Quote:
Originally Posted by psicodude
They have to drop the price of games. Do a little research and you will discover that the console gaming industry has been taking a beating for the last year or so and is headed for disaster. Casual gamers are migrating to mobile gaming and their $4 games in droves and the consoles need to react.
According to this 3 year old article: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...ideo-game.html, it costs a full $27 per disc to get a boxed game into the hands of a gamer via a retailer. Isn't it plausible that a large chunk of those costs go away under a Steam delivery model? What percentage of the publishers take goes to cover piracy that they could hypothetically drop?
I know that new release games on Steam are still $60, but I believe the reason is because there is currently no competition to push the prices down. Many retailers have to charge $60 to make a decent profit and those same retailers aren't going to put your game on their shelves if you sell it for $40 on Steam.
The point here is that companies like Microsoft and Sony won't have a choice but to drop their prices soon if they want their gaming divisions to be viable. They are going to have to try to sell their games for $30 - $40 and convince gamers that there is enough added value in using their console to justify the extra cost in comparison to tablets or phones. Employing strategies like DRM and digital-only distribution are likely the only methods to get there.
 |
That's what I said in my last post. The gaming industry has been in the crapper for the past few years and developers have gone out of business left and right. Retail discs will soon be a thing of the past like it has become for PC gaming. DRM is the future wether you like it or not and Sony seems to be going with the flow to align with the emotional chords of hardcore gamers but they will either have to get with the program or sell their $60 discs against Microsoft's $40 downloads for the same games.