A huckster who can do math. (cumulative individual price of HL2 + Ep1)/(cumulative individual price of Orange Box games) = 49.90/129.75 =.38
(price of package) -.38(price of package) = 49.95 -.38(49.95) = 30.97
Especially since I rounded down the percentage up there, that means that the package without HL2 or Ep1 should be close to $30 going by Valve's own individual prices. Granting Valve the privilege of applying less of the package's value to HL2 and Ep1 since they're older games (though in that case they really should be reducing the individual prices of those two games as well), $35 would be a fair price. $40 would be generous to them, but they deserve it because they're God manifest on Earth, etc. etc.
You bought a package (whatever the HL2:silver equivalent was at retail), for a more inflated price than HL2:standalone edition.
I paid $53 for my copy, and I believe that the retail price was $55, a measly five bucks above the standalone version, and easily covered by the costs in packaging and physical distribution. And I wouldn't have paid "a more inflated price" for the retail version anyway, since the retail version is the base version that the others are compared to. Instead, the people who got the standalone version would have gotten a discount. Regardless, the difference between the two Steam packages was only $10, hardly the $30 that they're asking for TF2 or even the $20 that you could extrapolate from the Orange Box price.
Are you always this dense?
I could ask you the same question.
See if you can find a way to get HL2 + CS:S for anything less than $49.99.
You can find new retail copies for $20-30 if you do a diligent search. This is irrelevant anyway, since it's been three years now and anyone who cares about CS: S already has it. The important point was that when the games came out, you could get HL2 packaged with CS: S at the same cost or close to it.
Episode 2 is, by all accounts, a larger and more feature rich game than Episode 1.
I don't care. Pricing one episode of a game for more than another is a sign of bad faith.
Portal is a full game in its own right according to accounts, not some indie minigame from 1999.
It sounds like a spinoff that some bored guys at Valve came up with to show off engine updates to me. I'll be surprised if it's worth as much as Ep1.
The second a game gets priced below $40, people start thinking it's some ultra low budget title and should either be ignored or priced at $10.
You're obviously not talking about me, since I had no problem with Ep1 being $20.
But, if you price a Battlefield, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or GTA III variation at $60 people lap it up and beg for $5-10 DLC to top it off.
Calling those "variations" is very disingenuous. The full-priced sequels to all of those games were justifiably so, since they were totally new games in regards to engine, content, or both. HL2 Ep2, on the other hand, is part of an episodic release, and as such is a direct continuation of the previous episode with incremental improvements in the engine, much like the many other add-ons and expansions that have been released for PC games in the past and never cost more than $20.
Valve's loyal customers shouldn't have to wait for the people just joining in. If anything, it should be the other way around. Besides, if it turns out that there will be no better packages, then you'll just end up missing out on the $5 discount and the bonus Popcap game on top of everything else.
More like $20 + $20 + $10 = $50 at most, since Valve usually packs online mods in for free (or at least much cheaper than $30) with its other games. So the package is the same price as what the new games are worth, at best. Even though the point of Steam packages is to get discounts from buying multiple games, this still wouldn't be a bad thing if Valve wasn't dishonestly making it look like $50 is a great bargain.
All I'm asking is that Valve offer a package that doesn't include two games that I have already bought and with an accordingly reduced price. $35 would make sense, but I would even accept $40 since that would still be much less of a ripoff than the current insulting "ha ha those dumb fanboys will buy anything, even stuff they already own" nonsense.
You can even sell them on the open market and make a bit of cash back, if you're that frugal.
"May I Buy, Sell or Trade gift subscriptions? "No. This violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement and may result in having your account disabled."
And if you already have half-life 2, you can give the new copy you get in your bundle to a friend.
Yes, that makes it worth it, especially since most people who are interested in HL2 already have it.
Its basically a free copy anyways, since episode 2, portal and tf2 cost more than the bundle if purchased seperately anyways.
If you accept the BS inflated prices that Valve gives for those games, anyway. There's no reason for Ep2 to be $30 when Ep1 was just $20, and Portal accordingly should be around $10. And there's no reason to think that the old games are free when they're still being sold for moderate prices individually.
I don't know why people are just accepting the individual prices that are being quoted to them as justification for the $50 price of the Orange Box. I guess the fact that it's Valve turns off the ripoff detectors in their brains.
Well if you are willing to wait another one, two or three years (how about 10 years) you will get a much better deal. Sort of stating the obvious don't you think.
He pretty clearly stated that the PS3 isn't worth getting right now, so presumably it wouldn't matter if he had waited a few months (not three years) to get a better model at the same price.
That'll be meaningless unless you don't update the firmware ever. In fact, I'm pretty sure all of the EE-equipped PS3s are already running software emulation under the latest firmware.
BTW, the difference between hardware and software emulation is fairly small and getting smaller every day. And with the EE you don't get some of the nifty results of software emulation like upscaling.
Why did you want a 60GB PS3 specifically? You do know that it's a near-certainty that the 80GB PS3 will go down in price by the end of the year, right?
I'm confused as to how you know how well Lair is doing at the cash register. I wouldn't mind if it did do well, since that would give the PS3 leverage, but the only thing I've seen is that it's #1 on the PS3 list at GameStop, which isn't saying much in and of itself. Especially since it doesn't show up on the overall best-sellers list at all.
It describes exactly why the research isn't saying what the scientists claim that it's saying. Zoe Williams' article, on the other hand, is a piece of anti-scientific trash. She seems to think that research is pointless unless there's money to be gained out of it, and cowardly pulls out the race card on anything that looks into the differences between groups of people.
You can grab something, move it up, to the left, towards you, and turn it upside down simultaneously, while moving your character at the same time.
Wow, amazing. Surely I've been wrong about this controller if it allows you to move objects slightly more easily than a normal controller does. Why would I care about that level of detail in object manipulation in the vast majority of games? Why is that worth the drawbacks that the Wiimote carries?
BTW, you can do that with the Sixaxis just as easily. In fact, if you split the Sixaxis down the middle, shifted the controls slightly for better ergonomics, and added an IR sensor, you'd have everything that the Wiimote has with none of the disadvantages.
Have you, you know, actually used a Wii?
Yes, I have. Wii Sports was a collection of minigames that could've been done better on any modern console, with or without waggle. For the game that was supposed to show off the Wiimote's massive potential and the game everyone seems to love, it wasn't at all impressive. Nor was the Wiimote, with its lack of precision on the menus and lack of realistic feedback to go with striking the tennis ball and so forth.
Slashdot Mirror
Things can be cohesive but not adhesive. Mercury is the most well-known example of this.
Rob
A huckster who can do math.
.38
.38(price of package) = 49.95 - .38(49.95) = 30.97
(cumulative individual price of HL2 + Ep1)/(cumulative individual price of Orange Box games) = 49.90/129.75 =
(price of package) -
Especially since I rounded down the percentage up there, that means that the package without HL2 or Ep1 should be close to $30 going by Valve's own individual prices. Granting Valve the privilege of applying less of the package's value to HL2 and Ep1 since they're older games (though in that case they really should be reducing the individual prices of those two games as well), $35 would be a fair price. $40 would be generous to them, but they deserve it because they're God manifest on Earth, etc. etc.
Rob
You bought a package (whatever the HL2:silver equivalent was at retail), for a more inflated price than HL2:standalone edition.
I paid $53 for my copy, and I believe that the retail price was $55, a measly five bucks above the standalone version, and easily covered by the costs in packaging and physical distribution. And I wouldn't have paid "a more inflated price" for the retail version anyway, since the retail version is the base version that the others are compared to. Instead, the people who got the standalone version would have gotten a discount. Regardless, the difference between the two Steam packages was only $10, hardly the $30 that they're asking for TF2 or even the $20 that you could extrapolate from the Orange Box price.
Are you always this dense?
I could ask you the same question.
See if you can find a way to get HL2 + CS:S for anything less than $49.99.
You can find new retail copies for $20-30 if you do a diligent search. This is irrelevant anyway, since it's been three years now and anyone who cares about CS: S already has it. The important point was that when the games came out, you could get HL2 packaged with CS: S at the same cost or close to it.
Rob
Episode 2 is, by all accounts, a larger and more feature rich game than Episode 1.
I don't care. Pricing one episode of a game for more than another is a sign of bad faith.
Portal is a full game in its own right according to accounts, not some indie minigame from 1999.
It sounds like a spinoff that some bored guys at Valve came up with to show off engine updates to me. I'll be surprised if it's worth as much as Ep1.
The second a game gets priced below $40, people start thinking it's some ultra low budget title and should either be ignored or priced at $10.
You're obviously not talking about me, since I had no problem with Ep1 being $20.
But, if you price a Battlefield, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or GTA III variation at $60 people lap it up and beg for $5-10 DLC to top it off.
Calling those "variations" is very disingenuous. The full-priced sequels to all of those games were justifiably so, since they were totally new games in regards to engine, content, or both. HL2 Ep2, on the other hand, is part of an episodic release, and as such is a direct continuation of the previous episode with incremental improvements in the engine, much like the many other add-ons and expansions that have been released for PC games in the past and never cost more than $20.
Rob
bzzzt. CS:S was free with HL2:silver edition, which sold at an *inflated* price.
Then how did this retail copy of HL2 with CS: S included end up in my desk?
Rob
Um, no. That probably would've made the complaints worse. I know such a thing would cause me to wonder what the hell Valve was thinking.
Rob
False dilemmas are no way to argue, son.
Rob
Look at Counterstrike: Source -- $27.99 at Amazon.
Free with HL2, and it always has been. I.e. CS:S isn't worth anywhere close to $30 either.
Rob
So... EP2 is worth $20, portal is worth $10? That leaves TF2, which should easily be worth the remaining $15.
$20, and that's questionable considering how other online mods have been priced in the past. I addressed this in another post.
Rob
Valve's loyal customers shouldn't have to wait for the people just joining in. If anything, it should be the other way around. Besides, if it turns out that there will be no better packages, then you'll just end up missing out on the $5 discount and the bonus Popcap game on top of everything else.
Rob
$30 + $20 + $10 = $60, even in the new math.
More like $20 + $20 + $10 = $50 at most, since Valve usually packs online mods in for free (or at least much cheaper than $30) with its other games. So the package is the same price as what the new games are worth, at best. Even though the point of Steam packages is to get discounts from buying multiple games, this still wouldn't be a bad thing if Valve wasn't dishonestly making it look like $50 is a great bargain.
All I'm asking is that Valve offer a package that doesn't include two games that I have already bought and with an accordingly reduced price. $35 would make sense, but I would even accept $40 since that would still be much less of a ripoff than the current insulting "ha ha those dumb fanboys will buy anything, even stuff they already own" nonsense.
You can even sell them on the open market and make a bit of cash back, if you're that frugal.
"May I Buy, Sell or Trade gift subscriptions?
"No. This violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement and may result in having your account disabled."
Rob
And if you already have half-life 2, you can give the new copy you get in your bundle to a friend.
Yes, that makes it worth it, especially since most people who are interested in HL2 already have it.
Its basically a free copy anyways, since episode 2, portal and tf2 cost more than the bundle if purchased seperately anyways.
If you accept the BS inflated prices that Valve gives for those games, anyway. There's no reason for Ep2 to be $30 when Ep1 was just $20, and Portal accordingly should be around $10. And there's no reason to think that the old games are free when they're still being sold for moderate prices individually.
I don't know why people are just accepting the individual prices that are being quoted to them as justification for the $50 price of the Orange Box. I guess the fact that it's Valve turns off the ripoff detectors in their brains.
Rob
Well if you are willing to wait another one, two or three years (how about 10 years) you will get a much better deal. Sort of stating the obvious don't you think.
He pretty clearly stated that the PS3 isn't worth getting right now, so presumably it wouldn't matter if he had waited a few months (not three years) to get a better model at the same price.
Rob
Looking at the differences between groups of people is the same as trying to prove that one race is superior to another... how, exactly?
Rob
That'll be meaningless unless you don't update the firmware ever. In fact, I'm pretty sure all of the EE-equipped PS3s are already running software emulation under the latest firmware.
BTW, the difference between hardware and software emulation is fairly small and getting smaller every day. And with the EE you don't get some of the nifty results of software emulation like upscaling.
Rob
Haha, I didn't even notice that.
Rob
Why did you want a 60GB PS3 specifically? You do know that it's a near-certainty that the 80GB PS3 will go down in price by the end of the year, right?
Rob
I'm confused as to how you know how well Lair is doing at the cash register. I wouldn't mind if it did do well, since that would give the PS3 leverage, but the only thing I've seen is that it's #1 on the PS3 list at GameStop, which isn't saying much in and of itself. Especially since it doesn't show up on the overall best-sellers list at all.
Rob
What of IGN and GameSpot?
Rob
I don't think that sort of proof is necessary. The writing style and rabidness are the same.
Rob
It describes exactly why the research isn't saying what the scientists claim that it's saying. Zoe Williams' article, on the other hand, is a piece of anti-scientific trash. She seems to think that research is pointless unless there's money to be gained out of it, and cowardly pulls out the race card on anything that looks into the differences between groups of people.
Rob
Now maybe they could do this with a game that's worth playing.
Rob
I have no arms, you insensitive clod!
Rob
I guess this means that Spitzer has discovered a spritzer?
Rob
You can grab something, move it up, to the left, towards you, and turn it upside down simultaneously, while moving your character at the same time.
Wow, amazing. Surely I've been wrong about this controller if it allows you to move objects slightly more easily than a normal controller does. Why would I care about that level of detail in object manipulation in the vast majority of games? Why is that worth the drawbacks that the Wiimote carries?
BTW, you can do that with the Sixaxis just as easily. In fact, if you split the Sixaxis down the middle, shifted the controls slightly for better ergonomics, and added an IR sensor, you'd have everything that the Wiimote has with none of the disadvantages.
Have you, you know, actually used a Wii?
Yes, I have. Wii Sports was a collection of minigames that could've been done better on any modern console, with or without waggle. For the game that was supposed to show off the Wiimote's massive potential and the game everyone seems to love, it wasn't at all impressive. Nor was the Wiimote, with its lack of precision on the menus and lack of realistic feedback to go with striking the tennis ball and so forth.
Rob