Mamoulian War

Lol, that may be the case! I would say most of the execs are doing that while outlining their expectations, and not only in gaming business

High cost as a piracy is bull***... If you think the game is to costly wait 6 - 12 months you can get the game in cheaper edition... I did that sometimes for console games, because i was "pure" PC gamer who changed 3 years ago with release of Wii... The biggest reason from my experience/point of view is that people pirate because of "collector's greed" (dont know better word for it)... Lot of people i know who download games, buy a lot of games aswell, but they download everything they think they will play, and as i know them, most of the games (about 80 - 95%) they download, they just burn on CD/DVD and put under the bed, without even installing it, because at the end they spend to much time playing the games they purchased legally...

Hmmm, the prices tend to be comparable for me. Because you live in North America... Steam for Europe sucks with prices compared to retailers... It's the same why i never ever buy games in Slovakia, tey just cost up to 20EUR more for new release than in UK!!! To hell even if i import stuff from HongKong it is still cheaper than buying game diractly at Slovakia... Not to talk about the regional locking of games, if i buy retail game with mandatory Steam activation during vacation in USA or Canada, if install it home the game can get locked out the steam account... that happened with few games in the past because publisher did not like people buying games for USD instead of EUR which is in most of the cases same number...

Believe me or not i am buying from UK with preorders (and i live in central europe) and every single copy i get directly in my home brought by postman 1 day before official release... all i have to do is open the door when the postman comes

That is pretty much the only reason people are still buying so many console games. If the publishers finally have their way and kill the console second-hand market then it will be hilarious to see them blame low sales on some other scapegoat(piracy maybe?) I firmly believe that all games should have demos(that FEAR2 demo was like the first PC demo of a big game in 3 months) and that people should only buy games that they think are actually worth the money.(maybe we'd get better games then) Retailer's take something in region of a 40% cut from a game which is sold new. The rest goes to publisher/developer etc... A second hand game is pure profit for the retailer. A game costing $50 once sold makes $20 for the retailer. I buy back that game for $15, and sell it on again at $30, that's just increased the retailers profit. Hence a game which cost $50 in the first place has now made $50 for the retailer, with a risk of $15, the actual folk who've worked on the product have made $30. The sale also only counts as a single unit sold. That's my basic issue with second hand games, I can understand why people buy second hand, it's cheaper so that's a no brainer, but the retailers are making an absolute killing while the developer probably see's what $10 of every unit sold. Naturally there is some room for movement, but those figures are around the correct figure. I agree with the idea of demo's in principle, but it's not always practical to develop a demo. Let's look at it this way: Retailer's take something in region of a 40% cut from a car which is sold new. The rest goes to car manufacturer etc... A second hand car is pure profit for the retailer. A car costing $5000 once sold makes $2000 for the retailer. I buy back that car for $1500, and sell it on again at $3000, that's just increased the retailers profit. Hence a car which cost $5000 in the first place has now made $5000 for the retailer, with a risk of $1500, the actual folk who've worked on the product have made $3000. And to my surprise i never ever seen any car manufacturer to complain about second hand sales... Myself I never ever sold a game i own, i do purchase mostly new and sometimes second hand (only when the game is not available anymore)... But there is one figure people should look at... If someone has yearly gaming budget of $300 he buys 6 new games, let's call him customer 1... that is $180 for publisher/developer (according to your 40% for retailers figure) If the same person sell all 6 games for $15 he get back $90. If the person is not a skinflint and adds another $10 he can buy 2 more games per year which means $60 more for publisher/developer. At the end publisher/developer get $240. Now look at the person which buys the second hand games...let's call him customer 2 the biggest question is why he is buying sencond hand games? the answer is easy he cannot afford paying full price for a game (i know many people in this situation who rather wait year or even two until the game gets into discount price)... So let's look at his budget... let's say he is a stupid customer and buys second hand games from retailer for $30... we used 6 games for the wealthy customer in 1st example so use this example here aswell... That means we have $180 budget for our less fortunate not-so-wealthy customer. from this budget publisher/developer get $0 Let's look if 2nd hand was eliminated.. budget $180 means 3 games which is $108 for developers (if you think that he will pile up his gaming budget just because there is no second hand market to buy as much games as before, you are clearly not married )... in this scenario the customer 1 was unable to sell any games so he bought only 6 games which means profit $180 for publisher/developer. both numbers together it's $288 profit... in this scenario it's clearly more profitable for publisher/developer. now look at customer 2 if he is acting smart... he does not buy from retailers, he buys directly from seller or from e-bay for $15 per game... for $180 he buys 6 games from customer 1 and because he still has $90 at hand he buys another 6 games from customer 3, which in ideal world were all first sales which means publisher/developer originaly sold 12 games for $600 which means $360 profit for them. This scenario is clearly the most profitable for publisher... both of these examples are representing two opposite sides of how secondhand market works... I let decide you which of these two examples are more fitting the reality... From my experience and observation (which might be totaly different from yours because i live in different part of the world), i can tell you, it's closer to the last example... So from my point of view elimination of second hand market will at the end lead into decreasing profits for publishers and developers...

Yes... very real... another article about it... http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090...usic-store.html

i can asure you it's not...

I might get a couple copies of that as well (one for me and one for my little sister), but only if it has no limited-installations or on-line activations. I'd sooner believe that Israel and Palestine will never ever start a war again...

Infinity Engine, especialy in Hi-Res resolutions looks much much better than most of the "modern" 3D engines... The designers just had to put more time into small details which made the areas look more alive... you can't see much of that nowadays most of the 3D worlds are static, with very few exceptions...

i played beta when it was out... i liked it a lot, the game was full of nice ideas, but from what i have seen and experienced it got ruined because to many people who played it played WoW aswell and they were not willing to pay 2nd subscription... that is fate of others MMO's aswell especialy if publishers are trying to get the same audience for their games...

There are. Stardock, for instence, has been opposed to DRM in the past. yes i know about stardock and CD Project Red and their www.gog.com aswell, I apparently missed "more" in the post above

Maybe i came to that conclusion the same way like you did came to conclusion that i am a fanboy so looks like we are both wrong :D Peace

People who disagree with your assessment of a game are not necessarily fanboys... Disagreeing with my assessment doesn't cause me to consider them a fanboy. Lines like "but i enjoyed every single line in that game" cause me to consider them a fanboy. I consider a fanboy to be someone who simply reveres a game without acknowledging its failure and problems. Every game has failures and problems. I never said the game was flawless, i just said i enjoyed every single line what's wrong with it? can't be someone happy about so much in-depth dialogue trees never before and never after seen in any other game??? That experience was and stays unique in my gaming "career"... i know if i did not play the game, i would miss a lot!!!... There are few things i did not liked about PS:T, for example i hated that everytime i started the game i had to start as a Fighter... And in all games i always play caster classes... But that minor glitch did not destroy the overall joy in me which i had whole the time during the play... that feeling is very seldom, and when you get it, you know you are playing something you will never forget... during last 20 years i had that feeling maybe on 8 or 10 other games...

You might be hating it, but i enjoyed every single line in that game i would kill to see something like that released again... but will not happen again... kids nowadays are to lazy to read, be it books lines in games or even newspaper... this game helped me a lot with learning english aswell (not native speaker)

there was one already http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/Products/PSX/pong/

if i do remember correctly i seen lot of ME ads in german comercial TVs in prime time when it was released.. and that is pretty expensive

1 million marketing costs are not very much over the top (do not forget about the world outside USA, where you have to pay for marketing stuff aswell)... compared to left 4 dead its nothing... http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/42138/Le...ion-Ad-Campaign

I know you hate the game and all, but don't start going off and spouting off random numbers now. nope that is simple math... try counting with me... my development costs are 25 millions (i bet that the number was bigger but we leave it down at this) add the marketing costs (i will be low again and say 1 million) how many gameboxes do you have to sell to get the money back?

You know that 80-90% of ME Xbox sales was before Bio was bought up right?

You are forgetting that they invested 800 million into ME PC and DAO IP's so they pretty much covered all Bioware's developing costs

If you realy think that the securom deal was less than few millions you are pretty naive and you can bet EA expected at least double if not triple the sales on PC

ME sold 2,5 million units on the 360 alone. Add the PC sales, and you have 3 million. Now don't tell me those aren't good numbers. you do know that EA has not seen a single dime from the Xbox release? so if they even sold 500k (which i realy doubt) ME PC that is for EA surely disapointing release... Boy, you really have some nerve. ME (PC) was the deal for EA! Just imagine, they only had to spend money for the conversion! And SecuRom and activation servers + their maintenance + staff who must solve billions of problems with DRM...

ME sold 2,5 million units on the 360 alone. Add the PC sales, and you have 3 million. Now don't tell me those aren't good numbers. you do know that EA has not seen a single dime from the Xbox release? so if they even sold 500k (which i realy doubt) ME PC that is for EA surely disapointing release...

I just wish there would be people like him in the gaming industry http://www.dailytech.com/UMG+Executive+Say...rticle13919.htm the most interesting quote from article...

Sorry but you are wrong... Bioware and Pandemic was purchased as one entity... But serves them right... If you dance with wolves, be prepared to get eaten... and Bioware?... I bet EA was realy dissapointed with the sales numbers of Mass Effect...