midnight rain

Do you think car companies should find a way to do away with used cars? How about used DVDs? Books? Maybe we should just make garage sales illegal?

I fail to see any differences between those examples and what they're doing with online passes.

Doesn't sound worth it.

Honestly, EA can do whatever the hell they want with online multiplayer. But if they're going to start tampering with single player, I'm done buying their games.

Greedy bastards.

Kirby

They aren't trying to get rid of used games. Just trying to make their money off of them. Publishers makes zero profit from used games. Charging ten dollars for content is pretty fair, in my opinion.

Like I said earlier, though. I only buy new.

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midnight rain

I'm well aware of that tired argument. You still didn't address how it's any different from any other used markets. Look at Amazon, they offer a second hand market on their own site, at their expense because people are buying other customer's products as opposed to Amazon's.

Just because it doesn't affect you (yet) doesn't mean you should support their moves. They are attempting to get rid of used games completely, by driving out companies likes Gamestop. This ends up hurting the consumer. You're a consumer aren't you? Are you so willing to bend over backwards and let them have their way with you? Because I'd bet this will only lead to further shady moves and stupid subscription type services. as long as people keep buying they know they can get away with it. PC games have game codes. But they also have Steam, which offers fantastic discounts and makes up for the lack of used games. Xbox live has no such thing and their deals are typically pretty awful.

Have you heard the rumors that the next Xbox and Playstation may not play used games? You realize this is the publishers putting pressure on Microsoft and Sony, right? Offering exclusivity to the company that'll disable used games entirely. No more used games means no more buying used, no more renting used games, no more bringing a game over to a friends house to play. Would if I want to buy a game 10-15 years after it comes out (I still buy PS1 games every so often)? How am I supposed to do that if they stopped making new copies years ago?

Just some things for you to consider, as a consumer.

Also, what do you think about Xbox Live's price being raised $10 (really, why am I paying for XBox live in the first place???)? Or game prices going up from $50 to $60, or the $15 DLC that gives you three maps.

Man I need to get a gaming PC.

James

On the subject of good early 360 titles....Prey was the sh*t.

midnight rain

One more thing, I don't like what Gamestop does and their parasitic nature, but I think game developers need to find a way that cuts Gamestop out of the equation, not one that punishes the consumer. Lower their prices or change up the way in which they release games (I've seen ideas like releasing games similar to the way TV shows come out, for example).

Kirby

Are you asking if I'm mad that the company wants to make money on the product that it made? Not at all.

Xbox has pretty good deals from time to time.
This isn't going to happen, so I'm going to skip the rest of the argument for it.

Xbox's price went up because of all of the extra apps and whatnot we've been getting. We're paying for Xbox because it's arguably better than PS3's online service.

Because of inflation, you're still REALLY paying about the same, or less, compared to what games used to cost (PS1 games were $50, and the dollar has been deteriorating since then)


And also, yeah, Prey was pretty fantastic.

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midnight rain

You didn't really answer my questions but oh well.

This is ridiculous. So I paid for what? To watch ESPN or get on Facebook on Xbox? Who actually does that? To get access to Hulu Plus and HBO Go, things I have to pay for separately? C'mon man you have to agree with me that those are ridiculous reasons to raise the price, especially when your competitor is offering their service for free. These are features that the majority of the Xbox Live userbase ignores, so why make everyone pay for them?

Because it's better than PS3's service doesn't explain why we're being charged for it. Online PC gaming is free on most games and better than Live. Microsoft is not paying for the servers, they are player hosted, so there is really no reason for them to be charging for Xbox Live other than that they know they can get away with it.

Sparky

Games are super expensive dude. A lot of games don't break profit off one title alone. For example uncharted 3 and mass effect 3 were made just to break even off the 2nd chapters. Its expensive to build an entire new engine.
Who is they? It depends solely on the publisher. Ubisoft is very aggressive in their pricing, i saw assassins creed revelations on sale for 20$ new last week.

Xbox live doesn't have steam because the install base isn't as developed as the average pc gamer. Many console gamers don't have a large hard drive to make a service like steam viable this gen.

Steam also benefit from being independent operation. In order to put up a game on psn or xbox live you need verification from them which can take months. It's not streamlined yet, but should be real smooth next gen i'd imagine.

Its completely bogus, but to put it in perspective,world of warcraft charges the same amount and thats for 1 game.

mr dave

As a consumer I think you need to be reminded of a saying my local pawn shop likes to tell EVERYONE when they buy used media.

"We guarantee it will work. We do not guarantee you will like it."

You're not owed personal satisfaction as a consumer, you're owed a functional product. If you don't like what's offered you are free to pursue other options.

Didn't we have this exact same discussion a few months ago? Is it just that every time you decide to buy a new game you have to vent your frustrations about how the manufacturer wants to maximize their profits off you as a consumer rather than reward you for being a special purchaser?

This is kind of off, is your complaint about 'on disc DLC' or used merchandise? Though on the angle of DLC content left on discs but unavailable to the end user until something is bought - YES, car manufacturers do that all the time - governors on the accelerator. They limit the full potential of the vehicle beyond the control of the owner. The car owner buys something with X amount of potential power but can only use Y amount of it unless they either upgrade or circumvent particular elements of the engine.

As for games and DLC shipping on the disc, what happens if let's say they're working on extra content, but the final ship date is approaching. The non-essential bonus stuff is about 75% complete but still rough around the edges and would stand out in a bad way as compared to the rest of the title. Would you package that bonus on the disc so that early adopter of the DLC only have to download a small file that finishes what was already started or would you rather increase the load on your content servers by forcing consumers to download the entire thing (and possibly blowing their bandwidth caps)? Which one is the easier distribution method?

The rumours about the next-gen machines not playing used games is far more likely due to the fact that those machines will be abandoning optical media drives in favour of exclusive digital distribution. How do you play a used game on a cd-rom, dvd, or bluray in a machine that doesn't have a slot to insert the disc? Don't think the old games are going away either, consider the popularity of digital distribution for the classics through WiiWare, the PSN Classics, Good Old Games.com, or whatever the Xbox equivalent is. Does the fact that my PS3 doesn't have a cartridge slot mean I can't play classic Atari games? No, it just means I need to download a digital copy instead of dusting off a 30+ year old cartridge and hoping it still works.

The Xbox live price... now that, THAT is a straight up consumer gouge. I could understand a premium pay service similar to the PSN+ but having to pay for basic online functionality, that's just harsh. Too bad the average Xbox user chose to support that.

You complain that they should lower prices, but Mass Effect 2 sells for $20 new right now. If that's too much for you then quite frankly, I don't know what to say besides I think you should check your priorities. Really though, how much cheaper would you expect a critically acclaimed, AAA quality, likely $100 million budget (or close) title to be?

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i am the universe

midnight rain

Where are you getting those numbers though? Do you have numbers on how much Mass Effect 2 cost to make?

If you calculate their sales of 2.76 million (taken from here: Game Database, Best Selling Video Games, Game Sales, Million Sellers, Top Selling - VGChartz), and this isn't even counting the PC and PS3 versions, you get:

$60 * 2,760,000 = $165,600,000

According to here, the developer usually gets about 30% of the cut: Where does my money go? Article • Page 1 • Articles • Eurogamer.net

$165,600,000=$49,680,000

That's just what the developer gets. Now how much did Mass Effect cost to make?

The ones who use the online pass.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I didn't say I wanted Steam on my Xbox. They already have a Steam-like service, my point is they don't offer the kind of deals for it that you see on Steam.



That's also bogus and you'd have to be bat**** crazy to pay for it, but people do apparently.

I'm not telling anyone how to spend their money. Honestly, Kirby seems like the kind of guy who will pay $150 for a Resident Evil game if it comes with a Leon figurine and a Umbrella Corp. duffelbag, so I think it's safe to say he represents a small part of video game players. I just don't like the way the industry is headed. Things were a lot simpler last gen, and the better for it (except stupid Xbox, which basically paved the way to where we are today).