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LemonSlice said: The problem is that the discounted and used AAA titles are plugging that middle. The very fact that a game enters retail at a lower price point devalues it in the eyes of many customers, and even if they don't have 60$ to spend, they see a similarly cheap only slightly older and discounted/used AAA title as a better value. Sad, very sad, but true. |
Indeed a very good point. Perhaps used games are the problem after all? :P
But it never seemed to be a problem in the past - games of all prices managed to sell alright.
Hell, the Simple 2000 series was a dedicated series of low-budget Japanese stuff that still saw physical releases and was (mostly) localised in Europe - I'm guessing mostly selling minimal copies but clearly enough to keep Midas Interactive afloat. I suppose they're definitely the lower end of "the middle" but there was a place for these games in the sixth gen that just doesn't exist anymore.
I guess it comes down to the lowered sense of game pricing coming from things like the App Store which has partly contributed to this. And development costs shooting up with HD development couldn't have helped too (although again, Compile Heart help to prove a point there about how that doesn't necessarily mean that sales-needed-to-break-even should shoot skyward).
I just wonder if this isn't mostly because of the cost of AAA games shooting up. In the sixth gen, the gap didn't seem so big. I always felt in the sixth gen that even though you could have two different series which probably had vastly different budgets (say, Halo 2 vs. Timesplitters 2) they could still both be sold at full price and people would buy them (obviously Halo sold far more, but Timesplitters sold "enough"). It doesn't feel like a similar comparison could be made these days, really. Everything shoots to be the next CoD or Halo, there's no ground for something lesser. Unless it's an indie release like Nexuiz or something, I suppose.
So effectively, by throwing so much money at AAA releases they've effectively destroyed the middle because you either go big or go home. Which I just find a massive shame. Sure, I love AAA titles and equally there's loads of lesser stuff that isn't great. But there were plenty of gems of middle-sized franchises too that just can't sustain themselves anymore, and it just sucks because many of those were games I loved. Ah well.
