly the same level as games for other platforms (usually a few $ behind the PS3/360 games and a few $ above the PC games).
If I were Nintendo, faced with the dramatic profits slump they've seen, I'd be looking to boost volumes of sales by pitching more boxed games at the more realistic $30 (or £20 in the UK) price-point and slashing the prices of titles in the online store. If you sell more games, you keep people using their Wiis. And if you keep people using their Wiis, they will buy more games for it. Sony managed to achieve that virtuous circle on the PS2, but despite their installed base lead, Nintendo haven't managed it this generation.
However if your sole justification for charging 50-100 bucks per game is "oooh look at teh shiny!" and nothing else then kindly fucking die already.
cheers
gamers everywhere
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that for one or two dollars I think create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be $2" ........ (That's doesn't work for us! We have 1000 management and marketing people that needs to be over-paid, as well as shareholders that needs to be paid. If we started paying the people who actually creates the games fully for what they actually produce... they would get rich in a few days and quit their jobs, and that doesn't work for us! We have 1000 over-paid management and marketing people as well as our shareholders)
So, cheap games are a threat to Nintendo, eh?
Also, second-hand games are claimed to be a threat to the games industry.
And I'm not even going to enumerate the times that piracy has been said to be killing gaming.
Maybe Reggie Fils-Aime needs to take up a position in a less competitive industry - or, if he really believes he's worth the salary he's paid from Nintendo he should MTFU and deal with it.
If you're worried, Nintendo, then I suggest you make sure your expensive games really do differentiate themselves from the cheap games. I doubt this will be difficult to do: the majority of games in the $1-$2 range, while fun, offer limited content. I doubt consumers attribute as much value to these cheap games as expensive games. Would you pay $40 for Angry Birds? I think if Nintendo continue to produce games that are immersive and with plenty of compelling content, people will be prepared to pay a premium price. I think a range of games of different qualities and pricing is a good thing and will serve as an opportunity to for Nintendo to increase the perceived value of their premium games, rather than as a threat.
Angry Birds for smartphones and tablets and the App Store. Taken together it's starting to look like the beginning of a new wave of creative destruction: very cheap casual games that will sweep away one of Nintendo's business models. Which is not quite cheap casual games for gaming handhelds. So I think they have good reason to be afraid, very afraid.
All Games are only really worth $10 or so.. When I first started playing games on my Amiga they only cost £15-20 yet now PC games are hitting £40
The 2 Dollar games is killing our business model of cashing in 50 dollars per copy for the same junk!
What he wants to say here is in the consumers mind, the curve of price and enjoyability is linear i.e. if a $2 game gives you x amount of value then a $60 game should give me 30*x which is simply not the case.
An indie shop with a programmer and an artist can put out a $2 game which is fairly enjoyable but as the scope of the game increases its complexity increases exponentially requiring producers, project managers, seperate QA testing, designers, workspace, engine and middleware licenses, graphics tools, marketing etc. So for every additional point of value you want out of the product you need to pay an exponentially increasing amount in price. He simply wants consumers to understand this.
The reason Angry Birds is such a hit is because it is fun.
When is the last time a fun game was released for Nintendo DS?
Cheap games are nice but too cheap and nobody can make any money, including developers. That might recreate the Video Game Crash of 1983 when so many video game companies went bankrupt.
As for me, I like games with fancy graphics and neat controls. Fancy graphics needs hundreds of artists who each have a salary. Fancy controls needs developers everywhere. Unfortunately, pretty soon, I won't be in the majority and the consumer will take over. The consumer is voting for cheap games and Farmville. If the money is where Farmville is, people who like fancy graphics and fancy controllers are going to be in big trouble. I'm still waiting on Sim City 5 with more fancy graphics but I think it just took a backseat to the cheap games :(
He actually does have a point. If you take your average small indie developer, which could very likely be one guy sitting in his parent's basement cranking away on a small game... this guy will never have the development costs of a company making commercial releases. No lawyers, no marketing department, no no art people, no advertising, no support people... basically it's one or a few guys doing these small indie games. They are happy they can get their app/game into an app store where people will discover it, like it, and recommend it to friends. This is very different than commercial development where there are a lot of upfront costs not to mention normal "running a business" costs. Like it or not, most of these small indie developers will either a) eventually be bought out by a larger company and no longer be a small indie developer anymore, or b) go out of business, or c) survive on a tiny income of residual sales.
I'm not saying one or the other is the correct way to do games, that is for another discussion. But the guy really does have a point.
On the Android platform, Angry Birds is ONLY available as a ad supported game. There is NO pay version. I don't know how much AB gets in revenue, but I'd bet they get MORE money from the "free" version with ads, then the paid one on IOS with out ads. Corporate Nintendo probably has NO idea how to compete with free for the long term.
the article if factually wrong, Nintendo's president is Satoru Iwata: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoru_Iwata
I guess the rest of the article is similar in terms of factual content
Even if it's true that the console game will give 40 times the value of the $1 mobile game, that can be seen as an enormous leap of faith to ask the consumer to make. What if I decide in the first 30 minutes I don't like the game? Can I take it back to Gamestop and get my money back? Fat chance. If I download a $1 game and decide I don't like it, then meh.
Considering how many $40 or $50 Wii games my kids have that never get played again, I can see how people can become leery of that model.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
This is just so off the wall I don't even.
Angry Birds is a simple concept with some great levels and compelling replay value. Would I pay $40 for it? No. However, conversely, I probably wouldn't pay even $2 for some of the "mini-game compilation" titles that have been released for the Wii (having been burned by one such abortion, priced at GB£15), nor would I pay $2 for any of the hastily hacked together "Dogz" clones for the DS. I love those platforms, but some of the crapware that's been released for them should give this man pause for thought before throwing around insults about "cheap" games.
There's a market for AAA US$40-50 titles and a market for US$1-10 casual/indie titles. These are two separate things, and complement each other. What he's probably worried about is that these $1-10 casual/indie titles will compete with similarly priced re-releases of 1st/2nd generation console titles on WiiWare/DS like Super Marios Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin etc.. Now, do I really want to play Sonic on my Wii or do I want to try out VVVVVV or Chime or Clickr on PC?
Now, if you price your SDK and impose restrictions in such a way as to exclude or discourage casual, indie or hobbyist developers then don't be surprised when they turn to other platforms with lower barriers to entry...
I can't speak for everyone, but personally I like games that have actual content and I'm not the only one out there. Games you actually play, as opposed to interactive movies like Fallout 3 and the CoD series. Of course, that requires to work hard, doesn't it?
Even if game developers believe I'm demanding, the above is the reason why I don't buy expensive games anymore. I go for $2-$5 games, even on computer. Sometimes up to $10 if the game seems to offer something original. I'll pay $60 when they make a game that has the following:
- Open world
- LOTS of things to do
- Lots of items and weapons (and customizable weapons too, hell I even want different ammo types!)
- Mechanics that require you to think and devise a good strategy, sometimes think outside of the box, not just develop your reflexes at pressing buttons.
- Improved micro-mechanics (like a health system that is closer to the Metal Gear Solid 3 health instead of just a health bar, and reloading replaces your half-empty mag with another one instead of magically refilling your mag to 100% with the bullets in your pockets).
I know this is not what the majority of gamers want, most prefer simple games that are easy to get your hands on. Complex games are only appreciated by gamers who want to take the time to climb the steep learning curve and who don't need to play a new game every week. But the casual gamer market is split between dozens of developers, whereas the 'pro' gamer market is left pretty much untouched, so there might be more money to make in the 'pro' market than the casual market. Not to mention, gamers like me are willing to pay $100+ for the kind of games we like. I'd rather buy ONE great game at $200 than 6 CoD's at $50 a piece because none of them satisfies me and I always want more.
Too bad developers can't see that. Some indies try to aim for our market, but as indies they don't have the means to make perfect games. At least they try and their games are better than the simplisitic and shallow casual games.. In any case, I'm not buying casual games, no matter how many are made. If devs want my money, they need to make the games I want.
Slashdot honestly doesn't seem to get content creation or business sometimes. By constantly lowering prices and conditioning customers to accept them, you actually stifle innovation and drive out businesses. In the bricks and mortar world this is what Wal-mart does, and they've managed to destroy and dominate markets while offering less overall quality and selection. For media, there is less barrier to entry, but the sheer number of crapware games competing at artificially low pricepoints are eventually going to start killing a lot of midrange developers as they simply can't make enough money in a reasonable timeframe. What the low price does is benefit AGGREGATORS not developers, who take a long tail approach and try and get tremendous amounts of content to make pennies on over time. And, of course there are no end of eager lemmings to help push themselves off the cliff. The low price points may make Apple and Steam rich, but not devs.
..."Cheap games a threat to our business model"
Someone needs to remind this guy that the world doesn't owe him, or Nintendo, a living. Games don't all need to be expensive epics to be good; that's as true now as it was when, say, Tetris hit the streets nearly 30 years ago, and it's not going to change. If companies such as Nintendo can deliver games that can justify their price differential in some manner (whether that's in the nature of the game, the depth of play or just about anything else), then all well and good - they'll continue to find a market. If they can't, they don't deserve to be in it (and having watched games publishers trying to charge an arm and a leg for rafts of mediocre titles, alongside the occasional gem, for nearly four decades now, I for one won't mourn their passing).
Nothing to see here - move along.
"Low cost, excellent, indie games make our shovelware look over priced."
Never have I seen a console hamstrung by so many low quality, gimic-y, titles. Nintendo may well be pursuing the casual gamer demographic, sadly they think these people are also morons. Take notes from popcap Reggie otherwise $2 indie titles will continue to eat into your margins...
Nintendo is the Apple of the gaming world, and they just ensured that a console version of Angry Birds will show up on the Xbox and PS3 downloadable market things. They like their own brand, they don't like opening it up to external developers, and they don't like following someone else's lead. Thank God, because if Nintendo made Angry Birds, it would be $40, have birds with Mii faces, and involve Mario or anime children or something. And be called "Flappy Bird Slingshot Adventures Party", or some s. And be a rail shooter.
Sorry, I'm a little bitter after buying a Wii and finding that, in exchange for no hard drive and crappy graphics, I got a controller that doesn't quite track motion accurately, a library of games suitable for a ten year old girl ("Say fellas, let's buy a case of beer and play Cooking Mama tonight!"), and a DVD drive that doesn't play DVDs, but does sound like a tiny gnome is attempting to cut his way free with a miniature Sawzall. I exaggerate, but not too much.
What's especially bizarre about Fils-Aime's statement is that the Wii Market channel carries an s-ton of casual games in the $5-$15 range. Thanks to their scam "Nintendo points" purchasing system (similar to Microsoft's Live point system), you can't get a game for anywhere between free and $5, but most people buying games via the Wii would have no problem dropping $5 on an Angry Birds-type title.
Frankly, there are some pretty terrible games for download that cost more than $5 for the Wii; for that matter, there are some pretty horrible games on disc for the Wii that are well in excess of that price. I doubt highly that the availability of cheap games on mobile phones will make an appreciable dent in Nintendo's market share, although Fils-Aime is more than welcome to suggest that consumers ought to be paying $25 a pop for games on a mobile phone. Preferably during an outdoor press conference after handing overripe tomatoes to the spectators.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
even free porn is legal these days :) (slashdot post about redtube case a couple days ago) ;)
I'm tired all these business whiners that have not adapted their business plan (including recording industries, newspapers, banks who expect a bailout any time something goes wrong)... I understand how it was important to intervene... but really... a little less whining, a little more sanity would be nice
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
some cheap mobile games for 1-2 dollars are overpriced, like angry birds which is just a simple rip off of another flash game that was already created. so for games that were just stolen from another game and given a new name, 1-2 dollars is way too much, for new concept games it would be an okay price even though I still would not pay it.
I'm not sure if Nintendo ever "got" games in the same way you do. Most of their history as a video game company was under Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was pretty much proud to never have played a video game and occasionally did disparaging remarks about RPG players or such.
Reginald Fils-Aime, who is President and COO of Nintendo of America, not only rose to that position during Yamauchi's time and in that corporate culture, but is a guy who comes from purely a marketing and sales background. The guy was marketing everything from toothpaste to beer to chinese takeout food before joining Nintendo, and at Nintendo he was pretty much just asked to build up their public image. And while he was undoubtedly good at that, I see nothing in his background to suggest that he ever "got" games as anything else than something that he has to sell.
I don't think he lost the point of games from the perspective of a gamer, as that he simply never had it to start with. He's just the guy who has to sell them and make money for the company, and he always was.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Cheap games are a threat to Nintendo, not the industry of game creators. Maybe the people who make their living from living off of artists are under threat? Good go create something or actually work. Stop being vampires.
surely they don't mean Cheap Ass Games
The cheaper a game, the more people can buy it, so the more profit the developers will get. I think Nintendo exhibits nothing but its greed
In further news, home fucking is killing prostitution.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I guess Nintendo just lost the monopoly on it.
Why pay for games at all? I got angry birds for free on android. I have heaps of free games on linux too. There is no need for a "marketed game", so no need for a marketing budget. (If a game need marketing, then it can't be that good?) There are always some who code up a game just for the fun and the fame. And with open source, there are always some who keep building on whats there already.
Sure, open source moves slowly and doesn't release a new title every week. But there is no need for that either, a few games is enough for me. There are so many other things to spend time on anyway.
As the target market (dad) I have an avid gamer (son). These $50 games are hyped and hyped to the kids in ways that the old TV advertisers could only dream of. Worst is the free "demo", which for a kid is like the crack dealers' First one is Free situation. Worst is that the games last as long as it takes a kid and his buddies to beat it...which might not be that long, depending on the game. Gamefly is a lifesaver for my wallet. Likewise, the $2 game on the Pad/Pod whatever is as well, although you can eat a lot of potato chips at that price. I sincerely hope the $50 video game goes the way of the $18 CD.
Unfortunately, mostly really bad games --- there're some titles on WiiWare which are worth the download time, but not one of them IMO is an iPhone game port.
Moreover, if I were Nintendo, I'd require that companies release a demo of _every_ WiiWare title.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Think this was a pretty interesting article. Content has been the main deciding factor in whether or not I buy a console. I didn't even entertain getting a Wii until a game that I was waiting for was released. It was the same for the PS3 and I have yet to buy the XBOX 360 (but will probably pick one up now for the 360.) I hope that Nintendo is not just noticing that there are cheap games out there now! Why are they not railing against buying things from the bargain bin at Walmart (probably because they are bad games, but some of them aren't that bad.) I know that Sony hates the fact that you can buy and sell used games, but hey these people need to wake up and understand that every single title they put out is not worth $60. I remember when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Nintendo had $50 games for the SNES. There was no way I was paying that for the American version of Final Fantasy III. By the time the price would have dropped, it wasn't available and I couldn't even get it used. I felt that I really missed out but I just couldn't justify the expense of spending $50 on a game at that point in my life. I don't stop playing console games because I have nice games for my phone. I have reduced my PC game play because of console games, but I think that is because for some games the console makes the experience more accessible.
The reason I, as a man in his mid 40s, is still playing DS games is because of the price. GBA handhelds were inexpensive, and for 10-15$, taking a flyer on a game was an easy decision. DSI on the other hand is nearly 200$, and titles are moving into the 40$ range. While I like titles like Professor Layton, I don't feel very compelled to buy, let alone play casual titles for that price. With the advent of games like Angry Birds, I can get my casual game fix for less. If Nintendo wants me to play their titles again, don't sell me a Raving Rabbids mini game at full price. Set your prices to 10-20$, with the upper end being a Zelda type game. I know you want more money Nintendo, but I don't have it for you. Since you now have to compete against free games, lower your price. In the long run you will make more money. If not, I am sure somebody like HTC will buy you out to put "retro" Mario games on the smartphones.
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
Yup, they're old, but so is my computer. And the good thing is that they generally run fairly well on Linux thanks to Crossover Games.
I actually nearly never bought games before knowing of GOG first, then Steam, and I now own about 70 in something like 2 years.
There is definitely a market for people like me, who don't mind waiting 2 or 3 years after release to play something.
Crap gets forgotten, good stuff get patches, great mods and great deals, so why not, really ?
If people want instant satisfaction, more power to them, but it has a price.
I am going to be totally honest here when I say that they're right, sort-of. I've bought normally-priced games, I've bought super-cheap games, I've downloaded free games, I've even downloaded the occasional ROM (mostly for really old, obscure games; I buy used whenever it's reasonable), and what I've found is that almost all of the free/cheap games I've played get pushed pretty far back on my personal gaming backlog. For example: I've bought Tales of Monkey Island and every single season of Sam and Max from Telltale Games ($5 and $20 respectively, on sale), and I've only gotten about half-way through each before going on to something else.The games were very fun, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't have as much of a "push" to get them over with. I'll beat them eventually, but that's another story. Likewise, I haven't beaten every one of the Humbie Indie Bundle (1 and 2) games yet... not even half or 1/4 of them! I've played them all but the drive to finish them, even if they're very good games, just isn't there.
I just recently bought Ghost Trick and Kingdom Hearts Re:coded for the Nintendo DS back in January, and I've already beaten Ghost Trick (which is awesome) and KH is almost there. Behind that is Baldur's Gate ($10 at GOG), the games I mentioned earlier, a few games I bought used a year or two ago, and whatever else is lying around the house that I haven't fully completed yet.
Don't bash Nintendo on this; they're partially right. Of course, if people get used to super-cheap or even free games, there's less of a possibility that they'd buy more expensive ones, especially if the quality of these games aren't quite up-to-snuff (then again, some $30-50 games aren't either but that's besides the point). Some of the best games I've played were full-priced, and that was mostly because I've had a drive to complete them. I don't have a problem with really cheap games, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that indie game developers and game publishers shouldn't have to price their games as much as a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes; there's lots of people that would buy them if they were more expensive, you know? And it helps because it gets the publisher/developer more money, especially if they aren't independent.
tl;dr, yes competition is a good thing as people here are pointing out left and right. That's not Nintendo's fault that it can't "compete"; it needs that money to stay afloat. Games are much more inexpensive than years ago when you take inflation into account (in the US anyways), and I don't complain about the occasional $30-50 game if it's worth my money; that's why we have review sites and magazines. $1 and $2 games, like $1 and $2 songs (only more so because games are much more expressive and interactive and whatnot compared to a 3-4 minute song), will force everybody to compete at a lower price point, and that's not necessarily good for some development studios/publishers in some cases.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Financial transactions are voluntary and don't occur unless both parties are satisfied. The seller wants the highest price they can get. The buyer wants the lowest price. The transaction only happens if both parties are satisfied, so the ultimate price ends up in the middle.
Competition benefits the buyer because the buyer may be able to find an equivalent product at a lower price. If so, the buyer will not make a voluntary exchange with the higher priced seller. Therefore, the higher priced seller must accept lower prices if he wants to make any sales at all.
In short, competition is always good for the buyer. Sellers have a natural interest in reducing competition. That is why we have anti-trust laws - except that various governments intervene and grant unnatural monopolies (pharma, insurance, undertakers, sugar cane, etc.) The government should always promote competition and never restrain it. Period.
I, myself, am a "full-scale" RPG person. Mobile games, up to this point, are, at best, pleasant distractions and, more often, annoying, in my experience. I think it will be awhile before I will be engaged enough by a mobile "piece of experience", that it will prevent me from dropping $49.99 on a quality RPG. Plus a "quality" RPG is often a 1 to 4 year wait between worthwhile titles to begin with.
If I were Reggie Fils-Aime, I would hold off on the negative prognostications and just focus on making solid, innovative, full-scale titles. Render unto mobile that which is mobile's, render unto the Nintendo Lords that which is the Nintendo Lords’. Also, Reggie, more RPGs please... ;)
Don't forget about the Nintendo DS. The DSiXL cost $180. Each game is $30 to 40.
My kids have one console and about 10 games for a total cost of about $480.
Do my kids play it? No, they are always stealing my ipod touch (about $280) and playing free games.
Yes, I think Nintendo is screwed. The DS hardware is crap and the games are way overpriced.
If they are going to compete with Android/Apple, they are going to have to drastically upgrade their hardware
and open an App store that encourages independent developers.
.... hookers protest sorority girls giving it away for free.
Have gnu, will travel.
retort of a corporate man [...] says that a 'decent' game should be worth $40-60.
Yep. His interest is (presumably) keeping his job. That means maximizing the profits of his company. His company makes big-name titles (I for one love the Zelda series, and tetris on the game boy wasn't half bad :D), so of course he wants everyone to believe that big-name titles are the best and worthy of the consumers' money. His interests are, of course, not necessarily aligned with those of the public. Probably not, in this case---otherwise he, an MBA schooled in some economics, would just put his faith in the invisible hand of the market.
more products are not produced and sold, because that would decrease the 'optimum' point.
What you're saying implies, if you think about it, that every sector is behaving like a cartel: the producers are cooperating (rather than competing) in their efforts to make as much money as possible.
If I was running my own company, I'd be a cold-hearted asshole and drop the price below what the cartel is charging and advertise this in as many places as possible, hoping to grab all the customers to myself and making a killing. Now, if these slimy weasel-suckers are half disgusting as me, they'd do the same. You're saying they don't?
corporations determining the price points (even unknowingly) instead of [the] public.
If the markets work the way economists think they do, the public exercises an influence on the price by buying some amounts at some price points and different amounts at different price points, thus influence what the optimal price (for the seller) is.
You may also want to add economics to your podcasting list, at econtalk.org, or watching a few video lectures at http://www.youtube.com/user/jodiecongirl#p/c/22785443C5FB0F83 (the latter being more technical and mathematical).
This is not to say "Corporations: good" or "Competition: bad"---on the contrary. I just don't think that all corporations in every sector form cartels: the benefit of undercutting the cartel is a too strong temptation, especially whenever there are more actors in the sector. (And "Yay, go the little guy!")
For that matter, Nintendo could simply create a custom emulator as an app, and sell their own version of roms for it.
Nintendo has been doing this since 2006: check the Virtual Console section of the Wii Shop Channel.
I am a PC gamer. I'm used to (and I EXPECT) user generated content for my games. These mods are usually FREE, and they sometimes surpass the quality of the original game they're based on. Counter-strike, Urban Terror, Tremulous, The Nameless Mod and Team Fortress: I'm looking at you five mods. Somebody can add more quality mods from other genres that I don't play. The Dark Mod is getting there, but it still has some rough edges.
The big N hasn't made what I would personally call a fun and engaging Mario game since SM64, and I'm not paying inflated prices for products that the fans can't enhance.
Sincerely, someone who had a Game Boy, NES, SNES, N64, GBA, and GameCube. I'm done.
Couldn't MS and Sony make the same complaint about Nintendo?
I'm still waiting for a mostly open Android based Console with kick-ass hardware. I'm frickin' sick of not being able to do things on my PS3 that I KNOW it should be able to do! It should have a browser that's not a POS, be able to stream from Shoutcast, or whatever, and have an app store with thousands of apps. Throw in Steam, too. I should be able to stream content from any device in my home. All in a nice Android UI.
Why can't someone come out with an Android Console and kick Nintendo/M$/$ony to the curb.
What's next? Mario farm?
That's been done. As for a video game, it hasn't, unless you count all the Mario shout-outs in the orchard/fishing sim series Animal Crossing.
Valve is living proof that this is a load of bull. Not every company is as greedy as yours Reggie.
I play older "full" titles since I often don't want to settle on the simple cheap games, not to mention that my old system still runs the old stuff well.
For example, Starcraft 2 is $60, but Starcraft 1 is $15 or so.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In the early 1980's Atari produced hundreds of cheap, disposable games for their systems. This behavior led directly to the video game crash of 1983 as consumers were turned off by terrible games. The flood of bad games to the market dilutes the integrity of the market.
99% of iphone games are cheap, disposable games including angry birds.
In the early 80's there were a lot of cheap (both in cost and quality) Atari 2600 cartridges as well. We all know what happened to the market once it was flooded with that crap.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Reggie Fils Aime is concerned about the effect of those games to the video game industry as a whole, not to each individual gamer per se. As far as the people are concerned, consumers will always side with the one that's cheaper, accessible, and fun. And the very fact that cheap mobile games have managed to attract large chunks of audiences even without the intricacies of more complex commercial console games hints that the mobile game industry may someday kill off a large chunk of its console counterpart, which is not really a good thing for the industry.
Nintendo has shown concern with the welfare of the video game industry more than any other company has ever done, and you will always be surprised at how the things they say that people oppose and whine at will always turn out to be true in the end.
I remember the moderator of a fairly famous Usenet newsgroup who was also selling a software product. This person complained about some free software that people were giving away - because it wasn't nearly as good as the commercial product but hurt their sales [ed. apparently because it was enough functionality at the right price for most people]. The righteous indignation at these people having the temerity to give their work away was priceless.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Maybe the problem is their expensive games with videos and surround sound often aren't any more fun than Angry Birds.
I don't know what dictionary you have, but here's what the Concise Oxford says:
capitalism
noun an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
-DERIVATIVES
capitalist noun and adjective
capitalistic adjective
capitalistically adverb
Not that you should be learning about economic or political systems from dictionaries. Your local library should have an entire section on these subjects. You should especially get something that explains the concept of the free market, because the accepted definition diverges greatly from your understanding of it. Shortly: in a free market, companies are free to compete in the market. Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods. You can have free market capitalism, but you can still have capitalism without a free market---capitalism tells us that private owners control the means of production, but doesn't tell us how they get their products to consumers.
He's upset because Nintendo's mode of business is to never discount their games. I've been trying like hell to find a USED copy of Mario Kart Wii for a reasonable price and I can never find it for less than $35 (usually + shipping). That's because the regular price on Mario Kart Wii is still high , despite being an old game. Meanwhile I can buy games that had 10x the production budget of MK, are only a year old, for under $20 new for other consoles.
I dunno. I understand his frustration, but perhaps he could learn a thing or two about moving more units if he'd knock the prices down on the old library! They've been losing money for the last 6 to 9 months now!
But most /.'ers have yet to learn that.
The thing is that Fils-Aime has a good point. Try reading the (short) article, you might just see that.
I don't know what dictionary you have, but here's what the Concise Oxford says:
I said I checked multiple and that many mentioned a free market. Quoting one that doesn't doesn't invalidate the overall point. References:
American Heritage: "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market."
Merriam-Webster: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market"
Not that you should be learning about economic or political systems from dictionaries.
Oh please. If you want some basic definitions, they are fine.
Your local library should have an entire section on these subjects.
You enjoy going to the library. I'll use whatever references are online. Speaking of which, here's a quote from a classic version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Thus capitalism is essentially based on freedom - the freedom of the subscriber in risking his money, and the freedom of the consumer in giving or withholding his custom and the profit that it makes possible."
Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods.
This is just bizarre. How can you have unfettered competition if a company isn't allowed to freely sell their goods?
You can have free market capitalism, but you can still have capitalism without a free market---capitalism tells us that private owners control the means of production, but doesn't tell us how they get their products to consumers.
Technically you can, in a very strict definition of capitalism, but in common usage, and also based on the theory of capitalism, and the common sense of what it means to own something, it is closely associated with being able to sell your goods in a free market. The references I found didn't associate them by accident.
Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods.
This is just bizarre. How can you have unfettered competition if a company isn't allowed to freely sell their goods?
There's nothing in the least bit bizarre about it. A monopoly can be free to sell their goods while competition is suppressed. The monopoly is still capitalist as they own the means of production---that is to say, the capital.
The important point that you are missing is not that it's not whether or not one is free to sell goods or services that defines a Free Market, it's the freedom to compete. As I stated in answer to someone else, guns are prohibited from being sold in Japan. Are you going to claim Japan's not a Free Market economy? They are both capitalist (capital--the means of production---being held privately) and a free market (companies are free to compete, and do: Toyota vs Suzuki vs Honda vs Nissan vs Daihatsu vs Mazda).
And in case you need an example of non-Free Market Capitalism, just look at AT&T before they had their monopoly taken away in the eighties. They were granted a monopoly. By law, they had no competition. However, they were owned privately and were free to sell whatever telephone-related goods or services they wanted. AT&T was entirely capitalist, but there was certainly no Free Market.
There is a tendency for Capitalism and Free Markets to go hand-in-hand. In fact, a Free Market depends on Capitalism---but not vice-versa.
As I stated in answer to someone else, guns are prohibited from being sold in Japan. Are you going to claim Japan's not a Free Market economy?
With respect to guns, no. There probably is no truly free market system any where in the world. Every regulation you place on buying and selling makes the market less free. Overall, though, the system is based on a free market.
There is a tendency for Capitalism and Free Markets to go hand-in-hand.
Which was pretty much my point. They're so tightly bound, in fact, that when people talk about capitalism they usually mean a free market, too.
It's quite debatable that a company that was granted an exclusive monopoly by-law is an example of capitalism, because that means that other owners of capital do not have the same rights. It's not full ownership if all owners are not treated equally.
The Free Market is tightly bound to Capitalism. Capitalism is not so tightly bound to the Free Market. The Free Market works best for the market overall, but the individual capitalists themselves would prefer a monopoly---a steady stream of income and power without having to innovate to maintain it.
Look back at where this started:
"For being so staunchly capitalist, big corporations sure hate the free market."
Which is bad for a Free Market system as a whole, but of course is exactly what you would expect of the individual capitalists. The Free Market relies on Capitalism and provides benefit to a greater number, but Capitalism itself gets along fine without a Free Market.
You can debate whether or not a privately-held monopoly is "right" or "wrong", but not whether or not it's capitalist. There are monopolies that were not government granted---what's known as natural monopolies. They use their monopolies to put an end to any competition that might creep up. In such a case, the market is not free either, but it's certainly capitalist.
Your specific example was for a government-granted and enforced monopoly, which is what I was debating. The existence of a natural monopoly doesn't mean the market isn't free. You are again introducing disputable examples into the argument. The point of the free market is that the government isn't regulating the price. A free market doesn't mean a perfect market.
Look back at where this started: "For being so staunchly capitalist, big corporations sure hate the free market." Which is bad for a Free Market system as a whole, but of course is exactly what you would expect of the individual capitalists.
Any individual actor in a system that they purport to believe in will often find cause to complain when the chips don't fall their way.
Rather than continue this discussion, I'm just going to note that while I understand your viewpoint, and even agree that it is right depending on how narrow you want to restrict your definitions to, on the whole I don't agree with it. I have found several references that support my point of view (including dictionaries and an old Encyclopedia Britannica) . You have your Oxford dictionary.
Wikipedia also supports the free market view as part of the definition, though it raises several warnings about debates over the precise meaning, and you can follow a debate in the Discussion tab, too. It also includes sections on etymology and history.
On that note, I'll take my leave.
Your specific example was for a government-granted and enforced monopoly, which is what I was debating.
It was one example for the sake of providing an example, and not even close to the core of the argument. The argument was that a capitalist who doesn't believe in the free market is not a contradiction. Dictionaries and out-of-print encyclopaedias don't enter into it. An actual book on economics would be more enlightening, but you've already stated that you'd trust Wikipedia over the library.
This suit needs a good slap, and then a kick in the pants to get himself back into reality. Most gamers I know, (and thats quite a few), are on tough times. The global econmy is in the tank, and with all the big oil suits looking to kick up gas prices, I can't get to work on buying a video game. Angry Birds is one of those instant classics that came out. Notice, they don't happen very often. The gamers I play with, we certainly cna't afford to drop $50+ for a game (console/or PC). I applaud "da birds" and hope many more come out. I can spen 1 or 2 bucks more easily (and often) than 50+. And, when I get bored with it/beat it, I feel like I gotz my moneys worth....that guy, sir, is a moron!