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Epics Michael Capps: "Make game endings DLC!"
- Thread starter PacoDG
- Start date
ultim8p00 said:
But that person wouldn't be making a 95% profit, because they'd have to get the book first somehow. If they paid full price, they're losing money. If they bought the book off of someone else, and can then sell it for a greater price, that's a discrepancy they're taking advantage of that shouldn't exist with perfect information. But there's not really much you can do about that.
I can see the appeal of the idea initially exposed in this thread, and it's easy to see why publishers would want to encourage new sales, or profit from used sales in some way. But after they've sold their product to someone, it belongs to that person, and any other interpretation of that transaction is a dangerous one. If people don't own the physical goods they have purchased, then what have they spent their money on?
I tend to avoid buying used if I can help it, because I want to support the developers whose games I buy. And I don't shy away from digital distribution. But removing the intuitive definition of what it means to own a physical product is a good way to alienate your consumers and piss people off.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
PataHikari said:
Eh? Music industry is a lot better in this regard than the propositions and current plans of the video game industry... What oppressive actions are they doing exactly?
MiiMarioMii
Banned
Fortunately Nintendo has a sound business model won't ever try squeeze me for an additional 20 bucks just to fight Ganon or Bowser, because they won't make a mess of things and ask the consumer to take it up the ass to make it "better".
Publishers and developers, Nintebdo systems are your only future if value your relevancy and profitable sustainablity in the near future.
And try to create a game without a single gun or sword... just try it once.
Publishers and developers, Nintebdo systems are your only future if value your relevancy and profitable sustainablity in the near future.
And try to create a game without a single gun or sword... just try it once.
sonicmj1 said:
Actually, in the case of the books, they'd be loosing about 5% if you don't count the enjoyment from reading the book as anything. But in the case of GS like you said, it's the fact that they sell the used games at a greater price. I mean, this really is a hard situation as on one hand you are messing with people's right to buy and sell a product, but on the other hand you are kind of riding of the dev's backs. I guess I wouldn't care if every game sold millions like Gears 2 or Halo 3, but I just don't want stuff like No More Heroes or some other indie-spirit game to get screwed like that.
MiiMarioMii
Banned
:lol :lol :lol
Strangely perfect tag for this threadChrange said:
Version 3.0
Member
ultim8p00 said:
I think you need some basic math. If I buy a book for $10 and sell it for $9.50, I'm not making any profit at all. I'm in the red 50 cents.
Now, if I buy a book for $10 and sell it for $3, and then that guy sells it for $9.50, he makes $6.50, and I'm out $7. At no point does this chain of sales ever get to a net profit, except the first sale, the one the publisher profited from. So where's the money? Why should the publisher be mad? I'm the one who should be mad, because apparently I could've lost 50 cents instead of $7.00.
Also, the book scenario you described, where 10 people read one purchased book, has a name. It's called a library.
MiiMarioMii said:
I got it in here, from a mod who can't admit they jumped in on something they didn't read and/or didn't understand, just to grind an axe about THEIR RIGHT AS A CONSUMER, when my point had little to do with that.
It's pretty sad that the only site who seems to have actually read the interview before running a "CAPPS SAID" headline is Kotaku - they actually got the story right. The ***stiq site got it so wrong they claimed the source was Game INFORMER...they must not have heard of industry.biz.
Brofist
Member
ultim8p00 said:
Greater price than what? Greater than the new price? I don't follow what you mean here. And games like No More Heroes aren't getting screwed because of used game sales btw. It's called low consumer interest.
The way to maximize new game sales isn't going to be through alienating the consumer. It's going to have to be through a deal with GS and the other major retailers of used games. Either a small cut of the sales of used game sales goes to the publisher, or have a no used copies sold within the first 2 weeks of a new release type clause.
Version 3.0
Member
Chrange said:
:lol
I got my tag--the original "whining loser" part of it--because I used that term while trying to drive a trolling mod out of a Metroid Prime thread.
Darn mods. ;-p
MiiMarioMii
Banned
:lol This thread is one funny mess.
I say let the publishers do that if they see fit, Gamestop will carry on, and the end consumers will see if this satisfies them. But I won't be a part of DLC endings or the games that have them.
I say let the publishers do that if they see fit, Gamestop will carry on, and the end consumers will see if this satisfies them. But I won't be a part of DLC endings or the games that have them.
ElFly said:
Lowering game prices is out the window - we recently had to increase them by $10 just to keep pace with the cost of making the things.
As a result, allowing retailers to get a bigger cut would mean increasing the cost to the consumer again, and I'm not sure people would react well to $65-$70 games. And even with a $10 increase in the retailer's favor, they would still make more money from a used copy when 80% of the sale is their profit instead of 20%.
Version 3.0
Member
kpop100 said:
Out of the question. And it would set a very dangerous precedent if it did happen.
kpop100 said:
This might be workable, and I suggested it earlier in the thread. But Gamestop has no reason to do this now. They're completely in the right. So they need some incentive. I suggested the publisher give them a margin that scales upwards as they sell more new copies. They're already doing publishers a favor by pushing pre-orders (often paid for with trade-ins), which helps them gauge demand and recover their costs quickly. That's not why Gamestop does it, of course, but nevertheless it's beneficial to the publisher.
Gamestop also hypes new games very effectively. They're really the publishers' best friend at the same time they're undercutting them with used game sales, and you can't separate the two.
I've still seen no one in this thread acknowledge the impossibility of running a profitable videogame specialty store with only new games. Walk a mile in those shoes and see how sorry you feel for the poor publishers. You'll be setting up a trade-in program within a few weeks.
Gully State
Member
Leondexter said:
This...I've been wondering about this myself. There is something inherently wrong with the commercial supply chain when your retailer essentially promoting your industry cannot be viable on single sales of your own product. That's where the issue lies.
Campster said:
This is a lie you were spoonfed by PR.
R&D for games certainly raised, but it is a constant cost for any given game. The actual cost of making 1 copy of the game is minimal. Printing more discs simply didn't become $10 more expensive from last gen to the current one.
There is a market for cheaper HD games, which is trivially proven because there are so many people buying the goddamn used games in the first place. If games were cheaper, they'd be able to sell more of them new, and get more money at lower prices.
Campster said:
Hopefully, there will always be an used games market. It is ridiculous that retailers can profit so much more from used games than from selling new ones. If a business can get ~10x more earnings from used games than from new games, you can't really fault them for trying to move the most used games than they can.
If Epic has so many problems with Gamestop, simply don't sell games to them, period.
Gully State
Member
Campster said:
Simply false...PC game have lower sales and scale farther than console games and yet they still cost $50. Developmental costs did not increase. Maybe licensing did (since console makers take losses from console sales and make it up from licensing)but definitely not the actual costs that go into game production.
ElFly said:
Oh, there's no denying there's a market for lower-priced HD games; but the cost of something like Gears of War is astronomically higher than the cost of something like Unreal Tournament 2004. And the sales simply haven't improved in line with the development costs. Our audience is bigger, yes, but not ~$5 million development cost -> ~$20 Million development cost bigger. The number of people buying hardcore games, the games that cost the most to make, absolutely has not grown in line with the cost to make them. It isn't a PR trick to get us to hand over more money; it's a sign of our ailing industry.
Again, we can either pretend like nothing is wrong when we're increasing product prices just to fund the next wave of sequels that will immediately be sold back to retailers as used product for people to bitch about on internet forums, or we can as an industry start looking for substantive ways to improve our business practices.
Version 3.0
Member
Campster said:
That's not entirely true. There are tons of games on the market that would easily turn a profit while being sold for a lot less than $60. The biggest blockbuster games this gen could've cleared profitability in the first week, even at $40 or less.
And there are other options. You can't tell me Nintendo is hurting on the developmental cost side. Brain Training probably cost 1000 yen and a pack of cookies.
I think publishers need to re-examine last gen. It had the most fair pricing this industry has ever seen--with new console games ranging from $50 all the way down to $20 or less and an excellent Greatest Hits model--and yet it was also the most profitable gen for publishers and developers across the board.
There is way more flexibility in videogame prices than you'll ever see admitted. Most new games don't need to be $60 if they can sell reasonably well. They are $60 because they're afraid they won't sell well, or because they think a lower price won't help sales much. And you can't tell me publishers are in a worse scenario now than when they were paying to put games on cartridges. Cheap media is still more than making up for the increase in development costs. And if it isn't in your specific case, then maybe you need to get your budget under control. Not every game has to cost tens of millions of dollars to create. If you want to play at the high stakes table, then be prepared to lose big if you lose.
Campster said:
Wait, no. You can't have it both ways.
If the used games are being sold and resold tens of times, that means that there is a big group of people that want to buy quality, HD games at a lower price than $60, that publishers simply aren't reaching, just because they don't want to.
That's just really indicative of consumers always wanting to pay less. Piracy, or trading was still a problem when games were $49.99. I do think that raising it above 59.99 will without a doubt start really impacting the industry.
Developing the product is responsible for costs, not the disc printing. What really drives the costs are the wages of the employees and so does the time and manpower required to make a modern day A-AAA product, and don't forget the growing RnD costs to get the tech up to the level of the higher and higher specs. I mean that's one of the the reasons that EA has been having greater and greater troubles, their RnD has been killing them, and the bar for what a game has to sell to be profitable keeps getting higher and higher.
20 million dollars, if you're lucky.
ElFly said:
Developing the product is responsible for costs, not the disc printing. What really drives the costs are the wages of the employees and so does the time and manpower required to make a modern day A-AAA product, and don't forget the growing RnD costs to get the tech up to the level of the higher and higher specs. I mean that's one of the the reasons that EA has been having greater and greater troubles, their RnD has been killing them, and the bar for what a game has to sell to be profitable keeps getting higher and higher.
20 million dollars, if you're lucky.
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ElFly said:
They can't--Gamestop sells too many new copies of their games. Probably more than any other store, and a lot of those were bought with trade-in games. But nobody seems to want to hear that.
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ElFly said:
Ah, the cold touch of logic. Very nicely done.
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Campster said:
I'll give you a hint: use the carrot, not the stick.
anotheriori
Member
It probably doesn't matter if they lowered the price considering the audience that buys the games is small and that they can only break even or make a profit if they sell 500k+ units at $60. I'd assume they would only lower the price themselves once they had atleast broken even or the game tanks at retail. Even if they did lower to say $30, Gamestop would go and sell used games back at $20. What also doesn't help is that a large portion of Gamestop customers who buy used consider a working game good enough criteria and saving money is more important that supporting the developers/artists. There is no depreciation of value of the game so a single copy of a new game can be sold countless times and this crowd tends to play the latest games rather than waiting for price drops.ElFly said:
Also, if prices were to drop.. it would have to be industry wide because there's also perceived value. People tend to wonder why a AAA will ship at a substantial lower cost than games it is competing against, look at Madden vs 2K Football when it dropped to $19.
Zen said:
Higher prices will always make a second hand market stronger.
Zen said:
No, no, no, no. For example, a console has a price that's relative to the cost of making said console. You pay $500 for a PS3 because the processor/bluray drive/gpu/hard drive/motherboard are expensive.
For a game, you pay $60 because the publisher figured out that $60 X the amount of people who would buy the game, would be enough to recover costs and, hopefully, make a profit. Realize that a new game could be sold for $5 if they thought enough people would buy said game, because the total cost of disc+case+manual is around $1.
If publishers want to charge $60 for their games, they are in their right to do so. But don't come crying when the loads of people who were used to the $50 pricepoint last gen want to keep doing so via the used market.
anotheriori said:
Obviously you can't stop Gamestop (lulz) from always selling used games cheaper than new games.
But it is obvious too that if they do so, they'd get a lower profit from them.
The final obvious thing is that Gamestop has kept growing and growing this generation. The higher prices certainly helped them a lot.
Gully State
Member
Brashnir said:
If you want to know where the console gaming industry is going, just look at what PC gaming is doing. FPS dominated marketplace, DLC/expansion packs, HDD installs, day 1 patching, and multiple SKU's (different hardware builds). If this trend continues, we're going to see MMORPG'S with subscription plans and microtransactions.
PataHikari
Banned
Campster said:
There's a solution here.
Slash the budget of the games and stop making them so expensive to make, then you can lower the price, and still make even more profit then you did when they were 60!
While everyone loves to blame Microsoft or Sony for higher next-gen prices, don't forget that EA was heavily lobbying for $60 games prior to next-gen's arrival. The whole 'premium games demand premium prices' mantra was repeated often by EA spokespeople, though their names escape me at the moment. Even Bleszinski came out against the idea of more expensive games
Microsoft's three launch titles were all $50, by the way. It was EA, Activision, and SEGA who put out multiple titles at $60. Then Riccitiello did an interview last year where he said we needed cheaper games?
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is announced at $40 and people say "What...isn't it worth $60?" Cheaper games don't look as good as the blockbusters, and don't get the attention or (in most cases) the sales. They battle the cheaper price tag, which is a mark of shame for some reason. OH NO - A BUDGET GAME!
PataHikari
Banned
Chrange said:
This is because most "hardcore gamers" are idiots.
The fact that people are seriously arguing against used games is a surefire sign of this.
PataHikari
Banned
KingJ2002 said:
You'd better believe they did when television and VHS came about.
If they really care so much about used games, I don't see why they don't bundle a one time activating code like you've seen on PC games. Once used it's tied to that individual's e-mail or online identity and is non-transferrable. Fallout 3 appears to have done it with my XBL account, for instance.
Don't see why they'd hold back from doing this on consoles.
Making only the end of the game or some milestone require activation or a DLC charge seems to beat around the bush of the core issue, which is to prevent renting and the used market altogether.
Edit: I know the argument against this is that Gamestop would go out of business, but most publishers would view that as a net win.
Don't see why they'd hold back from doing this on consoles.
Making only the end of the game or some milestone require activation or a DLC charge seems to beat around the bush of the core issue, which is to prevent renting and the used market altogether.
Edit: I know the argument against this is that Gamestop would go out of business, but most publishers would view that as a net win.
PataHikari
Banned
Juice said:
Because there would be a backlash like you wouldn't believe.
Leondexter said:
Dude chill out. Several people have said what you just said more effectively and they didn't have to be dicks. I'm not attacking you; I'm just trying to look at this issue from a dev's perspective. I may be wrong on this, but public libraries don't buy your book at $5 and sell it back to you at $15 to make profit. They make profit by charging subscription fees and making deals with publishers and other booksellers. Heck, in most cases, public libraries are heavily funded by the local government. The issue with GS, and really it is not an easy one as many factors are involved, is that they make significant profit of the devs, whereas a public library makes profit of its users. I'm not suggesting we OMG BAN GS AND BAN USED GAMES here. I'm just saying a small cut like 10% of what they make could go to the devs if the used price is still very close to the actual price.
kpop100 said:
That's exactly what I'm suggesting. Read my first post if you care. And by greater price, I mean buying used games at a lower price and selling it at a higher price. And by getting screwed, I mean this: NMH comes out and someone buys it used and ends up liking it. The money for the second sale goes to GS, not Grasshoper. Now, it's cool that they bought it used, but what about Grasshoper? I mean, it's already kind of a niche game, so it wouldn't sell that well. I think Grasshoper should get a little bit for that second sale. Not much. I mean 10% x 100,000 adds up. In most cases, when a person sells a used game, they sell it at a loss (unless it's a Wii) and that means they invested at least a little bit into the game.
PataHikari said:
I'd believe it, but among the people who care (and would read into the implications of having to type in a code when buying a game), there isn't a larger group of prosumer sadists this side of Apple Inc.
If EA, Nintendo, MS, Sony, and Activision Blizzard all agreed to it overnight, everyone would suck down the Kool-Aid the next day after the 300000 page thread on GAF got locked and archived.
lowlylowlycook
Member
PataHikari said:
Yeah, but how will you justify to gamers that they should buy a say $400 console when the games don't even use its potential. People already complain that they are too short.
ultim8p00 said:
Woah woah woah. Let's not start making up bullshit here.
How does GS make a profit "off the the devs". Do they charge electronics arts for every used game they give away to their customer?
Gamestop makes its profit from the users, just like the library. The users sell / buy their games to/from Gamestop as is their right in any free market. The developers/publishers don't have to pay Gamestop at any point.
Spruce Moose
Member
Juice said:
Sad but true.
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ultim8p00 said:
This is self-defeating logic. First off, you're arguing that publishers have a right to profit off of a re-sale when they've already profited from the original sale. That's flat-out wrong. Secondly, you're then saying that only when the profit of the subsequent sale is high enough should this happen, which means you don't support your original argument except as a matter of degree, which is awkward at best. And lastly, you don't seem to realize that you're arguing against individual rights in favor of corporation rights, which is dangerous territory. The precedent of second-hand revenue going back to the manufacturer could have serious implications if it were to be applied elsewhere.
All this to stifle a legitimate business, a necessary one for the company in question, that is very beneficial to the original IP owner in any case.
I wasn't attacking you before, I was merely stating the truth. Your basic math was severely flawed, and so is your entire argument. Publishers present their side as a sympathy plow, and you fell for it. But it's motivated by greed, and it's a losing proposition all around. There are better solutions.