Video Game Industry Thread: January's over, go to the new thread

cloudeagle

Hi! Welcome to the video game industry thread. Here we discuss things like sales figures, game development, studio closures, executive quotes, marketing and general business stuff. Also poop jokes. And frequent references to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoCZ07hwoZ4

And now, January's NPD numbers.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
2. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3)
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)**
4. NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PS2, PC)
5. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)
6. Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2)**
7. Mario Kart 7 (3DS)
8. Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (Wii, 3DS, 360, PS3, PC)**
9. Zumba Fitness 2 (Wii)
10. Saints Row: The Third (360, PS3, PC)**

Xbox 360 -- 270,000

cloudeagle

So Blockbuster, once a place where one could reliably borrow video games, is pretty well fucked.

Dish Network's curious Blockbuster project appears to be sputtering a bit, now that the company has confirmed that it will shutter more stores than originally anticipated. Speaking to Reuters at CES today, Dish Network CEO Joe Clayton confirmed that his company plans to close all Blockbuster shops that aren't turning a profit, and that some of the remaining stores will be converted into Dish customer service outlets. Back in July, the company announced plans to keep about 1,500 stores open, along with about 90 percent of Blockbuster employees, but those aspirations have since been derailed. "We are committed to keeping the profitable stores open that are generating positive cash flow, but there are ones that aren't going to make it," Clayton explained. "We will close unprofitable stores. We will close additional stores." The exec did not specify how many stores would be closed, nor did he offer any sort of timeline, but spokesman Marc Lumpkin said that the decisions would be made on a "case by case" basis.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/13/dish-network-to-close-more-blockbusters-than-originally-anticipa/

agoaj

I rented and N64 and Super Mario 64 from blockbuster. I thought it was broken when I put another game in and I couldn't control it.
I thought the first control port was on the right because you can use any port for Super Mario 64

Elvenshae

From the last thread, re: PopCap's survey of cheating social gamers.

cloudeagle wrote:

And now, news I think will delight you jaded folk: (some) social game players are horrible people.

Yeah, I posted that, like, last week. You even responded to the post.

fragglefart

Blockbuster just seems kinda, old hat, at this point.

DD, postal and streaming services just make them redundant.

Allforce

I spent probably 300 bucks at blockbuster on blu-rays during their "5 for 20" sale that ran literally ALL of 2011. Shit I just went in the one that is closing by my house this morning and bought two more flicks for like 6 bucks apiece.

I will miss that store only for the period of time it was going out of business

darkmayo

I'm ex BBV , so I am a little sad to see it go, we lost most of our blockbuster videos last year here in Calgary, most from what I understand were turning a profit still but due to some corporate stuff they all got closed (I think we have maybe 2 left in Calgary)

I have to say it kind of sucks not being able to walk to the video store on a Tuesday and pickup some new releases.

SmokeStacks

fragglefart wrote:

Blockbuster just seems kinda, old hat, at this point.

DD, postal and streaming services just make them redundant.

Why should I pay $6 to rent a "new release" that is over a year old at Blockbuster when...

- for $2 more I can get an entire month of Netflix?
- the DVD is already in the $5 bin at Best Buy?
- I can get a brand new movie on PPV for the same price without having to leave the house or even put pants on?

No wonder they're tanking so fast. Internet killed the video rental star.

cloudeagle

Elvenshae wrote:

From the last thread, re: PopCap's survey of cheating social gamers.

cloudeagle wrote:

And now, news I think will delight you jaded folk: (some) social game players are horrible people.

Yeah, I posted that, like, last week. You even responded to the post.

Hey, cut me some slack, I'm recovering from the flu! :P

At any rate, I'm a little baffled as to how converting Blockbusters that are making a profit into Dish Network service outlets will somehow result in them continuing to make a profit.

But yeah, I also got some insane deals at closing Blockbusters. Call me a vulture but I'm keeping a sharp eye for when the rest of them in my area start to close.

maximumzero

SmokeStacks wrote:

fragglefart wrote:

Blockbuster just
- for $2 more I can get an entire month of Netflix? seems kinda, old hat, at this point.

DD, postal and streaming services just make them redundant.

Why should I pay $6 to rent a "new release" that is over a year old at Blockbuster when...

- the DVD is already in the $5 bin at Best Buy?
- I can get a brand new movie on PPV for the same price without having to leave the house or even put pants on?

No wonder they're tanking so fast. Internet killed the video rental star.

I think I've been to Blockbuster once in my lifetime. I tried to rent Warioware: Smooth Moves.

$8. Mind you this was (I believe) 2009 and the game was almost three years old at that point.

I'd rather tack on two bucks and pick up a $10 bargain game from Wal-Mart at that price.

Incindium

fragglefart wrote:

Blockbuster just seems kinda, old hat, at this point.

DD, postal and streaming services just make them redundant.

Don't forget Redbox.

darkmayo

SmokeStacks wrote:

fragglefart wrote:

Blockbuster just seems kinda, old hat, at this point.

DD, postal and streaming services just make them redundant.

Why should I pay $6 to rent a "new release" that is over a year old at Blockbuster when...

- for $2 more I can get an entire month of Netflix?
- the DVD is already in the $5 bin at Best Buy?
- I can get a brand new movie on PPV for the same price without having to leave the house or even put pants on?

No wonder they're tanking so fast. Internet killed the video rental star.

Just checked out the delay in release dates for PPV and DVD release.. pretty much non existant.. maybe a day after street date. I guess what I said only really applies to video games...

Allforce

cloudeagle wrote:

But yeah, I also got some insane deals at closing Blockbusters. Call me a vulture but I'm keeping a sharp eye for when the rest of them in my area start to close.

Find some that are closing in the next few weeks, over Memorial Day last year they ran a sale of 99 cents on nearly every used blu-ray there, and the clerk today told me that is going to happen in a few weeks as they get closer to closing. LIteally EVERYTHING that's not bolted down is for sale in the store by me right now, down to folding chairs, tables, candy racks, and even those little movie display cards are being sold for 50 for a buck.

Cantido

Yeah, mine is closing. I'm leaving to the USAF when I graduate. My friends on the other hand are out of a job. We were one of the top store in the United States, but our store was huge and the landlord wouldn't budge on the rent. We were beside a store on the shitlist, but they closed us both anyway. So it's definitely not just the profitable stores.

I'm buying so many Blu Rays.

Xenogears of Bore

In this day of 12 hour shooters and action games sometimes just paying 8 bucks for a week of blockbuster was the right call. Sure you can use gamefly for roughly the same experience or Red Box if you get lucky but its not quite the same thing as driving down, going hey, I can beat this game in four nights after work, and giving it a go.

SmokeStacks

Hey @darkmayo , did that Velociraptor job interview simulator game that a bunch of PA people were working on ever get finished?

cloudeagle

Allforce wrote:

cloudeagle wrote:

But yeah, I also got some insane deals at closing Blockbusters. Call me a vulture but I'm keeping a sharp eye for when the rest of them in my area start to close.

Find some that are closing in the next few weeks, over Memorial Day last year they ran a sale of 99 cents on nearly every used blu-ray there, and the clerk today told me that is going to happen in a few weeks as they get closer to closing. LIteally EVERYTHING that's not bolted down is for sale in the store by me right now, down to folding chairs, tables, candy racks, and even those little movie display cards are being sold for 50 for a buck.

Hm, good point. I blundered into a Blockbuster during a visit to my hometown a while back that was quietly liquidating their video game rentals; the next week they were suddenly closed. Might be worth checking out.

Edit: Wait. So @Cantido, they're closing profitable stores? Good goddamn. I'm absolutely convinced the brand is going away.

Edit edit: And let's not forget the insane plan of Blockbuster rental kiosks to rent movies for $3 a night, when Redbox does it for $1.20.

Lawndart

Since the only thing with a Blockbuster logo on it in my neighborhood is a $1 DVD rental vending machine in the local chain drugstore, I assumed that there weren't that many physical Blockbuster stores left to close. It's still a bit odd to be reminded of how a company can go from being the 800lb., industry-influencing gorilla to being an afterthought simply due to technological advances and a few key business choices.

The doom alarm for Blockbuster has been ringing for at least a decade now, though, so any bad Blockbuster news is hardly a surprise. Silent movie melodrama villains have had less drawn-out deaths.

Allforce

Videogame deals unfortunately are harder to come by at blockbuster with the closings. You're really looking at ridiculously cheap blu-rays/DVDs and that's about it. Like today they had a whole rack of 360/PS3 games, Dark Souls (the 1st one for PS3) was 20% off and priced at like 30 bucks...

Xenogears of Bore

I did pretty well on games at my local BB when it closed this time last year. Got another copy of TvC for two bucks and NMH2 for around 4, and a ton of DS games for around twenty.

cloudeagle

Allforce wrote:

Videogame deals unfortunately are harder to come by at blockbuster with the closings. You're really looking at ridiculously cheap blu-rays/DVDs and that's about it. Like today they had a whole rack of 360/PS3 games, Dark Souls (the 1st one for PS3) was 20% off and priced at like 30 bucks...

Dang. I picked up stuff like Bioshock 2 and God of War 3 for a pittance, at or below $10 if I remember right. I think every other Blockbuster I popped into had a game I wanted for less than Amazon's used price (yes, I'm the asshole comparison shopping via smartphone).

Though weirdly enough, every single closing Blockbuster I went into during last spring's orgy of closing had like 47 copies of Fallout: New Vegas.

Cantido

cloudeagle wrote:

Allforce wrote:

cloudeagle wrote:

But yeah, I also got some insane deals at closing Blockbusters. Call me a vulture but I'm keeping a sharp eye for when the rest of them in my area start to close.

Find some that are closing in the next few weeks, over Memorial Day last year they ran a sale of 99 cents on nearly every used blu-ray there, and the clerk today told me that is going to happen in a few weeks as they get closer to closing. LIteally EVERYTHING that's not bolted down is for sale in the store by me right now, down to folding chairs, tables, candy racks, and even those little movie display cards are being sold for 50 for a buck.

Hm, good point. I blundered into a Blockbuster during a visit to my hometown a while back that was quietly liquidating their video game rentals; the next week they were suddenly closed. Might be worth checking out.

Edit: Wait. So @Cantido, they're closing profitable stores? Good goddamn. I'm absolutely convinced the brand is going away.

Edit edit: And let's not forget the insane plan of Blockbuster rental kiosks to rent movies for $3 a night, when Redbox does it for $1.20.

Oh yes, no store is safe. I was in a "safe store." I like to joke with customers that if we, a top store, were closing due to the square footage then maybe BB would open up a cardboard box next to the university and that would be the new store. It's way more likely they're just closing down every damn store and Dish/Blockbuster will be reduced to the On-Demand service you see on blu ray players. We are getting nice bonuses for getting people to switch to the online service, which was pretty awesome except customers will have no stores to turn in their mail copies for free store rentals.

As fore the 47 copies of New Vegas, BB gets what publishers would like available for rent. Western companies like EA lately have been great about rentals. Of course there are piles of crap but the AAA (bleh) titles are always in supply because publishers want the exposure. The opposite situation is Nintendo and Sony, who would prefer people bought their games. They hold out aggressively.

The recent shananigans with Battlefield 3 were an anomaly. Yes the online pass codes were removed, and it seemed EA wanted gamers to go fuck themselves, but late, late LATE into 2011, EA sent BB instructions on how renters can redeem a 48 hour code by setting up an account. I had such a sigh of relief for that.

I'm not upset at all, I'm on my final semester and have savings put away specifically for such an emergency. My real career is about to start.

Dodge Aspen

Ours had the closing out fire sale in the fall. I went in planning to pick up some really cheap games. Saw Lego Starwars III and thought: "Perfect! I'll placy this for cheap!" Took it to the desk to ask the price. It was 35 bucks! It was 15 new at Toys R Us. Not sure how they were planning on selling that.

Cantido

Dodge Aspen wrote:

Ours had the closing out fire sale in the fall. I went in planning to pick up some really cheap games. Saw Lego Starwars III and thought: "Perfect! I'll placy this for cheap!" Took it to the desk to ask the price. It was 35 bucks! It was 15 new at Toys R Us. Not sure how they were planning on selling that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHs9Rf7L8_U
Not all their sales are great, for they don't have their ear to the ground like a consumer would, but there are some absurd deals that go on.

You can always hide the game somewhere and hold out for a better sale another time :P

cloudeagle

Cantido wrote:

Dodge Aspen wrote:

Ours had the closing out fire sale in the fall. I went in planning to pick up some really cheap games. Saw Lego Starwars III and thought: "Perfect! I'll placy this for cheap!" Took it to the desk to ask the price. It was 35 bucks! It was 15 new at Toys R Us. Not sure how they were planning on selling that.

Not all their sales are great, for they don't have their ear to the ground like a consumer would, but there are some absurd deals that go on.

You can always hide the game somewhere and hold out for a better sale another time :P

Yep, some of the game prices are awful, some are great. That's why you need a smartphone price comparison app to separate the great deals from the crap.

Also, glad to hear you're okay, but this still sucks for thousands of people who will soon be out of work.

That must explain all the New Vegas... Bethesda must have carpet-bombed Blockbusters with the thing. Also explains why I could never find a good Nintendo game. Guess I was lucky to blunder into GoW 3....

UnbreakableVow

When our Blockbuster closed down, their sales on everything was pretty much shit

Even at fire sale prices, Wal-Mart still had pretty much everything they had at a cheaper price

All I could think was that this failure of a company can't even get the act of going out of business correctly

Cantido

Huh. I came home with a pile of cheap Blu Rays from a closing store once. In fact this is how I plan on getting all the Blu Rays of all of last year's Marvel movies! It really does very.

RainbowDespair

There was a Hollywood Video that went out of business near where I used to work. Man, all of their going out of business sales on video games were atrocious. The only halfway decent thing I found was Devil May Cry 4 at slightly below Gamestop used prices which was still not a good enough deal for me to pick it up.

Aumni

Obligatory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrPwOrf4sM

When I was young I use to whine and moan until we went to blockbuster. Oh man was I so excited. Then so horribly disappointed when the game I wanted wasn't in stock.

The Wolfman

I'm so pissed that Blockbuster US had to go and drag Blockbuster Canada down along with it, leaving me with no place to rent games anymore.

As great as some AAA games are, I'm still glad I rented them over buying them. Stuff like Gears of War or Bioshock? Fine, fine games. Beat them in a week with zero need to ever play them again, and I'm only out 10 bucks versus 70.

Gigazombie Cybermage

Yeah, I have fond memories of going to the video store and renting games and movies. *sigh* It may be more convenient now, but it loses something. Like digital downloads. Sometimes you just want to physically own something.

CaptainNemo

I'm gonna miss Blockbuster. I have good memories of walking their afterschool to rent the latest big game.

Darth_Mogs

The Blockbuster near me is shuttering too, though they're billing it as a "Moving Sale" because they're moving to...uh, the website. Which I just thought was a little sad on some level. Then I went in and they had maybe two dozen games which were mostly newer releases only that I didn't want, marked at around $55 a piece with 20% off. Not very enticing to me as when a Movie Gallery near me shut down, I managed to walk away with like four or five games and a Blu-ray for ~$50 or so.

Allforce

We still have like 3-4 Blockbusters in a 15 mile radius from me, the only one closing is the one closest. I really doubt I'm going to visit them anymore unless they plan on running more insane specials on previously viewed stuff in 2012, they really spoiled me last year to the point where I feel like I'm overpaying when I spend more than 5-6 bucks on a blu-ray anymore.

I don't particularly miss renting movies but I do remember the process fondly, I was about 6-7 when the first actual rental stores were popping up all over, no Blockbusters, just local places with VHS and Betamax sections, and of course the obligatory "adult" section cordoned off with just swinging saloon doors that we'd always run in and laugh at before we'd get dragged out by our parents. Ahh good times.

Chorazin

Redbox has been getting newer and better games, and for $2 a night its hard to pass up getting super short FPS games if you're not a real MP buff. Easy to see why retail Blockbuster stores have a hard time competing.

Cantido

I'm definitely not leaving my closing store empty handed. I want all the Marvel movie Blu Rays. Xmen First Class and such.

That's all I want because 2011 was such a shit year for movies. As for games....I'm a Steam user now

Ninja Snarl P

Aumni wrote:

When I was young I use to whine and moan until we went to blockbuster. Oh man was I so excited. Then so horribly disappointed when the game I wanted wasn't in stock.

This has been my experience with Blockbuster for the last... 15 years? Which would be ever since I even started going to them. They've always been pretty shitty when it comes to renting any game unless you want 15 copies of the latest big release or something 5 years out of date.

The irony is that they could probably actually compete pretty well with Netflix if the started up their own digital streaming service instead of their current on-demand rental service. I have Netflix to stream movies and whatnot, but it was pretty shitty when they split they DVD service away from the streaming service at such a high price. If Blockbuster came in and actually provided new streaming movies on a regular basis plus doing what Netflix used to do for a decent price, they could clean up.

Foomy

Ninja Snarl P wrote:

Aumni wrote:

When I was young I use to whine and moan until we went to blockbuster. Oh man was I so excited. Then so horribly disappointed when the game I wanted wasn't in stock.

This has been my experience with Blockbuster for the last... 15 years? Which would be ever since I even started going to them. They've always been pretty shitty when it comes to renting any game unless you want 15 copies of the latest big release or something 5 years out of date.

The irony is that they could probably actually compete pretty well with Netflix if the started up their own digital streaming service instead of their current on-demand rental service. I have Netflix to stream movies and whatnot, but it was pretty shitty when they split they DVD service away from the streaming service at such a high price. If Blockbuster came in and actually provided new streaming movies on a regular basis plus doing what Netflix used to do for a decent price, they could clean up.

Netflix didn't actually split the streaming and mailing dvd parts up, they got so much blacklash over the plan that they cancelled the plans and didn't change anything. but they did lose 800k subscribers over the whole mess.
unless your just refering to the split in plan options, but than I wouldn't doubt that blockbuster would do the same thing to make more money.

But at this point I don't think blockbuster has the money to setup streaming, the movie studios want so much money upfront to have the rights to stream.

Cantido

Blockbuster is owned by Dish Network now BTW.

cloudeagle

I just miss having instant gratification access to all movies released in the last five years or so. Gonna be a long time before the studios get their act together enough to replace that.

DodgeBlan

I really don't understand the strategy of the major production companies regarding internet distribution. Do they think they are going to be able to save their current business model, or do they recognize change is inevitable and just want to preserve it for as long as possible? Are they just trying to delay it in the hope that a SOPA-like bill will get passed and give them a stronger bargaining position?

Considering how long we've had the internet now and you basically have an exact predictor of the future in the music industry, I find it hard to believe they are as clueless as they seem.