They sell them for $30, GameStop sells used for $25. Lowering the price won't hurt used sales significantly.
Mass Effect... am I totally plot-spoiled?
- Thread starter Elemental
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I look at it like DVDs though. They're so cheap now that no one would even think of buying a used DVD and if game prices drop to something more reasonable, the difference between 25 and 30 dollars seems rather negligible.
What I don't get is why the game industry is so afraid of retailers when they are actively damaging the industry with used sales. Another solution would be to sell online at a substantial discount. Walmart sells iPods even though iTunes ruins their CD sales (and potentially movie sales), so it's not like it's unprecedented.
Oh well, a different discussion I suppose.
What I don't get is why the game industry is so afraid of retailers when they are actively damaging the industry with used sales. Another solution would be to sell online at a substantial discount. Walmart sells iPods even though iTunes ruins their CD sales (and potentially movie sales), so it's not like it's unprecedented.
Oh well, a different discussion I suppose.
Because most new sales go through them. Digital sales are growing on PC but for big console titles there is no direct path to costumers yet. This is one of the reasons why games on Steam aren't much cheaper then in retailers... because if EBGames gets pissed and says "we're not going to carry your game" then there will be a significant drop in sales.
The other reason is, of course, that gamers are used to paying those prices for games and publishers want all the money they can get
It's not big games like Mass Effect 2 that are hurt by the used market. They will all make more than enough money back.
It's the 7/10 games that suffer - Mirror's Edge being an obvious example - any above average game that's not quite what you'd call a AAA title.
People wait for the price to come down to begin with, then buy them, complete them and then trade them because there's usually either no multiplayer or nobody is playing it anyway because they're off playing MW2 instead. (The impact on mulitplayer gaming MW2 and a few other select titles is having is another discussion)
Games retailers then sell those traded in games for much more than they paid for them and the developers and publishers of those games see exactly zero dollars out of that. Obviously, that's not a situation the games industry is going to support if they can help it.
Right, which is why used game sales are pretty evil. Hell, in Canada, EVERYONE is doing it. The only other industry that I can think of where used products actively compete with new products is the car industry. I just don't get it.
And we're sort of at the point with XBL and PSN that full retail games are coming online. Now the big problem is that these games are still priced way too high (I think it's 40 bucks for Mass Effect 1 up here) and they come out way after the fact, but there will be a time when we're pre-loading Halo 9 on our XboxNatal 720s.
I do understand gouging the hardcore gamer though. It's why Modern Warfare 2 PC went up to 60 bucks - that's just pure profit for Activision. I just think it's short sighted, because even if MW2 made a billion dollars worldwide, that only accounts for several million people. Avatar managed to make the same amount of money buy reaching potentially tens if not hundreds of millions of people world wide.
Aaaanyway...
And we're sort of at the point with XBL and PSN that full retail games are coming online. Now the big problem is that these games are still priced way too high (I think it's 40 bucks for Mass Effect 1 up here) and they come out way after the fact, but there will be a time when we're pre-loading Halo 9 on our XboxNatal 720s.
I do understand gouging the hardcore gamer though. It's why Modern Warfare 2 PC went up to 60 bucks - that's just pure profit for Activision. I just think it's short sighted, because even if MW2 made a billion dollars worldwide, that only accounts for several million people. Avatar managed to make the same amount of money buy reaching potentially tens if not hundreds of millions of people world wide.
Aaaanyway...
^One of the major reasons Avatar has made so much money is that the ticket prices for 3D screenings are often around 30-40% more expensive than ordinary screenings, though.
Activision put the price up for MW2 simply because they could. The extra money was never going to stop people rushing out to buy it. They can justify it with the fact that, at least where I am, the price for CoD4 has only just come down from full price since MW2 was released.
Here in the UK, the retailers have to do something because they're getting undercut on some big releases by supermarkets who do special offers on the really big games on their first weekend as loss leaders. The supermarkets were selling FIFA 10 for £25 where the retailers were charging the usual £40 for it.
Activision put the price up for MW2 simply because they could. The extra money was never going to stop people rushing out to buy it. They can justify it with the fact that, at least where I am, the price for CoD4 has only just come down from full price since MW2 was released.
Here in the UK, the retailers have to do something because they're getting undercut on some big releases by supermarkets who do special offers on the really big games on their first weekend as loss leaders. The supermarkets were selling FIFA 10 for £25 where the retailers were charging the usual £40 for it.
I don't begrudge them charging as much as they want. They're trying to follow the book market - gouge for the hardcover, then six months later release what their version of the "GOTY" would be (Pulitzer Prize Winner!) in softcover form for much cheaper. I understand why they have to do that because they make most of their money on the "launch" of the product.
But the fact is, the Kindle has rendered that model of distribution almost irrelevant. And even though they make less money per book, they're selling more books than ever - Amazon has stated that ebook sales surpassed normal book sales this year.
Games can do the same thing. Valve constantly showing data that when they price a game at 5 bucks, sales go up several thousand percent is proof of that. It's too bad we're trending toward more expensive games (DJ Hero, Tony Hawk, Guitar Rock Band Hero Green Day Beatles edition, Night Goggle Cat Helmet special editions) nowadays.
But the fact is, the Kindle has rendered that model of distribution almost irrelevant. And even though they make less money per book, they're selling more books than ever - Amazon has stated that ebook sales surpassed normal book sales this year.
Games can do the same thing. Valve constantly showing data that when they price a game at 5 bucks, sales go up several thousand percent is proof of that. It's too bad we're trending toward more expensive games (DJ Hero, Tony Hawk, Guitar Rock Band Hero Green Day Beatles edition, Night Goggle Cat Helmet special editions) nowadays.
^Those games are only more expensive because of the other things you get aside from the disk.
I do wonder why anyone bought The Beatles: Rock Band full band pack at the price EA were charging when they could have bought the standalone game and a Rock Band 2 instruments pack for considerably less, though.
Digitial distribution should be drastically undercutting the boxed retail market, though. Sure, bandwidth, servers, co-location storage etc ain't free, but the costs are a lot less than manufacturing boxed products.
I do wonder why anyone bought The Beatles: Rock Band full band pack at the price EA were charging when they could have bought the standalone game and a Rock Band 2 instruments pack for considerably less, though.
Digitial distribution should be drastically undercutting the boxed retail market, though. Sure, bandwidth, servers, co-location storage etc ain't free, but the costs are a lot less than manufacturing boxed products.
Yeah, but there's also the money you lose to used sales to account for.
And hey, I'm one of the people who likes my local EB. I like being able to go into a store, ask for "Kanko Bancho" and not get weird looks. I just think pushing the 7.50 (with edge card) cheaper used version of the game pretty much kills the market.
It's not like I don't buy used... but when I do it, it means that the game is pretty much out of stock everywhere (another problem that can be fixed with digital distribution).
And hey, I'm one of the people who likes my local EB. I like being able to go into a store, ask for "Kanko Bancho" and not get weird looks. I just think pushing the 7.50 (with edge card) cheaper used version of the game pretty much kills the market.
It's not like I don't buy used... but when I do it, it means that the game is pretty much out of stock everywhere (another problem that can be fixed with digital distribution).
There's a big difference between a sale price and a regular price. If people know that a game is on a temporary discount they're probably more likely to buy it as opposed to if the price was just lower. Not saying that more people wouldn't buy with a lower price, just that it's not going to linearly scale and a $5 temporary price point doesn't really provide good numbers.
Yeah, I suppose the gimmick of the sale helps drive a purchase more than normal - the Christmas sale is proof of that. I just think lower prices over all would help with the situation.
Did it ever get explained where the Citadel relay came from? The Protheans couldn't have built it because they hadn't unlocked mass effect tech before the reaper invasion and if the reapers had built it Saren could have jumped in from anywhere.
Who says the Protheans hadn't unlocked mass relay tech? Just because they first used existing relays doesn't mean that they don't know how to build more. (Much like jumpgates on Babylon 5.)
The Protheans did crack mass relay technology, but only just barely. Vigil on Ilos explained the whole thing. The Conduit on the Citadel was a prototype mass relay constructed by the Protheans during their experiments in duplicating the technology. After the Reapers finally returned to dark space, Vigil awoke the few Prothean scientists it had managed to keep alive in stasis. They used the Conduit, which had been built before the Reapers came, to travel to the Citadel and disrupt the keepers' ability to receive signals from Sovereign.
The real plot hole, IMO, is how the Reapers missed the presence of the Conduit. If it was constructed by the Protheans, it couldn't have been there on the Citadel the last time the Reapers came, so why didn't they notice it when they returned to exterminate the Protheans?
None of the Council races thought it was anything more than a pretty rock. If it's been inactive all this time, maybe the Reapers couldn't tell the difference either?
The Reapers are the ones who constructed the Citadel (or so they claim), you'd think they would have noticed a foreign addition that wasn't there before. There was definitely an energy signature of some sort; Kaidan could feel it.
I think it was down to the Reapers being giant space ships and thus not able to actually board the station. However, the Keepers and the indoctrinated Protheans should have spotted it. It's implied by that the Keepers had evolved an ability to passively resist at some point, so you can say they ignored it on purpose. The other Protheans on the other hand, should still have had all of their faculties at least early on in the invasion.
Perhaps the plan was always to have the conduit hiding in plain sight, which while inactive could be indistinguishable from a sculpture and so it was simply dismissed as irrelevant.
Perhaps the plan was always to have the conduit hiding in plain sight, which while inactive could be indistinguishable from a sculpture and so it was simply dismissed as irrelevant.
You mean people actually play with Carth?
Carth/Kaiden is dreamy! 
Although their self-righteous whinyness and general ineffectiveness make them very easy to hate.
Although their self-righteous whinyness and general ineffectiveness make them very easy to hate.
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