Pemalite said:
biglittlesps said:
Pemalite said:
biglittlesps said:
Pemalite said:
Price is a big factor.
The cheaper the price, the less weight people give to reviews and more games they buy.
Also, sales like what are on Steam... Actually increases profits, Valve stated this before, but after a sale, the sales rate is increased from before the sale, thus during and after the sale, the developer gets more money, this is something Microsoft and Sony needs to push for, no one does a games sale like Valve does and it really is good for everyone.
People only have finite sized wallets, prices for games have increased slowly, massively with all the DLC/Expansions/Pay Walls, just unfortunately some things needs to give, usually the first is less game purchases, more obscure developers end up missing out. |
Yes, Price is a factor but you should realize that there are many people who are depending on gaming industry in retail games which is why it has high price compared steam digital sales which serves only three (Steam, developers and publishers). If the Console do the same then lot of people around the world will lose jobs and only Developers/Publishers will earn profits. Consoles are doing as much as they can to match digitial prices without impact on retails with their deals/sales every month.
Steam may have increased Indie sales with their deals but not many AAA sales compared to Consoles have mostly.
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Retail stores are partly at fault.
Over the years before Steam came along they constantly reduced the amount of shelf space dedicated to PC games, it actually reached a stupid state, piracy began to run rampant.
Then Steam came along and solved all of the PC gamers problems.
Besides, Brick and Mortar stores may have stopped supporting PC games, but dozens of online business's have sprung up dedicated to that target demographic, like Green Man Gaming, Gamers Gate, Good Old Games and the plethera of CD Key websites.
It's Capitalism at it's finest, if there is demand, then that demand will be met by new business's, if you neglect the demand and don't change with the market conditions and fail, then you deserve to fail, that shouldn't be something that's prevented by government bailouts or special market conditions.
Besides, the "digital" price matching is pretty laughable, you looked at a new released game on the Xbox Live Network? It's usually the same price or more expensive than the version you can find in store, digital should be cheaper by default, there is no packaging, shipping, manufacturing or other extra's like manuals, guides and such that you're getting.
As for the last line on your post, it's difficult to understand it, could you elaborate? From what I can understand you're basically saying that AAA games don't benefit which is ironic, because even AAA games on Steam have benefitted from the sales, hence why Valve is happy to discount it's own franchises which have sold millions of copies already.
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They do for a reason and its to balance the Retail and Digital. If they go cheaper in digital most of them will buy digital games then their retail sales will be less so the people who depend on this will be doomed. Gaming industry should provide help as many as possible with jobs instead of cutting the middle man and giving the games very cheap in digital.
AAA games benefit from steam sales but not makes great returns like Console sales does for the developers. Consoles can't do same sales very fast like Steam because it will make the retail games to be fade away along with the business of retailers and manufacturers who depend on them( which PC does not has any more like you said due to piracy).
Xbox Live may not have but did you see PSN sales every weeek? They are providing very reasonable deals and sometimes great ones which happens every week.
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You're missing the point, by balancing the retail and digital, they're trying to defy one of the amazing concepts of capitalism.
Capitalism when it's in full swing and there are no influences brings consumers more choice, lower prices and more convenience because of increased competition which also spurrs on more innovation.
There shouldn't be any help for the middle man, let them fail if they can't compete, when capitalism is working in full swing with no interferance, it will create more jobs as more competitors can enter the market.
As for AAA games not making great returns like they do on console? Well. PC games are more profitable to begin with.
For instance a PC developer if they so wished, can release a game on none of the major networks.
Wanna know how much Microsoft and Sony steal out of every game sold? You're looking at something like 30%, then they have to pay to have DLC and patches put out too.
For example EA sell their digital games via their own digital store origin on the PC, thus every game sold is 30% more money in their pockets, they don't have additional patches and dlc costs on top of that either, thus in turn more money trickles to the developer.
The consumer also pays (Without additional discounting) $10 less on PC than on Console for a new released game and the Developer can still end up with more money than from the equivalent sale on console.
As for PSN sales every week... Maaaaate... You really don't know what a sale is do you?
Steams sales discounts thousands of items/games all at once, remember Steam has more games than the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and the majority of it is discounted, let that sink in for a moment.
That's then compounded by mid week and weekend sales.
You also have other sales pop-up all the time.
At this current time, 68 games/DLC/addons/stuff are discounted on Steam.
The Autumn/Spring Sale is only a few months away (Again, thousands of stuff will be discounted.)
Then you have other sales from Humble Bundle, Green Man Gaming, Gamers Gate, Direct 2 Drive, Gamefly, Origin, uPlay, Good Old Games, Desura, Amazon and probably dozens more, basically, if you're buying a PC game at full price, then you really are doing it wrong.
The consoles can't compete on the PC's heavy discounting because of the much larger amounts of competition, again, thanks to capitalism, there arne't any restrictions to appease the brick and mortar and that's the way it should be, it's better for everyone.
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