David DeMartini needs to shut his whore mouth and listen to the onslaught of success that is valve and steam
I wish he would say that in an interview, then immediately be asked “So what about Westwood Studios?”
Sure, a sale for a game cheapens the IP but fuck up an entire game’s premise cough C&C4 cough and it’s all good
Steam sales are agreed upon by both the maker and ValvE. EA simply still didn’t get over the fact that games are not luxury goods any more. They are the biggest, fattest, the most corporate gaming company there is and so they are the ones that set prices for games. Steam tries to get over that. They try to cheapen the good that is not as luxury as it used to be. Obviously there is a lot of work that is put into creation of a game, but will you really sell more “units” for a badly rip-off price then, let’s say, 25% less? Steam sales are the kind of things normal shops around the world do, they cheapen the goods that are not bought much and once they go off-sale people still buy them because of good reports they had from others.
What’s wrong with that? If there is an item of interest some people will prefer to buy it at release, and others will wait for a sale/price drop. Its a matter of Supply & Demand
Demand: The lower the price = more will get sold
Supply: The higher the price = more will be supplied
I can agree with that statement. I’d rather not have to pay $50 to $60 for a new game, unless I have the money, and I was really looking forward to the game. Usually ends up being a new Zelda, Smash Bros., or MarioKart title.
His whole fucking career cheapens intellectual properties. Why is he mad?
if it weren’t for discounted games on steam, I’d still be playing “shared” games.
now I just wait a few months or even a year and get games for cheap and with all the patches and bugs fixed.
thank you steam
This is fantastic.
It may be true that consistent sales create an expected lower price point which thus ‘devalues the content’ as EA states. However, said lower price point can actually make the content much more desirable to the consumer. After all, who doesn’t want high quality goods for a low price?
Then, because the product is more desirable, you have more consumers who create demand for the product as well as more consumers who can afford the product. Two very good things to have and ones which can sell more units.
The trick is simply making sure that the percentage that you have reduced the price is less than the percentage of increase in units sold. In other words, selling a product for 50% off is fine, so long as you are selling to more than twice as many people. Which is completely feasible at the lower price point.
It’s a tried and true philosophy and one that works extremely well in a poor economy when people have less money to spend and are looking for more ways to have fun. Clearly this method must be working or Valve would not be doing it.
I also must add, that this type of lower price/more units sold methodology would be harder to make work for physical products, but it is one that is perfectly suited for the realm of digital goods. With digital goods, the lack of any sort of production costs for each additional unit created/sold makes it much easier to tip the balance towards more units meaning more profits.
EA isn’t bitching about “Cheapened” intellectual property, EA is bitching about the fact that steam repeatedly undercuts their profits. It’s not about people refusing to buy games at full price, it’s about people refusing to buy EA’s games, which are always at full price.
Not to disagree with you entirely, but I don’t think this point here is valid. There are plenty of ongoing costs involved with digital distribution. It’s not like Gabe Newell is just sharing these games from his house on his home internet. Servers have to be maintained/rented, and high bandwidth internet service has to be paid for. I don’t know the hard numbers but I imagine it’s at least a sizeable percentage of physical production costs.
It makes sense if you look at it from a business standpoint, which just shows that all EA sees in us is dollar signs. They don’t care about games, they’re just making them to make money. Hence why they sell the same game every year with slight tweaks. They’re basically making DLC and selling it for full price.
It would be interesting to see the sales figures between Origin and Steam on games in both catalogs.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out Steam completely curbstomps Origin on that front.
Well for example, I wanna see Crysis 2 figures since it’s back on Steam and see if it beats Origin which had a monopoly on it for a few years.
It’s so sizeable that games still cost more than physical copies of the same game (or at best rrp).
https://www.destructoid.com/origin-cheapening-ip-with-discounts-up-to-87-5–229693.phtml
lololololololol
Good job EA
wow, so much fail.