videojuegos

[Losonti Tokash]

Who cares?

[Darksi4190]

People who prefer their gaming to be affordable?

[Losonti Tokash]

How does this make gaming unaffordable?

[Oxymoron]

I'm ready to bet that a large portion of console owners rely on the used game market to find their game copies (eg : me)

Put a big enough obstacle to that and as a console manufacturer you might cut yourself from a portion of your intended market.

Maybe you'll make more selling games, but it's also probable you'll sell less consoles (especially if you sell them at a high price - though the price will probably stay high only for the first 18 month or so, to get as much money from the suckers early adopters as possible).

So it could possibly be, if not a losing move, one that will not yield much in the wau of positive results on Microsoft's part.

[Oxymoron]

Los : not everyone is ready to pay €45-60 for a game - which is the standard price of new Xbox 360 games here.

[Darksi4190]

How does this make gaming unaffordable?

What Oxy said. I know a lot of people who honestly can't afford game titles at new-game prices, and have to resort to secondhand sales from gamestop to get new games. These individuals also trade games around between them, which is something the XBOX One won't allow.

I'm griping a bit because I'll be able to afford fewer games with this new generation, but these people are about to be knocked out of the hobby entirely.

[Losonti Tokash]

So wait for it to get cheaper. They have no real reason to encourage used games as they are because they don't see a dime of it. This still allows used games but adds what is likely a $5-10 fee. It's not really any different from project $10 which was enormously effective.

[RogueIce]

Well they put the Always Online thing onto the game developers, it seems. Making it an option for them to use the cloud. Though MS hopes they will, so yeah. Always Online is not just for the PC anymore. Which doesn't surprise me, even though it seems needless.

Also if you have to install every game I wonder how long that 500GB hard drive will last you. Unless they put most of it on the cloud I guess but then yeah, if you lose Internet or have bandwidth issues sucks to be you I guess.

[Darksi4190]

What was it you said the other day about hoping for another game crash?

[RogueIce]

Maybe that's why they're hedging their bets in trying to make this the Do Everything platform, not just for games. Hell they apparently hope to replace your cable set top boxes which are pretty standard, though TBH I don't see that going very far because I'm not sure what the cable companies would have to gain from it, so they probably won't go along.

[Oxymoron]

How does this make gaming unaffordable?

What Oxy said. I know a lot of people who honestly can't afford game titles at new-game prices, and have to resort to secondhand sales from gamestop to get new games. These individuals also trade games around between them, which is something the XBOX One won't allow.

I'm griping a bit because I'll be able to afford fewer games with this new generation, but these people are about to be knocked out of the hobby entirely.

Remember that time when sharing music, movies and games with your friends meant something else than clicking the like button of a facebook page ?

[evilsoup]

Los, if the competition doesn't charge for second-hand games, then Microsoft have just shot themselves in the foot for the large second-hand-games market segment
of course, given that they get basically no money from us, they probably don't care

[Oxymoron]

The thing is that it might impact the number of Xbox they'll sell, so they might very well have to care about it.

The question is : will the money they'll gain from taxing used games (software) will compensate the loss they could experience from possibly selling less consoles (hardware) ?


That's where it's interesting to remember that historically, Microsoft has had a strategy of selling software and services relating to these softwares, and that for them selling hardware is simply a way to push their own softwares.

So I understand their move in that light.

But still, if less people buy their consoles, their market shares will shrink, and this'll make the market unhappy.


That's a risky proposition. But then, that wouldn't be their first, and they're still here.

[evilsoup]

Aren't consoles a loss-leader?

[Oxymoron]

Do you mean that it's a losing market ? I honestly don't know.

But if that were the case, it might as well be part of a strategy to occupy a market if only to deny it to the concurrence, and to ensure the visibility of your own brand.

They might lose a billion or two annually with the console themselves, but given said consoles allow them to sell what I guess is profitable services like On-Demand Videos (Netflix, right ?) and other things (Microsoft Live / Games for Windows), they might very well manage to balance the book there while, as I said, occupying a strategic market - and occupying it with a strong position at that, which would allow them to leverage the concurrence at the industry level.

[Losonti Tokash]

I think he's referring to how the actual console is sold at a loss, money is made from games, subscriptions, etc.

[evilsoup]

exactly
like alcohol in supermarkets
I've been led to believe that is the case with games consoles, but I've never looked into it myself so IDK if it's actually true

[Oxymoron]

I have no difficulties believing that it cost Microsoft more to produce and distribute an Xbox 360 than the price re-sellers buy them ; knowing that I bought my 120GB Xbox 360 less than €250 two and a half years ago, in-the-box-new, from a franchise of the local Gamestop subsidiary.

But that was several years after the console launch, after a severe price drop : I seem to remember the 360 originally sold around €450, and that was the earlier, less sophisticated versions.

[evilsoup]

Isn't the main difference between versions stuff like hard drive size? The underlying stuff, the CPU and whatnot, is identical on all models, and those are what make up most of the price... and those things are always trending downwards in price as a corollary of Moore's Law. So I guess that would change how much they can charge (even if it is a loss leader, they will only want to swallow a certain amount of loss on each unit)

[Losonti Tokash]

It's been ages since I bought an Xbox, but the hard drive was the main difference, yeah. The "Core" was $300 and didn't come with a hard drive or component cables, while the "Premium" was $400 and came with the cables plus a 20gb hard drive. Eventually the "Elite" was released for $470 and had HDMI cables and 120gb.

Then finally we have the Slim which added a 250gb drive and internal wifi.

I think they were all sold at loss until very very recently because Microsoft is both big enough and had enough success relative to competitors that they could easily eat the cost. When manufacturing costs went down they usually just cut the retail price accordingly.

[Darksi4190]

So no backwards compatibility for XBOX One or PS4. That sucks. I'm already switching between consoles from three different generations. I'm running out of places to put this stuff.

[Losonti Tokash]

Too much effort, not enough return. It's been gone from the PS3 for ages and while the 360 still supports it, they stopped adding emulation profiles a long time ago.

[Aaron]

After a few years all your friends will transition and you'll forget all about the compatibility.

[Darksi4190]

oh well. I suppose having two generations of PSes and XBOXes won't be too cluttering. My PC is advanced enough that I can just get an emulator for anything older. The only thing I was worried about was my N64 since there aren't enough buttons on a modern controller to match up with it.

[joviwan]

People whinging about backwards compatibility drive me mental

no, it doesn't have backwards compatibility. It doesn't need backwards compatibility. You already have a thing that can run the stuff you own.

backwards compatibility on consoles is extremely and incredibly hard to do, unless what you are emulating is light on resources and intensity (SNES, GBA, N64) or has been miniaturized enough to physically fit inside something else (PSX, gcube).