| Dodece said: @theprof00 You are barely comprehensible, but I gather the phone you are using is a real piece of crap. That is good to know, because I thought you were having some kind of break down. You might understand it when you get to a better terminal. As for the other things you typed. I am sorry I just couldn't understand what exactly you said. |
I'm going to respond to your post first because it's far simpler, than to confront Happy.
You first acknowledged the possible implications of heavy bundling with regard to their affect on third party sales.
Some of your key points were that Sony was playing a shell up game wherein they dictate what sells and what doesn't, and another point was that with consumers being given 10 free games per year (and a normal 3 game attach rate per year), third parties are going to find it difficult to find space, possibly resulting in driving off third party developers.
A point you then make later is that third parties have difficulty selling their games at retail. Those sales are more desirable over bulk digital sales. I agree. You said it would be more and more difficult to subsist as a third party developer, given this scenario, while in a market that is being undercut by freeware.
So, to answer your points:
It's hard to quantify exactly how much is being lost here. We don't really have data telling us that free games will push retail games out of the way. Sure, if a consumer only intended on spending 200$ a year on games was forced to buy a Sony game, that would impede on left over income available for purchasing third party games. However, this is a bit different than saying the consumer only plans on buying three games a year. We can only really use a dollar value to quantify this, and so we cannot look at a gamer as being an "x number of games purchaser", but an "x number of dollars consumer". In that sense, you can see my problem. Free games don't impede on that spending.
The other problem is that the assumption of a "200$ spender" is a vague label applied to the whole of the demographic. Surely there are gamers that in some years spend 400, and some that only buy used, and some that only get 2 games per year, one for christmas and one for a birthday....for example. It would be suitable in many cases to say that in some years, when a lot of desirable games are released, more is spent. So the whole discussion is a rather grey determination of the facts to begin with. Nonetheless..
...what does impede on a "x dollar consumer" is the 50$ yearly subscription fee. This certainly cuts into spending. However...
....In one of my posts to you, I spoke about this next logical step in the discussion, which is, "is the ps+ offering in any way positive for third party developers".
What I had been attempting to explain was that the understanding of ps+ is just as grey as the market. PS+ allows for developers to show off previous installments to drum up interest in upcoming games. As evidence for this, look at the ps+'s additional offerings, such as
-early demos
-guaranteed beta entries
PS+ allows a dev like Gearbox to tell its marketbase, "hey, we have a new game coming out and it's pretty great. Here's the first game which was very well received. Please play and enjoy it, and hopefully, you'll be interested in our new game which we think is pretty awesome". PS+ also gives third parties a chance to deliver a "dlc platform", enticing people who were not necessarily interested in spending money on a full game, to maybe buy a multiplayer pass, or some skins. Believe it or not, there's a lot of people who aren't willing to throw down money for a game, but are totally content buying content for a free game they are given. In fact, it's the entire basis of free-to-play market, which recent studies suggest aren't as 'cheap' as previously thought (a majority of sales happens at 9.99 and upward)
PS+ can act as a nice boost to marketing awareness, and it can help sway consumers through letting them play more than the constrained framework of the demo. I don't think that third parties are being strong-armed, as you suggest, into licensing their games for 1$. I believe they are openly welcoming the opportunity to advertise their game, while getting paid to do so.
Xbox live pricing for a couple weeks of advertising, including moving video, and demos can run 500k$ for just a week or two. This offering allows ps+ to generate these companies sales while giving the consumers, really, a much better exposure to an upcoming game.
That's my two cents on that subject. PS+ has both positives and negatives in store for third party developers, and it will be difficult to ascertain side weighs more. One thing is certain, it is not easily obvious how ps+ affects third party sales, but I will trust you to understand that there are indeed positives involved.
