I just read that article and wanted to comment on the idea that an aftermarket supports demand for new games. If this holds true, and significant numbers of people only buy new because they expect to make back 20 dollars from a resale, isn't this an indicator that pricing is inappropriate? From personal experience, I don't pay full price for a game unless there is a substantial multiplayer component. If a game is single player only or can be "plowed through in a week" I wait for the price to drop. Couldn't the problem be resolved if single player and multiplayer components are offered separately at reduced costs? After all, If people are primarly re-selling single player focussed games (*implied by the article), these are the types of games that suffer most from cannibalization. Thus, developers will be discouraged from making these types of games if the aftermarket theory is true, affecting the types of titles we may have to choose from in the future. Regardless, I would still buy the new machine even if it did prevent used games from playing because I prefer to buy new games (often a discount) anyway.
Ran into a glitch with Mass Effect 3 on the PC, where right before I can get back to the guy to open his case on that Prothean mission, I can't seem to get down a fucking ladder. Son of a bitch.
Okay, so if the single-player is offered for $20, what would stop the used games market from offering it for $10, for instance? It's a basic economic principle, but you're not going to get rid of the secondary market simply by lowering prices, or even splitting up your one good into two new ones. As for pricing of games and whether it's accurate, that's a whole different can of worms, and something many smart economists haven't really figured out. My personal belief is that as with movies, concert tickets, and many other things, it's not entirely accurate, but there are some deep economic reasons why games are priced in this manner.
Did you not actually read the words that were in the quote? First of all, they were very clear that it was "impossible to know the balance" but what he says isn't bullshit - if fully half of Gamestop's used games sales are in credits and thus provably driven immediately back into new games, then what he says is true. Not to mention the credits are the only thing they can track - who knows how much of the cash is spent back in new games? The point is that the industry treats it as a net loss, when it is not. Lastly, your figures are not relevant as a comparison to this $1 billion number. You're comparing the entire used game market in the US and Europe to a single retailer's figures where we don't even know the geographic distribution. Was that US sales only? Worldwide? US and Europe?
I don't know about America, but Wal-Mart Canada has Mass Effect on sale for 30 bucks. I picked up mine on Thursday. Yeah its hard to combat. Activations codes can chip away at profits and discourage this, but digital distribution is the only real solution. I still think splitting up single and multi player portions is a good strategy, especially for encouraging people to download their games.
Some interesting thoughts on game economics from Gabe Newell: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiment ... be-newell/</a>
I did, but I don't think you did. He's saying that the roughly billion dollars in store credits at GameStop are not only put back into new games, but that without this influx, consumers wouldn't buy the new games they wanted at all. This is by no means an obvious thing, and needs to be shown with research and figures. Simply assuming the fact is very much bullshit, and bad economic/mathematical thinking. I think the effect does exist, but whether it's 10% or 100% is far from clear. And that obviously makes an enormous difference. Where is this proven anywhere in the article? He treats it as an assumption. Again, you can't just assume something that you're trying to prove. No shit, if you assume what you're trying to prove, you've gotten the "result" you wanted. Great? Used game sales are a net loss. And this is a very easy fact to demonstrate. I think what you were trying to say is that it's not a total loss, because while used game sales might sap $5 billion that would have gone towards new game sales, if we (generously) assume all store credits go to buying new games, that's an influx of $1 billion towards new game sales. However, in this example, the net loss is $4 billion. You're correct here; it's a single retailer. It's the biggest retailer, by far, and the one that offers more store credits than any other, but just one. So feasibly, if you took all the retailers in US and Europe, assumed that 100% of used game store credits go back into new game purchases that wouldn't have been purchased at all by the consumers otherwise, and also assumed that a small enough percentage of used game sales take away from new games sales, you come to the conclusion that store credits completely counteract the loss of used games to the new games industry all by themselves. Well, you got there through some seriously bullshit assumptions, and achieved a result that is demonstrably incorrect. Again, lousy economics. By the way, my personal opinion is that used games are great, and should be allowed to continue. But from an economic sense, the evidence appears to show they harm the new games industry. I'm open to research and figures that would suggest otherwise, but the reasoning in the article wasn't it. Digital distribution is the wave of the future and will continue to take up a greater and greater share of games sales. Hopefully, it's seen by publishers as an opportunity to offer a range of dynamic price points, (games going on sale and changing their price constantly over a period of years) as is typical in the PC market.
Jesus you're passive-aggressive. I have no rage and certainly no personal vendetta. I'm not even sure we've had an actual back-and-forth conversation, so I literally have no strong feelings towards you at all. You said something and I replied as to why I thought it was invalid.
I've always considered myself the aggressive-aggressive type. Anyways, isn't it hypocritical to call someone passive-aggressive and then whine and bitch over neg rep? If you want to do that, you can post in the "Funny Rep Comments", since there is a small but dedicated group using it as "the airing of petty e-grievances against KIMaster's mean red dots". Anyways, I would rather you just answer my post. I enjoy discussing economic issues. Forum e-drama? Not so much.
Nope, because I'm not bitching and whining. I'm stating that snarky and ridiculous comments like "save it for when you have an actual point" (when, in fact, I had a pretty clear point) sent off on private reps while we are, in the meantime, having a public discussion, is passive-aggressive.
So, are you going to post an on-topic reply about games, or continue derailing the thread with your rep point whining? Just curious.
Good to see your still in the thread derailing by'ness. Im not a fan of Gamestop having a huge monopoly on the second hand market but Im also not a fan of paying full price or next to it for a game that I don't absolutely need on launch day. Id recommend what Parker suggested and turn to Amazon for either brand new or drastically reduced priced used games. As for the game developers it's hard to seeing them do anything but doing what game consumers want. All other forms of digital entertainment, against the wishes of entrenched media producers for the most part, have started catering exclusively to the end consumer. I don't see how a modern company could do anything else.
Read the article that Aetius posted on the last page. Digital distribution with dynamic price points is a far preferable model for both publisher and consumer.
I don't disagree with the Gabe Newell article and his points, but think about where the guy is coming from and he's talking about the current PC market which is being held up primarily by Blizzard and Valve's Steam platform. I'm going to go and assume the people that are working off Steam have faster than average connections so their wait for downloading a game isn't that long (and their systems would be fast enough to process said connection.) Consoles, the majority of the gaming market, is way behind in this digital distribution curve. Even further away from splitting the games up to singleplayer/multiplayer. Killzone 3 just released their multiplayer a year+ after the main game and I haven't seen any real stats on how well it did. We probably wouldn't hear much about it unless MW3 did the same thing (which they're probably not.) Either way, let's get back to talking about actual games we're playing and less of this armchair theoretical economy bullshit no one on this board actually has any influence or knowledge about.
Well, there have been a lot of little changes to Mass Effect 3 that I'm still getting used to. Carrying more weapons is extending the cool down peroid of my powers, which is kind of annoying. Also, health is broken down into segments and once a segment is depleted it cannot regenerate. This ruins my 'strategy' of running into gunfights like a jackass and ducking behind cover right before getting killed. Insanity mode is going to be ridiculous. On the plus side, shields do seem to regenerate very quickly. I imported one of my ME2 game saves and started at level 25. I assume the enemies are scaled to match, because I haven't spent any upgrade points and am finding them difficult. A personal challenge of mine is to get as far as I can in the normal difficulty without using any upgrades, but I don't see that working out too well. The multiplayer can be tough as well, but I've been fortunate enough to be on teams with at least 1 very strong player. Are character unlocks awarded randomly through the packs you buy? I'm using the soldier class and unlocked the Turian, but not the Krogan. Also, are silver or gold medal games worth playing? I assume you fight through more waves or against larger ones, but 10 already seems like a lot and I have trouble with waves that have Banshees or Geth with flame throwers.
Unless you've got AT LEAST 3 strong players, Silver (nevermind Gold) is extremely tough to complete. The waves are the same it seems, but your enemies are exponentially tougher. And yes, the fucking Banshees are a nightmare. Still, I've found it pretty enjoyable, especially when you get teammates that aren't retarded. Yes, characters are randomly unlocked with the packs, and I've noticed the packs, what they cost and what they give you, have been changing on a weekly-ish basis. It's pretty addicting. I highly recommend you ME3 players give it a try for at least a couple of rounds.
What does that have to do with any of his points in the article? Speak for yourself. I do economics research for a living, and love talking about it, games included. On a related note, I'm very curious how the Tribes: Ascend free-to-play model will do. Will it have the 2-3% conversion rate to paying customers that most such games do, or the incredible 20-30% that was mentioned in the article for Team Fortress 2.
I bought the special jumbo pack and it was filled with 10 crappy pieces of 1-time use equipment, so I'm not buying that again. The spectre pack, however, unlocked the krogan for me, which was what I wanted. A teammate used a krogan and carried us to the finish with his shotgun and melee, so I want to give that a try. Another strong build seems to be the sentinel class with overload. I was in a 2-player squad with someone using that and we got to wave 10, but lost because we got overwhelmed while trying to hold down an objective. A geth with a cloaking device slipped by and ruined us. Surprisingly, I've spent more time in the multiplayer than the single player. On paper, fighting waves of enemies sounds boring, but I'm enjoying this. There are a lot of different enemies and occasionally you will be given objectives which break up some of the monotony. It's also very challenging. Out of all the matches I've played, I only successfully completed 3 of them, and that's on the bronze/lowest difficulty.
Is anyone else considering checking out this new rpg coming to the Wii, 'Xenoblade Chronicles'? I gave up on these JRPG type games a long time ago, I just can't get into them anymore these days. However the reviews from the European release of this game back in August '11 have all been really positive. I've got Friday off (the day it comes out on), so I think I may give it a shot, even though I've barely even touched ME3.
I actually imported the European version and installed homebrew on my wii to play it. It's a tremendous game in a lot of respects. The best part of the game is the huge open world. It's definetely in the running for best rpg for this console generation. There's still a lot of the jrpg tropes scattered through out it, but it's a solid mix of jrpg story telling and western rpg gameplay. The game is very long. I played it for about 50 hours, and am about 75% of the way through. Is there any specifics questions about it? I'll try to answer them the best I can.