5778

By that time, the majority of the profits have been made. I doubt they care.

Aren’t must of the profits made in the first month of or so? My theaters.

5779

To complete the circle with our discussion last week, please point to any other $60 game selling for less than that. You can use EGS, Uplay, or Origin. The sample sizes continue to grow but there’s still only one title at $50.

Honestly, at this point this seems almost like religious belief as opposed to any sort of reasoned position. There’s no indication that games are trending down in costs, and I feel like I’ve provided many examples of this. Furthermore, this is simply not how businesses operate. Ubisoft knows people will pay $60 for their games, they have no incentive to lower those prices when they know people will pay that at release. For those waiting for cheaper prices, they can pull them in during summer/Christmas sales.

5780

We don’t know this for sure, I mean what if at least half of Steam users didn’t buy it on the EGS and are waiting for it to come back. :)

5781

Actually, they are driven by supply and demand and this is actually proof of that. This game is so popular and expected sales are so high that CD Projekt has no incentive to lower the price.

I think what you should be saying is that video game prices are not driven by costs. In this case, CD Projekt has lower costs by cutting out the middle man, but you are not seeing in the price at their own site. I’d also add that they may have agreements with other storefronts that they will not undercut them at their own storefront.

5782

World War Z launched at $35 on Epic vs $40 on consoles at the same time. (I assume this, rather than the exact price point of $60, was the spirit of your question).

5783

I think I pointed out that we won’t see any reduction of price right away. Not until we see Steam not be the main source of income.

I am sorry if that point wasn’t made clear.

5784

Thanks for the data point, @jsnell! I wasn’t even aware that game existed. :)

5785

Can you explain the reasoning of the publisher/corporation in this scenario? Say they’ve broken Steam’s hold on the market and EGS and their own direct sales have much more market share. This is great news for your company, as revenues are going up. What is the reasoning for them to start launching prices for less than what they know the market will pay?

5786

That’s simple. Someone will make a crappy game. And they will it. So, in order to get some money out of their crappy AAA game, they will cut their price prelaunch.

Suddenly, you have companies with slightly less crappy games feeling the pinch, because Call of Duty 10 is under cutting Medal of Home 12. So, they will feel the need to follow suit.
Slowly but surely, better games will feel the pressure to do so and the dominoes will fall.

But first, the companies will need the space to even cut their prices. And I think Epic and similar stores will help them create that space.

But, as with all things it’s starts with crap.

Anyway, I could be wrong.

Or, instead of price reductions, we might instead see fewer DLCs.

5787

There was no reason to believe prices would fall, but there were people here, not Matt, that claimed they would.

5788

Well, we have 2 examples right now. So, that is something.

5789

You’re ignoring data with this statement.

5790

You mean their 10 dollar short-term sale? Or something else? Can’t possibly be a long-term change because it hasn’t been actually long-term… for EGS. It has been for first party stores.

5791

Not really ignoring, there’s a lot more data pointing the other way. I’m including stores like Origin and Uplay in this, where they get 100% of the sale.

Epic is offering and 88/12 split for developers, which is fantastic news for developers. I don’t particularly care about EA’s bottom line, but I think this is huge for smaller studios. I don’t know why that can’t be enough, and instead trying to say how EGS is going to result in cheaper games. I mean come on, @Lunarstorm, I know you don’t think $60 are suddenly going to start becoming $50 games because of a better split.

5792

Well, there were two games listed in the last 10 minutes. I think he was talking about those two.

5793

I can’t predict the future, but I can say that competition is generally good for consumers (especially in terms of pricing and quality) and without competition, companies tend to get complacent and lazy.

5794

Exclusives are not competition.

5795

I’m on @legowarrior’s side here pertaining to prices. It’s the continuation of a debate that Travis and I had several months ago. To be clear, while I’ve bought a few games on EGS, I am not a fan of the storefront or their practices. I’m just willing to sell out to play a few exclusives. :)

There are two scenarios here:

  1. The majority of the storefronts continue with a 70/30 split. In this case, I see nothing changing meaningfully in prices.
  2. A sizable portion of the storefronts adopt a more developer/publisher-friendly revenue split with the store (this could come in the form of blanket changes or changes that impact a larger segment of the market). In this case, pure economics take over. The cost of delivering a good will go down, so some developers/publishers will try to price their good at a lower price in an attempt to lure consumers (Note: We’ve had the debate over and over whether games are comparable/fungible and while individual specific games aren’t, gamers time/money budgets are). Once some developers/publishers go down this route, there will be an incentive for more of the market to go down this route. To show otherwise, one would have to demonstrate why the market isn’t charging much higher prices than they currently are. In short, the profit boost will be temporary until a new, lower price point is achieved. (Second note: whether it’s a lower price point or whether inflation simply allows the further continuation of the $60 price point is a separate issue).
5796

I am not talking about exclusives. I appreciate that others have already pointed out the anti-competitive nature of exclusivity. I’m talking about competition from simply having another long-term, well funded company (who understands the complexities of making games) entering the digital storefront. Yes, we have had other stores, but many of them don’t also make games, or provide services/tools to assist developers/publishers.

5797

It depends on what you think the competition is.

I think that games are somewhat elastic and that people in the market for, say an FPS game, will feel multiple FPS games compete for their dollars.

On this forum, I have noted that people opted not to buy Fantasy General because they were currently playing Age of Wonders Planetside. I think they are very different games, but I can see how they compete for the same types of audience.

So, in this case, I don’t see exclusives not impacting competition because I see the main competition to be between publishers not stores.