The GameStops in my area switched to white labels a while ago, I figured they all did.
So did mine; if I'm shopping there, I take it upon myself as a consumer to read the label of what I'm about to buy. Oddly enough, I do the same thing for most things I purchase.
I realize not everyone shares my level of genius.
MalReynolds on
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Jesus fuck. Gamestop is absolutely planning on customer confusion to sell more used shit. And let's not kid ourselves -- we may be careful enough to look at the label and so might a bunch of other people, but there's a significant number of people who are likely to overlook that and just assume it's new.
Over the years they've been shrinking the size of the words new/used as well. It used to be huge capital letters. Now it's much smaller. They are definitely doing what they can do instigate some form of confusion in their customers. Which is pretty hilariously bad.
Judging from the masses of thick-tounged dunderpates I usually ford through whenever I have to go to a GameStop, I imagine that plan will work out famously well.
Over the years they've been shrinking the size of the words new/used as well. It used to be huge capital letters. Now it's much smaller. They are definitely doing what they can do instigate some form of confusion in their customers. Which is pretty hilariously bad.
There's no shortage of people who have absolutely no qualms with conflating "new" and "used" either.
Ive said it before and I'll say it again. If I was a big game publisher I'd find a way to negotiate 5% of used sales on games made by my company at gamestop, or stop shipping new games to them. I think gamestop needs big publishers like EA and Activision more than they need GS.
I think so too, Tommatt. I mean, how many people find out a game exists because of Gamestop? If they didn't have it, they'd find the game somewhere else.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Yeah the only games I'd imagine you need game stop for are the niche titles where you have to preorder to get a copy, because they shipped 100,000 copies total and aren't doing a second run.
You'd be surprised. An absolutely huge percentage of game sales come from Gamestop. True, there's plenty of other places to get games, but the fact that their used game sales keep rising year after year despite their shitty prices compared to pretty much everything else indicates there's a large number of people who can't be arsed to look for alternatives. In short, the publishers hate Gamestop but feel like they can't afford to play hardball with them.
Except Amazon gets my day 1 games to my doorstep at 10am.
I preordered Skyward Sword at Amazon several weeks in advance. They waited until yesterday to tell me that they were out of stock and weren't going to ship it for another month. I cancelled immediately.
Amazon's great when it works but sometimes you just want to walk into a store and walk out with the game you want.
Or ideally, just go on Steam, buy the game, and have it downloaded in under an hour, but not everyone has as good of an Internet connection as I do plus there are still a lot of console games that aren't available for download.
Best Buy has been my go to place for games recently, because they've been offering some nice deals for first week of release. Plus they've treated me much better than GameStop has in the past. Though the last time I was in GameStop they were nice, even though they didn't have the game I was looking for because it was the "shipping date". Despite the game company's twitter saying "in stores now" and Best Buy having it on the shelf. :P
Except Amazon gets my day 1 games to my doorstep at 10am. Gamestop often doesn't have any but the biggest games til the day after, as they 'ship' on day 1.
So, gamestop and similar still lose out in my opinion, as most don't even have games the first day they are out. Again, this doesn't count if they are AAA titles of course.
I've only ever had release day shipping on Amazon not pan out once, and that was probably more because the UPS dude flaked out and didn't even try delivering it.
Well bully for your Amazon. My Amazon does not offer day 1 shipping. Nor does it offer any preorder bonuses that the US version does. If I want the game as soon as possible, I can shell out 10 bucks for express shipping, and it'll still at best get here a day or two after launch. And I have zero faith US Amazon can get my game to me across the border on day 1. End result: I'm waiting a week for anything I order from them. During that timeframe, I can go to any brick and mortar shop in this city and simply buy the game right there. And for cheaper too if one factors in shipping costs.
Yeah, I'd be happy to wager that most people who do get day 1 deliveries from Amazon.com, myself included, do not get their games at 10 AM. More like 5 PM, or whenever the hell the UPS/Fedex truck decides to drive over.
Don't get me wrong, I have Amazon Prime, and with no taxes and regularly beating Steam's price, along with free shipping on practically everything, it's pretty awesome. But if I actually wanted to get something faster, waking up at 10 AM and driving to the Gamestop 10 minutes away is a lot faster. The same goes for literally any brick-and-mortar store (Best Buy, Target, what have you).
EDIT: On the other hand, I know my Gamestop for about six years now, and they're pretty all right guys. That influences my experience, of course.
I've actually been giving Gamestop a decent amount of business lately. First I cleaned out their decent Niche RPG DS games at the last B2G1 free sale and more recently I preordered three Nintendo Sunday releases there. Amazon is junk when it comes to Sunday release games. To be fair I could have gone to BB or Walmart or Target for Mario Land or Mario Kart but since I needed the collector's edition of Zelda anyways it made sense to go to one place.
Ive said it before and I'll say it again. If I was a big game publisher I'd find a way to negotiate 5% of used sales on games made by my company at gamestop, or stop shipping new games to them. I think gamestop needs big publishers like EA and Activision more than they need GS.
They are literally doing this.
Uncharted 3 had a five dollar unlock code free in new boxes for multiplayer. That is a far less confrontational, far more effective way of mitigating the losses from a used market.
New MMO in the works. Will it sink or swim? I've been playing a campaign in the Pathfinder ruleset and world and I find their goals quite lofty, but if they can actually get it to work? I'll be impressed and would love to play it.
Paizo Publishing, LLC has licensed the MMORPG electronic gaming rights to its smash-hit Pathfinder Roleplaying Game intellectual property to Goblinworks, a Redmond, Washington game developer and publisher that will create Pathfinder Online, a next-generation fantasy sandbox massively multiplayer online game. Founded by Paizo co-owner Lisa Stevens (Pathfinder RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade, Magic: The Gathering), game industry veteran Ryan S. Dancey (Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, EVE Online), and experienced MMO developer Mark Kalmes (Microsoft, Cryptic Studios, CCP), Goblinworks is an independent company that will work with Paizo Publishing to bring the award-winning world and adventures of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game to the online gaming market. The process has only just begun, and there is plenty of opportunity for gamers to get in on the ground floor of this exciting new project. Paizo and Goblinworks are committed to solicitin g player feedback about the Pathfinder Online project, and more information can be found at goblinworks.com.
Pathfinder Online will cast players as heroes in a unique online fantasy world filled with sword & sorcery adventures and kingdoms inhabited and controlled by thousands of competing players. Players can explore, develop, adventure, and dominate by playing fighters, rogues, clerics, or any of Pathfinder's many character classes, or they can go beyond the standard options to create nearly any type of character imaginable. Find lairs, ruins, and caverns filled with monstrous creatures and incredible treasure. Build glittering cities of castles and bustling markets. Take to the battlefield with vast armies to seize and hold territory. Players change the world and create new stories as they compete for resources, land, and military might. The possibilities are endless.
"I've been hoping for a chance to work with Lisa and the Paizo team on a Pathfinder project for years, and now that we're joining forces to produce Pathfinder Online, I couldn't be happier or more excited," said Goblinworks CEO Ryan S. Dancey. "My goal is to bring the high-quality experience Paizo has delivered for Pathfinder to the MMO platform, and to give players another fantastic way to experience the world of Golarion."
About Paizo Publishing
Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games, accessories, board games, and novels. Paizo's Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game, the result of the largest open playtest in the history of tabletop gaming, is currently the best-selling tabletop roleplaying game in hobby stores. Pathfinder Adventure Path is the most popular and best-selling monthly product in the tabletop RPG industry. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the nine years since its founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than 50 major awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.
Paizo Publishing, LLC, the Paizo golem logo and Pathfinder are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC, and Pathfinder Chronicles, Pathfinder Companion, Pathfinder Modules, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Pathfinder Society are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC.
About Goblinworks
Goblinworks is the developer and publisher of Pathfinder Online, a next-generation fantasy sandbox MMO. The company is located in the Seattle suburb of Redmond. It was founded in 2011 by a dedicated group of creative professionals with backgrounds in tabletop hobby gaming and online videogame development. Goblinworks is dedicated to creating a fun, immersive online gaming experience for the fantasy roleplaying enthusiast. Its goal is to deliver the best sword & sorcery massively multiplayer game on the market by starting with a carefully designed core of features and iterating on the content continuously after launch, with the input and feedback of the player community.
Except Amazon gets my day 1 games to my doorstep at 10am.
I preordered Skyward Sword at Amazon several weeks in advance. They waited until yesterday to tell me that they were out of stock and weren't going to ship it for another month. I cancelled immediately.
Amazon's great when it works but sometimes you just want to walk into a store and walk out with the game you want.
Or ideally, just go on Steam, buy the game, and have it downloaded in under an hour, but not everyone has as good of an Internet connection as I do plus there are still a lot of console games that aren't available for download.
Generally, I'm fine. For skyward Sword, I needed the special Edition as I had not Wii Motion plus, and I missed it on Amazon... so to GameStop I went.
An employee of Victory Games - an EA developer known to be rebooting Command & Conquer - listed her place of work as a BioWare studio on LinkedIn.
Superannuation spotted it, Kotaku reported it. But the reference on LinkedIn of Victory Games being a BioWare Studio has since been removed.
Victory Games making Command & Conquer under the BioWare label fits with the "new direction, new game, new studio" text that was flashed during last night's video.
...
BioWare, the developer, is renowned for role-playing games. But the BioWare label has no such constraints: "The BioWare label is a division of EA which crafts high quality multi-platform role-playing, MMO and strategy games," its cover statement reads.
My knee jerk reaction to "New MMO" is always sink. Not sure why, I guess you always hear about things that aren't WoW not doing so hot.
"New MMO" still seems to be a throwback to the "well WoW is making all the money, make a new WoW!" attitude from a few years ago now. Just like you're now seeing everyone start up a new studio to make iOS games. Like that 6-man studio made out of former Epic and Monolith developers, who are making an iOS game. Every damned person in the games industry is either making a AAAA hyper-budget blockbuster, or something for your pocket. It's transitioning away from 'new MMO' to 'new indie dev making iOS game'.
There's something really funny to me about a throwback system like pathfinder trying to translate into an mmo. I mean, it only exists to perpetuate 3rd edition d&d; what's the point in branching out from that?
oh, right, everyone wants a turn to tilt at the warcraft windmill.
To be fair, there is sound, logical reasoning that suggests that regardless of WoWs success and the attempted copying of said success by others, gaming as a whole is moving towards an MMO dominated landscape naturally of its own accord.
An MMO is the natural evolution of a lot of other genres.
I would be more sympathetic to that theory if there was more diversity in mmos. As it is, they mostly ape the same formula, which isn't really an extension of other genres. It's its own thing.
Big Fish Games has become the first publisher permitted to offer a subscription gaming service on the Apple iPad, Bloomberg reports.
Customers will be asked to pay $6.99 per month in order to access dozens of games, such as Mahjong Towers and Mystery Case Files, through the Big Fish app, which will initially require Wi-Fi access to operate. If it works, it could be a new source of ongoing revenue on a platform where it hasn’t been easy to make money in the past.
Traditionally the iPad subscription service, which was introduced in February this year, has been used more for magazines and newspapers. This is the first time that Apple has approved such an “all you can eat” service for games. Paul Thelen (pictured), founder of Big Fish Games, revealed that gaining approval for the service did not come easily: “It took longer than usual to be approved. They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.”
At launch, the service will be available for $4.99 per month, which will increase to $6.99 early next year, when more titles have been added. There will also be a free version of the service, which will limit playing time to 30 minutes per day, and will be supported by advertising. The service competes in a way with iSwifter, which is charging a flat fee of $4.99 for access to its app that allows users to play Adobe Flash-based games on an iPad. iSwifter tried a subscription fee, but found users weren’t quite ready for it.
The iPad service may just be the start of the Big Fish subscription initiative, as the company has designed its application so that it can be easily modified to work on Android tablets and smartphones, as well as internet connected televisions. According to Thelen, an Android version of the app should be ready by the first quarter of 2012.
Big Fish Games was founded in 2002 and is now one of the leading developers and publishers of casual games. The company distributes more than two million games per day worldwide, and last year generated $140 million in sales revenue. Thelen revealed that most of its sales are from downloads to a PC or mobile device, with about 75 percent of customers being women over the age of 30.
The company is currently in a position to pursue a public offering, according to Thelen: “We’re at scale, have great momentum and remain in a position to pursue a public offering or any number of alternatives if the markets allow”. It will be interesting to see whether this subscription service will prove to be successful, and helps the company to meet that goal. If it does prove to be a hit, then other publishers in the mobile gaming market will no doubt start looking to develop similar models of their own.
You'd be surprised. An absolutely huge percentage of game sales come from Gamestop. True, there's plenty of other places to get games, but the fact that their used game sales keep rising year after year despite their shitty prices compared to pretty much everything else indicates there's a large number of people who can't be arsed to look for alternatives. In short, the publishers hate Gamestop but feel like they can't afford to play hardball with them.
I don't think we're saying Gamestop doesn't have a lot of sales, but is it because they're convenient and close and EVERYWHERE (I think there are 3-4 within a 10 minute drive of me) or because the game wouldn't be sold if it wasn't there?
Answer is probably both, but I think just pointing at Gamestop sales and saying they'd all evaporate isn't accurate, either.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
You'd be surprised. An absolutely huge percentage of game sales come from Gamestop. True, there's plenty of other places to get games, but the fact that their used game sales keep rising year after year despite their shitty prices compared to pretty much everything else indicates there's a large number of people who can't be arsed to look for alternatives. In short, the publishers hate Gamestop but feel like they can't afford to play hardball with them.
I don't think we're saying Gamestop doesn't have a lot of sales, but is it because they're convenient and close and EVERYWHERE (I think there are 3-4 within a 10 minute drive of me) or because the game wouldn't be sold if it wasn't there?
Answer is probably both, but I think just pointing at Gamestop sales and saying they'd all evaporate isn't accurate, either.
Don't know how accurate it is today but a few years ago there was a study that said that Gamestop only accounted for a relatively small amount of game sales in the US (like 15% or so). Now obviously, when you're talking about a huge industry, 15% translates to a huge amount of money but they're not as important as you might think.
However, the problem with publishers blacklisting Gamestop is that unless several major companies did it all at once, it wouldn't have much of an effect. And for all I know, there might be some sort of trade law that makes that kind of action illegal.
Ive said it before and I'll say it again. If I was a big game publisher I'd find a way to negotiate 5% of used sales on games made by my company at gamestop, or stop shipping new games to them. I think gamestop needs big publishers like EA and Activision more than they need GS.
They are literally doing this.
Uncharted 3 had a five dollar unlock code free in new boxes for multiplayer. That is a far less confrontational, far more effective way of mitigating the losses from a used market.
That's the consumer paying the fee. It should be gamestop paying the fee is what I'm saying. And that pass is often more like 30%. That's all these online passes are. We're paying the gamestop tax.
I would be more sympathetic to that theory if there was more diversity in mmos. As it is, they mostly ape the same formula, which isn't really an extension of other genres. It's its own thing.
Indeed. I don't want all my games to end up with floaty turn-based gameplay that pretends to be real time.
You'd be surprised. An absolutely huge percentage of game sales come from Gamestop. True, there's plenty of other places to get games, but the fact that their used game sales keep rising year after year despite their shitty prices compared to pretty much everything else indicates there's a large number of people who can't be arsed to look for alternatives. In short, the publishers hate Gamestop but feel like they can't afford to play hardball with them.
I don't think we're saying Gamestop doesn't have a lot of sales, but is it because they're convenient and close and EVERYWHERE (I think there are 3-4 within a 10 minute drive of me) or because the game wouldn't be sold if it wasn't there?
Answer is probably both, but I think just pointing at Gamestop sales and saying they'd all evaporate isn't accurate, either.
Don't know how accurate it is today but a few years ago there was a study that said that Gamestop only accounted for a relatively small amount of game sales in the US (like 15% or so). Now obviously, when you're talking about a huge industry, 15% translates to a huge amount of money but they're not as important as you might think.
However, the problem with publishers blacklisting Gamestop is that unless several major companies did it all at once, it wouldn't have much of an effect. And for all I know, there might be some sort of trade law that makes that kind of action illegal.
Would be hilarious if so. Hey you group of games publishers! Stop ganging up your efforts in a bid to break the monopolistic actions of this one retailer! Knock it off!
I would be more sympathetic to that theory if there was more diversity in mmos. As it is, they mostly ape the same formula, which isn't really an extension of other genres. It's its own thing.
Indeed. I don't want all my games to end up with floaty turn-based gameplay that pretends to be real time.
An increasing number of MMOs are moving away from that kind of combat, though. Recent/upcoming releases like Vindictus, Dragon Nest, DCUO, Rusty Hearts, and Guild Wars 2 all have fully real-time combat with no auto-attacking and the ability to actively dodge, etc. Most of these games let you use environmental objects in combat, too. I'm finding myself unable to go back to the old "auto-attack and use abilities on long cooldowns" format, which I was never a huge fan of in the first place.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment and admit something terrible - I buy a lot of my games used, especially for my 360 because the prices drop so quickly. As a parent/full time employee/husband I am always behind on games a good year or two (with a few exceptions). This means by the time I get around to playing the newest games they are often super cheap used. Because of this, I often completely skip the new game section altogether when I'm shopping.
Yes, I know I'm not supporting the developer this way. Yes, I know I'm supporting the evil Gamestop machine. However, if I go shopping and I can use a b2g1 sale and my 10% card to get three $17.99 used games for $30ish instead of the $60 total for their $20 new copies, I will do it. Half priced games are worth losing the warm and fuzzy of buying it new for me. Putting the new games in the same section as used actually forces me to look at them, and might actually get me to buy more new games. If I see a game I really want and there is only a new copy, I'd probably buy it - as it stands now I often don't even see it there in the first place.
Gamestops are often physically small stores too - I can imagine if they can use this to combine displays and make better use of space that would be a pretty huge factor for them as well.
Every time a new generation comes around I end up going to Gamestop whenever they have a huge sale and just gobble up as many games I missed as possible. GBA in particular. For around 150 dollars I ended up with something ridiculous like 25 games. I then spent the next two years or so slowly going through them. I did the same recently when they started really lowering the prices on GCN and PS2 games.
The only time I buy new is when the price isn't going down or there is a finite time limit on the game's multiplayer (if you wait for it to be 10 dollars no one will still be online playing it.)
Don't know how accurate it is today but a few years ago there was a study that said that Gamestop only accounted for a relatively small amount of game sales in the US (like 15% or so). Now obviously, when you're talking about a huge industry, 15% translates to a huge amount of money but they're not as important as you might think.
I looked up the current marketshare from Gamestop's latest quarterly report and, well, I was shocked:
GameStop, the largest videogame and entertainment-software retailer by sales, now dominates that market, as it has 60% to 70% of the market share in first-week sales, DeMatteo said.
What I really wonder is: Is the current market of glacial price drops a product of greedy publishers, or a way for the publishers to make back the money lost from used sales? Would eliminating used sales then see a quicker MSRP reduction? Really no way to know, of course. I'm sure bigger greedbags like EA would still keep games at 60$ forever, too.
What I really wonder is: Is the current market of glacial price drops a product of greedy publishers, or a way for the publishers to make back the money lost from used sales? Would eliminating used sales then see a quicker MSRP reduction? Really no way to know, of course. I'm sure bigger greedbags like EA would still keep games at 60$ forever, too.
What glacial price drop market? Other than Nintendo games, Call of Duty titles, Blizzard games, and the occasional obscure niche game, just about everything drops in price really fast these days.
Don't know how accurate it is today but a few years ago there was a study that said that Gamestop only accounted for a relatively small amount of game sales in the US (like 15% or so). Now obviously, when you're talking about a huge industry, 15% translates to a huge amount of money but they're not as important as you might think.
I looked up the current marketshare from Gamestop's latest quarterly report and, well, I was shocked:
GameStop, the largest videogame and entertainment-software retailer by sales, now dominates that market, as it has 60% to 70% of the market share in first-week sales, DeMatteo said.
What I really wonder is: Is the current market of glacial price drops a product of greedy publishers, or a way for the publishers to make back the money lost from used sales? Would eliminating used sales then see a quicker MSRP reduction? Really no way to know, of course. I'm sure bigger greedbags like EA would still keep games at 60$ forever, too.
What glacial price drop market? Other than Nintendo games, Call of Duty titles, Blizzard games, and the occasional obscure niche game, just about everything drops in price really fast these days.
Well, those games are the biggest and most popular, so they're the most noticeable. (Also it's why they don't drop in price)
What I really wonder is: Is the current market of glacial price drops a product of greedy publishers, or a way for the publishers to make back the money lost from used sales? Would eliminating used sales then see a quicker MSRP reduction? Really no way to know, of course. I'm sure bigger greedbags like EA would still keep games at 60$ forever, too.
What glacial price drop market? Other than Nintendo games, Call of Duty titles, Blizzard games, and the occasional obscure niche game, just about everything drops in price really fast these days.
Posts
So did mine; if I'm shopping there, I take it upon myself as a consumer to read the label of what I'm about to buy. Oddly enough, I do the same thing for most things I purchase.
I realize not everyone shares my level of genius.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Hm. That's a very astute prediction, and one that I certainly wouldn't bet even a penny against.
In a completely unrelated note, I'm in the 360's beta dashboard program, though I'm not supposed to talk about it at all.
Jesus fuck. Gamestop is absolutely planning on customer confusion to sell more used shit. And let's not kid ourselves -- we may be careful enough to look at the label and so might a bunch of other people, but there's a significant number of people who are likely to overlook that and just assume it's new.
There's no shortage of people who have absolutely no qualms with conflating "new" and "used" either.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I preordered Skyward Sword at Amazon several weeks in advance. They waited until yesterday to tell me that they were out of stock and weren't going to ship it for another month. I cancelled immediately.
Amazon's great when it works but sometimes you just want to walk into a store and walk out with the game you want.
Or ideally, just go on Steam, buy the game, and have it downloaded in under an hour, but not everyone has as good of an Internet connection as I do plus there are still a lot of console games that aren't available for download.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Yeah, I'd be happy to wager that most people who do get day 1 deliveries from Amazon.com, myself included, do not get their games at 10 AM. More like 5 PM, or whenever the hell the UPS/Fedex truck decides to drive over.
Don't get me wrong, I have Amazon Prime, and with no taxes and regularly beating Steam's price, along with free shipping on practically everything, it's pretty awesome. But if I actually wanted to get something faster, waking up at 10 AM and driving to the Gamestop 10 minutes away is a lot faster. The same goes for literally any brick-and-mortar store (Best Buy, Target, what have you).
EDIT: On the other hand, I know my Gamestop for about six years now, and they're pretty all right guys. That influences my experience, of course.
They are literally doing this.
Uncharted 3 had a five dollar unlock code free in new boxes for multiplayer. That is a far less confrontational, far more effective way of mitigating the losses from a used market.
Generally, I'm fine. For skyward Sword, I needed the special Edition as I had not Wii Motion plus, and I missed it on Amazon... so to GameStop I went.
So... that Bioware game?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-23-evidence-points-to-biowares-new-game-being-command-and-conquer
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
"New MMO" still seems to be a throwback to the "well WoW is making all the money, make a new WoW!" attitude from a few years ago now. Just like you're now seeing everyone start up a new studio to make iOS games. Like that 6-man studio made out of former Epic and Monolith developers, who are making an iOS game. Every damned person in the games industry is either making a AAAA hyper-budget blockbuster, or something for your pocket. It's transitioning away from 'new MMO' to 'new indie dev making iOS game'.
oh, right, everyone wants a turn to tilt at the warcraft windmill.
An MMO is the natural evolution of a lot of other genres.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
I don't think we're saying Gamestop doesn't have a lot of sales, but is it because they're convenient and close and EVERYWHERE (I think there are 3-4 within a 10 minute drive of me) or because the game wouldn't be sold if it wasn't there?
Answer is probably both, but I think just pointing at Gamestop sales and saying they'd all evaporate isn't accurate, either.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Don't know how accurate it is today but a few years ago there was a study that said that Gamestop only accounted for a relatively small amount of game sales in the US (like 15% or so). Now obviously, when you're talking about a huge industry, 15% translates to a huge amount of money but they're not as important as you might think.
However, the problem with publishers blacklisting Gamestop is that unless several major companies did it all at once, it wouldn't have much of an effect. And for all I know, there might be some sort of trade law that makes that kind of action illegal.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
That's the consumer paying the fee. It should be gamestop paying the fee is what I'm saying. And that pass is often more like 30%. That's all these online passes are. We're paying the gamestop tax.
Indeed. I don't want all my games to end up with floaty turn-based gameplay that pretends to be real time.
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Would be hilarious if so. Hey you group of games publishers! Stop ganging up your efforts in a bid to break the monopolistic actions of this one retailer! Knock it off!
An increasing number of MMOs are moving away from that kind of combat, though. Recent/upcoming releases like Vindictus, Dragon Nest, DCUO, Rusty Hearts, and Guild Wars 2 all have fully real-time combat with no auto-attacking and the ability to actively dodge, etc. Most of these games let you use environmental objects in combat, too. I'm finding myself unable to go back to the old "auto-attack and use abilities on long cooldowns" format, which I was never a huge fan of in the first place.
Yes, I know I'm not supporting the developer this way. Yes, I know I'm supporting the evil Gamestop machine. However, if I go shopping and I can use a b2g1 sale and my 10% card to get three $17.99 used games for $30ish instead of the $60 total for their $20 new copies, I will do it. Half priced games are worth losing the warm and fuzzy of buying it new for me. Putting the new games in the same section as used actually forces me to look at them, and might actually get me to buy more new games. If I see a game I really want and there is only a new copy, I'd probably buy it - as it stands now I often don't even see it there in the first place.
Gamestops are often physically small stores too - I can imagine if they can use this to combine displays and make better use of space that would be a pretty huge factor for them as well.
The only time I buy new is when the price isn't going down or there is a finite time limit on the game's multiplayer (if you wait for it to be 10 dollars no one will still be online playing it.)
I looked up the current marketshare from Gamestop's latest quarterly report and, well, I was shocked:
http://www.advfn.com/nyse/StockNews.asp?stocknews=WMT&article=42913169&headline=gamestop-ceo-sees-market-share-gains-despite-wal-mart-moves
Sweet zombie Jesus. No wonder everybody else is picking price fights with them.
What glacial price drop market? Other than Nintendo games, Call of Duty titles, Blizzard games, and the occasional obscure niche game, just about everything drops in price really fast these days.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
There is a normal sized town near me (about ten miles away) that until last month had FOUR Gamestops.
Well, those games are the biggest and most popular, so they're the most noticeable. (Also it's why they don't drop in price)
see:Steam