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Forums - Gaming - Warren Spector Said If Publishers Didn't Overcharge For Games People Wouldn't Have To Buy Them Used

yo_john117 on 10 June 2013
Zero999 said:
yo_john117 said:
I agree 100%. People wouldn't have to buy used if games cost less from the get-go. That is a big part of the reason why I think games will get cheaper in general when the inevitable digital only era arrives.

it's already imoral to charge the same price for a digital game, since the download version doesn't feature disc, box and other lesser costs. so at minimum, digital sales should be $10 less than phisical copies.

I think it depends. When digital services first come out, it is more of a convenience so they charge more. But as something becomes mostly digital, they should (and do) become cheaper than retail (or at least have way more sales than retail).



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oniyide on 10 June 2013
gigantor21 said:
The whole macroeconomic excuse devs use to justify costs is a load of shit.

If you're really going to be technical about it, that argument is invalid in the States where wages have stayed pretty much flat for 90% of the country since the 70s. Adjusted for inflation, people don't have much more to spend on video games than they did back in the NES days. Family incomes have thus been buttressed by other factors, like women entering the workforce and people relying more on credit.

Beyond that, the economic trends in the country are no excuse for out of control AAA budgets. Very few games deserve to be budgeted around sales of millions of copies just to break even. And yet publishers keep chugging along anyway, regardless of how many disappointing financial quarters or fiscal year results they get when their lofty goals slam into reality.

Even Iwata was whining about how threatened they feel about people only spending 99 cents on a game, saying that it "devalues" gaming as a whole. I, for one, feel that if stuff like Angry Birds is able to turn people away from spending $60 on a console game, then console games clearly weren't that valuable to begin with. It would be better to bring costs down as a safeguard rather than complain about consumers wanting the best deal--something that's been true for every industry as long as commerce has existed.

God damn this is brilliant and is that Christina Hendricks as your avatar?



oniyide on 10 June 2013
yo_john117 said:
Zero999 said:
yo_john117 said:
I agree 100%. People wouldn't have to buy used if games cost less from the get-go. That is a big part of the reason why I think games will get cheaper in general when the inevitable digital only era arrives.

it's already imoral to charge the same price for a digital game, since the download version doesn't feature disc, box and other lesser costs. so at minimum, digital sales should be $10 less than phisical copies.

I think it depends. When digital services first come out, it is more of a convenience so they charge more. But as something becomes mostly digital, they should (and do) become cheaper than retail (or at least have way more sales than retail).

you keep saying this, but ive yet to see ANY evidence of it being true. Music went digital awhile ago. Eve, cheapest price is 7.97 bucks new,2 cents less than the digital version. books, hunger games i can buy new for 2.07 dollars, kindle? 5 bucks more than twice as much. Movies are a bit complex, Transformers 3 10 bucks digital, DVD version new is 8.50. Blu ray 13 bucks, but the value is still better since the bluray comes with DVD AND digital in the first place, with those special features, so in that case i dont see why someone wouldnt buy the Bluray.



yo_john117 on 10 June 2013
oniyide said:
yo_john117 said:
Zero999 said:

it's already imoral to charge the same price for a digital game, since the download version doesn't feature disc, box and other lesser costs. so at minimum, digital sales should be $10 less than phisical copies.

I think it depends. When digital services first come out, it is more of a convenience so they charge more. But as something becomes mostly digital, they should (and do) become cheaper than retail (or at least have way more sales than retail).

you keep saying this, but ive yet to see ANY evidence of it being true. Music went digital awhile ago. Eve, cheapest price is 7.97 bucks new,2 cents less than the digital version. books, hunger games i can buy new for 2.07 dollars, kindle? 5 bucks more than twice as much. Movies are a bit complex, Transformers 3 10 bucks digital, DVD version new is 8.50. Blu ray 13 bucks, but the value is still better since the bluray comes with DVD AND digital in the first place, with those special features, so in that case i dont see why someone wouldnt buy the Bluray.

On average prices for digital are the same as retail (except when that medium is still mostly physical sales, then digital is more expensive). But the thing that really sets digital apart are the sheer number of sales that they have. 

Music is probably 20/80 or 30/70 in regards to physical/digital and they have quite a lot of sales every week. I know Amazon and Google Play always have deals of the day/week and plenty of other sales where you can get full albums between 99 cents to $4.99. Being able to buy individual songs for 99 cents is also the biggest draw to buying music digitally because you don't have to buy an entire album just for a few songs.

Books are probably about 60/40 physical/digital and they too have decent deals on Amazon and Google play where you can get books for 99 cents to 2.99. Overall they still cost slightly more for digital.

DVD's and Blu-rays are still very much dominated by physical (probably 80/20) so they, on average, cost quite a bit more than retail. Even so once in a while you get decent sales on Vudu, Amazon, and especially XBL (where every few weeks they have a bunch of TV shows and movies for 33-50% off).

PC gaming is probably 80/20 or 90/10 in terms of digital/physical and we all know the crazy amount of deals you can find on Steam (and to a lesser extent, Origin and others).

The 360 is probably 80/20 in terms of physical digital and they are having increasingly better and more frequent sales where you can get games for much cheaper than retail.



Alby_da_Wolf on 11 June 2013

@OP:

I agree: as I want cheap and low power consumption PCs, due to performance limits I tend to buy "classic", budget edition and bargain bin games and I rarely buy games just released, so I never feel the need for used games. If those buying them when they are very recent found better prices, they too could buy more new and fewer used ones. Actually I too would buy more often new and just released games.



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