QUOTE(englishnamja @ Oct 23 2007, 06:08 PM)
I DO NOT AGREE and IM not afraid to say so......
Firstly.. 39$ - 49$ for a game is bullsh*t.. a movie doesnt cost 39$ - 50$ and im sure they are based arround the same budget and required amount of in-staff..
games make more profit than movies (I imagine!!)....
copying games just makes the companys produce on wider markets.. such as ID software, being PC only then saying due to software copying to make up for thier loss due to copying games, they produce on all consoles and platforms.. (isnt that a good thing! ?)
why... in England.. a game which costs 39$ - 49$ dollars in the states.. costs 70/80 dollars in the UK?
(what I mean here is.. the same box label, etc.. but the 39$ sign is transfered into 39Pounds)
copying games WILL never break the console market..will never stop companys making games, and will never stop consoles being developed.. please.. thats bullshit..
I USE THIS POLICY... and always will.....
I download a game.. IF I love it I BUY IT!!
if I was in charge of copyright thieft.. ID do this..when you sell a retail version of a game.. include a t-shirt, pretty posters, collectors box, keyrings, badges etc.... include something which makes retail versions of a game.. more presentable.. If everygame offered 1 week of FREE MS live GOLD service.. prehaps...people would be more inclined to buy it.. use it online.. meaning more chance of locking down consoles, checking the xbox 360 for illigal copies etc..
flame me.. I just dont give a F*CK! btw.. now im living in South Korea for like the last 5 years.. this is copytheft heaven......
I'm totally with you on the game packaging idea. One of my favorite american companies was Working Designs, because they put forth an effort to make sure they localized a game without losing any of it's original appeal, and gave all sorts of wonderful packaging (including hardbound, full-color instruction manuals, bonus cd or dvd with behind the scenes content, cloth maps, and about 5-10 other things I can't remember). Of course, they didn't do that until they moved to the PSX, but from then on, all their games really did have amazing packaging and extras, and I always wondered why other developers didn't do the same (especially ones with lower production costs such as almost any movie game, or sports games - to clarify, sports games have low production costs; it's licensing that gets them, but they have tons of ads, so that should offset it).
I also think it's kinda rediculous that games are mad expensive. The cost of materials for the physical product is the same as movies, except for the instruction manual. Now let's consider the latest record-breaking blockbuster: Spiderman 3. It cost $270,000,000 acording to a Sony rep (this doesn't including advertising, however). According to Rotten Tomatos, it's grossed $336,530,303 in a matter of 16 weeks. That's dangerously close to $100,000,000 in PROFIT. I'm sure DVD sales will push it past that. That being said, it costs less than $10 for a ticket, and less than $20 for the retail DVD when it hits shelves (well, u know how it's on sale the first week at BB and others). Now I'd love to factor in the production costs for the video game and see how it fared, but there's two problems with that: 1) I can't find the production costs 2) It was made by Activision, so a lotta people didn't buy it.
Let's also consider Halo 3's numbers. I remember reading the production budget was $50,000,000 and another $10,000,000 for advertising. It grossed over $300,000,000 in it's first week. Here's some quick math about this:
Cost per standard-edition would be less than $2 (DVD replication is under $1 per-disc anyway, with full amaray case, disc screen-printing, etc). The game is region free, so they only needed 1 glass master for the game disc (which they may not have had to pay for anyway), and another glass master for the bonus disc. We can safely assume it's less than $3 per package, including a game disc, bonus disc, amaray wrap, case, and instruction booklet. If it retailed on shelves for $19.99, and still sold the 2.48 million copies it did on launch day, it would have grossed $49,620,000 (just short of the entire production budget). Now, let's factor in that if the game really was $40-$150 cheaper than when it launched, how many MORE people would have bought it? As a matter of fact, most of the people I know are waiting to see a used copy of halo 3 before they buy it (and honestly, I don't blame them).
On the other hand, if 2.48 million people are willing to spend $60 or more to get a particular game on launch day, are you really inclined to argue with an industry that's used to overcharging?
Back to the topic at hand, the game industry, much like the movie industry and record industry, claim that piracy is destroying everything and that's why costs are high, but I don't think it really amounts to that. I believe that most piracy that occurs doesn't mean the person was gonna buy it anyawy. However, I think if they factor in all the pirated copies they confiscate in every raid, how much more they could sell if they simply weren't charging too much, though it's not a fair representation when you're comparing a corporate chain's numbers against a much smaller orginazation.
Maybe the next generation will finally be different...ha! Not likely.
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