The XBOX One

[Murbella]

It didn’t when Digital Distribution first started, but it did eventually. That’s why you see massive sales at Steam, Amazon, GMG and other PC DD retailers. Same with XBLA and PSN. When they first started, prices were what they were. But we eventually saw weekly sales, and special event sales, yearly sales, etc. And again, certain publishers are more willing to cut the price sooner than others.

If there’s more people like you, prices will come down faster. If there’s more people willing to pay the full price for longer, then it won’t. Of course, it depends entirely on the game itself, not just the publisher. Call of Duty’s price will probably stay high as long as it does now if that series maintains its multiplayer base. If it starts losing a lot of its base to the Battlefield series though, maybe we’ll start to see earlier sales.

This is the hugest misconception on these boards. I seriously don’t know why people believe this.

Steam has sales and yes, steam was the first digital distributor to actually have sales instead of keeping the price at 100% forever, but sellers of physical products had the same sales. Gogamer (which is sadly no longer around) for example had similar sales. I’d think if you had an actual copy of Command and Conquer sitting on your shelf, or even in your warehouse, you’d be more likely to want it gone instead of sitting on it for eternity.

In any event, sales do not point to lower prices. If they had really passed on the savings to consumers, games would not be $60 on release still, but they clearly are.

Not to mention as anyone has used steam for a while knows, steam is VERY often in 3rd place (behind GMG and amazon) as far as pricing goes.

Anyway, xbone games, even with their assault on the used market, are still going to be $60, if not more. Microsoft and publishers will not pass on any extra revenue to gamers in the form of lower prices. All talk of game prices having to be higher to make up for piracy, used sales, necromancy are complete bullshit and the nullification of them will not cause the price to go down one penny.

[Reemul]

This is the hugest misconception on these boards. I seriously don’t know why people believe this.

Steam has sales and yes, steam was the first digital distributor to actually have sales instead of keeping the price at 100% forever, but sellers of physical products had the same sales. Gogamer (which is sadly no longer around) for example had similar sales. I’d think if you had an actual copy of Command and Conquer sitting on your shelf, or even in your warehouse, you’d be more likely to want it gone instead of sitting on it for eternity.

In any event, sales do not point to lower prices. If they had really passed on the savings to consumers, games would not be $60 on release still, but they clearly are.

Not to mention as anyone has used steam for a while knows, steam is VERY often in 3rd place (behind GMG and amazon) as far as pricing goes.

Anyway, xbone games, even with their assault on the used market, are still going to be $60, if not more. Microsoft and publishers will not pass on any extra revenue to gamers in the form of lower prices. All talk of game prices having to be higher to make up for piracy, used sales, necromancy are complete bullshit and the nullification of them will not cause the price to go down one penny.

Yeah but in the UK game prices are always cheap but bricks and mortar just cant compete on price for pc games, even with sales on. I work in a town that used to have 2 games and a gamestop yet could never find anything cheap once Steam/Amazon/GMG got in to their stride. I mean Crysis 3 is £39.99 in there atm and all you get is the Origin code in a box, I paid £12 from GMG for it.

The issue is not to confuse Steam with Steam. Steam the system we use to play our games and Steam the company we buy from. One is great and the other outside of sale prices can be too expensive however we can ogo elsewhere to buy our steam keys like GMG.

Aggressive sales may not have led to lower inital release prices but they sure have led to massive prices drops with a few weeks of game releases, something many people now rely on to get their fix.

[Rock8man]

This is the hugest misconception on these boards. I seriously don’t know why people believe this.

Steam has sales and yes, steam was the first digital distributor to actually have sales instead of keeping the price at 100% forever, but sellers of physical products had the same sales. Gogamer (which is sadly no longer around) for example had similar sales. I’d think if you had an actual copy of Command and Conquer sitting on your shelf, or even in your warehouse, you’d be more likely to want it gone instead of sitting on it for eternity.

In any event, sales do not point to lower prices. If they had really passed on the savings to consumers, games would not be $60 on release still, but they clearly are.

Not to mention as anyone has used steam for a while knows, steam is VERY often in 3rd place (behind GMG and amazon) as far as pricing goes.

Anyway, xbone games, even with their assault on the used market, are still going to be $60, if not more. Microsoft and publishers will not pass on any extra revenue to gamers in the form of lower prices. All talk of game prices having to be higher to make up for piracy, used sales, necromancy are complete bullshit and the nullification of them will not cause the price to go down one penny.

Ah, I see. You want lower prices on Day One. That’s different. I would demand that too if the cost of making games wasn’t increasing for AAA game makers. Indie devs already have lower Day One prices. It would be different if you were saying “the cost of making games is the same, and they get to keep more of it, and yet the Day One prices are the same”.

But that’s not the case is it? But for the games that are developed with smaller development budgets, those do tend to cost less at launch. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger just came out at $15. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon just came out recently at $15. Those are smaller budget games from big budget developers, released only on digital platforms, and they cost less from Day One.

[Starlight]

If you want to believe this is why it was abandoned and not because the console makers are implementing their own used game system that does the work for publishers like EA you are seriously naive dude.

Again, how does this relate to ending it on the PC?
And how does it work when those systems are in severe legal jeopardy, at best, in the EU?

[WarpRattler]

I’m currently a real-life example of how the Internet connection requirement for the Xbox One is a Bad Thing. We had some pretty bad storms here (central Illinois) on Friday, and while we didn’t lose power, our Internet has been down since then; our ISP (a small local provider) apparently doesn’t have anyone in the office on the weekends, and their tech support is junk. I’m posting this from a Dairy Queen in town with free Wi-Fi.

Despite this, I can play games on my 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, Vita, older consoles, or PC (as long as they’re already installed). I wouldn’t be able to do this on an Xbox One in my current real-world situation. So: piss off, Microsoft.

[RickH]

I have 100s of Steam games, 100s of XBLA games, etc. But they are all relatively cheap, cheap enough that I considered it a fair trade-off for giving up the above. I’m aware they could go away at any time, though.

Exactly. As a consumer, a diminished product merits a diminished price. However, my suspicion is that there are parties within the big publishers that think that they can BOTH sell a reduced-value product and demand premium pricing by locking out re-selling. If they get their way, I suppose we’lll see how making your customers obtain permission every time they want to use what they paid for works out.

I dont think it will work. I have seen way too many GameStop customers who (by my estimation) don’t have the infrastructure or the credit rating available to them so that they can do things the always-online way.

[intruder]

I’m currently a real-life example of how the Internet connection requirement for the Xbox One is a Bad Thing. We had some pretty bad storms here (central Illinois) on Friday, and while we didn’t lose power, our Internet has been down since then; our ISP (a small local provider) apparently doesn’t have anyone in the office on the weekends, and their tech support is junk. I’m posting this from a Dairy Queen in town with free Wi-Fi.

According to Microsoft you should move to a bigger city. #dealwithit

[BigWeather]

That’s always going to be the case. Some people are willing to give more, some people are willing to give less. It’s the job of the seller to try to get money from each group. Ideally, a lot more from the people willing to give a lot more, and then less and less from each tier. That’s the way it works voluntarily with the humble bundles and Kickstarter with it’s different tiers. For new retail games, they do via a factor of time, that’s all. Offer up the game for a higher price up front, and then slowly do bigger and bigger sales as time goes on.

Certain publishers are more aggressive than others in their sales. Like Microsoft (on both PC and XBLA with their own published games) and Square Enix (on Steam, XBLA and PSN). Other publishers seem very reluctant to do sales. Like Activision.

Surely there must still be some games you’re willing to pay $60 for, right? Maybe GTA V? Maybe Watch Dogs? Perhaps the next big Bethesda RPG with its 100s of hours of gameplay? Even if you’re not, plenty of people are, and they will still lower the price of those games so that they cross into your threshold eventually.

I guess I was just pointing out that the way that things are being done now has (again, I speak only for myself) completely turned me off from paying day one prices. Something that even today I’d happily do, but for knowing that they’ll just be a ton of DLC and a GotY edition later that I’ll get (since I prefer having physical media) and stuff like that. Add on the potential next-gen that a day one price won’t even guarantee that I’ll always be able to play the game and they’ve effectively shut off a spigot that was giving them $3000 - $5000 a year (and often more) and reduced it to closer to $1000. I wait now for $20 or so prices, $30 tops, and if the game has a ton of single-player DLC even then I don’t bite until the inevitable GotY is released and hits that sweet spot.

As for games I’d be willing to pay $60 for, assuming that next-gen restricts my ability to play my games forever, I haven’t seen anything worth giving up that for day one prices. Maybe GTAVI? GTAV is this gen and I don’t have much problem buying R* games day one, even with full knowledge that I’ll buy the GotY as they are so good. Everything else (AC4, Watch Dogs) I’ve seen can wait.

There are ways to get me to pay top dollar – produce beautiful physical versions with art books, maps, etc. I’ve Kickstarted 25 projects, around $2000 worth, and almost every one because I wanted the physical rewards. I miss the old Infocom games, Ultima games, etc. But restricting my usage of games is not the way to go, that’s for sure.

[Brad_Grenz]

Exactly. As a consumer, a diminished product merits a diminished price. However, my suspicion is that there are parties within the big publishers that think that they can BOTH sell a reduced-value product and demand premium pricing by locking out re-selling. If they get their way, I suppose we’lll see how making your customers obtain permission every time they want to use what they paid for works out.

But it’s not a different set of publishers on Console from the publishers who participate in big sales and swift discounts on Steam, Amazon and elsewhere online. It’s the same damn people setting these prices in both cases. Why wouldn’t they chase long tail sales on consoles the same way they do on PC? They might have been skeptical of this approach at one time, but Valve showed them how to squeeze money out of product long past it’s prime in retail.

[Don_Quixote]

The current on-demand pricing on Xbox Live suggests that that’s not the approach they’ll take. They aren’t doing it now, why would they suddenly start? And with no used market to undercut them, they have no competition, so yeah. I just don’t see it.

[Brad_Grenz]

Microsoft’s pretty late to the digital party in general, ironically. Sony has obviously been pushing day one digital and sales far more, in addition to the PS Plus stuff. AFAIK MS actually sets the price of XBLA content, that may extend to Games on Demand right now resulting in a bureaucratic quagmire even for publishers that are interested in “Steam Sale” style discounts. Next gen that could all change. Or not. Maybe MS will just suck at this stuff on the Xbox One, too. But that doesn’t mean it will be bad in principle. If they’re shitty at flexible pricing people can always choose Sony or Steam instead.

[intruder]

I guess I was just pointing out that the way that things are being done now has (again, I speak only for myself) completely turned me off from paying day one prices. Something that even today I’d happily do, but for knowing that they’ll just be a ton of DLC and a GotY edition later that I’ll get (since I prefer having physical media) and stuff like that. Add on the potential next-gen that a day one price won’t even guarantee that I’ll always be able to play the game and they’ve effectively shut off a spigot that was giving them $3000 - $5000 a year (and often more) and reduced it to closer to $1000. I wait now for $20 or so prices, $30 tops, and if the game has a ton of single-player DLC even then I don’t bite until the inevitable GotY is released and hits that sweet spot.

As for games I’d be willing to pay $60 for, assuming that next-gen restricts my ability to play my games forever, I haven’t seen anything worth giving up that for day one prices. Maybe GTAVI? GTAV is this gen and I don’t have much problem buying R* games day one, even with full knowledge that I’ll buy the GotY as they are so good. Everything else (AC4, Watch Dogs) I’ve seen can wait.

There are ways to get me to pay top dollar – produce beautiful physical versions with art books, maps, etc. I’ve Kickstarted 25 projects, around $2000 worth, and almost every one because I wanted the physical rewards. I miss the old Infocom games, Ultima games, etc. But restricting my usage of games is not the way to go, that’s for sure.

Same for me.
I only buy Collector’s Editions I deem worthy day 1 full price and games that have a high probability to be banned in Germany (mostly WWII games containing swastikas).
Everything else AAA I wait until it’s reduced to my price point of 25 EUR or less for a PHYSICAL copy.
Steam keys of AAA I will wait until 15 EUR or less.

Publishers want to fuck with me and well I have the patience so I win. The traditional “bond” between them and us has been broken (from gamers for gamers) and we didn’t cause it.
Now they will reap their rewards.

I jumped into quite some kickstarters though and I’m a indie supporter since before indie was a theme (I got Uplink on a CD ordered via Inversion’s forum ages ago).
I pay full price for indies quite some time.
I also own over 400 games on GoG.com and yes I say “games” not “licenses”.
In my opinion I own a handful of licenses for application software and that’s it.

[Rock8man]

The current on-demand pricing on Xbox Live suggests that that’s not the approach they’ll take. They aren’t doing it now, why would they suddenly start? And with no used market to undercut them, they have no competition, so yeah. I just don’t see it.

Again, it depends on the publisher. Ubisoft games on demand usually start around $40, even for relatively new games like Assassin’s Creed III. And then they go on weekly sales when the theme is Ubisoft week, or something like that. Same with Square Enix games. They start lower, and then the go on sale become even lower. Microsoft also started Halo 4 off at $40 on XGoD, as it does with most games.

And then there’s Activision, who start their games off at full price, even when the GoD version shows up over a year later sometime. It’s kind of ridiculous. But then they do the same thing on Steam.

And like Brad said, XGoD games still aren’t there at launch like they are on Sony’s console, where they already have Day One digital launches for most games now. There was even an interview recently with some MS executive who said that they didn’t do Day One launches in order to make Gamestop happy.

[Alstein]

But it’s not a different set of publishers on Console from the publishers who participate in big sales and swift discounts on Steam, Amazon and elsewhere online. It’s the same damn people setting these prices in both cases. Why wouldn’t they chase long tail sales on consoles the same way they do on PC? They might have been skeptical of this approach at one time, but Valve showed them how to squeeze money out of product long past it’s prime in retail.

Sega shows patience with the long tail- they’ve put many of their console games on big sales (the current one is Virtua Fighter, which is a steal at $5 or $15 if you like dress-up)

[RickH]

Why wouldn’t they chase long tail sales on consoles the same way they do on PC? They might have been skeptical of this approach at one time, but Valve showed them how to squeeze money out of product long past it’s prime in retail.

Probably for the same reason the big pharma companies agree to sell the same medications they sell in the US at full price to Canada at a reduced rate, they figure it’s gravy because they are already covering their profits in the US market. i.e., it makes sense to bean counters if not the general public.

[Telefrog]

E3 is going to be awesome.

[Ninyu]

Sony had better not mess this up. Microsoft is basically handing this next generation to them on a plate.

[stusser]

They’re afraid that people will keep asking those same tired questions about used games, always on, etc, and since it’s all realtime you’ll be able to just stare them down. MS obviously does not have answers to those questions yet.

[Telefrog]

Keep in mind that the post-E3 one-on-one interview appointments are still on, so it’s not like MS is running away after the curtain drops.

[intruder]

Awesome E3 coming up I think!
Took off work on Monday and Tuesday as the press conferences start at Monday 06:00 PM local time and go deep into the night.
(Monday off so people don’t dare to call me on Tuesday morning as they assume I have a long weekend).
Damn I’m giddy like a little school girl! :)