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On May 02 2011 19:19 Gheed wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 19:06 karpo wrote:On May 02 2011 19:02 GizmoPT wrote:On May 02 2011 19:00 Fission wrote:On May 02 2011 18:56 Inori wrote:On May 02 2011 18:50 Fission wrote:
i'd pay a monthly fee to play sc2. Because of people like you there are now stupid money milking strategies like DLC, monthly fees and etc. Feel free to blame me in particular, but there are a legion of people who feel similarly to me. Explain to me why you feel that you are entitled to persistent monthly service for something you pay a small nominal fee for? What other industry works in a similar manner? if you feel so bad for not paying it monthly why dont you just send money to blizzard to help them pay their bills Look at it this way. Buy a movie, you get what you buy and nothing changes. Buy a book, same deal. Buy a game, expect updates/patches/maps/improvements for free for a unlimited time. Sounds weird to me. I think what he's saying is that no other provider of that kind of service do it for free, so if supporting game devs like Blizzard with a small monthly fee means a stable development and no money hungry CEO's ruining the franchise i'm all for it. Movies cost more to produce than video games, yet cost less. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect continued support when you shell out 60 bucks for a video game versus 15 bucks for a DVD.
Movie also sell on theaters, on DVD's, on Blu-ray and to all the movie-channels on TV. Die Hart 4 had a budget of 110 million dollars, Killzon 2 had about 20 million dollars. So sure movies have a higher budget, they are also a bigger medium and appeal to a much bigger audience.
Yeah 60 bucks for a game where the campaign alone is at least 10 hours with potentially endless gametime online compared to a 15 buck 1.5-2 hour movie. Not a great comparison.
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My BW fanboy senses are tingling ..
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On May 02 2011 19:24 cluedo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 19:09 GizmoPT wrote:
i wont support money hungry CEOs that ruin franchises sorry
and btw i got windows on my computer and i get free updates i get a lot of other programs that i didnt even pay for and i get updates for them..
when things start being made cause of money instead of passion they tend to start to suck.. Out of interest, who here can claim to not be 'money hungry.' I think that subscription fees would just make the game more 'elitist' perhaps, as the numbers of people in the lower leagues playing casually would decrease massively.
well i actualy do stuff cause i love to do them and not thinking on the money i can make with it.. but i guess the world is all f'ed up
i really feel sad for the children that are born with this system of gaming.. cause it really sucks
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On May 02 2011 16:44 Wolf wrote:
Marketing is going more and more this way. I just hope SC2's expansions come out before SC2 gets dragged into this. If there ever become premium portraits or units or ANYTHING, I'll practically quit SC2 immediately.
Then you should never have started... what do you think the portraits in the collector's edition are?! Hell, I even got a unique and awesome model for my thors! Not that it affects you in the slightest when actually playing the game: do I play better because I have a diablo marine portrait? Are my thors any stronger than yours?
The same happened in WoW when people were QQing about Blizzard putting vanity items in the TCG (and later just selling them outright in the online store): if people are willing to pay money for a transparent tiger, I honestly don't care. It would be very different if the staff of ultimate awesomeness (or in SC2 terms, 2 more damage for your hydralisks) was for sale, but nobody at Blizzard is dumb enough to do that.
Another studio that caught a lot of flak for this recently was Valve: you can buy silly outfits for the co-op mode robots in the portal 2 store. But seriously? Why does this matter? The game itself is exactly the same, regardless of whether you only paid the initial cost or you bought $50 worth of cosmetic claptrap. If Activision/Blizzard/Valve can make a bit of extra money on exploiting vain people, why do you begrudge them that?
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On May 02 2011 19:27 GizmoPT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 19:24 cluedo wrote:On May 02 2011 19:09 GizmoPT wrote:
i wont support money hungry CEOs that ruin franchises sorry
and btw i got windows on my computer and i get free updates i get a lot of other programs that i didnt even pay for and i get updates for them..
when things start being made cause of money instead of passion they tend to start to suck.. Out of interest, who here can claim to not be 'money hungry.' I think that subscription fees would just make the game more 'elitist' perhaps, as the numbers of people in the lower leagues playing casually would decrease massively. well i actualy do stuff cause i love to do them and not thinking on the money i can make with it.. but i guess the world is all f'ed up i really feel sad for the children that are born with this system of gaming.. cause it really sucks
I really don't. We're biased as we will always see "our" time of gaming as superior. Just like old men talk about "back when i was young". The game experience and graphics are alot higher now and the industry has grown alot. I bought NES games when i was a kid, some were great like Mario/Zelda but alot of the games were really horrible. I still played them for ages but i'd rather have the huge availability of today compared to back then.
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On May 02 2011 16:12 Eury wrote:
Starcraft has sold over 5 million copies on a platform that you don't have to pay any license fees for, of course it is worth it.
However, compared to WoW, Starcraft 2 is a very small part of Blizzard's overall revenue.
WoW went from 98% of Blizzard's revenue in 2009, to 89% in 2010. Also keep in mind that not only did WoW generated 9 times as much money as Starcraft 2 last year, the profit margins for WoW is probably a lot higher.
At the end of the day Starcraft is still very profitable for Blizzard, even though it can't compare to World of Warcraft. Very few games, if any, can.
Yes but WoW is now 7 years old , the game would continue dying whether Blizzard released SC2 , D3 or not.
Anyhow it's sad what happened to Activision , they were once a great gaming company but they're just an embarassment to the industry now.
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On May 02 2011 18:57 Alpina wrote:
I am wondering do they think Diablo 3 is not going to be worth as well..?
Probably. Maybe even less I suppose.
Although there been some hints by Blizzard on the official forum that there might be some form of micro payments for additional stuff so I wouldn't say it's unlikely they'll try to squeeze more money out of it than they have with sc2.
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On May 02 2011 19:34 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 19:27 GizmoPT wrote:On May 02 2011 19:24 cluedo wrote:On May 02 2011 19:09 GizmoPT wrote:
i wont support money hungry CEOs that ruin franchises sorry
and btw i got windows on my computer and i get free updates i get a lot of other programs that i didnt even pay for and i get updates for them..
when things start being made cause of money instead of passion they tend to start to suck.. Out of interest, who here can claim to not be 'money hungry.' I think that subscription fees would just make the game more 'elitist' perhaps, as the numbers of people in the lower leagues playing casually would decrease massively. well i actualy do stuff cause i love to do them and not thinking on the money i can make with it.. but i guess the world is all f'ed up i really feel sad for the children that are born with this system of gaming.. cause it really sucks I really don't. We're biased as we will always see "our" time of gaming as superior. Just like old men talk about "back when i was young". The game experience and graphics are alot higher now and the industry has grown alot. I bought NES games when i was a kid, some were great like Mario/Zelda but alot of the games were really horrible. I still played them for ages but i'd rather have the huge availability of today compared to back then.
latelly ive been feeling old dudes have some reason lol
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On May 02 2011 19:27 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 19:19 Gheed wrote:On May 02 2011 19:06 karpo wrote:On May 02 2011 19:02 GizmoPT wrote:On May 02 2011 19:00 Fission wrote:On May 02 2011 18:56 Inori wrote:On May 02 2011 18:50 Fission wrote:
i'd pay a monthly fee to play sc2. Because of people like you there are now stupid money milking strategies like DLC, monthly fees and etc. Feel free to blame me in particular, but there are a legion of people who feel similarly to me. Explain to me why you feel that you are entitled to persistent monthly service for something you pay a small nominal fee for? What other industry works in a similar manner? if you feel so bad for not paying it monthly why dont you just send money to blizzard to help them pay their bills Look at it this way. Buy a movie, you get what you buy and nothing changes. Buy a book, same deal. Buy a game, expect updates/patches/maps/improvements for free for a unlimited time. Sounds weird to me. I think what he's saying is that no other provider of that kind of service do it for free, so if supporting game devs like Blizzard with a small monthly fee means a stable development and no money hungry CEO's ruining the franchise i'm all for it. Movies cost more to produce than video games, yet cost less. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect continued support when you shell out 60 bucks for a video game versus 15 bucks for a DVD. Movie also sell on theaters, on DVD's, on Blu-ray and to all the movie-channels on TV. Die Hart 4 had a budget of 110 million dollars, Killzon 2 had about 20 million dollars. So sure movies have a higher budget, they are also a bigger medium and appeal to a much bigger audience. Yeah 60 bucks for a game where the campaign alone is at least 10 hours with potentially endless gametime online compared to a 15 buck 1.5-2 hour movie. Not a great comparison.
You pay 60 dollars because of all those countless hours spent online. It's not some added perk of buying the game, that's what you're buying. It costs a production company 0 dollars when I rewatch a movie. It costs blizzard an extremely tiny amount for me to use battle.net. That extremely tiny amount is bundled into the cost of the game. It is not free. Like when you buy a bottle of shampoo, and it says "30% free," that stuff isn't free. You just paid for it when you bought the shampoo. It's a marketing trick.
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Lets face it guys,this is where we're heading. Look at Sierra,a monster-like quality company withered away because it published adventures,a not so commercial kind of gaming.
While other quality companies like Bioware,produce worse games by the year,all of these forced by their holders.
Imo we're very lucky that Blizzard has WoW.It rakes so much profit for them,that they don't need to release games 8 months before they're ready,drop quality or overcharge for stupid things.
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On May 02 2011 19:45 Steveling wrote:
Imo we're very lucky that Blizzard has WoW.It rakes so much profit for them,that they don't need to release games 8 months before they're ready,drop quality or overcharge for stupid things.
Very much this. Everything that Blizzard puts out nowadays is basically cherries on top because they need to keep busy. WoW is the Blizzard business.
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United Kingdom12071 Posts
Sierra,a monster-like quality company withered away because it published adventures,a not so commercial kind of gaming.
Isn't Sierra also owned by Vivendi now? I think they were one of the companies they ate up.
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WoW is a cash cow but it's dying more and more every year no matter how much they try to rejuvenate it. It is not sustainable and sooner or later they'll have to fall back on other stuff anyways. They should be happy while the getting is still good.
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People who call companies "money grubbing" if they try to monetize their game beyond the purchase price are hypocritical, because they are the same. Think about how much development costs have increased for (non-web based browser) games nowadays. It costs at least 10x or more of what it cost 10 years ago, yet we still pay the same price.
What reason do you have for not supporting your favorite game company financially for a product you enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours besides saving a few measly bucks yourself?
On May 02 2011 20:00 BG1 wrote:
WoW is a cash cow but it's dying more and more every year no matter how much they try to rejuvenate it. It is not sustainable and sooner or later they'll have to fall back on other stuff anyways. They should be happy while the getting is still good.
Which is why they're already well on their way at developing their next big cash cow AKA "Titan" to continue where WoW left off.
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On May 02 2011 20:02 teamsolid wrote:
People who call companies "money grubbing" if they try to monetize their game beyond the purchase price are hypocritical, because they are the same. Think about how much development costs have increased for (non-web based browser) games nowadays. It costs at least 10x or more of what it cost 10 years ago, yet we still pay the same price.
What reason do you have for not supporting your favorite game company financially for a product you enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours besides saving a few measly bucks yourself?
Games also sell more than before.
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On May 02 2011 20:10 anilusion wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 20:02 teamsolid wrote:
People who call companies "money grubbing" if they try to monetize their game beyond the purchase price are hypocritical, because they are the same. Think about how much development costs have increased for (non-web based browser) games nowadays. It costs at least 10x or more of what it cost 10 years ago, yet we still pay the same price.
What reason do you have for not supporting your favorite game company financially for a product you enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours besides saving a few measly bucks yourself? Games also sell more than before.
Not by enough. You might want to take a look at a list of the best selling games. BW still has more total sales than SC2 atm.
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On May 02 2011 20:00 BG1 wrote:
WoW is a cash cow but it's dying more and more every year no matter how much they try to rejuvenate it. It is not sustainable and sooner or later they'll have to fall back on other stuff anyways. They should be happy while the getting is still good.
WoW has more subscribers than virtually every other MMO combined. Even if it lost half their user base, it would still be raking in the dough
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On May 02 2011 20:13 teamsolid wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 20:10 anilusion wrote:On May 02 2011 20:02 teamsolid wrote:
People who call companies "money grubbing" if they try to monetize their game beyond the purchase price are hypocritical, because they are the same. Think about how much development costs have increased for (non-web based browser) games nowadays. It costs at least 10x or more of what it cost 10 years ago, yet we still pay the same price.
What reason do you have for not supporting your favorite game company financially for a product you enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours besides saving a few measly bucks yourself? Games also sell more than before. Not by enough, if at all. You might want to take a look at a list of the best selling games. Diablo, BW still has more total sales than SC2 atm.
Why would that be surprising? Even if games were sold by a lot more (reasonably) today than before, I would still expect two of the most popular games that have been out for 10+ to have more total sales.
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On May 02 2011 20:02 teamsolid wrote:
People who call companies "money grubbing" if they try to monetize their game beyond the purchase price are hypocritical, because they are the same. Think about how much development costs have increased for (non-web based browser) games nowadays. It costs at least 10x or more of what it cost 10 years ago, yet we still pay the same price.
What reason do you have for not supporting your favorite game company financially for a product you enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours besides saving a few measly bucks yourself?
We actually pay less, if you adjust for inflation. That's more of an argument for the fact that video games used to be way too expensive than that they are too cheap now. As more and more people buy video games, they can be sold more cheaply, since the production costs of the physical products, i.e. discs, boxes, shipping, labor etc, are minimal or near zero if digitally distributed.
Point is: they're making money, and charging more money for the same products is the definition of greed, regardless of their responsibilities to their shareholders.
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Vivendi owns 54% of blizzard if activision wants to do something changing the structure i think that they will need to get vivendi to approval.
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EPT
