Ok... Zasto su igre za PC jeftinije od igara za PS3/XBOX?
http://www.pcgamingstandards.com/Blog.aspx?blogid=4
Pored toga, Steam i ostali DD servisi omogućavaju veliku fleksibilnost što se tiče cena, omogućenu kroz nepostojanje troškova asociranim sa fizičkim radnjama i distribucijom.
http://www.next-gen.biz/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive
- 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
- 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
- 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
- 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
Valve has hired an experimental psychologist to come up with new ways to excite users with pricing models and sales. He suggested one in 25 users that buy Left 4 Dead get another Valve game for free.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57308
Zasto su igre koje izadju na PS2 i PS3 jeftinije za PS2? Npr na dvd.co.uk FIFA 10 kosta 12.19 za PS2, 12.99 za PC, 17.99 za X360 i 17.95 za PS3... Verzija za PS3 je 47% skuplja...
PS2, glavni razlog - nije više u fokusu izdavača, smanjeno interesovanje -> besmisleno je da igra drži cenu kao za PS3.
Zasto je DLC za PC igre besplatan, a za PS3 se placa?
Zato što je u pitanju zatvoreni sistem i kompanija koja stoji iza njega može da određuje pravila, plain and simple, te "dranje" može da prođe
jer korisnici nemaju drugi izbor (osim da glasaju novčanikom i preskoče kupovinu skroz). Još jedna od prednosti otvorene platforme, gde niko sem izdavača/developera ne može da određuje uslove.
Valve i Epic su hteli da iz baceDLC-ove besplatno na X360, MS-ov zatvoren ekosistem to nije dozvolio.
"On the consoles, they want us to charge money for [DLC], because that's in their model, and our model is very much more to grow the community by giving out free updates," said Valve president Gabe Newell last year.
The Washington-based developer traditionally refuses to charge for DLC - as Robin Walker put it
when we asked in May 2007, "You buy the product, you get the content" - and this explains why it's free on PC.
"You buy the product, you get the content," Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker told us. "We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."
Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi admitted the company had "pretty strong opinions" about how to handle post-release content. "Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products."
Zato će sad Portal 2 za PS3 doći sa
Steamworks integracijom što će Valve-u pružiti kontrolu koju inače ne bi imali (i koju nemaju drugi timovi) - mnogo brže update-ovanje i drastično smanjivanje troškova seritifikacije.
Steam lets the company take full advantage of the freedom that the PC and Mac platforms give it to constantly update and tweak its games. For instance, the developer has updated its 2007 game Team Fortress 2 more than 100 times, Newell said.
This wouldn’t be possible on a closed system like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, he said: “Microsoft’s QA fees … would be several hundred thousand dollars to do the updates that we did to Team Fortress 2. And that ignores the fact that the cycle on these closed platforms would have taken years to get all these updates through.”
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/steam-mac/
Gabe Newell: That’s why we’re really happy with the current situation with the PS3… We’re solving it now in a way that is going to work for our customers, rather than assuming something is going to emerge later that will allow us to fix this
Takodje, za X360 su u vreme izbacivanja cene iste kao za PS3 dok posle mnogo brze padaju...
To što si napisao je
post-hoc. Postoji više faktora koji utiču, ne možeš samo da uzmeš jedan i zakjučiš da je isključivo zbog njega. Piraterija je na X360 procentualno jako malo zastupljena (
~5% u US). Jedina korisna statistika koju je inače nemoguće izračunati je koliki broj ljudi bi kupilo igre da uopšte nisu dostupne nelegalne kopije. Btw, izdavačima na konzolama mnogo više smeta tržište polovnih igara (i to je na neki način "ekvivalent" pirateriji na PC-u: na konzolama se žale na 2nd-h, na PC-u na pirateriju), koje je inače skoro nepostejeće na PC-u. Šta misliš
čemu služe "sitni" DLC-ovi kao npr. ovi za Mafia-u 2?
I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.
Statistike "koliko su izgubili" zbog piraterije i 2nd-h tržišta se rade tako što računaju za njih najbolji slučaj - da je odnos između skinutih kopija i izgubljene prodaje 1:1, odu na trekere i i pomnože max. cenu u toku životnog veka igre sa brojem downloada i sl. Ignorišući pritom ostale stvari koje u u te brojke ulaze: oni koji su skinuli igru jer nije uopšte dostupna u njihovoj zemlji legalnim putem,
da bi zaobišli DRM koji služi da zaobiđe
first-sale doctrine, skinuli jer nema demoa pa kasnije kupili, demo je loš/ne reprezantuje dobro celu igru itd. Ah da, tu su i oni iz
siromašnih zemalja koji je ne bi kupili uopšte jer je razlika u
per-capita GDP-u njihovih zemalja i onih prema čijim se tržištima formiraju cene igara i ostalog softvera ogromna.
Publishers and console manufacturers like Nintendo are convinced that once they stop piracy, the money from all those lost sales will suddenly come flowing into their coffers. For whatever reason they never take into account their prospective market's spending ability. Thus, an underground economy has been built around the needs of the low-income Asian gamer to help them support their addiction. It's not hard to relate: If you had $300 a month to spend on rent, food and all of your other expenses, how high would a $60 game be on your list?
In the Philippines, as in many other Asian countries, piracy isn't a matter of right or wrong; it's a matter of survival. To eradicate piracy means depriving people of jobs generated by this underground economy. It means eradicating the businesses that employ them and negating the taxes funneled to the Philippine government. Developers and publishers will claim a huge victory, but they'll soon notice that those billions of dollars in lost sales aren't exactly showing up on their bottom line. People still can't afford their games. Everyone loses.
So how much would a game have to cost for the average Filipino to even consider purchasing it? First, let's calculate the ratio of a $60 current gen game to the U.S. per capita income, which was roughly $46,000 in 2007. When you divide 46000 by 60 you get the ratio of 766-to-1. That means the cost of a video game in the US is 1/766 of the average American's income. Let's apply that number to the per capita income of the average Filipino, which is roughly $3400. If you take 3400 and divide it by 766, you get the interesting amount of $4.44. Why is this interesting? Because the cost of a pirated Xbox 360 game is around 200 pesos, or roughly $4.39.
Now you've got a dollar figure to work with. At the $5 price point, games become accessible to most of the market. Of course, it costs much more for a publisher to develop, market, produce and release a game than it does for a pirate to rip a CD and burn it a hundred thousand times. So let's take our cue from the market and cut costs. For the past 10 years, Filipinos have consistently bought games with shoddy covers and no manuals, so they've proven they're not picky about the quality of the physical product; as long as it works when they stick it in the console, they're happy. Get rid of manuals, CD cases, and elaborate covers with marketing talk. Sell the discs in vinyl sleeves with a sticker cover of the game in front. Eliminate as much cost as possible in the production of the actual CD by having the pirates burn the CDs themselves, and simply supply them with the cover material. Then sell the games as usual. The public might not even have to know about it, and no fanfare means no marketing costs.
U solidnom broju zemalja, originali nisu ni dostupni ili se pojave dosta dugo nakon zvaničnog izlaska na drugim tržištima, ali kompanije ipak žele da održe prisustvo brenda.
Saudijska Arabija npr.
I think they don't give a shit about those regions as they know they cannot scam people into buying their games at the prices they sell them to rest of the world for, but still wish to maintain a brand presences there by selling consoles. And even when software sales are a lost cause there, they can still capitalize on piracy with console sales.
Here in Saudi Arabia, Sony rarely released games officially during the PS1 and PS2 era, yet they sold the consoles like crazy (based on my observation and not official numbers). They knew about the huge pirated game market here and didn't seem too bothered about it. 99% percent of game stores here sell nothing but pirated games and consoles pre-installed with modchips. I'm pretty sure Sony Middle East knew what these stores are doing when they were taking only the consoles but not the games. This seems to be case for rest of the Middle East. With the PS3 though, they have started to release more games, which is probably because PS3 piracy has not surfaced yet.
Po tvojoj logici, PS3 kao jedina konzola bez piraterije je trebala da bude na vrhu softverske prodaje sve ove godine, a nije. Nintendo DS ima verovatno najlakši sistem za puštanje kopija od svih sistema, samim tim je i dostupan najširem krugu populacije te stoga predstavlja potencijalno najveći gubitak za developere, ali je na softverskim listama pri/na vrhu od kako je izašla. Dakle, prodaje se i softver i hardver u velikim količinama. Kako to
objašnjavaš?
Lako je koristiti pirateriju i/ili s-h tržište kao
scapegoat kada stvari idu loše, dok se sa drugih, mnogo važnijih stvari skreće pogled.
VB: 2010 has not been a great year for video games in the U.S. The recession is lingering. You have had a shortage of Wiis. And the number of Nintendo blockbuster titles has been thinner. How concerned are you about 2010 sales?
SI: I cannot say that the recession has no effect on the sales of video games. My belief is we should not blame the bad economy for the cause of slow sales of video games. The slow sales must be due to the lack of great software that everyone wants to buy. We have not shown off the great attractions of whatever we are selling. This is not the problem of Nintendo alone, but the entire video game industry. After all, something that is really fresh can make our industry grow. The important thing we have to tackle is making attractive games and marketing them well toward the end of this year. I think the whole industry should be more cautious about how we act and how the general public perceives us. In the past, the formula was to make the computer graphics more gorgeous. It used to fit the taste of the majority of the gaming audience, but it doesn’t work so well in this day and age. It’s more difficult for us to come up with something new and different and show people how different we are. The whole industry has to recognize that. Looking at the product line-ups this year, these titles might have been big hits three years ago. But now this year, they are not selling that much. In other words, people get tired of games more quickly than they did before. When you look at our 3D games concept, we recognize it will not be eternally appealing. However, it’s not a shallow concept that can be forgotten as a momentary fad.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/23/nintendo/
:wave: