Alan Wake: Microsoft preparing to leave PC gamers behind (again)

Good idea. We don't like price of the music, so we don't buy the CDs. CD sales fall. The music industry's reaction to falling sales is ...

a) cut prices
b) blame pirates

???

 

You're going to have to show me some data that supports this...I've heard it before, but it's all very anecdotal and there's no data to support it

Jack

 

And that still doesn't justify stealing anything. The music industry is going to do whatever it needs to shift blame off themselves, that's just business. There is no justification for stealing anything

Jack

 

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86009/study-pirates-buy-10-times-more-music-than-they-steal/
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article476178.ece
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15840-Study-Pirates-buy-the-most-music.html

There's at least something

 

Do you honestly believe that games like Mirrors Edge or Dead Space would sell more than 20 million copies for 20 Bucks?

Mirrors Edge is now at $20. If it was just too expensive for all these people before we should have seen a bombastic jump in sells after the price cut, right? But this hasn’t happen. What’s up with these 19 million people out there that you believe are willing to buy it for $20 but not for $50? Have they bought a used version? In this case every copy should be already sold 20 times or always in less than 10 days. This would be quite fast. Have they already pirated it? In this case the pirating problem is really a serious one.

Edit:

Doesn’t everybody knows that Valve doing such crazy weekend sales on a regularly base? If you are not totally crazy and “need” to play a Steam game right now just wait a little bit to get it cheaper. Without absolute numbers this can be read although in this way. The crazy weekend sales just cannibalized the regularly full price sales on Steam.

 

Some do. As I said however, I know many people that claim they would buy games if they were cheaper.

However, when presented with a game costing only 5 USD. They would still rather pirate it than buy it.

Pirating on PC is far worse than people with their heads in the ground would like to believe.

Regards,
SB

 

Not surprising and common practice for most businesses. Once you recoup the initial R&D/Developement and production costs, you can reduce price to hopefully see another surge in sales. At that point other than production costs it's almost pure profit.

And if a title doesn't appear on track to recoup dev costs you can still cut the cost in an attempt to recover as much as you can. But at this point, it's quite likely you won't be able to. This happened with some of Interplay/Black Isle's better titles before they went under.

The problem is first recovering your initial developement costs.

Regards,
SB

 

I'm guessing if they are wondering if the addition costs and time to port to PC would be worth the gamble that the game would sell enough even with piracy to make it worthwhile.

Especially if they could take that time and money and instead devote it to their next title and start developement on that right away with a much better chance of getting much more ROI on their next title on console.

Regards,
SB

 

I didn't say it was a justification for stealing.

What I said was that normal market forces, the normal "negotiation" between the buyer and the seller over the price of a product, don't appear to working properly in the music industry (nor the movie industry while we're on the subject).

 

Sorry, that's not what I meant, I wasn't pointing fingers and saying "You were saying that" I just meant that no one is going to convince me that piracy, in any form, is helping the process. We're really getting off the whole Alan Wake point here, but it does concern me that common mentality is "there's nothing else we can do but steal it"

Jack

 

It will be a serious piss take if they don't bring it to the PC. From the makers of Max Payne, originally promised for the PC and actually used as a technical showcase for PC technology.

If its not brought to the PC it will be the biggest betrayal of PC gamers by a games dev to date. I think on principle I would boycott Max Payne 3 in response, regardless of what platforms its on.

And no way I will buy Alan Wake on my 360.

 

AFAIK Max Payne 3 will have nothing to do with Remedy or Microsoft. It'll probably still be released first for consoles, since it is a Rockstar game, and given GTA4's shoddy port I think not giving them any more money for PC games isn't unreasonable.

 

Isn't this all doublespeak? We don't know what the numbers are, because Valve won't release them, all we have is that they're always doing great.

 

That sucks if true.

 

Well there is no porting job work for PC version as the engine and Alan Wake runs well on PC as evident by 2005 x1900 showcase. And some year(s) later Intel Quad-Core showcase with tornado physics demo while it also rendered all the surroundings.

IMO it's crystal clear that MS as the publisher snatched it to 360 exclusively as a seller point for 360 (assuming PC version is completly ditched). Remedy has no other option but to bend over for MS. Otherwise foolish move as the PC versions is practically free work at this point.

 

According to IGN, the PC version is shelved until further notice, with focus going to the 360.

 

Certainly you are correct.

Reality is that they are one and the same. If people perceive that the cost of the item outweighs the benefit and the detriment to the unlawful copying does not outweigh the benefit then they reach the reasonable conclusion that unlawful copying is a valid method to protest unreasonable prices.

The thing people always forget is that laws are almost always consensual in reality. Enforcement of laws has minimal effects on actual actions concerning those who the law effects. I'm sure it was unlawful to slaughter the french royalty, but it didn't protect them.

but does it make sense to fight against the mentality or to work with it?

actually, it isn't theft. It is unlawful copying. If we want to have a discussion on this topic we should use the real terms.

this assumes a reality that does not exist. It assumes that the unlawful copying actually converted a sale into a loss of a sale. This is far fetched in the extreme. If you actually study the culture of unlawful copying you would find that this is as far from the truth as possible, esp among the elements of the more packrat set among the culture.

A rational answer would be to lower prices and ease methods of distribution. Then again, another rational response would be to do nothing or even raise prices. It all depends on what the actual viable conversion price point is between unlawful copying and sales vs the maximal profit point on the unlawful copying vs sales curve is.

 

no they weren't that good of games nor did they have the marketing to reach that point.

It is also old. It missed its time window to significantly increase sales based on pricing. If it released at $20 then a lot more people would of probably bought it instead of pirating it.