Gaming News

The Raging Bile Duct · 03-07-2020 1:26pm

Skerries wrote: »

I did the math again and that would be €99.17 for the 1992 game

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the two games combined.

Penn · 03-07-2020 2:38pm

Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, the bad guy from The Mandalorian and much else) says he's starring in a big game due to be announced soon. Only rumour I've seen is Far Cry 6.

Varik · 03-07-2020 2:48pm

Could see him being the big bad in a Far Cry game.

martyos121 · 03-07-2020 2:52pm

Penn wrote: »

Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, the bad guy from The Mandalorian and much else) says he's starring in a big game due to be announced soon. Only rumour I've seen is Far Cry 6.

Surely it has to be Journey to the Centre of Hawkthorne 2.

03-07-2020 2:56pm

CastorTroy wrote: »

I think the reason given at the time for the high cost of games like Street Fighter 2 on SNES was the cost of the cartridge.

The carts were reasonably expensive to manufacture, and larger ROM sizes cost more than small ones. (And enhancement chips added to the cost also). They would talk about cart size in adverts and PR releases.

Early SNES games were 4Mbit, I remember a big deal being made about SFII Turbo being the first to have a 20Mbit cart.

At the time that SFII Turbo was £80, a SNES console with Mario was as little as £100. So a single game was nearly the price of the console! Absolute madness, but it was Nintendo's model at the time.

K.O.Kiki · 03-07-2020 6:09pm

Deleted User wrote: »

The carts were reasonably expensive to manufacture, and larger ROM sizes cost more than small ones. (And enhancement chips added to the cost also). They would talk about cart size in adverts and PR releases.

Early SNES games were 4Mbit, I remember a big deal being made about SFII Turbo being the first to have a 20Mbit cart.

At the time that SFII Turbo was £80, a SNES console with Mario was as little as £100. So a single game was nearly the price of the console! Absolute madness, but it was Nintendo's model at the time.

It's not madness, you said it yourself: hardware costs were much larger, and companies need to make profit to survive.

That's why the PS1 succeeded: its manufacturing costs went down to almost nothing (CDs) allowing even 20-25 quid games to have a profit margin.

B.A._Baracus · 03-07-2020 10:12pm

Skerries wrote: »

I did the math!

WWF came out in 1993 so £45 back then is the equivalent of €93.44 according to the following sites

http://kildare.ie/business/euro-cal.asp
https://www.inflationtool.com/euro-ireland/1993-to-present-value?amount=57

That is insane!!
I could have sworn this was summer 1995 too so the game was still that price.

Skerries · 04-07-2020 10:19am

OK symbol removed from COD due to white power

https://gamerant.com/call-of-duty-okay-gesture-removed-modern-warfare-warzone/

Robert ninja · 04-07-2020 10:34am

2020: the year racism ended because a video game company removed an emoji 👌

pixelburp · 04-07-2020 10:39am

Skerries wrote: »

OK symbol removed from COD due to white power

https://gamerant.com/call-of-duty-okay-gesture-removed-modern-warfare-warzone/

Reading that, I didn't know it started as a hoax by 4chan. That must be kinda embarrassing; making a joke at white supremacists expense only for them to adopt your brainchild in seriousness, using it everywhere.

Vicxas · 04-07-2020 10:59am

More pandering i see, no one cared but IW decided it was a MASSIVE issue

Mr Crispy · 04-07-2020 12:26pm

Vicxas wrote: »

More pandering i see, no one cared but IW decided it was a MASSIVE issue

TBF, it was removed without any fanfare. That's hardly making it a massive issue. Anyway, if no one actually cared that it was there, then they shouldn't care that it has been removed.

Kylo Ren · 04-07-2020 8:48pm

I don't think games have been 60 for a while. The last couple console generations the new games have been 70 for a while which was already pointed out. Then you have most games coming out with a 70/80 edition with digital crap, 100+ editions and even some 250+ editions with merch and digital crap again. Now with digital, most big games are 70 at launch and the cut no longer taken from printing, pressing, distribution and the share to the likes of GameStop and Amazon disappearing is a sizable difference. Haven't even mentioned the now highly lucrative microtransactions in games that people view from a slight annoyance to predatory gambling mechanics dressed up with shiny bells and whistles and everything in between -- but watch the multi million/billion dollar businesses come cap in hand and make it feel like ye are doing them the favour.

Varik · 04-07-2020 9:04pm

pixelburp wrote: »

Reading that, I didn't know it started as a hoax by 4chan. That must be kinda embarrassing; making a joke at white supremacists expense only for them to adopt your brainchild in seriousness, using it everywhere.

How was it a joke at white supremacist expense.

Trump made a weird OK hand sign and 4Chan managed to convince the likes of CNN it was white power.

Grumpypants · 04-07-2020 10:40pm

Kylo Ren wrote: »

I don't think games have been 60 for a while. The last couple console generations the new games have been 70 for a while which was already pointed out. Then you have most games coming out with a 70/80 edition with digital crap, 100+ editions and even some 250+ editions with merch and digital crap again. Now with digital, most big games are 70 at launch and the cut no longer taken from printing, pressing, distribution and the share to the likes of GameStop and Amazon disappearing is a sizable difference. Haven't even mentioned the now highly lucrative microtransactions in games that people view from a slight annoyance to predatory gambling mechanics dressed up with shiny bells and whistles and everything in between -- but watch the multi million/billion dollar businesses come cap in hand and make it feel like ye are doing them the favour.

Printing a disc cost cents, distribution isn't that expensive either, especially at scale. GameStop took a smaller cut than the digital stores which take 30%. They also handled the sale, the money, the customer service.

When selling digitally on your own store (Never mind the huge cost of data). You have the cost of the servers, the 24/7 teams if engineers to monitor and maintain them. The extra costs in handling money in terms of legal compliance. The customer support staff needed to deal with any issues.

Digital isn't just extra free money for companies. There is a huge cost associated with it that never exist with the old ship and forget model.

Almost every aspect of game making has gone up in price bar the cost to consumer.

It has never been cheaper and we have never had so much choice in the history of the industry.

Kylo Ren · 04-07-2020 11:09pm

Grumpypants wrote: »

Printing a disc cost cents, distribution isn't that expensive either, especially at scale. GameStop took a smaller cut than the digital stores which take 30%. They also handled the sale, the money, the customer service.

When selling digitally on your own store (Never mind the huge cost of data). You have the cost of the servers, the 24/7 teams if engineers to monitor and maintain them. The extra costs in handling money in terms of legal compliance. The customer support staff needed to deal with any issues.

Digital isn't just extra free money for companies. There is a huge cost associated with it that never exist with the old ship and forget model.

Almost every aspect of game making has gone up in price bar the cost to consumer.

It has never been cheaper and we have never had so much choice in the history of the industry.

Those small costs that you describe also scale so they add up.

I'll put it to you this way, if you asked every game company would you rather sell digitally or physically, 99% of them will say digital. The gains far outweigh the costs.

The cost has gone up in certain areas: controllers are a lot more expensive; only get one in the box now and usually without a game bundled which most of them did back in the day with many of them also giving you two controllers; online subscriptions; special editions and microtransactions that while you don't have to partake in, garners such a high revenue that it can't be discounted in the argument that these businesses require upping the price of games.

dreamers75 · 05-07-2020 12:05am

Grumpypants wrote: »

Printing a disc cost cents, distribution isn't that expensive either, especially at scale. GameStop took a smaller cut than the digital stores which take 30%. They also handled the sale, the money, the customer service.

When selling digitally on your own store (Never mind the huge cost of data). You have the cost of the servers, the 24/7 teams if engineers to monitor and maintain them. The extra costs in handling money in terms of legal compliance. The customer support staff needed to deal with any issues.

Digital isn't just extra free money for companies. There is a huge cost associated with it that never exist with the old ship and forget model.

Almost every aspect of game making has gone up in price bar the cost to consumer.

It has never been cheaper and we have never had so much choice in the history of the industry.

For a physical game to be €50 it cost €20 for manufacture/distribution. The €20 would be broken down to Manufacturue, deliverer, shops profits. So thats €30 to the publisher and maybe €10 to the developer depending on the publising deal.

For a game to be delivered digitially it does not cost anywhere near €20, would be more like €1 with AWS.

Now its €49 to the developer.

Grumpypants · 05-07-2020 9:21am

dreamers75 wrote: »

For a physical game to be €50 it cost €20 for manufacture/distribution. The €20 would be broken down to Manufacturue, deliverer, shops profits. So thats €30 to the publisher and maybe €10 to the developer depending on the publising deal.

For a game to be delivered digitially it does not cost anywhere near €20, would be more like €1 with AWS.

Now its €49 to the developer.

The margin on digital is higher but not anything near what you are suggesting.

You are mixing up a few things. If you are comparing selling in a physical shop it should be compared to selling on a digital storefront.

For starters Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo all take 30%. So a game sold digitally for €49 would only net the developer €35.

In that case, the physical and digital store takes the brunt of the infrastructure and service costs away from the developer.

Just because they don't print a disk and have a shop with a person in it doesn't automatically make it free. Sony need huge servers, in huge buildings with huge rent. They have massive power bills. They need a customer service org. Just 25 staff costs about a million a year.

Then you need engineers to build and manage the store front, you need QA to test it. You need a legal team etc etc. Those costs run into the millions as well.

This notion of the cost being €1, only works if you Conviently ignore all the other costs.

The main plus for digital is it speeds up delivery and lowers risk of loss rather than it boosts the margin.

Printing and delivering a disk to a shop is a small amount. Less than a Euro. The risk is if you have to print and deliver at scale. Say you print 5 million disks then you are spending €5million. If you only sell 1million that is a big €4million hit.

If you only print 1 million and the game is a hit then it takes weeks to get more on the shelf. It's why pre order numbers are a great indicator.

TitianGerm · 05-07-2020 9:21am

dreamers75 wrote: »

For a physical game to be €50 it cost €20 for manufacture/distribution. The €20 would be broken down to Manufacturue, deliverer, shops profits. So thats €30 to the publisher and maybe €10 to the developer depending on the publising deal.

For a game to be delivered digitially it does not cost anywhere near €20, would be more like €1 with AWS.

Now its €49 to the developer.

Microsoft, Sony and Steam take something like 30% of online sale on their platforms.

Potential-Monke · 05-07-2020 11:23am

Grumpypants wrote: »

Then you need engineers to build and manage the store front, you need QA to test it.

Just go the Sony route and update it once per generation!

RobertFoster · 05-07-2020 12:21pm

TitianGerm wrote: »

Microsoft, Sony and Steam take something like 30% of online sale on their platforms.

IGN have a retailer cuts diagram (too big to embed)

Steam scales to 25% and 20% after $10m and $50m in sales. Across PC, console, mobile, and physical, most charge 30%. The only outliers are itch.io (developer's choice), Humble Bundle (25%), and Epic (12%).

CatInABox · 06-07-2020 3:19pm

https://twitter.com/XboxIE_Official/status/1280139442187956230

July 23rd for the Xbox Showcase. Hopefully they've learnt from their first reveal and show some actual gameplay.

Jordan 199 · 06-07-2020 3:24pm

CatInABox wrote: »

July 23rd for the Xbox Showcase. Hopefully they've learnt from their first reveal and show some actual gameplay.

I'm hoping they will show some of new Flight Simulator game and possibly a release date.

Sephiroth_dude · 06-07-2020 3:34pm

CatInABox wrote: »

https://twitter.com/XboxIE_Official/status/1280139442187956230

July 23rd for the Xbox Showcase. Hopefully they've learnt from their first reveal and show some actual gameplay.

Hopefully it's not as cringey as most of their presentations are.

Penn · 06-07-2020 3:44pm

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Hopefully it's not as cringey as most of their presentations are.

Hopefully with it being a "Games showcase", they just stick to gameplay and trailers, like the PS5 event. Some intros and outros by the devs, but mostly just the games themselves.

Hopefully we see what their new first party studios have been doing too.

ERG89 · 06-07-2020 3:48pm

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Hopefully it's not as cringey as most of their presentations are.

Less phil spencer talking and more actual trailers of what people want to see. Doesn't all have to be first party but their first party stuff is very important; especially new IP's as Gears, Halo and Forza have been well milked now

Penn · 06-07-2020 3:58pm

ERG89 wrote: »

Less phil spencer talking and more actual trailers of what people want to see. Doesn't all have to be first party but their first party stuff is very important; especially new IP's as Gears, Halo and Forza have been well milked now

I think there'll definitely be Halo 6 and a new Forza. Can't imagine a new Gears, probably too early. But yeah, their new 1st party studios, time to see what they bring to the table.

World Premiere of Crackdown 4, anyone?

EoinMcLovin · 06-07-2020 4:04pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQi5qL2esn4

Sephiroth_dude · 06-07-2020 9:19pm

Penn wrote: »

Hopefully with it being a "Games showcase", they just stick to gameplay and trailers, like the PS5 event. Some intros and outros by the devs, but mostly just the games themselves.

Hopefully we see what their new first party studios have been doing too.

ERG89 wrote: »

Less phil spencer talking and more actual trailers of what people want to see. Doesn't all have to be first party but their first party stuff is very important; especially new IP's as Gears, Halo and Forza have been well milked now

Christ Half the time all they go on about is bloody game pass and player experience, if they put half their energy into talking about exclusive titles forthcoming from the studio's they've acquired over the last couple of years, we'd all be happy, gamepass is old news now!

EoinMcLovin · 06-07-2020 9:43pm

https://twitter.com/geoffkeighley/status/1280211179638452226?s=19

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