Am I killing the PC gaming platform?

FoxEye said:
But I do wonder if my purchase will even register with the bean counters who decide if a game is successful or not. How long do they keep track? The opening week, the opening month, 2 months, 6 months, a year...? And who is losing the most profit as the game gets cheaper, the retailer or the publisher or the devs?
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1. Yes they keep track of sales even years later, as long as it is new purchase, they don't keep track of second hand/pre-owned.

2. publisher/dev will lose most profit as game gets cheaper - retailers (at least the major ones) get to return unsold merchandise

I wouldn't compare second buyer to a pirate, clearly not the same.

and yes, consoles is where the $$$ are, why most games are arcady and easy nowadays, consumers don't like games that are hard - i.e Ninja Gaiden, and even they were "forced" to add easy difficulty in sequels ;)
 
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FoxEye said:
I was thinking today about the PC games I've enjoyed over the years, and how it used to be that I could buy a game on release day for just over a tenner (1990s). It was great to be a school-age child and able to buy new releases with just his pocket money!

Then, remembering that the cost of console titles is stupidly high (hello £40/£50 per game), I wondered if I myself have not become part of the problem.

Frankly, I avoid paying release prices these days. Because I like to get things cheap, I wait... and wait, and likely get it next year. Clearly this is not illegal. But I do wonder if my purchase will even register with the bean counters who decide if a game is successful or not. How long do they keep track? The opening week, the opening month, 2 months, 6 months, a year...? And who is losing the most profit as the game gets cheaper, the retailer or the publisher or the devs?

Just like people who buy 2nd hand games, I'm sure the developers would like to tell me I'm a bad man. No doubt they'd say that only people buying on release day are truly supporting the industry... and only if they don't sell on their copy down the line.

Odd that I could be thinking this way, but after reading comments that "2nd hand gamers are no better than pirates", it made me wonder whether my own buying habits are somehow "wrong". Should I simply play less games and buy them dearer? What price will we all have to pay for a thriving PC development scene once more? Or do we just accept that consoles are where the $$$ are now?

Sorry for a bit of a useless melodramatic post... :D
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Not at all, game developers are a business thats out to milk you for all they can. Your spending habits are a part of that plan and so long as people like you continue to buy their older games, they will continue to make money. They are no different to Tescos.
 
Like any Product if it is Quality it will sell.
Decent games do well in the market place & I am Not prepared to buy crap games just to keep a company in business. If they want my money then Produce something that is worthy of it, Simples.
This is just another example of Companys trying to enforce there shoddy working practices on the consumer.
Stop making shoddy ports & make Decent Dedi PC games & they will sell.
 
lunarwolf said:
but they were/are still quality, hence if "it is quality is will sell" doesn't hold water :) - LCD is inferior quality to plasma - thus price is more of a factor than quality
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And there's me thinking we were talking about PC games in the PC Games section.
 
lunarwolf said:
but they were/are still quality, hence if "it is quality is will sell" doesn't hold water :) - LCD is inferior quality to plasma - thus price is more of a factor than quality
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But we are talking about software and the very same thing applys, if its over priced it will not sell well. If the price is right quality will sell.

As for plasma and LCD it all depend on what its use for, to me a cheap LCD is of a better quality than an over priced plasma. Once the kids rub their dinner over it and cartoon network screen burns its logo onto the plasma am sure its quality will shine through. ;)
 
Orcish-Horde said:
As for plasma and LCD it all depend on what its use for, to me a cheap LCD is of a better quality than an over priced plasma. Once the kids rub their dinner over it and cartoon network screen burns its logo onto the plasma am sure its quality will shine through. ;)
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Panassonic Plasma are not that expensive, pretty competitive in terms of pricing. Screen burns??? this is with old plasma screens , doesn't happen anymore, i leave my Pio on all day and I suffer no screen burn or IR.


As far as pricing it's pretty standardized for vid games between AAA and other titles
 
I still remeber as a kid i would save pocket money and have a big trip to toys r us (I lived in the middle of nowhere) where they had 100's and 100's of spectrum games for a quid it was childhood heaven! They all seemed to have yellow sided cases for those that recall!

Yes games are a bit more expensive these days, but compare them to other forms of entertainment. You spend £10 on a DVD you watch once or twice, 6 to 8 quid for cinema, 8 quid for a book these all have minimal entertainment time. Games can last for ages if you are wise and select the right ones. One example is Dragon Age Origins, I only played 1 play through which took 60 hours, that is incredible value for money! I built a PC in October and went on a bit of a games buying spree, now i'm skint. It has woken me up a little most of the games I have only played for an hour or two. If i was rich id run out now and buy ME2 and there are a lot of games coming out soon I fancy, and i wouldn't get much play time out of them.

I have racked up nearly 300 hours on MW2, some hate I love it. Thats the thing, if you can find a game you love they really are not that expensive, if you buy a game that you get borred of in 2 hours then... you should not have bought it. Right now i plan to reinstall Civ 4 as i have a big hankering for it, another game that has been incredibly good value and referring to the OP i paid 12 quid for it with the 2 expansion, possible the single best buy i have ever made!

I think PC games have a unique problem and that is resale of games. Before I had this PC i was limited to consoles. I would buy a game for £30-40. If it was a short game i could finish it and sell it on getting a good chunk of my money back so the game realalistically only cost me around a tenner. For the PC it is a pain in the ass to try and sell games partly as I have bought most on steam and would have to **** about making seperate steam accounts so i could resell games and secondly because of DRM issues.

Personally i can understand why consoles are winning big time over PCs, You pay £200 quid for a console and everygame works without issue. Most people prefer this. I think we are in the minority of enthusiasts who will pay for cutting edge technology and are able to tweak and get games/mods to work as well as possible. The average man on the street does not want any of that, they want to plug Fifa10 in and play.

People have noted that developers fears of piracy is screwing over the PC game developement industry. While at the moment the way things are going are a pain in the arse with games starting to have to rely on a good connection and that the developers servers don't go down even for single player games. Unfortunately I feel we are at a start of a big change in the way entertainment is provided, and we will have a period of crap to deal with until the 'new way' is an everyday part of life. Jump to the future 50 years and realistically we will just all own entertainment hubs, essentially an output and input device, with everything stored and most likely (in the case of games) processed remotely and we would subscribe to the services. We may be a long way off from this but as far as i can tell pieces are starting to fall together and it's only a matter of time.
And here we have an example: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/107/1070283p1.html
 
We are responsible and all a part of the system but don't beat yourself up over it. You make changes when you are ready. As you get older you will most likely have less attachments.
 
overclick said:
Yes games are a bit more expensive these days, but compare them to other forms of entertainment. You spend £10 on a DVD you watch once or twice, 6 to 8 quid for cinema, 8 quid for a book these all have minimal entertainment time. Games can last for ages if you are wise and select the right ones. One example is Dragon Age Origins, I only played 1 play through which took 60 hours, that is incredible value for money!]
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definitely this.

Bought fallout1&2 for under 20 quid and been playing them o nand off for the best part of a decade :D

Got CSS free and play'd that for hundreds of hours :D

Anmd that's before you even get into mods.
 
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