aaronspink
Veteran
If you look at steam most of the year, you'll see the top seller dominated by full priced games. case closed.
Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
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If you look at steam most of the year, you'll see the top seller dominated by full priced games. case closed.
aaronspink
Veteran
You have to look at the bigger picture here. There are a lot of reasons that reasonably cheap bandwidth will come to rural areas and a lot of them aren't related to traditional telco issues. There is a major push for power distribution networks to move to smart grids, and esp in rural areas, this mean stringing bandwidth along with the power lines. Once you are committed to stringing bandwidth, the marginal cost for 100x min bandwidth is minimal. So you are seeing a lot of power grids string in fiber bundles in the US. Paradoxically, it is the urban areas which are likely to get the least benefit from this as higher density areas both tend to have underground power and are easily serviced via wireless interconnects.
corduroygt
Banned
Your posts are not facts, you know that right?
http://store.steampowered.com
Only full priced game I see there is Black Ops at number 13. There are only about 20K users playing it concurrently at any time.
ok now take 100 more snapshots over the year to prove your point
Yeah. IIRC Steam's Top Sellers list is weekly based. Since they are having a massive holiday sales now, it's very easy for those 75% off indie games to top the list.
A quick Google search gives a Top Sellers list for a random week in April:
http://gamersyndrome.com/2010/pc/steam-top-sellers-list-april-11th-17th/
1. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
3. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City
4. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
5. Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse
6. Left 4 Dead 2
7. Mount & Blade: Warband
8. Just Cause 2
9. Commandos Collection
10. The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
which painted a quite different picture, no?
A quick Google search gives a Top Sellers list for a random week in April:
http://gamersyndrome.com/2010/pc/steam-top-sellers-list-april-11th-17th/
1. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
3. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City
4. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
5. Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse
6. Left 4 Dead 2
7. Mount & Blade: Warband
8. Just Cause 2
9. Commandos Collection
10. The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
which painted a quite different picture, no?
deathindustrial
Regular
Your comment above is contradicted by reality in both Canada and the US:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...fcc-just-bless-a-capped-two-tier-internet.ars
Forgive my cynicism but the promise given above does not hold much water considering the FCC's behaviour for at least the last decade. More telling is the following quote:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91452/fcc-chief-suggests-isps-switch-to-usage-based-pricing/
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/05/06/crtc-usage-based-billing-internet.html
For example, Shaw here in Canada recently downgraded its bandwidth allotments and also added in extra charges if you go above the amount included with your plan:
http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/newdatausage
100GB a month is $47 currently. Basically what they have done to counter the likes of Netflix is increase their billing enough to offset any savings cable cutters might have seen. This has the side effect of making DD potentially more expensive (if it causes your usage to go over your base allotment.
What's to sue for? This is all perfectly legal compliments of the FCC and CRTC.
Cheers
corduroygt
Banned
He's the one who said full priced games are best sellers on Steam, so he has to prove his point with 100 snapshots.
Besides, the top sellers list is not that useful, since it's revenue based, not based on the amount of units sold.
Given that PC retail market is very small, and DD revenue is less than retail revenue, I wouldn't put much stock in Steam stats anyways. It's a very small pie.
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Ugh, do you know that back in July NPD published a report stating that, during 2009, full PC game digital puchase reached 21.3 million copies, and the physical retail was 23.5 million copies? That means digital downloads accounted nearly half amount of all PC game retail sales in the US, and that's last year. I won't be surprised if it surpassed physical sales this year in the US.
Also, in the same report, the top digital PC game retailer based on unit sales is, yes, Steampowered.com.
corduroygt
Banned
Revenue-wise, DD was far behind though almost 2:1 according to the same report, which means the ASP of DD is lower. I wouldn't also be too sure of more of that revenue reaching the publisher, since Valve's cut is around the same rate charged by other app stores, at about 30%.
2:1 is not far behind. Of course digital purchases have lower ASP, because the majority of "casual" games are digital purchased. However, even if you consider that, digital purchases still have a significant portion (maybe > 25%) of the whole non-casual non-indie game sales.
Also, 30% cut is cheap. It's very hard to get 70% if you are selling physical copies.
just to add to what pcchen has said.
You also have to understand that with DD games never go out of print. So I live in the united states and I bought Fear 1 + 2 for $7 this week. If we look at gamestop.com I can't buy Fear 1 at all. Fear 2 i can get digital for $10 or I can buy new for $20 through them only on the pc.
If we look I bought dead space on sale for $8. At game stop its $20 bucks on all the systems. How much do you think EA lost in that sale. Thier sales went through the roof and with only valve's hands in the pie they are able to sell a ton of copies of an older game.
I even bought games like Pirates that hasn't been in print for years. Yes it was $2.50 but thats $2.50 they would never get at retail cause the game wouldn't be able to find shelf space. I also got kotor for $2.50 and thats another game that they wouldn't get any more for cause there is no retail space.
You also forget the huge retail sales for games. Since August Toys r us have done 4 buy one get one 50% off or buy 2 get 1 free. Those are pretty big discounts also to get product to sell.
Sales are great because it allows you to move alot of product that you normaly wouldn't and it allows you to bring in revenue.
corduroygt
Banned
Hey, I'm all for crazy sales like you've mentioned. So games for $10-15 bucks are fine by me, I welcome them. But I'm not paying full price for something I'm going to be playing for a couple months at best, if I can't resell it afterwards.
A lot of people depend on used game sales to fund their new game purchases and I'm not one of those guys who buys a game and then plays the multiplayer for a year, at least not very often that I find a game that's worth keeping. And even when I find a game that can sustain my interest for more than a couple of months, I can only give that kind of attention to 1 or 2 games, whereas I play about 10-15 different games in a year. This year, it's been BC2 and GT5 that are long term keepers for me, everything else from this year, I've sold or traded. BC2 is also going in when the sequel comes, of course.
aaronspink
Veteran
What part of most of the year don't you understand. Of course, while they are in the midst of a 20+ day holiday sale with deep discounts the list is going to be different, but if you look most of the year, it is dominated by whatever full price game just released.
aaronspink
Veteran
Well you better get ready to not buy anything then. The life of the secondary sales market is running out.
corduroygt
Banned
Proof or STFU please. All PC DD revenues are about 400M USD out of the 10B USD video game market in the US. DD is still very small. Show me those full price games and exactly how many copies they sell.
1. The game companies should be worried about me not buying anything, not me. I can still either wait 6 months to get the game for the $10-15 price, or if I want to play it right away I'll buy the disc version and resell it when I'm done. If they block the selling of used copies via DD, that's still not going to make me buy the game, there are always other avenues.aaronspink said:
2. Next gen will still have discs, so secondary market is still going to be there. Game companies are run by execs, not people with an axe to grind against Sony and Blu-ray, and they'll see that they can make the most profit by allowing second hand sales, since they help fund new game purchases in a big way.
Or they only see that they lose the x number of copies due to second hand sale, you never know
So you are comparing PC game digital puchase with all retail games, including consoles?
Why not including the US$1 billion revenue from World of Warcraft?
Also, don't forget that consoles also have their own digital purchases which NPD also ignored until recently. Actually, an NPD survey released just a few days ago states that 29% of all game sales in the US for the last three months are digital purchases. Of these, 30% are console game digital purchases. Now do you still think it's "very small?"
corduroygt
Banned
30% of 29% = 10% and is it by by revenue or just number of units sold?
I mean, I probably have more DD games on my PS3 than disc games, but I pay much less for them. I'd never buy $60 DD games.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
What I found very interesting is that in the same survey, only 10% of purchases were funded by trade-ins. In other words, it would be no big loss and in fact would probably net game publishers a LOT more money if they can get rid of the used game market. They would only need a small fraction of used game buyers to buy new games to make up that lost 10%. More revenue would allow for more varied game developement.
I really can't wait until the used game market dies.
It's number of units.
Regards,
SB
corduroygt
Banned
1. That NPD survey is just a survey, not actual data like sales data they collect.
2. The trade-in question can all be dependent on the wording used in the survey questions. I don't trade my games in to gamestop either for example, because it's a ripoff. Go on ebay/amazon marketplace/craigslist and see how many people are selling their used games, it's a lot. I wonder if they asked if people lend each other games, and what the answer to that would be.
3. If you kill the used market, you'll have more piracy.
2. The trade-in question can all be dependent on the wording used in the survey questions. I don't trade my games in to gamestop either for example, because it's a ripoff. Go on ebay/amazon marketplace/craigslist and see how many people are selling their used games, it's a lot. I wonder if they asked if people lend each other games, and what the answer to that would be.
3. If you kill the used market, you'll have more piracy.
