This CEO may think it’s developer-friendly, but I highly doubt if Epic will keep such developer-friendly stance if Epic becomes a giant in this industry.
Epic burnt so much money on Epic store these years. If it succeeds, it’s very likely Epic will try to earn it back. From player? Will players willing to pay more in Epic store than the others? If the answer is no… Sometimes it really makes me wonder if these CEOs are really that stupid…
Yes, and at wholesale rates it’s a pretty good bang-for-your-buck, as an advertising scheme. Advertising is a numbers game about getting as many eyeballs as possible on the product, and I know I actively check for free games on the Epic launcher most weeks. Even if I don’t ever buy anything because of that specifically, it keeps the app on my computer and keeps me checking back in.
Edit: And I shit you not I just opened it to check 'cause I can’t remember if I looked at this week’s free game. Turns out it’s a good thing I did too, the Fallout collection is free right now!
“Even if I don’t ever buy anything” is why I doubt it’s going to work out. Epic is publicly right now saying that it’s great at acquiring users. Yeah, I’ll bet it is. People love free stuff. Is it great at turning those users into paying customers? Even at wholesale rates, I’ve gotten hundreds of games for free from Epic, which means they spent thousands of dollars on me, and I can’t foresee an instance where I’ll ever give them a cent back.
Yeah, obviously they’d want to earn it back and yeah, obviously from customers. You make that sound malicious. Steam is doing the same thing. With the amount of money Steam makes, they could drop their share in half and still make a killing. Epic wouldn’t have to do anything that Steam isn’t to recoup costs if they were competitive with Steam.
That said, Epic does take less revenue from developers, which is nice. This doesn’t translate to less for the end user though because Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces or you aren’t allowed on Steam. It’s fucked up.
Just pointing out, once again, that games sold on the Epic store can be different prices to Steam. “Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces” is a nonsensical, incorrect statement.
You own the game on switch and already have the dlc so pay nothing unless you want to pay $10 or have the switch online subscription for the switch 2 edition if you want the enhancements. For a total of $0-10 depending on your choice
You own the game but dont have the dlc so pay $20 for that and then $10 for the switch 2 version unless you have the subscription for a total of $20-30 depending on your choice.
You dont own the game so you buy the switch 2 version for $70 and the dlc for $20 for a total of $90.
This is not the same as the $90 game lie thats being told, but it is painted that way. To get clicks.
Paying $70 for a game and then paying more for an expansion is nothing even close to new. For example, Destiny 2 is free but if you want the DLC its gonna cost you between $150 and $270 depending on when you buy it as there are sometimes deals on.
Breath of the Wild is 8 years old at this point. Asking $70 for that is pretty egregious in my opinion. Maybe for TotK that’d be more acceptable but for BotW I think it’s a very steep price. Especially given that it’s common that rereleases usually include dlcs by default.
I’d expected $60 for the full package, not $90, given that the amount of development work was likely pretty low (the game was finished years ago after all). So 50% higher than expected.
The SM64+Sunshine+Galaxy bundle game was $30, for comparison. That’s three full games that they needed to put in effort for to run on the Switch.
Absolutely fair. An 8 year old game should not cost $90 all in.
I dont dispute that. I just think the article is misleading as there is a lot of talk about $90 switch 2 games, which turned out not to be true, and it creates anger that is misplaced. Even if the reality isn’t far from that lie.
I do, however, think it’s an interesting thought experiment to come at it from another angle.
Imagine the article was “8 year old AAA game and DLC at a huge discount” and the article said things like:
breath of the wild was ahead of its time on release
the graphics still look great thanks to the cell shading and art style
unique gameplay elements and a modern feeling combat system
vast open world with expansive storyline
on par with modern games
currently only $50 on this deal, a bargain considering everything you get for that price
From this point of view i think you would agree that anyone would argue its worth more than $50 and that its a great deal despite being 8 years old.
Nintendo games should definitely come down in price over time, but the point is its just so easy to spin something however you want if you use the right words.
If this turns out to be a solid performer, the price could make it the best midrange value since AMD’s Polaris (RX 480). Let’s hope Intel’s build quality has improved since the A770.
Epic store not being profitable and despite the backing of Fortnite and Unreal Engine surplas being at the state that it is shows that it is probably much more expensive than expected to make a feature rich launcher. What epic has is more a glorified storefront like humble bundle or Fanatical but worse because it isn’t even selling keys for the platform of your choice, and they have to handle server costs of storing all the games too.
They “invested” in paying out the ass for exclusivity and loss leaders thinking that buying users would result in users ignoring how terrible their store was and buying more games there.
In a way it like trying to enter the smartphone market and paying for app exclusives then ignoring the part about polishing the OS experience as much as possible and putting out something that is from the flip phone era.
I own a handful of games on Epic that I actually play. But whenever I see one of those games under $5 on steam sale I buy it. I think I’m down to two games left. Playing Fallout London on GOG gives me the same heebie jeebies
Steam is not free. Steam is 30% cut to businesses.
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft offload their costs via yearly subscription costs as well as developers paying a protection fee to launch on their platform. Steam just has the highest protection money scheme. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to the games you’re publishing through them, would you?
I, his inheritor, am sorry to inform you that GabeN has passed. I’ve realized that I want an even larger pile of money, and it’s come to my attention that you aren’t paying for us to maintain your account.
You have 30 days to download your content or subscribe to Steam Plus at a cheap $X9.99/mo to avoid account deletion.
It looks like “attack and destroy the contents of religious sites such as the Itatehyouzu Shrine” means you can break the clutter scattered around the area, like a pot or a bench. You don’t deface the shrine itself. This is just twitter drama.
If Borderlands 3 had released on Steam, I’d have probably bought it when it came out because I still had a lot of goodwill for the series at that time. Instead, I had to wait until the Steam release when the game already had loads of negative press. Exclusive deals are idiotic
Not just tariffs, but Trump is trying his damnedest to add more inflationary pressure to the economy by firing the people who are keeping interest rates high, counteracting the tariffs.
One of the issues I have with the new open-world style Zelda games is that they don’t have replay value. After finishing each once (which takes a lot of time), I can’t actually imagine wanting to go back and play them again. So yeah, Nintendo can charge what they want and it isn’t very appealing regardless. Increased resolution isn’t going to change the experience.
Increased resolution probably wouldn’t make a difference, but keeping the framerate at a steady 30 (or even better 60) would make a noticeable difference. At least it did when I played it on PC
I replay OoT and MM at least once a year. I can see myself replaying these new Zelda games at some point and enjoying them, but I won’t likely pay $90 for the privilege.
Interestingly I’d say the complete opposite: BotW was my fave and I feel I could replay it in quite a different style (e.g. trying to beat it without any dungeons, trying to 100% it), whereas the others are all very linear and my only option is to play it again in the same way.
(Obviously I don’t need to pay any additional money to do either though!)
Although I don’t hate my PS5 (it’s the only console i still use), I do think the launch PS3 was peak Playstation. Yeah, it did have a “Homer car” vibe to it by including everything and the kitchen sink, but it was truly amazing.
I believe one person acts as the host. That’s why sometimes it’ll kick you out of a session and start loading again, that means the host has left and someone else needs to take over.
Isn’t this the same architecture that is also in their iGPUs? That should help keep them motivated to improve drivers even if they lose interest in dGPUs.
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