Publishers and their used games gripes.

[jp1]

I think the idea of the company being paid a second time on the used sale of a game is bullshit. I also think that games are grossly overpriced. Here's why...

Yes games used to cost more money. They also cost A LOT more to manufacture and distribute and sold fewer copies. Optical media is cheap, light, and small compared to cartridge media of the past. Some of those savings should have been passed on to the consumer and not just looked at as another way to increase profits.

Game developers today are working with development kits that make their jobs a lot easier than the game developers of old. The old developers that had to slave over assembly and be creative instead of using a prebuilt engine and tweaking it into "Same as the last FPS but with a new twist." I know there are still some great and creative developers that put out groundbreaking games that actually do utilize new ideas but they are fewer and fewer. Still, even they have an easier job than the people who were doing it in the past. Because of this gaming companies should be able to produce games more quickly and for less money than they used to. I realize that doesn't apply to all games but you don't see them dropping the price on something just because it is piggy backing another game and utilizing the same engine.

Game companies do have multiple revenue sources now that they didn't have in the past. There are things like steam, virtual console, playstation network, xbox live, and countless other services like gamefly which must purchase an immense amount of games to support it's rental base. Not to mention that good games and franchises often get re-released in compilations or by themselves on newer consoles at full price and gain another full scale of revenue. Then there is download content and online subscription fees.

Intellectual property needs to have some hard limits put in place. It should be limited to the license to create and distribute and not an ownership of the consumers physical media. If I purchase a copy of a game/movie/cd I should own outright that singular copy and be able to do anything I please with it. Even make more copies for my own personal use. The only thing I should not be allowed to do it make additional copies and distribute them for profit or otherwise. These companies want to take our rights away. Imagine if this mindset spread to every commercial venture and you couldn't have full control of your home because it was the intellectual property of the architect who designed it.

[ZeroAX]

I think the idea of the company being paid a second time on the used sale of a game is bullshit. I also think that games are grossly overpriced. Here's why...

Yes games used to cost more money. They also cost A LOT more to manufacture and distribute and sold fewer copies. Optical media is cheap, light, and small compared to cartridge media of the past. Some of those savings should have been passed on to the consumer and not just looked at as another way to increase profits.

Game developers today are working with development kits that make their jobs a lot easier than the game developers of old. The old developers that had to slave over assembly and be creative instead of using a prebuilt engine and tweaking it into "Same as the last FPS but with a new twist." I know there are still some great and creative developers that put out groundbreaking games that actually do utilize new ideas but they are fewer and fewer. Still, even they have an easier job than the people who were doing it in the past. Because of this gaming companies should be able to produce games more quickly and for less money than they used to. I realize that doesn't apply to all games but you don't see them dropping the price on something just because it is piggy backing another game and utilizing the same engine.

Game companies do have multiple revenue sources now that they didn't have in the past. There are things like steam, virtual console, playstation network, xbox live, and countless other services like gamefly which must purchase an immense amount of games to support it's rental base. Not to mention that good games and franchises often get re-released in compilations or by themselves on newer consoles at full price and gain another full scale of revenue. Then there is download content and online subscription fees.

Intellectual property needs to have some hard limits put in place. It should be limited to the license to create and distribute and not an ownership of the consumers physical media. If I purchase a copy of a game/movie/cd I should own outright that singular copy and be able to do anything I please with it. Even make more copies for my own personal use. The only thing I should not be allowed to do it make additional copies and distribute them for profit or otherwise. These companies want to take our rights away. Imagine if this mindset spread to every commercial venture and you couldn't have full control of your home because it was the intellectual property of the architect who designed it.

um dude. Today's games = tons and tons of HD art which costs a LOT.

[jp1]

So artwork was cheap on old games? I would have thought that all the hand drawn stuff would have been just as expensive. I don't know anything about the costs of artwork but I don't see why current gen games would cost any more.

[yomomma1]

So artwork was cheap on old games? I would have thought that all the hand drawn stuff would have been just as expensive. I don't know anything about the costs of artwork but I don't see why current gen games would cost any more.

jp1, if you are saying that current gen games don't cost more to produce then you haven't read on the subject. Many developers are having trouble with the costs associated to produce HD games. This is why you see few JRPGs for 360, PS3. And so many for psp, ds.

[yomomma1]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... to-Develop

Time=money.

[jp1]

No, I'm saying they cost less to manufacture and distribute. I'm saying they should cost less to produce. It's the fault of the video game industry if they can't get their business model right not the consumer.

I would bet also that any info provided by the game publishers about cost of production is inflated to compensate for the inflated game costs. You can't believe that the masses of re-skinned games on the same engine all cost $20 million (picking a number from thin air) to produce.

I'm not saying that something put out by Square-Enix or a comparable publisher doesn't warrant the price tag. There are a lot of games that should cost $60 but there are even more that should be sub $10 titles.

EDIT: Consider this, do you consider today's games better than those of the 16 bit era assuming they are more expensive to produce? Can a game be produced for less money and be good?

[yomomma1]

Didn't N64 games cost more than PSone games?. I can't remember and don't know what PSone games used to cost. Also if a team of 200+ are working on a game for 2 years, it gets pricey. Edit: A game like deadly premonition should cost 19.99 and it does. But it doesn't cost nearly as much to make. Edit Edit: saw your edit. This isn't about whether games were better in whatever bit than now. it is about the cost to make the game. And it costs more to make an HD game.

[Jrecee]

Technology improved too fast. Everyone was trying to outdo eachother on tech specs and be first out the door with the latest system. To the point where now it's normal to lose money on a console because the technology is so new.

But they finally seemed to have realized this, which is why the current generation is lasting longer than previous ones. Look at the original Xbox, if this was last generation we'd have gotten the Xbox 720 a year ago.

Then look at the wii. Nintendo went against the grain by only slightly upgrading the power of their new system, and it worked. Wii games are cheaper than ps3 and 360 games to buy. And they're cheaper to produce.

I personally think Nintendo should go a step further with their next system and simply release the SNES 2.

[jp1]

Didn't N64 games cost more than PSone games?. I can't remember and don't know what PSone games used to cost. Also if a team of 200+ are working on a game for 2 years, it gets pricey. Edit: A game like deadly premonition should cost 19.99 and it does. But it doesn't cost nearly as much to make. Edit Edit: saw your edit. This isn't about whether games were better in whatever bit than now. it is about the cost to make the game. And it costs more to make an HD game.

Well, it is about if they are better or not to me. If they were actually better now then I could justify the price point. I don't really care about the costs of production and all of that. It is the end product that interests me as a consumer. A few of the new games that come out might justify a $60 price tag but the vast majority of them do not.

Also, are you trying to say that they do a good job of pricing budget titles? Deadly Premonition should cost that and so should a TON of the games that don't. Also, digital downloads costing the same amount as hard copy games is bullshit. Not that it's relevant to the topic at hand I just forgot to mention it earlier.

Would you pay more to see a movie that cost more to produce? Would you go see a shitty movie that cost a lot to produce and be happy about it?


Check the iphone/ipod touch for a reasonable pricing scheme. Even Square-Enix games rarely jump over $20 if ever. Some of the games are quite good as well.

[Flake]

Check the iphone/ipod touch for a reasonable pricing scheme. Even Square-Enix games rarely jump over $20 if ever. Some of the games are quite good as well.

That's not a good comparison. Iphone apps are way cheaper to produce for market than console releases. No expensive development kits, licensing fees, or ESRB ratings required.