No but seriously, they charge why to much. Yes, i know entertainment is a non essential item, but all that money for a bit of plastic that costs nothing to press?
1. Games take a long time, years sometimes, to develop. You aren't just paying for the CD duplication costs.
2. Run the movie test on them. A movie is about $8 for two hours (yes, some places it's less, but many movies are shorter than that, too). That's $4 an hour for entertainment. Compare that to a game and you'll see it's not too bad. As long as you play it for more than 12 hours, you're doing good. If you end up logging hundreds of hours into the game, it's an amazing bargain.
Overseas, maybe. In the US these were very hard to find and now not for sale here, I believe.
Palm? Windows CE?
These are in a whole different catagory, IMHO. Just like PC games and Console games are in a different catagory.
Graphing calculators (especially among junior high and high school kids)?
This is a REALLY different catagory!
I don't think you can really count calculators and palmtop software as direct competitors until you see it on Toys R Us and Funcoland racks- and you start to see crossover software. (Tony Hawk for TI, yes!) Until then, and maybe even then, they are only indirectly related- I don't think the fact that a kid has a badass calculator would keep him from asking his parents for a GBA for christmas.
Remember that 90% of that $6B is being spent by "computer gamers", not the general public.
I'd disagree. A lot of the best sellers are games like the Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon, which appeal to the mainstream demographic more than the hardcore gamer demographic.
The fact that the gamer demographic has shrunk to a smaller percentage of the marketplace was the reason why everyone was saying "PC Games are dead" a while ago.
I think people will dislike this because they will realize that they are getting screwed, price-wise.
People don't have a problem renting something for $5. Or buying it for $25. But if they get the same product they would have rented (and returned), or purchased and kept, and then are forced to throw it away, I think they'll be dissatisfied.
They'll realize- "hey! this is the same disc i bought for $25. those things can be made cheaply enough for me to THROW IT AWAY, so why do DVDs cost $25? Especially since it probably costs MORE to make a dvd that expires than a regular one!"
And, yes, I know that the costs are not limited to the cost of the DVD pressing. But I still would feel really odd throwing away a DVD.
It seems like, if they just dropped their prices on all DVDs (and CDs for that matter) to the 9.99 range, they'd make just as much money as now, on more sales. The lower price would, I think, discourage piracy.
You could also, though this would be annoying, have the 9.99 dvds just have the movie, while the "deluxe edition" had all the extras. Some studios do this already, to an extent.
Of course, all these arguements have been made before, but the idea of a disposable media really pounds them home more, and might even strike a chord with the mainstream consumer.
I don't know what _you're_ talking about. I have owned three players, a panasonic, a jvc (i think) and an apex. the first two very early in the DVD lifecycle, none of which had DIVX (unless the apex has it, but somehow i doubt it does).
I only know one person out of about ten that had a DVD player at that time who had one that had DIVX... And he didn't even know what it was.
The difference is : I don't pretend to be a web site or writer with a big following. This isn't my job; I'm not getting paid to comment on slashdot. I'm just your average joe _reader_.
One of my good friends has a closet-sized studio apartment in SF. His Linux "box" is a motherboard attached to the wall, with all the drives also attached, in a little pattern around it.
Sort of cool looking, actually.
No monitor, he accesses it via shell from the laptop he keeps on his bedside.
After this article and yesterday's overly-glowing review of the Xbox, it seems to me that Tom's has fallen on hard times. Consider the following sentence:
"The test guys who aught [sic] to have caught this driver bug seem to be busy selling their stock our [sic] counting their money instead."
All their articles now seem to have been written in five minutes and sent though to door without the slightest bit of editing- or even spell checking!
I don't mean to nitpick, but Tom's used to be a very reliable source- and a great read. Not so much anymore.
Uh, then why did they get out of the hardware market?
And why did almost every media outlet declare the Japanese launch a resounding failure? Then proceed to relate sales figures that indicated top-tier DC titles selling less than throw-off PSX, N64 and even Gameboy titles?
This link shows a DC news site gleeful that FOUR DC games showed up in the top THIRTY. One of which is Grandia II, one of the DC's most anticipated games.
Here's another fun quote from a few weeks before: For anyone wondering why I didn't report on Japanese sales of Dreamcast games in Japan last week, the reason is simple, if a tad depressing: None of them made the charts.
And let's check out a hardware sales quote, from the same site, for the same week:
On the hardware front, the Dreamcast moved 5,951 units which is on the higher end of the usual sales range. The PS2 moved 88,286 and the GBA helped to drain the batteries of another 73,315 customers.
Wow, that's a success? True, these are from the weeks before Sega pulled the plug, but check out sales figures. You'll see top-tier games like PSO topping out at 130,000 copies. A big PSX game will usually sell a few million copies. Those were the sorts of sales the DC needed to pull Sega out of its hole, and they never got them.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Dreamcast- I have one with more than 20 games, I still play it all the time. But I don't delude myself into thinking it was a success. Rather, the DC was the coolest "also ran" in the console industry in quite awhile. It sucks, but at least we can get the games for $5.99 now.
I'm curious to know how much money must be spent on a PC before it equals the performance of a game console.
I don't think either can really "equal" the performance of the other. Maybe the graphics or the frames per second, but not the experience.
I can't imagine playing Tekken or Tony Hawk on my PC, likewise I can't imagine playing Starcraft or Counter-Strike on my PS2.
I know that some of these games have crossed over, but I still can't see playing fighting games on the computer or traditional RTS' on a console. These genres need to be heavily tweaked to work on the other platform- and you'll never convince me they are as fun as on the platform they are designed for.
Just because you say that Sony is selling PS2 below cost and Nintendo isn't, doesn't mean it is true.
I think it is the other way around.
Nice "thoughts". The fact that Sony sold the PSX as a loss leader is WELL documented. It paid off in the long run, too, as it lead to market domination. MS is following Sony's playbook there, or at least trying to.
I think Nintendo and Microsoft, who buy the console from other companies, sell at a loss; and Sony, who designed the entire PS2 themselves and invested 2 billion US dollars worth into production, make money on every console they sell.
You said it yourself, they invested $2B in production, not to mention whatever in R&D. All this must be recouped. That's why console sales don't generate a profit right away, usually. Costs fall. A PSX used to cost a lot to make. Now they are cheap. You set pricing based on complicated models that you think will end up making you the most profit in the long run. You lose money at first, but you have to get the system into people's hands so you can sell the games- where the REAL money is.
Now, I'll back my statement up with some comments from people more in the know than either of us.
"Driving down production costs will be a determining factor in profitability over the next five years. According to most estimates, Sony's PlayStation 2 cost the company $450 per unit upon initial production in early 2000. The company had first sold the machine as a loss leader for $360 in Japan and for $300 in the United States and Europe. The strategy paid off with the first Play Station because Sony was able to reduce the product's cost from $480 in 1994 to about $80 now (it was initially priced at $299 and is sold at about $99 today). Meanwhile, the company sold about nine games for every console. That model allowed Sony to make billions of dollars over the life of the PlayStation, even if it lost money at first."
Do a little homework before you shoot your mouth off, and have the courage to back your statements up with your name next time, AC.
Are those rumours of losing money on each XBox true?
These aren't rumors, it's a standard console strategy. It's the whole "cheap razors, expensive blades" business model and, from what I understand, all companies but Nintendo use it. The consoles start off being sold as a loss until they can streamline their production process and parts prices go down.
This is also the reason people give for Nintendo being able to survive, and even thrive, without being the sales leader- they have a large profit margin.
I'd disagree. As somewhat of an old timer, I'd say they once trumped PCs, then got left behind. NES era games were hard to beat on a PC, the only genres where PC's could beat were sims and some RPGs. This changed with FPS and RTS style games... A game experience pretty much impossible on the consoles of the day. The appearance of 3D accelerator cards also helped, because you could have a visual experience on the PC the consoles could not even approach.
With this generation, it seems that consoles have mostly caught up in terms of power, though they still can't match a monster gaming rig. I think consoles are better for casual gaming, though RTS/FPS/Sim games still rule in the PC world... Speaking as someone who has probably logged a full year of his life into the Civ series, I can say that I think the PC still has a very important place in gaming.
And why is XBox going to flop in Japan whereas it has been success here? Neither of you has explained that. Are you implying that Japanese consumers won't buy a foreign product even if it is fundamentally superior (hardware)?
Why is it going to be a success overseas just because it is a success here? The Dreamcast was a sucess in America (at least at launch, arguably a bit longer), but flopped overseas. The Japanese market is significantly different than the USA one. I don't pretend to know what they want in a system. Maybe the Xbox will be a hit there, maybe not, I couldn't even begin to guess.
It didn't do so well? I mean, it didn't do as well as Doom, but what game does? I think it ended up selling over 300,000 copies, and at $50 a pop, that sounds pretty good to me...
Eastman and Laird, the guys that did TMNT had a comic story based around this premise that I remeber to be pretty good. It came out in the wake of "New" Coke and dealt with a civil war over soda.
Polaroid has gone chapter 11 because people prefer to pay $300 for a good digital camera that costs $0.00 per shot rather than pay $30 for a Polaroid camera and $1 for every shot they take.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that that $0.02 per hour applies only to service providers. They aren't going to charge owners of consumer devices an hourly fee to use their players. This will get transfered to customers/or companies that use services that require MP4... Video on Demand, maybe. It might translate into more costs for consumers of items that required payment of those hour fees to produce, as well.
Well, don't. Did I say you should? I certainly am not. Just pointing out the fallacies in some of the conclusions people are jumping to about the nature of tape.
Also, I'm sure this thing supports DTS, because that's a standard of movie theaters. DTS, SDDS, Dolby. Those are the big names. If this doesn't support Dolby and DTS, it won't sell, period. That's what people want - for it to look and sound JUST LIKE it does at the movies. This thing exists because there are some people will to pay almost any price to have the "movie theater" experience in their home.
Example: I have a friend who paid 20k+ for a dvd system, with DTS surround sound and a projector, and a special screen to make the picture brighter. He even had automatic light dimmers and a curtain which opened and closed. He also, and I'm being literal here, built stadium seating in his movie room. It was most impressive. I bet he would buy this, because it's movies in HD. He's the target market for expensive audio/videophile stuff such as this.
Slashdot Mirror
No but seriously, they charge why to much. Yes, i know entertainment is a non essential item, but all that money for a bit of plastic that costs nothing to press?
1. Games take a long time, years sometimes, to develop. You aren't just paying for the CD duplication costs.
2. Run the movie test on them. A movie is about $8 for two hours (yes, some places it's less, but many movies are shorter than that, too). That's $4 an hour for entertainment. Compare that to a game and you'll see it's not too bad. As long as you play it for more than 12 hours, you're doing good. If you end up logging hundreds of hours into the game, it's an amazing bargain.
Wonder Swan?
Overseas, maybe. In the US these were very hard to find and now not for sale here, I believe.
Palm? Windows CE?
These are in a whole different catagory, IMHO. Just like PC games and Console games are in a different catagory.
Graphing calculators (especially among junior high and high school kids)?
This is a REALLY different catagory!
I don't think you can really count calculators and palmtop software as direct competitors until you see it on Toys R Us and Funcoland racks- and you start to see crossover software. (Tony Hawk for TI, yes!) Until then, and maybe even then, they are only indirectly related- I don't think the fact that a kid has a badass calculator would keep him from asking his parents for a GBA for christmas.
PSone can't be made handheld because a 12cm disc is just too clunky for a handheld
Anyone else think Nintendo might make (down the road a ways of course) a handheld Gamecube? The discs are small enough.
I'm sure the guy that makes all those portable conversions is already working on one...
The day after Christmas, I was in the store, pondering over what to buy: xbox, ps2 or gamecube.
The gamecube and ps2 both had tony hawk 3, so there's a tie there. The xbox did not have tony hawk 3. bsszt, disqualified.
The Gamecube was cheaper, but the PS2 had GTA3. I bought the PS2.
I think a lot of people bought a PS2 for MGS2, also.
Remember that 90% of that $6B is being spent by "computer gamers", not the general public.
I'd disagree. A lot of the best sellers are games like the Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon, which appeal to the mainstream demographic more than the hardcore gamer demographic.
The fact that the gamer demographic has shrunk to a smaller percentage of the marketplace was the reason why everyone was saying "PC Games are dead" a while ago.
I was really referring more to this sentiment, along with the previously quoted bit:
Whatever technique they use, they will find a way in eventually.
Should have quoted that as well, sorry.
So in effect, the proposed solution, although "safer", is effectively useless, pointless, a waste of my time ;-)
I bet I could find a way to break in to your house while you were at work, if I wanted, no matter what preventative measures you put in place.
Does this mean you don't lock your door?
I think people will dislike this because they will realize that they are getting screwed, price-wise.
People don't have a problem renting something for $5. Or buying it for $25. But if they get the same product they would have rented (and returned), or purchased and kept, and then are forced to throw it away, I think they'll be dissatisfied.
They'll realize- "hey! this is the same disc i bought for $25. those things can be made cheaply enough for me to THROW IT AWAY, so why do DVDs cost $25? Especially since it probably costs MORE to make a dvd that expires than a regular one!"
And, yes, I know that the costs are not limited to the cost of the DVD pressing. But I still would feel really odd throwing away a DVD.
It seems like, if they just dropped their prices on all DVDs (and CDs for that matter) to the 9.99 range, they'd make just as much money as now, on more sales. The lower price would, I think, discourage piracy.
You could also, though this would be annoying, have the 9.99 dvds just have the movie, while the "deluxe edition" had all the extras. Some studios do this already, to an extent.
Of course, all these arguements have been made before, but the idea of a disposable media really pounds them home more, and might even strike a chord with the mainstream consumer.
I don't know what _you're_ talking about. I have owned three players, a panasonic, a jvc (i think) and an apex. the first two very early in the DVD lifecycle, none of which had DIVX (unless the apex has it, but somehow i doubt it does).
I only know one person out of about ten that had a DVD player at that time who had one that had DIVX... And he didn't even know what it was.
The difference is : I don't pretend to be a web site or writer with a big following. This isn't my job; I'm not getting paid to comment on slashdot. I'm just your average joe _reader_.
Hey, I own an xbox, but the review yesterday was pretty poorly done, at least I thought so. As did a lot of people on here.
One of my good friends has a closet-sized studio apartment in SF. His Linux "box" is a motherboard attached to the wall, with all the drives also attached, in a little pattern around it.
Sort of cool looking, actually.
No monitor, he accesses it via shell from the laptop he keeps on his bedside.
After this article and yesterday's overly-glowing review of the Xbox, it seems to me that Tom's has fallen on hard times. Consider the following sentence:
"The test guys who aught [sic] to have caught this driver bug seem to be busy selling their stock our [sic] counting their money instead."
All their articles now seem to have been written in five minutes and sent though to door without the slightest bit of editing- or even spell checking!
I don't mean to nitpick, but Tom's used to be a very reliable source- and a great read. Not so much anymore.
Uh, then why did they get out of the hardware market?
And why did almost every media outlet declare the Japanese launch a resounding failure? Then proceed to relate sales figures that indicated top-tier DC titles selling less than throw-off PSX, N64 and even Gameboy titles?
This link shows a DC news site gleeful that FOUR DC games showed up in the top THIRTY. One of which is Grandia II, one of the DC's most anticipated games.
Here's another fun quote from a few weeks before: For anyone wondering why I didn't report on Japanese sales of Dreamcast games in Japan last week, the reason is simple, if a tad depressing: None of them made the charts.
And let's check out a hardware sales quote, from the same site, for the same week:
On the hardware front, the Dreamcast moved 5,951 units which is on the higher end of the usual sales range. The PS2 moved 88,286 and the GBA helped to drain the batteries of another 73,315 customers.
Wow, that's a success? True, these are from the weeks before Sega pulled the plug, but check out sales figures. You'll see top-tier games like PSO topping out at 130,000 copies. A big PSX game will usually sell a few million copies. Those were the sorts of sales the DC needed to pull Sega out of its hole, and they never got them.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Dreamcast- I have one with more than 20 games, I still play it all the time. But I don't delude myself into thinking it was a success. Rather, the DC was the coolest "also ran" in the console industry in quite awhile. It sucks, but at least we can get the games for $5.99 now.
I'm curious to know how much money must be spent on a PC before it equals the performance of a game console.
I don't think either can really "equal" the performance of the other. Maybe the graphics or the frames per second, but not the experience.
I can't imagine playing Tekken or Tony Hawk on my PC, likewise I can't imagine playing Starcraft or Counter-Strike on my PS2.
I know that some of these games have crossed over, but I still can't see playing fighting games on the computer or traditional RTS' on a console. These genres need to be heavily tweaked to work on the other platform- and you'll never convince me they are as fun as on the platform they are designed for.
Just because you say that Sony is selling PS2 below cost and Nintendo isn't, doesn't mean it is true.
I think it is the other way around.
Nice "thoughts". The fact that Sony sold the PSX as a loss leader is WELL documented. It paid off in the long run, too, as it lead to market domination. MS is following Sony's playbook there, or at least trying to.
I think Nintendo and Microsoft, who buy the console from other companies, sell at a loss; and Sony, who designed the entire PS2 themselves and invested 2 billion US dollars worth into production, make money on every console they sell.
You said it yourself, they invested $2B in production, not to mention whatever in R&D. All this must be recouped. That's why console sales don't generate a profit right away, usually. Costs fall. A PSX used to cost a lot to make. Now they are cheap. You set pricing based on complicated models that you think will end up making you the most profit in the long run. You lose money at first, but you have to get the system into people's hands so you can sell the games- where the REAL money is.
Now, I'll back my statement up with some comments from people more in the know than either of us.
From the Seattle Times:
"Hardware pricing is considered a loss leader for console makers, who make their money selling games."
From Red Herring:
"Driving down production costs will be a determining factor in profitability over the next five years. According to most estimates, Sony's PlayStation 2 cost the company $450 per unit upon initial production in early 2000. The company had first sold the machine as a loss leader for $360 in Japan and for $300 in the United States and Europe. The strategy paid off with the first Play Station because Sony was able to reduce the product's cost from $480 in 1994 to about $80 now (it was initially priced at $299 and is sold at about $99 today). Meanwhile, the company sold about nine games for every console. That model allowed Sony to make billions of dollars over the life of the PlayStation, even if it lost money at first."
Do a little homework before you shoot your mouth off, and have the courage to back your statements up with your name next time, AC.
Are those rumours of losing money on each XBox true?
These aren't rumors, it's a standard console strategy. It's the whole "cheap razors, expensive blades" business model and, from what I understand, all companies but Nintendo use it. The consoles start off being sold as a loss until they can streamline their production process and parts prices go down.
This is also the reason people give for Nintendo being able to survive, and even thrive, without being the sales leader- they have a large profit margin.
Integrated game consoles have always rivaled PCs
I'd disagree. As somewhat of an old timer, I'd say they once trumped PCs, then got left behind. NES era games were hard to beat on a PC, the only genres where PC's could beat were sims and some RPGs. This changed with FPS and RTS style games... A game experience pretty much impossible on the consoles of the day. The appearance of 3D accelerator cards also helped, because you could have a visual experience on the PC the consoles could not even approach.
With this generation, it seems that consoles have mostly caught up in terms of power, though they still can't match a monster gaming rig. I think consoles are better for casual gaming, though RTS/FPS/Sim games still rule in the PC world... Speaking as someone who has probably logged a full year of his life into the Civ series, I can say that I think the PC still has a very important place in gaming.
And why is XBox going to flop in Japan whereas it has been success here? Neither of you has explained that. Are you implying that Japanese consumers won't buy a foreign product even if it is fundamentally superior (hardware)?
Why is it going to be a success overseas just because it is a success here? The Dreamcast was a sucess in America (at least at launch, arguably a bit longer), but flopped overseas. The Japanese market is significantly different than the USA one. I don't pretend to know what they want in a system. Maybe the Xbox will be a hit there, maybe not, I couldn't even begin to guess.
It didn't do so well? I mean, it didn't do as well as Doom, but what game does? I think it ended up selling over 300,000 copies, and at $50 a pop, that sounds pretty good to me...
Eastman and Laird, the guys that did TMNT had a comic story based around this premise that I remeber to be pretty good. It came out in the wake of "New" Coke and dealt with a civil war over soda.
I agree, it's a rip off - plain and simple.
I'd almost always prefer to pay more up front to OWN something, as oppossed to renting.
Or, just perhaps, he's being sarcastic.
Polaroid has gone chapter 11 because people prefer to pay $300 for a good digital camera that costs $0.00 per shot rather than pay $30 for a Polaroid camera and $1 for every shot they take.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that that $0.02 per hour applies only to service providers. They aren't going to charge owners of consumer devices an hourly fee to use their players. This will get transfered to customers/or companies that use services that require MP4... Video on Demand, maybe. It might translate into more costs for consumers of items that required payment of those hour fees to produce, as well.
Well, don't. Did I say you should? I certainly am not. Just pointing out the fallacies in some of the conclusions people are jumping to about the nature of tape.
Also, I'm sure this thing supports DTS, because that's a standard of movie theaters. DTS, SDDS, Dolby. Those are the big names. If this doesn't support Dolby and DTS, it won't sell, period. That's what people want - for it to look and sound JUST LIKE it does at the movies. This thing exists because there are some people will to pay almost any price to have the "movie theater" experience in their home.
Example: I have a friend who paid 20k+ for a dvd system, with DTS surround sound and a projector, and a special screen to make the picture brighter. He even had automatic light dimmers and a curtain which opened and closed. He also, and I'm being literal here, built stadium seating in his movie room. It was most impressive. I bet he would buy this, because it's movies in HD. He's the target market for expensive audio/videophile stuff such as this.