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

[Golden Calf]

I should point out that I make it no secret that I think Kuchera is kind of an idiot but more of a tool. But he's wrong about this.

 

You're not alone. That guy's writing is so hilariously lame, and he always seems to think he has an interesting take.

[syntheticgerbil]

Ben Kuchera decided to write an opinion piece, in the wake of this EA subscription service news, about how "the days of owning games are going away."

I'm sorry to put it this way, but I think that's just dumb. I am one who makes it a point to try to get boxed releases and I avoid Steam like the plague. I generally don't like having to have some internet connection or rely on a client to play something. That said, I do have many PSN and XBLA games, but the way I see it is if you give those consoles enough years to become obsolete, it will go the way of Wii Homebrew or compilation Dreamcast CD-Rs with all DLC ever and complete with VMU, where someone has taken a backup of all digital releases.

 

Also I tend to import games a lot of games for the sake of a boxed release since there will always be other countries where the market is pointed towards or hard copies, although I'm not quite sure why.

[Nachimir]

I should point out that I make it no secret that I think Kuchera is kind of an idiot but more of a tool. But he's wrong about this. He takes to news of the end times for video games as we know it in the same fashion that random internet folk, who are also video game enthusiasts, do. Which is to say, WAY too eager to talk about it. It's like seeing Christians go on about the end times because waah gay people waaah. Only it's video games I guess.

 

 

This year was the first in which I've been to industry conferences and not encountered the same "end of video games!!1" hysteria. There were a really discouraging few years around 2009 where it made it into a bunch of event programming.

[Griddlelol]

Ben Kuchera makes exaggerated and/or controversial opinion based on nothing! Stop the presses!  

 

The EA shit kinda sounds cool, until I realised that EA puts out maybe one game every couple of years that I'm remotely interested in. PS+ has some serious value to it, and is clearly subsidised by Sony to get people to buy their platform, and in turn make more money. The EA one is likely to be pretty bad considering they are just trying to make money and have no reason to give consumers anything good. 

[Merus]

Relevant: Kucheralert, a Chrome extension that makes links on Twitter that point to pieces written by Ben Kuchera drip blood.

[Twig]

That is perfect.

[Henroid]

Not surprising anyone, Sony says the EA+ service is a bad value to the customer. But they also shed some light on things - EA actually went to them with the idea. Sony turned them down because they felt it would be ridiculous for consumers to pay the fee for PS+, and then have to pay an additional fee for just EA games.

 

Good move on Sony's part I say.

[Henroid]

And in a surprising move, it turns out Sony is just as crap as EA.

 

The Playstation Now thing is terribly overpriced. To play games for 90 days you pretty much pay Gamestop used prices (which are shy of new prices), ranging from $25 to $45. Because people were bothered by this they introduced a $1.99 per day option. Which is STILL too much.

 

I'd considered Sony to be making the right moves over the course of the PS4's life (and with the unit itself) but this is their first huge blunder.

[JonCole]

Theoretically PS Now is still in "open beta", so there's still potential for them to review their decision on pricing.

 

Also, there are rumblings about a PS Now service subscription, which could also provide a better value proposition.

[Bjorn]

[Professor Video Games]

I know nothing about this...what's the story?

[SecretAsianMan]

He used to be the head of Nintendo of America's indie program.  Last year he ran into some trouble with the company for tweeing negatively about the 3DS's region locking and rejecting submissions like a 3DS version of Binding of Issac.  This basically resulted in Nintendo telling him he wasn't allowed to tweet or speak in public anymore.

[Twig]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/222509/Nintendos_indie_guy_Dan_Adelman_has_left_the_company.php

[SecretAsianMan]

Going back to the EA subscription thing, they've now clarified that you don't need Xbox Live Gold to use it.  Of course you won't be able to do any multiplayer gaming without it, but at least it's a side offer to Xbox Live instead of a subscription within a subscription.

[Dewar]

And in a surprising move, it turns out Sony is just as crap as EA.

 

The Playstation Now thing is terribly overpriced. To play games for 90 days you pretty much pay Gamestop used prices (which are shy of new prices), ranging from $25 to $45. Because people were bothered by this they introduced a $1.99 per day option. Which is STILL too much.

 

I'd considered Sony to be making the right moves over the course of the PS4's life (and with the unit itself) but this is their first huge blunder.

 

I believe that the individual publishers decide their prices, thus the widely varying numbers you can see if you shop around the market. Many of the games that they showed on the GB stream had 7 day rentals at around 10 bucks, which is roughly the same value as a physical video game rental (yes they still exist.) For many games out there, 7 days is plent to beat them, so I'm OK with that. There's never really going to be a way to sustain the service without either rentals and no purchases, or purchases with some type of monthly fee (on-live style.)

[JonCole]

Redbox is $2 a day + tax for game rentals, Gamefly is $15.95 a month for one game at a time. I'd say PlayStation Now is on par if not better, if only because you can buy PSN Store cards discounted now and then (they are buy one, get one 25% off or effectively 12.5% off at Target right now) and there is no tax on digital purchases.

[Gormongous]

Redbox is $2 a day + tax for game rentals, Gamefly is $15.95 a month for one game at a time. I'd say PlayStation Now is on par if not better, if only because you can buy PSN Store cards discounted now and then (they are buy one, get one 25% off or effectively 12.5% off at Target right now) and there is no tax on digital purchases.

 

But doesn't the lack of a physical infrastructure mean that there should be savings to pass to the consumer?

[Bjorn]

But doesn't the lack of a physical infrastructure mean that there should be savings to pass to the consumer?

 

If it were just a download, sure, but they are running these things on hardware and streaming the result.  I, personally, have no idea about the relative cost of that operation compared to mailing discs or stocking a kiosk. 

[JonCole]

I don't really think so, considering they're also offering a back catalog that you really would not be able to rent elsewhere in many cases. You're trading the lack of infrastructure for selection and convenience.

 

Sure, I'd love for PS Now to be cheaper than anything else. But I personally can't expect it to break a model that's prevalent and working elsewhere. Hell, most HD movie rentals online are more expensive than renting the blu-ray locally - renting a 1080p HDX version of a movie on Vudu costs $6 while renting a blu-ray from Redbox is $1.50 per day. I suspect the value may come with promotional pricing, like a monthly selection of things that cost 50% less to rent or perhaps a free weekend rental of a really long game to promote the release of a sequel.

[Wordherder]

But doesn't the lack of a physical infrastructure mean that there should be savings to pass to the consumer?

Digital infrastructure can be surprisingly expensive -- it wasn't until 2013 that PSN started turning a profit, if I'm remembering right. Plus there's also the feeling (among the suits, anyway) that this is a completely new type of service, and there's really no sweet spot for price yet. It's true that this is a new type of service in the video game world, though that's not going to keep people from comparing it to Redbox.

[Gormongous]

Digital infrastructure can be surprisingly expensive -- it wasn't until 2013 that PSN started turning a profit, if I'm remembering right. Plus there's also the feeling (among the suits, anyway) that this is a completely new type of service, and there's really no sweet spot for price yet. It's true that this is a new type of service in the video game world, though that's not going to keep people from comparing it to Redbox.

 

Yeah, I guess I've proven that the issue is not equivalence but the perception of equivalence.

[Henroid]

To be fair, when did PSN start trying to monetize? It ran for years without any of that.

[Wordherder]

To be fair, when did PSN start trying to monetize? It ran for years without any of that.

Oh, sure. For much of its life it stuck with basic online purchases. It wasn't until later that the added Plus, more ads and other things to beef up its revenue, which was a good move from a biz standpoint. I guess I wanted to point out that online infrastructure for a game platform is more constly to maintain than most people would guess, and that might be one of the motivations for Sony to charge so much for Now. Or maybe it's just miscalculation. Or greed. Whichever.

 

(This is Cloudeagle, by the way.)

[Dewar]

To be fair, when did PSN start trying to monetize? It ran for years without any of that.

 

When they looked over the fence and saw XBL Gold raking in.

[Ucantalas]

When they looked over the fence and saw XBL Gold raking in.

...and then saw Microsoft get hated on so they could slip the news in without much in the way of bad feelings because "At least its not as bad as what Microsoft is doing!"