Originally posted by: ShawnD1
This is at least partially correct. Publishers care a lot about second hand sales. I would go as far as saying they care about this more than piracy because there's a measurable value of how much money is being made/lost by second hand sales.Originally posted by: Red Irish
The reason publisher's use DRM is because they want to prevent second-hand sales and herd us all on to consoles.
As someone who has worked for a gaming store, I'll explain a bit of this. Stores don't actually make any money on most gaming related things. PC, Xbox, and PS3 games are all sold at cost. When a customer pays $60 for a game, the store paid $55 for that game. The consoles themselves are also sold at cost. The cheapest Xbox 360 is $200, and the computer would say that the store also paid $200 for it. Things like Xbox controllers, memory cards, and hard drives are also sold at cost. The way places like EB Games make money is through warranties and second hand sales. If you want to know how much second hand sales are worth, just look at what Gamestop is up to
http://www.google.com/finance?q=gamestop
This is also the reason EB Games and Gamestop don't sell many PC games. If they're not making money on the first sale and they can't make money on the second sale, why would they care about PC gamers? They don't, so they don't carry many PC games.
It's ironic how that worked out. By trying to stop second hand sales, it completely alienates the people who rely on second hand sales, so those companies no longer stock PC games. When a multi-billion dollar company like Gamestop no longer stocks PC games, the sales numbers go way down, and the publisher blames piracy.
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Instead of complaining why don't gamers come up with a solution ? Selling the games with no protection whatsoever is not the solution.
As someone who has worked for a gaming store, I'll explain a bit of this. Stores don't actually make any money on most gaming related things. PC, Xbox, and PS3 games are all sold at cost. When a customer pays $60 for a game, the store paid $55 for that game.
If you want to know how much second hand sales are worth, just look at what Gamestop is up to
Instead of complaining why don't gamers come up with a solution ?
Everybody wants all these things, and I would love to have them too, but wanting it isn't going to make it happen.
I'm just saying what the computer said. The computer might be factoring in other things like cost after shipping and after the cost of stocking the shelves and stuff. While working there, the employee price on everything in the store was "cost + 10%" and for most games, music, and movies, it amounted to no discount at all. Yes, I'm serious, even the music CDs and DVDs were sold at cost. Most of the store's money was through scam items that smart people don't buy anyway. This would be crap like $80 HDMI Monster Cables (you can buy the same cable on Newegg for $10) or $30 for a USB cable ($3 at Home Depot). One time I paid $10 for a 4-slot power bar; Home Depot sells 6 slot ones for $3. We also sold warranties on virtually everything.Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Someone must have been stealing from the company you worked for. Wholesale on a new console game is normally $45, the markup on conrollers is comparable, memory cards are considerably higher(margins that is). You work for a chain store that did a different break out on costs? While console hardware has no margin to play with, the games have plenty.
Or you could just buy the game the same way you buy a console game rather than stealing it.Pc best equivelant:
******.org
1. pick the games you want to spend the next 10 hrs downloading.(countless titles except the ones you really want and theres only 1 seeder/456 leechers)
2. pray hard that torrent is exactly as described and works (if not, waste more time hunting for another and try again)
Originally posted by: racolvin
I'm too old to play games on a console I pay my money, I wanna see the content but most of the time I have to use cheat codes to get past certain things because I just don't have the hand/eye coordination to do it otherwise. PC games generally allow me to do that, consoles not so much.
Originally posted by: frythecpuofbender
There are rumors about an updated XBOX360 in 2010
if that's the case I really think that CRYSIS2 will not be dumbed down in any way. At least not in the way id had to change the game design cause the XBOX360 wouldn't have the storage for it.
Rumors for NEXBOX360 or XBOX1080:
500GB HD mandatory, 1GB Ram, double gpu horsepower, slightly higher CPU clock.
backwards compatible to play all games in 1080p or play games marked with "NEXBOX" with higher res, textures, shaders etc.
Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Or you could just buy the game the same way you buy a console game rather than stealing it.
Originally posted by: frythecpuofbender
There are rumors about an updated XBOX360 in 2010
if that's the case I really think that CRYSIS2 will not be dumbed down in any way. At least not in the way id had to change the game design cause the XBOX360 wouldn't have the storage for it.
Rumors for NEXBOX360 or XBOX1080:
500GB HD mandatory, 1GB Ram, double gpu horsepower, slightly higher CPU clock.
backwards compatible to play all games in 1080p or play games marked with "NEXBOX" with higher res, textures, shaders etc.
Originally posted by: 4537256
i was listing the alternatives, you displayed my point, there really isnt much alternatives to pc gaming, you pay full price or steal it, period. at least consoles has options and many stores also sell used games but wont touch pc titles, instead you have to search ebay which most of the time is just a pirate ported from asia.
I have no doubt the console versions will look fantastic. The thing I hate about high demand games is that I don't know what I'm doing in the config settings. How high is "very high" resolution? Does my video card support that? What about "post processing", what the hell is that? Do I turn that down? On the Xbox and PS3 versions, the devs set all of that for you so you get the most out of the system. I don't feel like dicking around so I just set all of mine to "low" at run the game at 1680x1050. It still looks great, but I can't help but think I'm missing out on a lot of things I could run if I just took a few hours to figure out which settings I should turn up.crytek said its equivelant to med/high settings on the PC. which is pretty good considering. the video of it looks like it is as well.
Originally posted by: frythecpuofbender
Well I believe there was an autosetup for CRYSIS which analyzed the PC and set the options for you. No excuse for developers if there is none.
I'm just saying what the computer said. The computer might be factoring in other things like cost after shipping and after the cost of stocking the shelves and stuff.
Yes, I'm serious, even the music CDs and DVDs were sold at cost.
Everything in the entertainment department (where I worked) was a loss leader.
What I've always wondered is why PC games need to be installed.
Possibly, but googling around for wholesale prices gets roughly what the computer said.Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
I'm just saying what the computer said. The computer might be factoring in other things like cost after shipping and after the cost of stocking the shelves and stuff.
It is possible that your corporation does that for multiple reasons, one to make it look like they make more money at the corporate level then the store level(which is an ego stroke for the guys who don't work at store level) the other is so that your 10% discount ends up meaning jack
Looks about right. Lots of big name CDs were about $10 in the computer. What's funny is that the most expensive music CDs were rap music. Some of those were up in the $15 wholesale range. That is just insane. If you go into Best Buy and see Murder Rapist's new CD costing $19 when all of the other CDs on the shelf are $12-15, that's why.Under the new pricing scheme, Universal would lower its wholesale price on a CD to $9.09 from $12.02. The company said it expected retail stores to lower CD prices to $12.98, from the $16.98 to $18.98 they now charge, and perhaps to as low as $10.
NewEgg right now you can pick Infamous as an example for $50 with free shippng, that is a new game that is one of the best sellers in the US atm. The company you worked for may have used interesting accounting practices, but I assure you games are a relatively high margin item looking at wholesale-retail.
True, but it seems to work just fine on the Xbox. That thing has a normal dual layer DVD drive and it can run games like GTA 4 straight from the disc. That game is huge.HDs are much, much, much faster. As far as why it takes so long to install, the folders are heavily compressed to fit on to either CDs or DVDs. Current gen games are pushing up towards 50GBs in some cases, a DVD holds a bit under 9GBs max. The compression used by games tends to get them packed tighter then you could using a zip utility(although not always).
Originally posted by: ShawnD1
What does the PC version cost? $30 new at Best Buy. And of course Steam is out in lala land, charging $50 for the same game. Steam is probably the last store anyone should check for PC games.
It still looks great, but I can't help but think I'm missing out on a lot of things I could run if I just took a few hours to figure out which settings I should turn up.
Originally posted by: ShawnD1
True, but it seems to work just fine on the Xbox. That thing has a normal dual layer DVD drive and it can run games like GTA 4 straight from the disc. That game is huge.
Looks about right. Lots of big name CDs were about $10 in the computer.
Did you remember to factor in shipping and handling?
True, but it seems to work just fine on the Xbox. That thing has a normal dual layer DVD drive and it can run games like GTA 4 straight from the disc. That game is huge.
http://www.gametrailers.com/us...taiv-load-times/213730Originally posted by: 4537256
Originally posted by: ShawnD1
True, but it seems to work just fine on the Xbox. That thing has a normal dual layer DVD drive and it can run games like GTA 4 straight from the disc. That game is huge.
so how do you explain why some new consoles games need to be installed? cause devs gain added benefits of adding other things for it to be doing while the system loads textures from HD, with DVD's it can only load so much data at once.
The developers of consoles have been complaining about 360's that didnt come with hard drives cause they cant use the benefits of loading from HD by default. loading from dvd's is slower, thats why the 360 version of gta 4 loads slower than the PS3 version...there are youtube videos that compare them side by side if you want to see the loading speed differences.
You're assuming they all get sold within a short period of time, and that just doesn't happen. What happens is they have a huge amount of space given to CDs and most of them will sit there for half a year, just wasting floor space. For a lack of a better term, we had 4 "walls" of music CDs. One was new releases and best sellers which actually did sell fairly quick, 2 walls given to "rock" (stuff you hear on the radio), and 1 given to jazz/classical/rap. 3 of those 4 walls had very little going on. People come, look through it, see that we don't have some abstract garbage by some singer nobody has ever heard of, they leave.That's a 43% margin, not sure what you are thinking most margins are, but that is fairly huge. At cost would be if they were paying $12.70ish and charging $12.98- $9.09 and getting $12.98 is a steep markup.
You're assuming they all get sold within a short period of time, and that just doesn't happen.
Having new stuff in the store is basically just a way to get people to come inside the store and have a look around. Getting them to buy a 500% marked up game (sold to EB for $5, put on the shelf for $25) is where game stores make their money.
Can you pay the rent, the utilities, the cashier, the guy putting stickers on the boxes and stocking things, and still turn over a profit on 20% markup?
Originally posted by: Gothgar
blah blah blah
people who pirate games for PC are the same people who would have never bought the game in the first place.
Originally posted by: CoinOperatedBoy
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Instead of complaining why don't gamers come up with a solution ? Selling the games with no protection whatsoever is not the solution.
Just want to point out how ridiculous this is. It's not the consumers' job to provide a solution to a problem that the publishers and developers introduced. If you want to claim that piracy is the real motivator here, fine, but the DRM implementations the industry has chosen to espouse are at the same time strangling the second hand market. There's no argument. And it didn't have to be that way, so there's little doubt in my mind that it's purposeful.
Let them lie in their own beds.
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Instead of complaining why don't gamers come up with a solution ?
How many billions of dollars are publishers going to give us to do it? Because that is what the honest PC gamers have given to the publishers.
What was the fastest way to get Spore? It was't preorder, wasn't line up outside for a midnight launch, it was to download the pirated version before it hit retail- and that was with what was supposed to be the strongest DRM available. DRM won't stop criminals, just as the best car alarm in the world won't stop a professional car thief.
Publishers want our money. We are under no obligation whatsoever to give it to them. But let's take an honest look at a title that gets cracked and released to the pirate community two full weeks before retail release. Sims3. How badly did that impact the sales? It set an all time record for stand alone PC games with 1.4Million units sold its first week. Two weeks being 'freely' available to the criminals- 1.4Million units sold in one week. Make a game people want, and even if the criminals do get it for free in advance, good people will still pay for it.