Good luck getting anywhere near that price difference with soft drinks. You might be able to make a can cost 20% less than Coke but with less advertising you'll still lose out, especially when it comes to such subjective things like taste where marketing alone can make a person think product A tastes better than product B even if you put the same substance into both cans.
But arguing that graphics are more important than gameplay for getting a game on TV ignores just how much of an impact even minor imperfections in the gameplay will have on a competition. Of course the dumb companies will think they can make big money by releasing B-rate multiplayer titles but that won't take off because those don't work in a competition.
Do you think a game that's unbalanced or otherwise bad will be used for a competition? Players are good at finding the optimal strategy if one exists and exploit it to the limit. The best graphics wouldn't make it fun if everyone always picked the same faction and performed the same strategy because everything else will cost them the match (unless you put players in there that wouldn't last five seconds in an open competition).
When it gets to he point where you can blame other people for your inability to understand what they are saying when they weren't speaking to you, the deaf and mentally disabled will rule the world.
Let's just preemptively burn all books since people who read them may scare the dumb ones.
Uh, what? Unless you have to pay royalties to your translators (voice actors? Pah, Nintendo of Europe doesn't hire these, english voices are enough for everyone, right?) they really shouldn't affect unit cost (beyond a few cents for the additional manual pages) and the fixed cost is so low compared to the game budget that really shouldn't make a difference. Never mind some games get released untranslated without being cheaper and PC games get translations including voice acting without huge delays or price hikes.
This is like WAD file editing mixed with The Incredible Machine, all enabled with built-in internet connectivity; I'd feel safe letting my kids play this online.
Goatse can be expressed in ascii, I bet it can be expressed in LBP levels, too.
That's Mario vs. DK 2, by the way. MvDK (1) promised a level editor but didn't deliver on it. While MvDK is a sequel to the SGB Donkey Kong, MvDK2 has very indirect gameplay that I'm not sure how to describe (not exactly lemmings, anyone here played Eets? It seems kinda like that).
Sony is selling some 400k new PS2+PS3s every month just in the US alone
Should be noted that 270k of that is PS2 sales, the PS3 is moving at below 100k a month. For a comparison the Wii is doing 380k that month and the DS 560k while the 360 sells 198k, still twice the sales of the PS3.
So now any store that wants to carry Manhunt 2, a game which just barely inched into the AO rating, is also consenting to carry interactive donkey porn. As far as the ESRB is concerned they are one and the same.
Yes but stores don't have to be consistent, there's no rule that says you either have to ban AO completely or carry all of it. Though I'm really not sure if an interactive donkey sex simulator would be worse than an interactive snuff movie simulator.
So the cheaper dollar made translation costs rise or what are you saying? If the 60$ price hike was because of the weakness of the US dollar the 70€ price still lacks an explaination.
Also translation is a fixed cost and shouldn't affect the per-unit cost.
The optimal price of a CD or DVD is not dictated by the "invention" costs but by what the market is willing to pay. Whether I sell the discs at 5$ or 50$, the cost to create the data is constant. What dictates the price is profit per unit times number of people buying at that price. The higher the price the fewer people buy. Since fixed costs are subtracted once, not per-unit they don't affect the optimum price. It doesn't matter at all that a game costs more to make than a CD's worth of music.
Nintendo still seems to make sure the prices stay high. I've yet to see a real pricedrop (i.e. more than just 5-10€ because the store needs to clean out inventory) on Nintendo-made DS games.
The 60$ ones are console games. I don't know about the US but here in Europe those don't tend to fall in price as fast. Most remain 60€ until they're gone from the shelves.
What would be interesting is not whether $60 games are becoming the norm but whether games are getting more expensive in Britain and Europe since their currencies are inflating at a much slower rate.
Yep, 10€ price hike for "next-gen" console games (60€->70€). I believe console game prices were set to match US prices back when the Euro was at 0.8$ and never adjusted for the changing value. Now they're adding a price hike just because they think they can. For a comparison, the Wii is getting several new games at prices below 60€, e.g. Mario Strikers Charged Football can be had for 45€ in some places. I don't know about Britain, though.
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Good luck getting anywhere near that price difference with soft drinks. You might be able to make a can cost 20% less than Coke but with less advertising you'll still lose out, especially when it comes to such subjective things like taste where marketing alone can make a person think product A tastes better than product B even if you put the same substance into both cans.
But arguing that graphics are more important than gameplay for getting a game on TV ignores just how much of an impact even minor imperfections in the gameplay will have on a competition. Of course the dumb companies will think they can make big money by releasing B-rate multiplayer titles but that won't take off because those don't work in a competition.
Just use AJAX then.
However it also removes the incentive for illegal disposal so depending on the situation in the country it may be worth the tradeoff.
Do you think a game that's unbalanced or otherwise bad will be used for a competition? Players are good at finding the optimal strategy if one exists and exploit it to the limit. The best graphics wouldn't make it fun if everyone always picked the same faction and performed the same strategy because everything else will cost them the match (unless you put players in there that wouldn't last five seconds in an open competition).
Just wait for the Yellow-Red Scare to appear.
When it gets to he point where you can blame other people for your inability to understand what they are saying when they weren't speaking to you, the deaf and mentally disabled will rule the world.
Let's just preemptively burn all books since people who read them may scare the dumb ones.
Perhaps they'll release a larger demo later but then again I don't know when the full release is due.
Uh, what? Unless you have to pay royalties to your translators (voice actors? Pah, Nintendo of Europe doesn't hire these, english voices are enough for everyone, right?) they really shouldn't affect unit cost (beyond a few cents for the additional manual pages) and the fixed cost is so low compared to the game budget that really shouldn't make a difference. Never mind some games get released untranslated without being cheaper and PC games get translations including voice acting without huge delays or price hikes.
This is like WAD file editing mixed with The Incredible Machine, all enabled with built-in internet connectivity; I'd feel safe letting my kids play this online.
Goatse can be expressed in ascii, I bet it can be expressed in LBP levels, too.
"Game experience may change during online play."
That's Mario vs. DK 2, by the way. MvDK (1) promised a level editor but didn't deliver on it. While MvDK is a sequel to the SGB Donkey Kong, MvDK2 has very indirect gameplay that I'm not sure how to describe (not exactly lemmings, anyone here played Eets? It seems kinda like that).
Sony is selling some 400k new PS2+PS3s every month just in the US alone
Should be noted that 270k of that is PS2 sales, the PS3 is moving at below 100k a month. For a comparison the Wii is doing 380k that month and the DS 560k while the 360 sells 198k, still twice the sales of the PS3.
So now any store that wants to carry Manhunt 2, a game which just barely inched into the AO rating, is also consenting to carry interactive donkey porn. As far as the ESRB is concerned they are one and the same.
Yes but stores don't have to be consistent, there's no rule that says you either have to ban AO completely or carry all of it. Though I'm really not sure if an interactive donkey sex simulator would be worse than an interactive snuff movie simulator.
Do they just assume that every computer that's sold in one piece will have some form of Windows installed, legal or warezed?
I'm thinking Dune movie here...
But how would that work for a weapon used on a crowd or maybe the guy slightly to the left of the rangefinder beam?
The "liberals" we see on Slashdot seem to be more of the conservative-in-denial type.
And people who buy gold for its shinyness or value are driving the price up.
Yes but 50€ is still significantly more than 50$. Also the VAT didn't rise that much so why are games getting more expensive?
So the cheaper dollar made translation costs rise or what are you saying? If the 60$ price hike was because of the weakness of the US dollar the 70€ price still lacks an explaination.
Also translation is a fixed cost and shouldn't affect the per-unit cost.
The optimal price of a CD or DVD is not dictated by the "invention" costs but by what the market is willing to pay. Whether I sell the discs at 5$ or 50$, the cost to create the data is constant. What dictates the price is profit per unit times number of people buying at that price. The higher the price the fewer people buy. Since fixed costs are subtracted once, not per-unit they don't affect the optimum price. It doesn't matter at all that a game costs more to make than a CD's worth of music.
Nintendo still seems to make sure the prices stay high. I've yet to see a real pricedrop (i.e. more than just 5-10€ because the store needs to clean out inventory) on Nintendo-made DS games.
The 60$ ones are console games. I don't know about the US but here in Europe those don't tend to fall in price as fast. Most remain 60€ until they're gone from the shelves.
Wrong, there is an absolute limit to the supply of gold.
Yeah and I'd rather see that used for processes that need the chemical properties of gold rather than just be something shiny to trade with.
What would be interesting is not whether $60 games are becoming the norm but whether games are getting more expensive in Britain and Europe since their currencies are inflating at a much slower rate.
Yep, 10€ price hike for "next-gen" console games (60€->70€). I believe console game prices were set to match US prices back when the Euro was at 0.8$ and never adjusted for the changing value. Now they're adding a price hike just because they think they can. For a comparison, the Wii is getting several new games at prices below 60€, e.g. Mario Strikers Charged Football can be had for 45€ in some places. I don't know about Britain, though.