shams said:
I agree - but look what happened to the music industry. The Internet took over. There is too much FAT in the games industry - and digital distribution is the only real way to go, to ensure that more consumer dollars actually end up in the hands of developers. Leading to much lower prices, far greater unit sales, etc. Cut the retailers, distributors, marketers, manufacturers (etc) all out of the picture. The big AAA titles can land on the shelves - and this benefits them as well, as they get more shelf space, and less competition. ... One of the things I have noticed with my buying behaviour, is when prices get low enough - I not only buy more copies than I would at a higher price (no surprise there), I actually spend more revenue in total - and am happy to do it. I imagine I could spend 50% of my yearly gaming dollars on digital downloaded titles - to cover 90% of my total (unit) purchases. Then spend the other 50% on a few AAA titles, that are worth buying in the shops.
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The music companies spent a lot of time figuring out how to rationalize this for the modern digital distribution age... Now, unless they know that someone will be a hit, they only sign them to very short term, higher percentage of total sales contracts. They still have the same fail rates but the bet is hedged a lot more. Essentially, passing more risk to the artist because if they bomb they don't get the money and their contract is over.
Games will and are going more in that direction, and you are already seeing it with the Bioware/Pandemic and Bizzare buy out... Good studios will get security and commitment from publishers. Middle studios will get one contract at a time. The exception is Bungie... They are sort of doing a Prince type move...
