Are you ready to go entirely digital?

[Ail]

CDiablo said:

Ail said:

 

 PS : it's amazing to see the numbers of people opposed to digital, especially with what's happening to the book market. Book readers are some of the most avid collectors and see how fast some of them are switching to all digital........( I have a collection of 1400 scifi-fantasy books and I went all digital 18 months ago and since then I'm reading 5 times as much as before and I don't miss my physical copies at all anymore...)

 

With all due respect you are comparing a $60 game to (Im a idiot who doesnt read outside of comics) I guess $5-$20(between paper and hard). I assume Kindle books are max $15 but closer to $5.....either way spending $5 to not own something (or $1 for MP3's) is throwaway money to most people $40-$60 is not.

 

I wrote this in yesterdays(and the once monthly) "do you agree with companies trying to kill the used industry" topic. I buy new in %99 percent of the time when its feasable(not paying $100 for some rare game just to open it). When I lose the right to resell, lend, trade (I have been lucky to have a job which allows me to keep my games and still buy new) value drops. I also dont want to lose the right to play a game tied to my account while a friend plays a different game tied to my account(which steam does not allow even though we are in the same house). Once those rights are taken from myself and gamers the value of the game dramatically drops. If I could buy a physical Copy of Skyrim for PC that lets me keep the rights stated above I would pay $60. SInce its on a shitty DD system I will wait for it to drop to $10. I have other games and things to keep me busy while that happens. DD games(as the current Steam model stands) are not worth more than $20 max. I know a lot of gamers that feel the same.

Prices of the production of games are going to continue to rise. Publishers are not going to want to give up profits and prices are going to stay stable. Look at XBL game prices. Plenty of games that have been around since the launch of the system are still the same price today as they were at launch. Many 360 Games on Demand are $10-$40 more than what can be had in store. I think this mindset from publishers will result in less games being made, less new IP's and less chances being taken on big games(the throwaway $1-$5 iPhone market will still do fine). The price and restrictions due to the DD system will result in less people partaking in the games industry. The contiuning greed and high expectations of publishers will be the death of the big game industry. I hope I am wrong.

 

 

The thing is publishers actually make more money on digital sales than on retail sales.

So if the costs are going to keep rising, it would be to our advantage to use  media that gives a higher share to publishers.

Typicale revenue sharing for digital is 70-30. Publishers gets 70% of the final price, Sony or XboxLive get the other 30%.

In a retail environment it's more 50-50 or 60-40 depending on the product, my guess is for games it's most likely 60% for publishers, 40% for the retailers. ( it's not 70-30 or you wouldn't have retailers doing 30% discount on release day like Amazon does). And out of its 60% the publishers still has to give a share to Sony or Microsoft...

 

 

And finally what everyone is arguing against has already happened to the PC, and that has not killed the PC gaming market. You still get boxed releases of most games but in practice few retailers carry them anymore because of how small the market for boxed games has become...