The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Henroid]

So the news about Atlus' parent company means that the company is selling off assets to pay money it owes. Which includes Atlus.

 

Among the 20 companies bidding for Atlus is Sega. And that scares the hell out of me. Sega has a reputation for financial troubles, and they're currently operating on a big-brand only approach to video game development and publishing. If they hold the reigns on financing Atlus' work, they could very much kill off a part of what makes Atlus who they are - supporters and developers of awesome niche titles.

 

In other news Activision's financial call noted that CoD: Ghosts has a lower pre-order count than CODBLOPS2 did last year. They're attributing it to the PS4 and XB1 not yet being released (people aren't going to pre-order a game if they don't know what console to get it for). And that makes sense to be honest. There's a lot of people too eager to say that CoD is suddenly on its way to dying or whatever. The time to determine that is when the next game after Ghosts is on its way. The console transition is gonna make things weird and not everyone is gonna adopt the hardware right away.

[Henroid]

A shareholder in Activision / Blizzard stock is suing the company and Vivendi over the purchase to allow A/B to be independent. I haven't seen any concrete reasoning behind it, just that the shareholders and board of directors were owed... something... as a responsibility of Activision. The suit is meant to prevent the buyout.

 

I dunno what the guy stands to gain from this, because Vivendi was wanting to gouge Activision/Blizzard into a dry husk, financially. Maybe we can tinfoil hat that there's some corporate sabotage going on; it's an EA employee who invested in their competitor for moments like this! Or not.

 

Edit - What this probably is is someone who recognized a chance to squeeze some settlement money out of the companies to have the lawsuit dropped so the purchase can go through.

[Roderick]

You say that as if it isn't a perfectly fine use of the legal system.

[Lu]

I think we should settle these shareholder things by way of Thunderdome. The current way of doing things is just, well, it's--*yaaawn*

[Dewar]

A shareholder in Activision / Blizzard stock is suing the company and Vivendi over the purchase to allow A/B to be independent. I haven't seen any concrete reasoning behind it, just that the shareholders and board of directors were owed... something... as a responsibility of Activision. The suit is meant to prevent the buyout.

 

I dunno what the guy stands to gain from this, because Vivendi was wanting to gouge Activision/Blizzard into a dry husk, financially. Maybe we can tinfoil hat that there's some corporate sabotage going on; it's an EA employee who invested in their competitor for moments like this! Or not.

 

Edit - What this probably is is someone who recognized a chance to squeeze some settlement money out of the companies to have the lawsuit dropped so the purchase can go through.

 

From what I've seen on Bloomberg, the A/B stock has taken a major hit since the announcement of the buyout. You could make a case for the buyout to not be in the best intrest of share holders, even if it's a good choice from a creative freedom point of view.

[Henroid]

From what I've seen on Bloomberg, the A/B stock has taken a major hit since the announcement of the buyout. You could make a case for the buyout to not be in the best intrest of share holders, even if it's a good choice from a creative freedom point of view.

But it's a good choice from a business angle too. It means less overhead and was going to save A/B from that funding drain that Vivendi was looking to push, which would've bankrupted them. The stockmarket is so short-sighted when it comes to the video game industry, it drives me up the wall.

[Sno]

Crytek's websites were hacked, i guess.

If you've ever played a latter-day Crysis game, you've been sent an e-mail telling you to change your Origin/EA password.

If you have and weren't, you should probably still go change your password.

[tegan]

So apparently Nintendo asked Newgrounds to remove 500 games that use Nintendo resources like sprites and music. At this point I'm guessing that there might actually be something behind their sudden shift in attitude toward trademark protection. Like maybe some lawyer found out they were close to letting Donkey Kong fall into public domain or something like that.

[syntheticgerbil]

Wonder if my really shitty 30 second flash cartoon that I uploaded there about 6 years ago where Luigi does cocaine will be gone... Meh.

[Dewar]

Fair enough It's not that hard to draw your own sprites.

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't somehow managed to pull the plug on Super Mario Bros. Crossover, especially when you consider just how many Nintendo assets are in that thing.

[Henroid]

So Gamestop is allegedly practicing business in a shitty way.

http://kotaku.com/extreme-gamestop-pricing-leaves-some-fans-calling-scam-1108627828

 

Xenoblade Chronicles, a hard to find game (and thus expensive when you do find it) that had a limited print and sold exclusively through GS and Nintendo's Online store, has suddenly shown up in great quantity across Gamestop locations with a $90 price tag. It happened over the last two weeks or so, way too fast for people to just trade it in over time.

[I Saw Dasein]

People are such babies about video games. No one has an inherent right to buy a video game at $59.99. Gamestop should charge whatever the market can bear. I don't understand what is supposed to be "shitfy" about that. 

 

This:

 

One GameStop source tells us the retailer printed a few thousand copies of the game with no shrink wrap in order to restock their inventory, then labeled them as pre-owned.

 

strikes me as pretty unlikely, too. 

[Gormongous]

So Gamestop is allegedly practicing business in a shitty way.

http://kotaku.com/extreme-gamestop-pricing-leaves-some-fans-calling-scam-1108627828

 

Xenoblade Chronicles, a hard to find game (and thus expensive when you do find it) that had a limited print and sold exclusively through GS and Nintendo's Online store, has suddenly shown up in great quantity across Gamestop locations with a $90 price tag. It happened over the last two weeks or so, way too fast for people to just trade it in over time.

 

God, the comments on that article... Why is it that in recent years, the whole argument of "video games are luxury goods, therefore any amount of unethical behavior regarding them is totally cool and warranted" has become ubiquitous among fanboys and industry apologists?

 

 

EDIT: Daesin, if they're creating artificial scarcity because they're the sole distributor of a given title, then flooding the market to profit from those prices, that is unethical. It's unethical with diamonds, it's unethical with video games. When a company controls the whole market for a given product, there is no "market can bear" bullshit. And that is what's going on, from the evidence I've seen. There are multiple pictures in the comments thread showing that these are brand new copies not printed by Nintendo, using generic packaging materials but with all pack-ins present.

[I Saw Dasein]

EDIT: Daesin, if they're creating artificial scarcity because they're the sole distributor of a given title, then flooding the market to profit from those prices, that is unethical. It's unethical with diamonds, it's unethical with video games. When a company controls the whole market for a given product, there is no "market can bear" bullshit. And that is what's going on, from the evidence I've seen. There are multiple pictures in the comments thread showing that these are brand new copies not printed by Nintendo, using generic packaging materials but with all pack-ins present.

The company doesn't control the whole market for the product. First, there's probably other used copies available from other retailers (there's a bunch on ebay, at similarily high prices). Second, Xenoblade is eminently substitutable: if you don't want to buy that game at the current price, there's approximately a million other video games you can buy instead. So what is "bullshit" about the market for this product? If they can find buyers at the current price, good for them. If not, too bad, they will have to lower their price. 

[Gormongous]

The company doesn't control the whole market for the product. First, there's probably other used copies available from other retailers. Second, Xenoblade is eminently substitutable: if you don't want to buy that game at the current price, there's approximately a million other video games you can buy instead. So what is "bullshit" about the market for this product? If they can find buyers at the current price, good for them. If not, too bad, they will have to lower their price. 

 

I don't agree. Just because you can charge a given price for something doesn't mean you should. I don't think there's any economic argument you can make to change my mind on this. They could charge $10,000 per game and people would still buy them, but that doesn't keep it from being a negative thing for companies, customers, and the industry as a whole.

[I Saw Dasein]

I don't agree. Just because you can charge a given price for something doesn't mean you should. I don't think there's any economic argument you can make to change my mind on this.

Ok, fair enough. I generally don't view pricing as something with an ethical dimension. If (for example) Louis Vuitton wants to charge a thousand dollars for a pair of jeans, I really don't care--I just won't buy the jeans. I tend to view video games through that same lens, and so I used excessively strong language in my original post. Sorry.

[feelthedarkness]

If the game is only available through Gamestop, and they're automatically marking them up to $90 as used, they probably aren't available much cheaper elsewhere.

 

I also agree with the contempt for the game community embracing their own gouging. 

 

The cynic in me says "good for you Gamestop!" You want to ensure the consoles drive your business into the ground with digital distribution, do this. The realist in me knows that GS going out of business is bad for everyone even if I vowed never to shop there years ago. 

[Gormongous]

Ok, fair enough. I generally don't view pricing as something with an ethical dimension. If (for example) Louis Vuitton wants to charge a thousand dollars for a pair of jeans, I really don't care--I just won't buy the jeans. I tend to view video games through that same lens, and so I used excessively strong language in my original post. Sorry.

 

No worries! Differences of opinion happen between reasonable people.

 

It just kills me because I pirated games constantly in high school and college, before pricing got to be a bit more democratic thanks to Steam (and I grew up a bit, too). So, any time someone begins to make the market or scarcity arguments for games, I start to think, "Yeah, or I could get them for free with a lot less effort," and then I get sad again.

[Dewar]

Ok, fair enough. I generally don't view pricing as something with an ethical dimension. If (for example) Louis Vuitton wants to charge a thousand dollars for a pair of jeans, I really don't care--I just won't buy the jeans. I tend to view video games through that same lens, and so I used excessively strong language in my original post. Sorry.

 

I tend to agree with you on this one. There's a lot of stuff in this world that is overpriced, so I just don't buy it. Gamestop doesn't have the monopoly on these games because the publisher could just print more if the demand was really all that great. I'm more mad at them for not printing enough copies than I am at Gamestop for hording the ones they have. Or they could just skip the whole thing and release digitally, which would be awesome. I like Gamestop's angle on this story simply because they are showing some intellegence in pricing, rather than being the place that will happily sell you rare valuable games for the same price as another copy of Assasin's Creed 2.

[feelthedarkness]

This could also create an incentive for publishers of small/niche titles to strike deals with Gamestop for a larger exclusivity fee, knowing GS can gouge their customers with impunity. 

[Gormongous]

This could also create an incentive for publishers of small/niche titles to strike deals with Gamestop for a larger exclusivity fee, knowing GS can gouge their customers with impunity. 

 

Well... except that Gamestop is selling the copies as used, which means they aren't giving Nintendo jack.

[feelthedarkness]

There must be some kind of deal for the exclusivity, no? 

[Dewar]

There was a deal for the original exclusivity, but this new wave of copies was simply them buying the games back from customers, not putting them on the shelf, then dumping them all at once. They could do that with any game that had a small enough number of copies out there to make it worth while.

[syntheticgerbil]

The company doesn't control the whole market for the product. First, there's probably other used copies available from other retailers (there's a bunch on ebay, at similarily high prices). Second, Xenoblade is eminently substitutable: if you don't want to buy that game at the current price, there's approximately a million other video games you can buy instead. So what is "bullshit" about the market for this product? If they can find buyers at the current price, good for them. If not, too bad, they will have to lower their price. 

The problem is they received a batch of new games for all intents and purposes and sold them as used to line their pockets. Instead of getting them shrinkwrapped or just calling them new, they do this. And on top of that, I've had two cases at Gamestop where they sold me a new game without the shrink wrap and a dinky sticker around the case labeled NEW. I asked the first time because I was so confused and thought I somehow was being given a used copy, but the clerk insisted it was new. When I purchased a game the second time like this, I didn't ask. I don't really need the shrinkwrap, but I do hate getting rid of sticker goo. Anyway that was years ago, but they have practiced it before and I can confirm first hand.

 

Maybe one could argue because a new game is not coming shrinkwrapped, then for all intents and purposes, it's used, but that really is only a concern for collectors and devious resellers, not for people who actually want to own and play the game. So really the consumer and manufacturer is getting a bad deal here and the price is being inflated either way when a new batch should mean temporarily lower prices on other used copies. Gamestop wins, no one else does, not fans or the developers.

 

Anyway, I guess this particularly annoys me because I have the same problem with a few artists who regularly release art books in limited quantities because they aren't popular enough to sell retail with a SKU but are enough for the fans who want them to grab them up. But once resellers get word of this and see an artist has a dedicated amount of fans who will buy every art book, they most likely end up buying about a third to half of the stock to resell if Ebay is to be trusted. Pisses me off so much when I miss a book.

 

EDIT: Blurp, this exchanged happened already. Errr... I'll just leave my message anyway.