RRP for Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 and PS3 is £54.99. Retailers are cutting this to around £44.99, but that's still more than the usual £39.99 price we expect to pay for new release console games.
Apparently other publishers are thinking of following suit with their "tentpole blockbusters" because of the lousy exchange rate, which is actually getting better for them now... great excuse.
Well Nintendo of Europe has released 2 games over in Europe that haven't been released in North America, and of course both of them are games I want to play. I would say Disaster basically has no chance of coming to the US though it's hard to say if Trace Memory 2 will, though since it wasn't announced at E3 I have my doubts (it could be announced at Nintendo's October press conference). I figure I may just have to install the homebrew channel on my Wii so I can import them.
Yeah that is true I suppose. It sort of confuses me that Nintendo spent that money to purchase Monolith and yet doesn't use them to their advantage in the US. Sucks too cause I was ultra psyched when I heard about the Monolith deal With the increased demand for more "real" games for the Wii though, I can see that decision being changed in the future.
Well I know Reggie said he didn't like Disaster so I'm guessing that has to be at least part of the reason it didn't come to the US since it would require pretty much no work due to it already being in English. I imagine we'll see Monado Beginning of the World released in the US though since both Baten Kaitos games came out here.
Two games does not make up for the extended delays, especially from Nintendo, in getting games shipped over here. It doesn't make up for the higher prices we pay - the infamous $1=£1 exchange rate. It doesn't make up for being asked to stump up over £100 for Activision's single peripheral games like DJ Hero and the new Tony Hawk game.
Activision turning Call of Duty into an annual game as if it were a sports game is pretty annoying. Eventually they'll just start naming their games Call of Duty 2011, Call of Duty 2012, Call of Duty 2013, etc. And then they'll start marketing with cover military personnel, with Colin Powell on the cover of Call of Duty 2011 and John McCain on the cover of Call of Duty 2012! But flooding the market with all their Guitar Hero games, and probably killing the market in the process, is their icing.
Hey you also got Mario Kart Wii like a month before we did, but then again you had to wait several months for Smash Brothers. It's pretty interesting the way games are priced in Europe, whenever I read about people buying games it's not unusual for it to be on sale, even on release day. That almost never happens here, at most you can expect a sale/discount a few weeks after release if the game bombed, otherwise it could be even longer. Preorder deals are pretty rare (though becoming a bit more common, Toys R Us and Target seem to be giving away more and more giftcards for preordering or buying major games release week). I'm guess there has to be a pretty nice sized retailer markup over in Europe, I believe that here in the states retailers only make $5-10 per new copy of a game (depending on buying power), which is why stores like Gamestop push used games so much. I agree 100%, I'm loosing a lot of enthusiasm for Call of Duty now that it's a yearly franchise. As I posted in another thread I have my doubts I'll buy this one on day one like I have since CoD3. Yeah according to recent NPD numbers for June the newest Guitar Hero with the songs from the first few games pretty much bombed. It will be interesting to see how well the next Guitar Hero will fare against Rock Band Beetles. Personally I think the music genre has pretty much become saturated and sales of new games will start declining quite a bit.
A new PS3 or Xbox 360 game normally costs £39.99 on launch day. Last Christmas a lot of big titles ended up dropping in price rapidly. Possibly Mirror's Edge was the worst affected. That's the problem - Christmas. Everybody schedules their games for release at the most expensive time of the year for most households. Then, for the rest of the year, we get very little. If the publishers spread things out more they would sell more games. We are starting to see more extra content for pre-orderers. I received a pre-order code with my copy of Red Alert 3 that got me a few extra multiplayer maps. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had a pre-order bonus which has since gone up on the PSN Store as paid DLC. The 128k download size tells you where the content was actually stored. And publishers will counter that with paid DLC that can't be transferred.
This is actually something that some developers are starting to notice. I know EA in particualr has stated that tehy wish they released Mirrors Edge in the summer months as opposed to the busy Christmas time slot where it never stood a chance. What I think will happen is new properties are going to get releases in the summer months with the big hitters and sequels getting releases during the Christmas rush
Its amazing to think that the same game in essence on the PC will have a lower price point just to try and make PC owners buy the game instead of DL for nothing.......
^PC game prices are typically lower because the publisher doesn't have to pay Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony any licence fees.
I don't mind big prices so much. I do mind those half-brained copy protection schemes that insert themselves as a filter driver on your dvdrom drive and all that crap. Before I buy a game, I usually try to find out if it has any copy protection. If it does, I don't buy it. But I have a big stash of games I gladly payed the full price for, seeing as they don't have any copy protection. I see it like this: if the developers/publishers don't try to frell me over, I want to give them the money the deserve. If they do try to frell me over, they don't deserve any money from me.
I've only purchased a handful of PC games the last couple years, and admittedly have pirated a few that I was unsure of, but twice I actually HAD to pirate the game and use a crack because the copy protection was causing stability issues. (Spore and Mirror's Edge, both EA) It is almost enough to just drive me away from PC gaming entirely. As far as I know, no problems with any Activision games.
I investigate things like that before buying the game. If I really, really want the game anyway, I'll buy it, but I'll then download a cracked version to avoid the garbage that will mess up my system. It was bad enough when we had CD checks. Now they install drivers that dick up your OS and hardware, all on the fear you might pirate the game. And yet, I have not found a game that someone hasn't managed to pirate. Imagine that! Why they continue to bother is beyond me. Put some simple checks in to prevent casual copying and just be done with it! Keep your fucking hands off my computer.