Game Discounts, Sales And Bundles Are Toxic

I preordered supreme commander 2 (how could you go wrong after forged aliance+ new in game ai for each units +original creator having full control), yea put that in your pipe and smoke it for $50.

xcom enemy unknown, oh god was it buggy when it came out, played it a week just to finish my $50 and then left it for a year till longwar got good.

diablo 3, yea i played as monk in 1.0, get to inferno and run out of money in repairs...
 
ccmfreak2 said:
When a journalist makes a statement that a game isn't worth a particular cost, it's not because he doesn't understand the cost of development, it's because the journalist sees so many other BETTER games at the same or lower price point.
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Well, maybe this is true for SOME journalists.

But we have more than our share of the ignorant, over-opinionated kind who're making the statement simply because they don't understand the economics.
 
gunbust3r said:
My rules:

Never pre-order. NEVER

If it looks interesting to me and gets good reviews and is multiplayer maybe buy at full price. You don't want to be playing a game on empty servers if you wait 6 months.

If it's single player wait for a sale, I've got a huge backlog of games already.
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I've done it on the rare occasion I've been 100% certain I am going to buy a game as soon as it is launched, no matter what.

I can honestly say I have never read a game review in my life. The games press is complete wasted on me (with or without gamergate ethics concerns).

I know the types of games I am interested in, and I buy those games and only those games, the reviews be damned. Thus far I ahve never been excited about a title, and bought it to ahve it be a huge letdown, so I guess my method is wotrking for me.

Games I've bought on preorder in the last 20 years:

2011 - Deus Ex - Human Revolution

Because Deus Ex. The 2001 original was IMHO an industry transforming title, and one of the best games of all time. The interim sequels, not so much, but as soon as I heard they were making another Deus Ex, I knew I was buying it. I wasn't disappointed.


2011 - Red Orchestra 2 - Heroes of Stalingrad

Because eastern front, high realism FPS. The first game is still one of my all time favorites, and there was no way I wasn't immediately going to pick up the sequel. It is not without its disappointments (even RO2's realism mode has less realistic game mechanics than RO1, they finally made a classic mode, but no one plays it, and this game demands a full 64 player server) but it is still my top game and I play it weekly. Fantastic title, horrifying artillery, historic context, grim eastern front, demanding real team.play for success, makes this one of the best games I have played.

Takes some serious adjustment coming from a fast twitchy FPS as motion is more real world like (and interacts with world objects) but once the adjustment is over, other FPS:es just feel silly by comparison.

It's one of those where a good player can never carry the team. You need everyone on board.


2010 - Sid Meier's Civilization V

I've played every incantation of Civilization since it's original release in 1991 when I was 11 years old. I ahve loved every single one of them. Civ 5 had a few bugs on launch, but it was still an exciting new fresh experience, and it has rewarded me with hundreds upon hundreds of hours of entertainment since then. Even at $60, that's a fantastic cost per hour for entertainment, only ever beaten (for me) by my Half Life 1 purchase, which enabled me to play the free CS mod in college for thousands of hours.


2004 - Half Life 2

This one requires no explanation.




That's it. In the last 20 years (heck, 24 years since I started PC gaming) I have pre-ordered 4 titles, and I ahve been happy with every single one of them.

Now, what titles would I go out and pre-buy tomorrow?

Probably a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sequel, (unless my spidey sense tells me it's going to suck.) The next Deus Ex game probably. Civilization 6 (but none of that space Civ shit. I mean a real Civ, new engine) half Life 3, you know, just because. Any Red Orchestra eastern front expansions or new sequels (but none of that Pacific/Vietnam shit, must be Eastern Front!)

That's about it. Any other title will be on a wait and see basis, if - that is - I get around to buying it at all. (I probably won't)
 
So someone is barking at the depreciation of game prices. Wow... sorry, didn't think I'd want pay full price for the original DOOM, Ultima I, etc. either.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
DING DING DING

Just look at the current Batman release. It's shaping up to be a fiasco already. :mad:
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I preloaded it last night only because I had two free copies I got with video cards...

I probably would never have bought it, regardless of how discounted it got if not for the free codes. I never bought the previous batman title (titles?)
 
It's not a consumer's job to pay full price or above for anything. It's our job to get what we consider to be a good value for our money.
Games are a luxury item. Why the hell is someone complaining about people not wanting to pay full price on a luxury item if it's not something they need.
I've heard the same complaints with sales in other industries. It's like some new MBA approach on how to make more profit. Eliminate sales and somehow the profits will skyrocket. What they don't realize is that many people will not buy a luxury item if it's not heavily discounted or will turn to piracy. I can't wait until a copy tries this new method and fails miserably.
 
The moral of the story is, it doesn't matter if consumers get used to lower prices.

When your incremental product cost is as low as it is in digital distribution the old rules of unit cost go out the window. You are playing a volume game, not unit cost game.

Anyone who knows economics and business should have suspected this, but it was confirmed and now we know this because Gabe Newell said so in an interview (which I linked in my previous post).

The cheaper digital distribution games get, the profit per unit goes down, but the number of units go up, and since it costs next to nothing to produce more units, the total profits go up to.

It almost doesn't matter what price point you are currently at with a digitally distributed game. Lower the price, and you make more money. This is the lesson learned from Steam.

of course, at some point you get to the point where there are not enough people interested in a title to sufficiently expand volume by lowering price (after all, only 7 billion people on earth, and most of them don't own a gaming PC) but in most cases we are nowhere close.

So yes, consumers SHOULD expect prices to be lower, because its both good for consumers AND good for developers, and if this nitwit who wrote this article doesn't get that, he needs to find a new job, maybe selling big macs.
 
What I found to be toxic is this rampant "enhance edition" or whatever name they are giving it, where it's merely improved game mechanics, nicer graphics, and are being sold as a new game at full price (when it should have been patched into the original game).

Back then we could get Skyrim's HD texture for free, but by today's standard, that's worthy of a full price Enhance Edition. :eek:
 
Yakk said:
LoL... Broken PC games on release doesn't factor into their equation I guess...:rolleyes:

Pre-Orders, DLC... Nevermind just waiting 3-4 months, I wait for GOTY editions!
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I support this message. I do the same thing because I think buying a game Day 1 is just like buying into a beta test . . . , Day 1 customers buy the beta, and then they give their feedback, then the developer may or may not (but usually do) patch their game, and it takes a few patches to get it to where it should have been as a released product. By then, the game is $5-10 during the big Steam sales, and may have even hit the weekly Steam sale.

I get all the benefit, I save money, and it gives me plenty of time to attack the ol' backlog.
 
I'm not paying 60 bucks for a game I'll most likely get bored to in an hour max.
 
I HATE HATE HATE HATE DLC, particularly when games LAUNCH with DLC.
Why the hell am I paying $50 when I dont even get the full game at launch?
Oh because you are a greedy company.

Yeah, Ill wait for a Steam sale.

FWIW I only preorder 2 or 3 games a year, EVERYTHING else gets put on the watchlist.
 
Maybe they could release things at $20-$30 and have more people buy initially if that's what they are after.
 
gunbust3r said:
My rules:

Never pre-order. NEVER

If it looks interesting to me and gets good reviews and is multiplayer maybe buy at full price. You don't want to be playing a game on empty servers if you wait 6 months.

If it's single player wait for a sale, I've got a huge backlog of games already.
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Pretty sound logic as it keeps your purchases safe. I can go along with it, however, I don't follow it absolutely. There are certain game makers that have earned my trust. DC Projekt Red proved that in the Witcher series. If they made another game that caught my eye, I would risk a pre-order.

The makers of DiRT and GRID would also fall into that category for me, but I must admit that their quality is dropping off a bit.


The trend that annoys me the most right now is games stuck in perpetual pre-alpha (whatever the fuck 'pre-alpha' means). At first it seemed a great way to reward serious fans of a development project with early paid access. Hell, its hard to argue against how others choose to spend their money. Lately, it has become a crutch for shitty unpolished games that probably aren't going to make it to market as a properly finished product.
 
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