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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Doom, Seriously.

Although its a good thing(?) that MS was able to secure the timed exclusive in Rise of Tomb Raider, but its made me realize something truly terrifying about this new generation.

Money is starting to matter more than gamers.

Please Understand, when I say this I'm not saying money wasn't always important. Rather, Gamer's money is starting to matter a whole lot less. Which means decisions are made with the understanding that gamers purchasing games isn't very profitable.

With Square Enix, they were disspointed with the profit of the Tomb Raider (2012) even though it sold well, and now they where happy to take a deal for timed exclusivity, when it would obviously hurt sales. One could surmise that MS money, was more guaranteed, and it would be more profitable then if they released multiplat from the start. In other words, MS money mattered more than the profit they would make from selling on a larger platform, because every major platform, and when I say major I mean PS3, 360, PS4, Wii U, and PC, has a bigger userbase.

Generally speaking, the common understanding of how multiplats and exclusives work is that the console with the largest userbase, will get the most third party and exclusive support, but both EA and SE, two publishing giants of West and East respectively are getting behind the Xbox. At the very least it shouldn't be this easy, especially when we are looking at 2:1 globally.

Look at the entire mobile industry, the advent of pay2win, microtransactions, and freemium games lends cresedence to the idea that these publishers don't care about profit from sales anymore and are instead looking at ads and microtransactions as main sources of profit.

If publisher's have lost faith in the consumers ability to sustain them, then its only a matter of time till the industry shifts its focus and downsizes, and this freemium industry is one that consoles cannot sufficiently exist in. Sure diehards will still get consoles, but publishers are going to be making games similar to those found on Mobile, and their might not be a need for a physical console to play these kind of games.

Ultimately, this right here, this is doom for the console industry.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

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The day we can no longer vote with our wallets, that is the day I quit gaming.



You can add Season passes, Early access and Kickstarter to that. Instead of taking the risk and make a good product that sells, publishers rather get the cash up front.

The next step is more subscription services like EA access. MS is already more interested in the cash cow that gold live is and Sony has followed this lucrative business model. Use exclusives and 'free' games to attract people to your subscription service. This only leads to less game sales overall.

Dunno if that's doom for the industry. Publishers still need to keep you interested enough to pay them a monthly fee. There will be some downsizing, owning multiple consoles is more attractive if that doesn't mean you also need multiple subscriptions for the full experience.



SvennoJ said:
You can add Season passes, Early access and Kickstarter to that. Instead of taking the risk and make a good product that sells, publishers rather get the cash up front.

The next step is more subscription services like EA access. MS is already more interested in the cash cow that gold live is and Sony has followed this lucrative business model. Use exclusives and 'free' games to attract people to your subscription service. This only leads to less game sales overall.

Dunno if that's doom for the industry. Publishers still need to keep you interested enough to pay them a monthly fee. There will be some downsizing, owning multiple consoles is more attractive if that doesn't mean you also need multiple subscriptions for the full experience.

I mean't doom for the console industry, subscription based services don't really need physical devices unless its like streaming and really thats only in tech that doesn't natively support it, e.g roku in tvs without wifi.

On PCs and mobile, console like things wont be neccessary.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

This is nothing new. Customer's money hasn't been enough for a long time. Why else do you think publishers are always on the lookout for new opportunities to make money? DLC, micro transactions, subscriptions, season passes, legendary editions. All designed to press more money out of the consumer than they would've paid.

That's either because making games is expensive or because they're inefficient with the money they're getting.

It has been happening for the whole last gen. This gen is only capitalizing on the fact that certain money getting techniques are institutionalized now.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

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vivster said:

This is nothing new. Customer's money hasn't been enough for a long time. Why else do you think publishers are always on the lookout for new opportunities to make money? DLC, micro transactions, subscriptions, season passes, legendary editions. All designed to press more money out of the consumer than they would've paid.

That's either because making games is expensive or because they're inefficient with the money they're getting.

It has been happening for the whole last gen. This gen is only capitalizing on the fact that certain money getting techniques are institutionalized now.

It definetly started last gen, but the issue is that it started with this gen. If anything, these changes are increasing at a more rapid rate then ever before. This rampant mobilization might be what's best for buisness, but its not good for gamers, and its definetly not good for conventional consoles.

Hence teh doom is real



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

I actually think that this is a smart and safe decision on part of SE. I may be the only one to think this way, but I think I'd do the same if I was working at SE. Crazy? Here is my train of thoughts:

Christmas 2015, what massive games hit the market alongside the new TR? Halo 5 and Uncharted 4. They will both be in the centre of attention of XO/PS4 fans respectively. Will the PS4 gamers be interested in TR? Don't think so. They will get their Indiana Jones fix with Uncharted and will look for a different experience as their second choice. On the other hand Halo 5 will move a sick amount of consoles (in NA) and gamers playing an s-f FPS game are more likely to pick up TR in the search for a different experience. This is why I think SE thought that TR won't really explode on PS4. No matter how good it is, it will be totally overshadowed by U4. In this instance it's much better to take the MS money, make TR a timed exclusive and release on PS3/PS4 after half a year or so, when PS4 people already put U4 behind them and will be ready for a similar experience. I believe this would give SE more profit than releasing multiplat and getting obliterated by Uncharted on PS4.

At least this is what I'd do. I wouldn't agree to totally ignore PS consoles, but I'd agree to delay the release of these versions. They'd sell decent even when released later on and MS money would more than make up for the people who ignore the game because of the delay.

It really comes down to the sum of money MS paid and whether SE is allowed to release the game on PS3/4 later on or not.



Wii U is a GCN 2 - I called it months before the release!

My Vita to-buy list: The Walking Dead, Persona 4 Golden, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, TearAway, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, History: Legends of War, FIFA 13, Final Fantasy HD X, X-2, Worms Revolution Extreme, The Amazing Spiderman, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate - too many no-gaemz :/

My consoles: PS2 Slim, PS3 Slim 320 GB, PSV 32 GB, Wii, DSi.

Gamers refuse to pay more than $60 for a game (games don't sell much more than in PS1/2 gen, but need way larger developing and especially advertising budgets these days), so yes, publishers don't make enough money on game sales to sustain themselves.



Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
vivster said:

This is nothing new. Customer's money hasn't been enough for a long time. Why else do you think publishers are always on the lookout for new opportunities to make money? DLC, micro transactions, subscriptions, season passes, legendary editions. All designed to press more money out of the consumer than they would've paid.

That's either because making games is expensive or because they're inefficient with the money they're getting.

It has been happening for the whole last gen. This gen is only capitalizing on the fact that certain money getting techniques are institutionalized now.

It definetly started last gen, but the issue is that it started with this gen. If anything, these changes are increasing at a more rapid rate then ever before. This rampant mobilization might be what's best for buisness, but its not good for gamers, and its definetly not good for conventional consoles.

Hence teh doom is real

The problem is that people don't buy enough games at launch price. If people bought like double as many games on average we probably would have less such techniques.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

Scisca said:
I actually think that this is a smart and safe decision on part of SE. I may be the only one to think this way, but I think I'd do the same if I was working at SE. Crazy? Here is my train of thoughts:

Christmas 2015, what massive games hit the market alongside the new TR? Halo 5 and Uncharted 4. They will both be in the centre of attention of XO/PS4 fans respectively. Will the PS4 gamers be interested in TR? Don't think so. They will get their Indiana Jones fix with Uncharted and will look for a different experience as their second choice. On the other hand Halo 5 will move a sick amount of consoles (in NA) and gamers playing an s-f FPS game are more likely to pick up TR in the search for a different experience. This is why I think SE thought that TR won't really explode on PS4. No matter how good it is, it will be totally overshadowed by U4. In this instance it's much better to take the MS money, make TR a timed exclusive and release on PS3/PS4 after half a year or so, when PS4 people already put U4 behind them and will be ready for a similar experience. I believe this would give SE more profit than releasing multiplat and getting obliterated by Uncharted on PS4.

At least this is what I'd do. I wouldn't agree to totally ignore PS consoles, but I'd agree to delay the release of these versions. They'd sell decent even when released later on and MS money would more than make up for the people who ignore the game because of the delay.

It really comes down to the sum of money MS paid and whether SE is allowed to release the game on PS3/4 later on or not.

No, I agree it is good for Square Enix.

That's the problem, it shouldn't be.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank