You are making a very poor comparison here. Your logic could also be used to say that Pepsi was far superior than Coke because you'd rather have Pepsi and eternal life over Coke and cancer. The *applicable* comparison in this case is between Civ IV distributed in a paper bag and Civ IV distributed in a well designed box with a logo.
I own a copy of Civ IV (which I don't like as much as Civ III), and I assure you the box is very professionally designed. The developer, Firaxis, has a very carefully designed logo and so does Civ IV. I assure you the choice of the lettering and layout for the block probably consumed a sizeable investment in design hours.
Why wasn't Civ IV shipped in a paper bag as you would have been just as happy with? The answer is that it was not being sold solely to you. Marketing exists because it works, and there are many people who purchase games from stores like EB or gamestop solely based on looking at the rack and seeing something that looks interesting. Having a flashy package means there is that much more of a chance that a prospective buyer will take Civ IV home with them instead of one of the other games, and that is why companies like *every company* make a sizeable investment in the final look of their product.
I definitely concur with you in that the 360 launch was very poorly represented in a few key genres, especially adventure/rpg. I think we can be a little optimistic about this, however, because of the historical trends regarding the release of new consoles. They have historically shipped with a large proportion of action/arcade style games for a couple of reasons, most importantly design time. The desire for manufactures to stress highlighting the improved capabilities for their machines with a heavy focus on graphics shouldn't be overlooked either - look at the N64 launch in particular.
I doubt Microsoft will ever have the RPG focus of Sony, but they certainly have not neglected it. A few of my favorite RPG's over the last couple of years have been on the XBOX, such as Fable, Kotor, Jade Empire, X-Men Legends and Arx Fatalis. Indigo Propechy had a terrific story in particular.
There are a few 360 titles coming fairly soon that have perked my interest, such as Elder Scrolls IV, Lost Odyssey, and Mass Effect. By the time the PS3 is out and the xbox 360 drops in price I expect there will be a reasonably large handful of games that feature terrific stories.
The double-edged comment was made from an end user standpoint. In a locally run application the end user usually has the choice whether they want to apply the upgrade or not, and there are many scenarios in which they may elect not. I have a gaming box at home running det drivers from october because the newest ones cause glitches in a couple of "older" games I still enjoy. This is also true for several versions of applications I use.
The ability to rollout bug fixes nearly instantly is great, but the loss of flexibility can be a serious issue depending on the circumstances.
"As it is, they dug this hole for themselves."
Not that *I'm* bitter or anything, but would you mind elaborating on what exactly you perceive this hole to be? I doubt Gates wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering if the/. community found the latest microsoft announcement appealing.
This announcement is completely factually advertised - Microsoft is merely making a change that a large part of it's userbase has been requesting for many years. This isn't an amazing thing, but I think you would be very hard pressed to convincingly argue that it is a bad thing. Who cares if Unix did this first?
I understand your cynicism but not your implication that a profit motivated business would necessarily want to increase prices. I would be surprised if the average song price doesn't actually decrease in the future, depending on what happens on the enforcement front.
The challenge of any business is to find the ideal price breakpoint at which the profit per item multiplied by the total number of items sold is the highest. Increasing profit per item by 10% and then selling 20% less units is hardly in a corporation's best interest. I have a hard time believing the demand for the average DRM loaded mp3 is greater than $0.99, which is a very attractive consumer breakpoint.
They can get probably get away with charging more for a select group of the very latest songs from a handful of artists, but beyond those few songs I suspect the demand would dramatically plummet if they moved past the $1 mark anytime soon. At the same time the miminal production costs lead me to conclude that there are many, many songs at which the ideal price breakpoint falls significantly below $0.99.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you only bought the first one and the next two were free replacements.
You are making a very poor comparison here. Your logic could also be used to say that Pepsi was far superior than Coke because you'd rather have Pepsi and eternal life over Coke and cancer. The *applicable* comparison in this case is between Civ IV distributed in a paper bag and Civ IV distributed in a well designed box with a logo. I own a copy of Civ IV (which I don't like as much as Civ III), and I assure you the box is very professionally designed. The developer, Firaxis, has a very carefully designed logo and so does Civ IV. I assure you the choice of the lettering and layout for the block probably consumed a sizeable investment in design hours. Why wasn't Civ IV shipped in a paper bag as you would have been just as happy with? The answer is that it was not being sold solely to you. Marketing exists because it works, and there are many people who purchase games from stores like EB or gamestop solely based on looking at the rack and seeing something that looks interesting. Having a flashy package means there is that much more of a chance that a prospective buyer will take Civ IV home with them instead of one of the other games, and that is why companies like *every company* make a sizeable investment in the final look of their product.
I definitely concur with you in that the 360 launch was very poorly represented in a few key genres, especially adventure/rpg. I think we can be a little optimistic about this, however, because of the historical trends regarding the release of new consoles. They have historically shipped with a large proportion of action/arcade style games for a couple of reasons, most importantly design time. The desire for manufactures to stress highlighting the improved capabilities for their machines with a heavy focus on graphics shouldn't be overlooked either - look at the N64 launch in particular. I doubt Microsoft will ever have the RPG focus of Sony, but they certainly have not neglected it. A few of my favorite RPG's over the last couple of years have been on the XBOX, such as Fable, Kotor, Jade Empire, X-Men Legends and Arx Fatalis. Indigo Propechy had a terrific story in particular. There are a few 360 titles coming fairly soon that have perked my interest, such as Elder Scrolls IV, Lost Odyssey, and Mass Effect. By the time the PS3 is out and the xbox 360 drops in price I expect there will be a reasonably large handful of games that feature terrific stories.
The double-edged comment was made from an end user standpoint. In a locally run application the end user usually has the choice whether they want to apply the upgrade or not, and there are many scenarios in which they may elect not. I have a gaming box at home running det drivers from october because the newest ones cause glitches in a couple of "older" games I still enjoy. This is also true for several versions of applications I use. The ability to rollout bug fixes nearly instantly is great, but the loss of flexibility can be a serious issue depending on the circumstances.
"As it is, they dug this hole for themselves." Not that *I'm* bitter or anything, but would you mind elaborating on what exactly you perceive this hole to be? I doubt Gates wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering if the /. community found the latest microsoft announcement appealing.
This announcement is completely factually advertised - Microsoft is merely making a change that a large part of it's userbase has been requesting for many years. This isn't an amazing thing, but I think you would be very hard pressed to convincingly argue that it is a bad thing. Who cares if Unix did this first?
I understand your cynicism but not your implication that a profit motivated business would necessarily want to increase prices. I would be surprised if the average song price doesn't actually decrease in the future, depending on what happens on the enforcement front. The challenge of any business is to find the ideal price breakpoint at which the profit per item multiplied by the total number of items sold is the highest. Increasing profit per item by 10% and then selling 20% less units is hardly in a corporation's best interest. I have a hard time believing the demand for the average DRM loaded mp3 is greater than $0.99, which is a very attractive consumer breakpoint. They can get probably get away with charging more for a select group of the very latest songs from a handful of artists, but beyond those few songs I suspect the demand would dramatically plummet if they moved past the $1 mark anytime soon. At the same time the miminal production costs lead me to conclude that there are many, many songs at which the ideal price breakpoint falls significantly below $0.99.