Greed sucks.
So some of you may have listened to our E3 show already. Some of you may have not. First of sorry we didn't get all 3 covered. I'm sure we'll find a way to squeeze a middle show in with coverage of Sony's Glowing Orbs. Also I'm sorry we failed to talk about this.Now as great as the ability to download full games directly to your hard drive might be I see a few problems with the concept. My three biggest problems are the cost, the size, and the selection. Let's look at this bit by bit.
1. Cost
Okay first and foremost we've talked about this on shows before. Games are expensive. They always have been and probably always will be. In looking at this before I got into it I found this wonderful article from Forbes that breaks down a brand new game's cost breakdown. Hopefully you all will actually look at that because I don't intend to summarize for you. The thing about this new service though is we aren't talking new games going to retail. Much like the Virtual Console we are talking old, already developed games. Yes these are slightly newer than Duck Hunt, but many of the same questions still emerge. Why would I pay $19.99 to download a copy of Mass Effect with no manual, box, or disc when I can go to the store and for the same price pick up, FOR THE SAME PRICE, a full retail copy of the game. No matter how you breakdown the cost of a game (greed) it is cheaper to sell me a file than a physical version of the media. You wouldn't buy MP3's if you could by the CD for cheaper or the same price. It wouldn't make sense.
2. Size
So again I found a cool article to help my point here. The only thing is it is old. Like 360 launch old. This isn't really to bad a thing though. We aren't talking new games at launch of this download service. When we look at this information we can see that full games are going to take up a LOT of space. Now at this point none of the systems has a great setup for handling extra storage space. For whatever insane reason (greed) no one will let you hook up an external hard drive to your system. Hell with the 360 you can't even buy just a off the shelf notebook hard drive like the PS3 or SD cards like the Wii. At least in both of those you have some control. With the 360 you are stuck once you run out of space. It's a new hard drive or nothing. And even those are limited. If you go nuts on XBLA or through this new download service the biggest hard drive they have could go pretty darn quick. 120 GB isn't much with files running 4 GB plus a piece.
In their defense though we haven't been told how big these files will be or how they are working this service. I'm also not factoring in whether or not you use the current ability to store parts of your game to the drive to help them load faster. This eats space too. But as someone who is already having space issues on his PS3 this concept scares me.
3. Selection
I touched on this previously in this article but now I'll flesh it out completely. There isn't much information on what 30 games are going to be included, but this article gives a breakdown of what is confirmed. Not an impressive list is it? Now the Virtual Console take s advantage of our need for nostalgia. I don't think anyone is nostalgic for games released in the last 2 years. Especially not that you can pick up cheaper used or for the same price new. We're not talking Mario RPG here. Microsoft MIGHT have a rental service out of this and they MIGHT have newer games at some point. I mean honestly though. Is someone going to jump to use this service to buy a game that has been available this long just because they can download it now? I just don't see this selection causing people to jump for joy.
So yeah. Not really a thrilling announcement. I just can't see this being the next big thing. Old games (not classic, there is a difference), retail pricing, and limited space. So why do it? The only answer I could come up with is greed. Maybe they'll throw out something about "green", but the only people benefiting from these are those due to make the extra money from lack of packaging, distribution, and retail fees. This isn't benefiting us the gamer in any way. So once again greed (or good business as the industry would call it) rears it's ugly head. Here's hoping that rental service comes out of this. Now THAT I could go for.
-John
1 Comments On This Post:
First of all, gauging from that article about the breakdown of how games are priced, at LEAST 25% of the on-shelf price gets thrown out the window when you cut out a retailer, manufacturer, etc. It never fails to impress me how shortsighted many corporations are, especially videogame companies, when it comes to price point. A 10% discount on a digital copy of a game would be enough to make just about any gamer consider downloading a game rather than buying the physical copy, and a 20% discount would probably seal the deal for most. If theres no discount, you're going to have a hard time convincing me commit to only having the game on the harddrive with no chance of selling it later. Oh, and for all those corporate folk who apparently never took Econ 101, if a product costs $10 to make, and you sell twice as many when its priced at $18 as when its $20, YOU MAKE MORE MONEY.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 11:58:00 PM CDTAs for storage space, the "new xbox 360 experience" that came out in November lets you copy games to your harddrive (you still need the disk to play it to prevent piracy, but the load times are drastically reduced for most games). Every game I've copied to my harddrive has taken between 4 and 10 gb of memory, with most being 5-7. My 120gb harddrive got eaten up pretty fast once I started copying my games. I can see this service causing discontent among gamers who like having the digital copies but don't like paying exorbitant amounts for a new harddrive.
As for selection, it isn't terrible but isn't fantastic either. IMHO the virtual console and Xbox originals libraries are just as pathetic. VC is better if for no other reason than they have hundreds more to choose from, but still 95% of it is total garbage. Xbox originals on XBLA is even worse as it only has about 4 games worth downloading, and less than two dozen total. Really, whats wrong with putting EVERY game you have on there? If its a first-party title, then there is no reason at all why it shouldn't be available. I understand Nintendo has a sales scheme in mind with its VC release schedule, but its fucking ridiculous to string it out for so long. The Wii has been out for 2 1/2 years, and Majora's Mask, a wholly Nintendo owned game, was only recently made available (I think is was the super special 300th game on VC). Instead of creating anticipation and generating more sales, what I like to call the "blueballs release schedule" for downloadable games just causes me to push it all out of my mind and forgo the whole thing. None of my favorite games will ever be available on XBLA, Nintendo is going to hold off on releasing any of the games I truly loved as a kid until god knows when, and I don't have a PS3 and so don't have anything to say on that.
Just my thoughts.
Glenn
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