GAME in serious trouble

Helix

corcaigh07 wrote: »

they will if they have to, i remember my brother paying about 70 Punts on Street Fighter 2 for the Megadrive, plus of course some 6 button pads!

thats when games traditionally cost stupid money - they dont any more

Helix

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

You are completely missing the point. Competition regardless of where it comes from is what keeps prices down. As you remove the competition the prices will creep up. Steam is a great example. Its very much established itself as a monopoly and charges way more for new release games and keeps the prices higher longer than any bricks and motor ever did.

game prices on steam were handicapped by b&m stores threatening not to carry products that had lower retail prices on steam

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Once all the fixed stores are gone the online retailers will let their prices creep up. I'm not suggesting that people should buy from somewhere thats massively more expensive - just to keep an open mind as to what's going on in the big picture.

i work in the industry, i know what's going on in the big picture, game prices will NOT increase like you think they will

Rezident

Good, it was a shameful rip-off.

RobbingBandit

corcaigh07 wrote: »

they will if they have to, i remember my brother paying about 70 Punts on Street Fighter 2 for the Megadrive, plus of course some 6 button pads!

I remember paying £70 for a steel box Street Fighter on SNES in gamesworld in chapters, I paid £70 in belfast 5 years ago for the dreadful DS Lunar Dragon Song import in forbidden planet,people will pay what ever price games are in high street shops for one reason only convience. super mario 64 ds is still €30 or upwards in Gamestop,hmv and Smyths.

sink

The price elasticity of demand in general is greater, not less with ecommerce in comparison to the high street. This means that price has a greater impact over how well a product sells and so on-line retailers have to be even more sensitive to the price of goods, which leads to lower prices.

If someone wants to purchase a homogeneous product and they shop on-line they are far more likely to check multiple retailers in comparison to bricks and mortar stores.

Steam is only able to do what it does because it has a unique selling point in the overall service it provides. It will loose that USP overtime as rival digital distribution services improve and catch up.

I don't think the loss of bricks and mortar retailers will have any significant impact on price competition in the on-line market as there is already a high level of competition between on-line retailers

Ostrom

corcaigh07 wrote: »

they will if they have to, i remember my brother paying about 70 Punts on Street Fighter 2 for the Megadrive, plus of course some 6 button pads!

A friends copy of Soul Calibur 4 still has its €75 price tag, and our local Tesco still has a copy of Halo 3 for €75

Procrastastudy

sink wrote: »

The price elasticity of demand in general is greater, not less with ecommerce in comparison to the high street. This means that price has a greater impact over how well a product sells and so on-line retailers have to be even more sensitive to the price of goods, which leads to lower prices.

If someone wants to purchase a homogeneous product and they shop on-line they are far more likely to check multiple retailers in comparison to bricks and mortar stores.

Steam is only able to do what it does because it has a unique selling point in the overall service it provides. It will loose that USP overtime as rival digital distribution services improve and catch up.

I don't think the loss of bricks and mortar retailers will have any significant impact on price competition in the on-line market as there is already a high level of competition between on-line retailers

While I agree to a degree - what is the point of a physical product if there are only online retailers? If there is no physical product - why bother having the middleman. While we're all speculating here there are two facts which I think are fairly hard to ignore:

Competition is good and keeps prices down.
People will, do and have paid silly money for games.

The point you make about Steam having a USP is exactly what I'm refering too. If your USP is you are EA and only you sell EA games then you will have them doing what Steam does now.

Specifically @Hellix we've already seen examples of people paying €74.99 for games in this generation let alone all the stories of what people have paid previosly. You don't need to work in the industry to see where the publishers want to take price points and that people will pay them.

Beyond giving you many examples of how what's already happened - explaining what publisher have already done ref pricing and applying common sense I think we have to agree to disagree on this one.

I know if Total War: Rome II came out tomorrow at €79.99 I'd still buy it.

cloud493

I paid... £45 I think? To get crisis core early when it came out, and £50 for pokemon diamond :eek: but it would depend on the game, popularity. Something like call of duty could get away with being 70 quid +, on pure popularity alone in my opinion.

Helix

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

I know if Total War: Rome II came out tomorrow at €79.99 I'd still buy it.

im hoping this won't be seen as poster on poster, but if you would pay that for a game you are an absolute moron, and you deserve to be fleeced for every penny you have

if publishers end up charging that kind of money to people who'll pay it, then you'll have nobody to blame only yourself

Varik

Helix wrote: »

im hoping this won't be seen as poster on poster, but if you would pay that for a game you are an absolute moron, and you deserve to be fleeced for every penny you have

if publishers end up charging that kind of money to people who'll pay it, then you'll have nobody to blame only yourself

I can't remember what my last game of Total war shogun 2 came in at but it was near 40 hours, before which i had done 3 more campaigns.

People spend €45 for a game that may not even last that in total, so why is spending that for a game that he could be playing happily for the next 2 year stupid?

Helix

Varik wrote: »

People spend €45 for a game that may not even last that in total, so why is spending that for a game that he could be playing happily for the next 2 year stupid?

sure why not pay €200 for it then? if it's going to last you 2 years like

Varik

Varik wrote: »

I can't remember what my last game of Total war shogun 2 came in at but it was near 40 hours, before which i had done 3 more campaigns.

People spend €45 for a game that may not even last that in total, so why is spending that for a game that he could be playing happily for the next 2 year stupid?

45 euro for a game that give you hundreds of hours of enjoyment is a bargain but what about games such as Homefront whose single player can be cleared in 3 hours. I only paid 5 euro for my PC copy and I still felt ripped off, imagine the disgust that gamers who paid 45-60 felt.

corcaigh07

people will pay whatever the going rate is, they may just reduce the amount of purchases made. When GTA4 was in high demand at launch, people were happily paying 75 euro and thats a this generation example.

if cigarettes were 20 euro a packet, people would still smoke but would try to cut down. same might happen to gaming. I just hope publishers use their heads and start distributing new release retail games (on consoles) at a price thats fair. surely with no box, no middle man to sell, no transit cost, no manual, the scope is there to sell new releases in the 29.99 to 39.99 bracket.

Helix

GTA 4 didnt cost 75 or anything close to it

where are you people paying these prices ffs?

corcaigh07

Helix wrote: »

GTA 4 didnt cost 75 or anything close to it

where are you people paying these prices ffs?

why are you being argumentative? i saw it for 75 euro in Zavvi in Cork at launch. thats a fact and because stock was so low for GTA4 for a whil after launch, people bought it at that price.

TheGunns

corcaigh07 wrote: »

people will pay whatever the going rate is, they may just reduce the amount of purchases made. When GTA4 was in high demand at launch, people were happily paying 75 euro and thats a this generation example.

if cigarettes were 20 euro a packet, people would still smoke but would try to cut down. same might happen to gaming. I just hope publishers use their heads and start distributing new release retail games (on consoles) at a price thats fair. surely with no box, no middle man to sell, no transit cost, no manual, the scope is there to sell new releases in the 29.99 to 39.99 bracket.

yes but like cigarettes that kind of price would make people source them illegaly. that the reason prices arent jacked up higher as it drives people into the black market as will happen with games, ie. piracy

Procrastastudy

TheGunns wrote: »

yes but like cigarettes that kind of price would make people source them illegaly. that the reason prices arent jacked up higher as it drives people into the black market as will happen with games, ie. piracy

Piracy will be illiminated by the publishers as you will have to log in to play any games. They are doing a fairly decent job of this even now. I know a fair few people with one "online" 360 and one "offline" 360. And knowing the 360 - probably a spare one and a broken one too. :P

Hellix - seriously man I think it was fairly obvious from day one people will pay whatever the going rate is for games given we've gone from £3.99 tapes to €74.99 Blu-rays in the space of 20 odd years. I would be interested in what the upper limit is but it sure ain't €80.

Also anyone who thinks letting the publishers get a monopoly because competition has been eliminated is indeed going to get fleesed

EDIT: Do bear in mind the Irish Market is somewhat different from the US / Canadian markets. We've always piad more for stuff in the UK and Ireland pays even more - if for no other reason than the VAT.

Deano7788

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-29-game-administration-to-end-tomorrow-with-rbs-as-buyer-report

The Royal Bank of Scotland will buy GAME out of administration - and it could happen as soon as tomorrow, a new report has declared.

Hopefully something will be done to help the Irish staff if this goes through.

Retr0gamer

corcaigh07 wrote: »

why are you being argumentative? i saw it for 75 euro in Zavvi in Cork at launch. thats a fact and because stock was so low for GTA4 for a whil after launch, people bought it at that price.

And if you paid that you were mugged since it was less than 50 in Tesco.

noodler

PS3 games were certainly 70e+ when the console was first released.

I can confirm that much without any dispute, Play.com and the Xtra-Vision where I worked would be two sources.

noodler

Retr0gamer wrote: »

And if you paid that you were mugged since it was less than 50 in Tesco.

??

Strange argument Retr0, whatever Tesco's relatively small market share in video games now, it would have been even smaller 4/5 years ago.

It seems strange to compare one of their 'limited time only' prices to the other 90% of the market and say you were mugged.

marco_polo

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Piracy will be illiminated by the publishers as you will have to log in to play any games. They are doing a fairly decent job of this even now. I know a fair few people with one "online" 360 and one "offline" 360. And knowing the 360 - probably a spare one and a broken one too. :P

There are no singleplayer games that require an Xbox live connection and the online Xbox is presumeably for multiplayer? So I don't see how that point is at all relevant.

The only publisher that have even attempted an 'always online' type single player DRM was Ubisoft and it was such a roaring success that they managed to completely destroy their PC sales by up to 90%, and hastily did a complete UTurn soon afterwards.

sink

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

While I agree to a degree - what is the point of a physical product if there are only online retailers? If there is no physical product - why bother having the middleman. While we're all speculating here there are two facts which I think are fairly hard to ignore:

Competition is good and keeps prices down.
People will, do and have paid silly money for games.

The point you make about Steam having a USP is exactly what I'm refering too. If your USP is you are EA and only you sell EA games then you will have them doing what Steam does now.

Specifically @Hellix we've already seen examples of people paying €74.99 for games in this generation let alone all the stories of what people have paid previosly. You don't need to work in the industry to see where the publishers want to take price points and that people will pay them.

Beyond giving you many examples of how what's already happened - explaining what publisher have already done ref pricing and applying common sense I think we have to agree to disagree on this one.

I know if Total War: Rome II came out tomorrow at €79.99 I'd still buy it.

That is a non-sequitur. The closure of high street retailers is not necessarily followed by publishers eliminating disc sales or limiting direct downloading to their own platform. Neither of those scenarios were factored in to my earlier analysis.

That scenario is also unlikely to come about for a good number of years, if ever. The lack of broadband infrastructure in many areas and the bandwidth caps on many ISP's are just two limiting factors.

MadYaker

I very rarely buy a hard copy of a game in the last few years. I buy everything on steam sales or on amazon. Even with delivery its always cheaper for PC games. I suppose its sad to see these shops closing but i don't really care. They are obsolete and never really catered properly for PC gamers.

Beefy78

sink wrote: »

That is a non-sequitur. The closure of high street retailers is not necessarily followed by publishers eliminating disc sales or limiting direct downloading to their own platform. Neither of those scenarios were factored in to my earlier analysis.

That scenario is also unlikely to come about for a good number of years, if ever. The lack of broadband infrastructure in many areas and the bandwidth caps on many ISP's are just two limiting factors.

I don't think it's any sort of real leap of logic to tie the two together, though. Digital distribution is the ambition of publishers who want to cut out any middle men. The death of the High Street is one more step along the road.

readyletsgo

Topic completely gone off real topic...

Unsubscribed...

Procrastastudy

Fair comment any chance a mod could take the bits re the future of the gaming industy and dump it in another thread? If not I'll try and do a highlights thread when I get of my teeny tiny laptop as its an interesting discussion imho.

@Marcopolo to be fair we're talking about where we think its going rather than where it is now.

On BB infastructure that's not a major issue - esp given we're probably one of the furthest behind and we're a tiny market.

Retr0gamer

noodler wrote: »

??

Strange argument Retr0, whatever Tesco's relatively small market share in video games now, it would have been even smaller 4/5 years ago.

It seems strange to compare one of their 'limited time only' prices to the other 90% of the market and say you were mugged.

Tesco have been heavily discounting the big name games for the last few years and GTA4 certainly wasn't the first and they advertised it heavily. If you pre-order one of the biggest games ever in a shop expecting it to sell out (hint it won't but the shops will hold back the stock on the first day to simulate demand and only give them to pre-orders) then you were mugged if you paid more than Tescos charge which is usually 45-50 euros. Gamers need to shop around, there's absolutely no need to pre-order a game unless it's niche. People need to learn to shop around.

Fussgangerzone

Beefy78 wrote: »

Do you have a source to support this?

Nope. I believe it, but I can't prove it.

It's been seen before that retailers and suppliers **** each other over when their interests don't coincide, in all sectors.

Procrastastudy

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Tesco have been heavily discounting the big name games for the last few years and GTA4 certainly wasn't the first and they advertised it heavily. If you pre-order one of the biggest games ever in a shop expecting it to sell out (hint it won't but the shops will hold back the stock on the first day to simulate demand and only give them to pre-orders) then you were mugged if you paid more than Tescos charge which is usually 45-50 euros. Gamers need to shop around, there's absolutely no need to pre-order a game unless it's niche. People need to learn to shop around.

While that may well happen at a company level - I can assure you in my several years as a GameStop manager and then a GAME one we I never did.

On the last comment there - the other option is to stick to one and get them to price match - building up a bit of loyalty to a particualar company. That's the way I prefer to shop that's not to say your way is any worse, just different strokes for different folks. Having said that I suppose by extention I'm shopping around too.

In regard to Tesco - GAME didn price match them because they were selling under cost. My view on this type of practise is it's anti-competative and in the long term damaging. That said I realise thats a minority opinion.