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Re: You can change ONE trend in the videogame industry...

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 9:23 pm
by ranger_lennier
matt wrote:
I guess the win/win for developers and gamers is if cheaper games just make people buy more, so we get more games without the total money going to the industry going down.
While I think that is true to some extent, I don't think that's really the case overall. Gamers have a limited amount of time, so I don't they really will buy THAT many more games to make up for the low prices. Look at the iOS market for example. They have super low prices, but people still aren't buying that many games. The race to the bottom just forced devs to turn to F2P or super mass market appeal. :-/
I guess it's also worth mentioning that I buy many more games than I actually play. That's definitely understandable with bundles, but there have certainly been times when I've bought single games that had a good sale, figuring I might get around to playing them at some point. Now I have so many on Steam, GOG, etc. that I don't see how I would ever play them all.

Also, with the shift to digital distribution, the marginal cost of each additional copy of a game is near zero, so that alone allows for lower prices.

Of course, none of this is to say that there isn't a race to the bottom hurting developers, and I agree that it looks more like that on mobile than on PC. But they are countervailing factors.

Re: You can change ONE trend in the videogame industry...

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 6:18 pm
by matt
I think a lot of people buy more games than they play these days with humble bundles and all that. Maybe I got some money for Retro/Grade from people who were buying the bundle for other games. That would be a win for us. hahah

Re: You can change ONE trend in the videogame industry...

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:19 pm
by ranger_lennier
matt wrote:I think a lot of people buy more games than they play these days with humble bundles and all that. Maybe I got some money for Retro/Grade from people who were buying the bundle for other games. That would be a win for us. hahah
Yeah, probably so. Maybe some of them will even play it and like it. Of course with me, it's hard to invest much time in games I'm not familiar with when there are so many I want to play but haven't yet.