It’s just the basic logic of maturing market. They couldn’t really increase the game prices that much more without affecting demands, nor could they improve efficiency of making games (the capital costs and team sizes have only gotten up) so they did the thing they could. Try to turn games from a product that the sell into a service they provide and can therefore lock people into their walled gardens and keep continuously charging fees and subscriptions. Too bad games are more of an art form than a news paper or a some tool maintenance contract is.
It will be valuable information when we have more data points to compare it against later. The console’s high initial sales may very well have little to do with anything except how many Nintendo had available, for instance. It could do Wii U numbers (unlikely), or it could be a mega success, or anything in between. The third party sales might be reflective of the fact that the games are all older and available on other platforms, or it could be that customers are strapped for cash after a higher console purchase price, or any of a number of other reasons. I would just encourage people not to make a narrative out of this yet.
It’s too early to draw any conclusions. Take it from Mat Piscatella, who’s forgotten more about video game market research than I ever learned myself.
Hardware launches are not like game releases, anyway. It’s the establishment of a new product market, and early game releases on consoles have an ebb and flow to them that later blockbusters do not. It’s about building growth, not first-week sales.
If I remember correctly, at the time Valve justified the 30% by pointing out that Apple was charging the same for music and video content. And Valve immediately started building value-added services like forums, updaters, multiplayer support, achievements, etc. to justify the price.
If you compare what Valve was doing to the physical media distribution methods of the period, it was a MASSIVE improvement. Back then, you could sell 10000 units to Ingram Micro or PC Mall, or whatever, and you only got paid if they sold. And any unsold inventory would be destroyed and the reseller would never pay for it. And if you actually wanted anything other than a single-line entry in their catalogs, you paid a promotional fee. Those video games featured with a standup display or a poster in the window at the computer store? None of that was free; the developer was nickeled and dimed for every moment their game was featured in any premium store space.
That process is typically part of the class action suit/settlement. It often comes with a binding agreement that by participating you are waiving your right to seek compensatory damages individually.
I’m not a lawyer, but this seems illegal, they can’t retroactively change licenses, imagine Microsoft decides that starting January 1st you need to pay them 20¢ each time you open the file explorer or each time you boot windows. They can’t just decide to change their pricing strategy for an existing product that people have already agreed to. They could make it that starting from version X that would be the price, because people with games already released or in the works can keep the current terms with the downside of not being able to update the engine, or even have a page where people can contact them to tell what is their current project so that projects that started before this date are not affected. But the way it’s being done feels like it should be illegal.
Somebody’s already asked some lawyers and they’ve already said it is illegal. Now we’re just waiting for somebody to sue them, but it’ll probably take a while because getting all of that paperwork sorted will take some time.
I am not a developer but don’t they have to state the engine at the beginning of the game? Really no idea, just guessing, as I’ve seen a lot of games with it.
That would involved buying/downloading the game first to find out though (which would defeat the purpose of avoiding Unity in the first place). Out of curiosity I checked some of the games on my Steam wishlist to see if Steam had the engine listed anywhere, and unfortunately they don't. A few had it under the fine print copyright section under System Requirements, but not all. Because of this whole thing, it would be nice if Steam would include that as well, like in the sidebar where they list the developer and publisher. I can't speak for other pc storefronts though.
You can go to the SteamDB page for a game, click App Info on the left, then look for the “Detected Technologies”. This will usually tell you what they’re using if it’s not a custom engine. You can use the Augmented Steam or SteamDB browser extensions to get a direct link to the SteamDB page from a game’s store page.
Also, SteamDB has a page here with aggregate data of how much each detected engine is used across Steam. Unity currently accounts for over half of the games using known engines (snapshot).
Edit: For non-Steam games you could check out IGDB.com. It has crowd-sourced data on all video games, including which game engine was used.
I realized the only game I play online is FFXIV, which doesn’t require PS+. I almost never play the “free” games they add to the service, and spend a non-zero amount of time browsing said free games in an effort to find something to play rather than something in my backlog. So I just canceled.
My membership is up in December and I doubt I’ll even notice when it’s gone.
Price rises aren’t welcome and the latest one does seem quite high. However I’ve been paying for plus since I got my PS4 and I’m still ok with it. Considering I maybe buy one game every two years for the price of another triple A game a year I’ve built up quite a library. The hours my partner has put into Spiritfarer, Slay the Spire and Hades indicates it’s still providing good value. Every month we at least check out the new games unless it’s a survival horror.
If I have one complaint it’s since I got off the CoD train as I got older when I do occasionally dip into the free ones via plus I find it very hard to find any online matches. I assume this is because all the hardcore players move pretty quickly to the current iteration leaving the lobbies of the older games empty.
Same here, I set to cancel renew every time I top up and since late ps4 time I don’t even add free games that are remotely interesting so I keep a cleaner library. And then when they announced the hike, I did the review and filter by games acquired via plus, same feeling, I almost never play those games, even though they look somewhat interesting and added them but probably never gonna play them since my primary interest and good backlog will last me long enough for next main games to release. So they will have the same treatment like my humble bundle games. And I also decide to not top up any more.
It’s still crazy to me that this somehow became normal. I’m not paying rent for a fucking video game. Hell I’m not even paying in general, least of all for Ubisoft or some other Activision-Blizzard-EA shlock.
Things are getting back to normal in a way. People rented games for 8/16-bit consoles from video rental stores commonly. These days it’s common for people playing on consoles to buy, play through and sell games because there are no such stores anymore.
Oh no, we might be making marginally less profit than we told our investors we’d be making, and none of us have the backbone to just tell them that you know, sometimes you gamble money and get little in return.
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