Xbox One Reveal

[alanschu]

 

 

I also wish the publishers would hire more modern economists. I mean, it just feels like their entire business model has not really changed since the nineties, while the market has changed beyond recognition. It used to be that only the full price games were quality games and anything that cost less sucked (back in the Commodore 64 and Spectrum days). Nowadays it's almost the complete opposite! So called AAA games very rarely do anything for me while I am looking forward to much more modest titles like Grim Dawn and the likes.

 

The biggest difference is that if I'm on the fence about a game, I am ten times more likely to buy it if it's 20€ than if it's 40-60€. Thus, if other people are anything like me, the loss in short term profit is offset by us impulse buyers. It just must be better to get those 20€ than nothing at all.

 

Well, I'm likely not one to buy Skyrim nor Call of Duty (I haven't bought either of them), but a developer will lose a lot of of money if they opted to sell at $20 instead of $60 and you don't effectively triple your sales.  The thing about your impulse buy is that it's still applicable later.  It doesn't need to happen on day one if they end up doing pretty well with sales at triple the cost.  If they can sell to those people at $60, and then get you at $20 later, it's much better than selling to everyone at $20.

 

Further, while you and I may not consider a game like Skyrim or Call of Duty to be worth full price at release, a lot of other people do.

[Nepenthe]

Steam sales are pretty unreliable. There's no guarantee the particular game you want will be on sale. Its likely, but not certain. I imagine that makes quite a difference when you're dying to play a certain game.

 

I never buy anything on day one, pre-order or kickstart anything  - and the games that I would buy (like say Witcher 3) I'm better off waiting for the enhanced edition/patches. Its just not worth buying a game only to discover it'll need patches to work as you expect it to. Prices tend to drop fast (except on Blizzard games) so its not much of a wait.

I'm likely to pay the full price for a retail collectors edition of a game I desire, if the package is sufficiently appealing.

People start waiting for that steam sale and refuse to buy a game until it's available there... And then forget about it.

[alanschu]

 

People start waiting for that steam sale and refuse to buy a game until it's available there... And then forget about it.

 

 

Steam (finally!) added in the feature of alerting users that have it on their wishlist, so it's easier to not do that.  Although yeah, for a developer, someone forgetting about it outright would definitely not be good haha.

 

But the Steam sales also get people buying games that they likely will never play ever, so how it all falls down is something I can only guess at.

[licketysplit]

Because I agree with the people who say that it cheapens the product, just participating in this forum has been enough to convince me of it.

 

You mean the same argument that jealous EA rep made? The numbers make a stronger argument for me. Steam and GOG no doubt have to negotiate sale prices with the devs. Given how prevalent digital is becoming, and how long companies like Steam have been around, I don't see it going away any time soon, nor do I see devs complaining about it.

Edited July 5, 2013 by licketysplit

[Tale]

Because I agree with the people who say that it cheapens the product, just participating in this forum has been enough to convince me of it.

That seems a chicken/egg situation.

 

You're going to have a hard time convincing me that older games are cheapened by sales, and not that the sales reflect how they cheapened naturally. Especially when consoles have similar issues of games losing their value in the tail.

 

Really, the only decent way to grow audiences is by encouraging impulse buys. With larger franchises, people need a way to catch up without breaking the bank. And with smaller franchises, there's not enough word of mouth going around for the people on the fence to spend the full price.

 

How else can they get people to take a chance? Especially in an atmosphere of growing consumer distrust.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

Steam sales are pretty unreliable. There's no guarantee the particular game you want will be on sale. Its likely, but not certain. I imagine that makes quite a difference when you're dying to play a certain game.

 

I never buy anything on day one, pre-order or kickstart anything  - and the games that I would buy (like say Witcher 3) I'm better off waiting for the enhanced edition/patches. Its just not worth buying a game only to discover it'll need patches to work as you expect it to. Prices tend to drop fast (except on Blizzard games) so its not much of a wait.

I'm likely to pay the full price for a retail collectors edition of a game I desire, if the package is sufficiently appealing.

People start waiting for that steam sale and refuse to buy a game until it's available there... And then forget about it.

 

 

I know! But then if I could forget about it I probably didn't want to play it as much as I thought.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

How else can they get people to take a chance? Especially in an atmosphere of growing consumer distrust.

 

 

The distrust isn't misplaced. A game is much more expensive than a movie or a comic but is equally likely to be bad (even more so probably) and it can even be unusable (recent War Z scandal).

[alanschu]

 

Because I agree with the people who say that it cheapens the product, just participating in this forum has been enough to convince me of it.

That seems a chicken/egg situation.

 

You're going to have a hard time convincing me that older games are cheapened by sales, and not that the sales reflect how they cheapened naturally. Especially when consoles have similar issues of games losing their value in the tail.

 

Really, the only decent way to grow audiences is by encouraging impulse buys. With larger franchises, people need a way to catch up without breaking the bank. And with smaller franchises, there's not enough word of mouth going around for the people on the fence to spend the full price.

 

How else can they get people to take a chance? Especially in an atmosphere of growing consumer distrust.

 

 

Prices are specifically lowered over time because the prices eventually become elastic.  So yeah at some point prices need to come down.

 

The funny thing I find, however, is that they still did this despite Steam sales.  I never understood the justification for things like piracy because "This game isn't worth the full price" when eventually the price would come down.

 

It's not quite the same, though as the biggest advantage of Steam sales, however, is that the cost of changing prices is miniscule (compared to retail), and they can literally be done for one day which can really help impulse purchases.  It also makes it easier to put a game on sale on an even more extreme sale, which does happen from time to time.

 

 

I do think that people will need to alter their expectations somewhat, though.  It might just be personal bias speaking, but the way I approach digital purchases, especially sales, is I look at the price and conclude "Do I think it's worth that price?"  If so, I'll buy it.  A lot of things influence that decision, but I have learned to NOT get upset if I conclude "Yup it's on sale for $20 and that's so worth it" only to have it hit one of those one day $5 prices a couple days later.

[Bokishi]

Bump! Expecting my XBone tomorrow. Since I work at Disney Interactive I get a free copy of Forza and Ryse. I'm excited for Forza, Ryse maybe not so much

[ManifestedISO]

The iFixit tear-down of the One is pretty entertaining. Turns out the hard drive can be replaced ... although no one yet knows if the OS will recognize a new, unformatted drive.

 

Free Forza 5 ... that is f'n awesome.  

[alanschu]

Bump! Expecting my XBone tomorrow. Since I work at Disney Interactive I get a free copy of Forza and Ryse. I'm excited for Forza, Ryse maybe not so much

 

 

Nice.  I have a few coworkers that have taken tomorrow off and are at a midnight launch right now.

[Bokishi]

Just got it earlier, kind of an ugly black box design, I think xbox 360 design looked better

 

[ManifestedISO]

I think my 360 Slim is a tad sexier than the One, too, until I remember how much faster the new console is. 

 

I love that all-black Day One box. Nice job. I'm curious how Ryse plays ... I'll never know since I went blue this year. 

[Bokishi]

Well despite being linear and repititive, I think I can finally say that Ryse surpasses Crysis' outdoor graphics. It was made by Crytek anyway