Originally posted by BackFire
No, I don't know what games you're talking about because you made a vague and silly comment that in no way is indicative of any meaningful point. You simply said games selling millions and doing poorly. Though it's perfectly possible for a game to sell a million copies and still not make back the money that the game cost. It's a meaningless benchmark - the only meaningful benchmark is actual profit, which you are ignoring when you point to an arbitrary number of sales like that.Day 1 DLC does not need to exist, and it does not need to be purchased. It's extra content that you can purchase if you wish. Despite what many think it's not content that they withheld from the product that was ready to go months in advance when they started printing copies of the game. It was content they were working on during the time between a game being gold and a game being made public.
The price of the full game has little baring on microtransactions. Just don't utilize them. A lot of people want to buy different models or outfits for their characters or whatever, and so the publishers make it available. Blame the people who buy it, not those who allow them to buy it.
You say make games with replay value, as if developers intentionally make bad games. When they're making a game they likely think it WILL have good replay value. Sometimes they just fail. Thankfully you aren't forced to purchase bad games. And you have no inherent right to play games that you don't purchase.
What gamestop does is different than what Amazon and Ebay do. Amazon and ebay don't purchase the game from you and then turn around and resell it for 400% profit. Gamestop does. Amazon and ebay simply act as an intermediary for users to sell things themselves or for other smaller venues to sell things. Gamestop literally sucks unearned income out of the industry. Just because some publishers try utilize gimmicks in conjunction with gamestop to try and make some money from them doesn't mean gamestop offers some meaningful service. The relationship between publishers and Gamestop is rocky and an ugly necessity. And this relationship is rocky because Gamestop, at their core, is a leech. They maximize their profit directly by minimizing the profit of the industry they pretend to be a part of. It's why the industry will be better off when they are dead. Which isn't going to be far off.
As far as pricing digital copies go, currently console games are still sold through physical means as the primary way of getting the product into the hands of the consumer. As such, unfortunately retail stores like Gamestop still hold a great deal of power over publishers. If a publisher were to make a digital copy permanently cheaper than what Gamestop could match, Gamestop could simply threaten to stop carrying products of that publisher, and that could be crippling for all except the biggest publishers. This already is happening with the PC market. Digital distribution of PC games is now considered the norm thanks to outlets like STEAM. Thankfully over the next ten or so years digital sales will become the norm for consoles as well and there will be nothing Gamestop and other retailers will be able to do about it no matter the tantrum they throw. And once digital distribution is the norm then they will be able to lower prices in sometimes extreme ways as PC publishers are able to do on steam, because they aren't losing money from used game sales, so they can make more profits and then pass on savings to the consumer. And there are sales on Xbox Live and PSN every now and then where games can be purchased for much cheaper than Gamestop. They just aren't permanent.
Because people buy used games publishers feel that they have to have the new product be expensive to try and maximize their profit while the game is hot and hyped. This leads to more people buying used games which then causes prices to go up more. Used games and piracy create a vicious cycle. Fortunately, the opposite is also true. The death of used games will create a cycle of greater profit and savings for the consumer.
Resident Evil 6, Tomb Raider, Dead Space 3, Hitman are the ones that come to mind. You yourself said some games, so I can interpret just as well you knew what games I was talking about. My point is Publishers deeming said games as failures when clearly they aren't.
How do you determine profit? this benchmark isn't disclose as to make proper comparison.
So what happens with a game you didn't like or thought was too short or simply are done with it as is likely you won't go back to it later.Are you just stuck with it? If microsoft were to have its way, that would have happen. I'm not talking about games you don't purchase cuz obviously you won't waste money on them and have little to complain about, I'm not taking about digital either with this point. It's physical copies they aren't ready to kill yet.
Even Steam is considering sharing games, and it might have something to do with that Germany lawsuit
DLC is not consider or done just after games going gold, they're too thought of and develop while the game is being develop as well. This does not apply to all developers, but it is happening.
About Gamestop, not just some publishers, all of them do, all of them are in bed with Gamestop, Developers are told to make this preorder things, and most are for Gamestop exclusively.
You talk about the dead of Gamestop with an all digital future, why hasn't that happen now? What if Sony were to have gone the Microsoft way with the PS4, their policies would have been pretty much the same as the Xbone, and guess what?, one of those "participating retailers" would have been Gamestop (if not primarly) so what would have happen with, like it's put mostly, pops and moms stores? what would have happen with selling your games at Amazon or Ebay? they would be gone.
They would have willingly eliminated Gamestop competition, not Gamestop itself.
Yes, they don't price digital accordingly because of retailers like Gamestop, because they are afraid of them, but this gen the gun was loaded and handed to both Sony and M$ to go all digital and outright kill Gamestop, they didn't. The infrastructure exist already and they don't use it, why?
Poor developers, even when they complain about used games, when they are gone it would Publishers benefiting from it, not the ones that make the game.
I don't like an all digital future to be honest, but it's inevitable. As long as convenience is more luring than proprietorship, I'm willing to buy digital, Steam gives you that, PS+ sales gives me that. Heck GOG is entirely DRM free and is great at it.