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Why do we care about "devaluing games" when it comes to subscription services like Game Pass, but not with used game sales?
- Thread starter Deleted member 58846
- Start date
The food analogy doesn't really work. Quality ingredients are still expensive and people acknowledge that. It is just that the vast majority of people are willing to settle for something less due to economic constraints.
A used game (or record, DVD, etc) was still paid for up front. A subscription does not work the same way, and artists have been yelling about this for ages. Spotify pays less than peanuts to bands.
There's also the issue of curation. A used market makes it possible to find things that are out of print. Being at the whims of a streaming service means only having access to what they offer.
There's also the issue of curation. A used market makes it possible to find things that are out of print. Being at the whims of a streaming service means only having access to what they offer.
Not sure if we can compare gaming to any other industry because of in app purchases. You can give a game away for free and still make a shit load of money. Look at Fortnite.
Simple. Used games upvalue games. When you know you can resell, re-use, or do whatever you want with the game once you have bought it without paying anything extra or being at the whim of a publisher or a platform holder, that means the game has more value. You're getting a better value for your initial purchase thanks to used games existing. It's totally different for digital subscriptions, which rely on driving prices down in a race to the bottom because they can't compete on actual value.
That's a good way of putting it.
That's a good way of putting it.
Actually, you can look at games, because the example you're literally using is what happened in the mobile market - 'premium' mobile games were completely eradicated in the marketplace because of free-cost games that were loaded with tons of in-app purchases.
This completely destroys the ability to potentially fund bold endeavors in this space because the chance that you'll ever make your money back goes to complete shit when you're competing with 'free'. And the budget on those games only increases *after* they prove to be successes, not before - Fortnite didn't blow up until PUBG started fumbling their development processes, and even within the context of that example, Fortnite is F2P while PUBG had an upfront cost, and Fortnite completely stomped PUBG.
I don't mean literally taking away rights. Rights might not even be the right word, maybe control, power or options are better words. If a game goes to a subscription model instead of being individually sold physically, someone now can't sell the game.
Well I don't rail against subscription services. I don't like them but for example I don't think I've posted about Stadia once. I would guess a lot of people dislike subscription services for reasons other than devaluing games, and the argument that they devalue games is another negative on a pile of negatives to them. Resale might devalue games too, but if they do people might overlook it because they see it as fundamentally, as a whole, offering control to consumers.
The food analogy was more along the lines of seeing a $1 cheese burger from maccas and assuming it cost less than $1 to make, which is false when you think about all the agriculture requirements, trucking the meat to the restaurant and paying the person to make it for you etc. for all we know the cheeseburger is a loss leader, but this thought devalues the cheeseburger and this is where the bar is set for people to compare. Now compare this to a $8 cheeseburger from some scrappy hipster joint. The ingredients are probably made at the same place, and I wouldn't say the hipster burger is 8 times better, but because of it's price it's perceived to be of better quality and value.
So of course when I see 100 games for $15.95 per month or one game for $60, I inherently place more value on the $60 game.
Whether that devalues the 100 games I don't know, but I certainly never planned on buying the outer worlds after they announced it for gamepass, even though if I had I could've been playing on my ps4 pro, but instead chose to play on my Xbox one s for cheaper.
Take Two already came out and said that TOW is both a critical and commercial success. MS owns Obsidian andI am sure they paid Take Two as well. So who exactly should I be worried for?
What rights are being taken away when there's the option to buy and subscribe? I'm talking about the now and not speculation that something might happen in the future.
Edit: Might have misinterpreted your post!
We have a winner.
Simple answer is: lots of competition in platform and publishing provision, or non-profit run platforms.
This means many ways to access a product or service - physical or digital media; drm or drm-free media, LANs (p2p or dedicated) or datacentres / cloud (dedicated).
Ideally, re-selling on digital content in some form, allowing basic markets to be formed as they used to be.
With the current treatment of intellectual property and software as it is, I'm not sure if people are ready for that.
But, I'm also not sure if people are ready for what will happen if no provisions are put in place:
At minimum, monopolies, oligopolies and stagnation, leading to: barriers to entry so indies must accept platform holders rules/contracts/agreements, therefore fewer indie devs and games can support that; increased publishing and marketing costs; hiding upcoming games with certain philosophies under the guise of curation, etc.
The keyword sadly is: control.
Lack of control of consumption; control of provision.
What's the concert equivalent for games?
What's the movie theater equivalent for games?
Because buying and reselling physical games is a thing that console gamers do. And we are in reset era.
I'd rather buy a game in a deep sale or a humble bundle rather than buy used. "pirate" PC gamers money actually ends up in the developers pocket.
I'd rather buy a game in a deep sale or a humble bundle rather than buy used. "pirate" PC gamers money actually ends up in the developers pocket.
Free to play games were a thing on pc since the early 2000s with the explosions of mmos.
The console/pc industry is definitely not the same regardless of available free games. Both has free and paid games, the difference is pretty much cultural, where most on pc/console purchase games and most on smartphone don't.
Value in phone games is a problematic concept because most are free to play with mtx stuff but only the top ones get a huge share on the pie, where the others pretty much relies on whales. In this case, something like Apple Arcade can be a light for devs.
In the PC/Console atmosphere, Fortnite is a threat to other games because it's really popular, not necessarily because it's free. Minecraft had the same effect at its peak despite being a paid game. Nevertheless, a lot of paid games sell millions on pc/console, their situation is not even slightly the same as smartphone stuff.
A lot of AAA publishers will proceed to release flops for a lot of motives. Like Bethesda that loves to publish stuff with shitty marketing and being mad because sales are bad. Any way or another, these $60 flops would be in a lot worse place on a $15 monthly service on release.
Swap the $1 for $15 or $20 and my point stands.
The argument is the comparison with used games, of course $1 is just a beta proposition. Depending on the userbase, the game pass could be easily sustainable in the future but doesn't means the games aren't being devalued.
What ?!?!
WHo cares, this is exactly what we are talking about. People won't spend 20$ on an indie if they can play a 60$ game on a 10/15$ sub services !
Have you read about the video game crash of 1983? That was about devaluing games, and it almost killed the whole industry. In the US at least.
It took Nintendo (a Japanese company) to reboot the video game market after the crash by putting complete dogged faith in the NES.
Cart before the horse on this one. Decs didn't start aggressively cutting price based on a feeling. They did it because 95% of games make their money in the initial month or so of release, and have for at least two decades.
The price cuts are them responding to their potential customers who are sitting around asking things like "why are Prototype 1+2 still $40?" or "why aren't the Infamous games permanent on PS Now?" when the revenue from Infamous in 2019 is probably four figures at best.
Game devs who keep their prices locked at super high value are like people who try to sell stuff at face value in a pawn shop. If I wanted it for its initial MSRP (or close to it), I'd have paid that.