Boxed PC games market 'gone by 2011'

valtonray said:

Diosoth said:

I run cracked games with no CD patches. DRM is bad, nor do I need a CD in if it does a full install. PC gamers are giving up because they're being treated like criminals. This is the fault of the companies.

maybe we wouldn't need DRM and copy protection if you bought your media...

I thought he meant he uses them on older games that has the DRM requiring aCD in the drive/ though still owns the physical discs/game.

No CD executables are nice on older games that do this so you do not have to swap the CDs in and out. IF YOU OWN THE GAME!

I do think pirating has put us in this mess ..

By the same token, If companies went with a diff. approach such as:
We know the game will be pirated and cost to much to try to stop what we cant so ...
Work out something with Free DLC (I think they are actually experiementing w/this now) that must be Digital.
this way theres still physical disks, yet some Digital means that cant be pirated as easily in frquent small portions. And more incentive to buy the "full" game so-to-speak

If it would work, and the game is good theyd sell more in the long run Id think.

And the pirates can keep going with a stripped version of the game (As large amounts of conent were DLC on release.

Im not fussed about discs any more. The last 173 games Ive bought are all from steam. The only time I buy a disc is due to bandwidth considerations because of the large download.

EvilOzzmess said:

Sounds awesome… NOT! Who wants to give greedy companies MORE money for less, at your inconvenience? Not me, they already raise profits unfairly by well over $20 as it is! They do NOT need an extra $10 or more on top of that inflated $20, again at YOUR inconvenience!

However, if these companies guaranteed two conditions:

1) They LOWER the price by $10 to $15 to account for using NO materials AND 2) Allow you to BURN A PHYSICAL BACKUP DISK of the game - then hell yes, I’d say bring it on. BUT – we all know that will never happen. So… nope, not going there.

Recently there have been a lot of game companies with layoffs or simply going out of business so while I'm sure there is corporate greed in the environment, it's not like every game company on a digital distribution platform is rolling in dollars laughing maniacally when someone buys their game.

Also, your $10-$15 per game for materials is highly exaggerated. Let's look at an older breakdown of the cost by ars.*



Manufacturing costs + Distribution = 6.5% or $3.25 per $50 game.

Bioshock 2 is releasing on February 9th on Steam for $44.99 and it includes Bioshock 1 so that's below retail, below these approximated %'s without distribution, and with an added bonus of getting the original game. You can shout and stomp your feet about how they could be charging less but realize that they're not offering a bad deal compared to retail.

Also, I'd love the ability to burn copies of downloaded games. The ability to buy online and play offline is the ideal of course.

*Chart is from 2006 so it's a bit dated. Also note that PC games don't necessarily have a "console owner fee" associated with them.

DarkRhystar said:

Also, your $10-$15 per game for materials is highly exaggerated. Let's look at an older breakdown of the cost by ars.*



Manufacturing costs + Distribution = 6.5% or $3.25 per $50 game.

Bioshock 2 is releasing on February 9th on Steam for $44.99 and it includes Bioshock 1 so that's below retail, below these approximated %'s without distribution, and with an added bonus of getting the original game. You can shout and stomp your feet about how they could be charging less but realize that they're not offering a bad deal compared to retail.

Also, I'd love the ability to burn copies of downloaded games. The ability to buy online and play offline is the ideal of course.

*Chart is from 2006 so it's a bit dated. Also note that PC games don't necessarily have a "console owner fee" associated with them.

So they say, anyway. Just like the US Government had been claiming unemployment was only at 10% a few months back, when we ALL knew it was really 15% or over! Don't believe everything you read or are told, dude. And I see there is 20% retail markup - there's where they're hiding some of those steep markups on physical materials right there.

By the way, do you have ANY idea how much they want for you to buy those DVD-ROM cases used (the ones most games today are coming in now, such as Sims 3)? $2 - the distribution marks those up to at LEAST $5 - and they only spend 5 cents on them, let me tell you. Then as I said is all the fancy artwork and color paper, and the paper itself which is already by itself very expensive, and then they're paying the people putting those things together as well - it all adds up to at LEAST $10-$15, trust me!

The point was, these damn companies will keep the games the SAME, exact prices instead of lowering them to account for the money they WON'T be spending on materials and also distribution. It's a blatant rip-off, because they DO suck out as much money as they can from you just for that cheesy case, artwork, paper and crappy, cheap disk(s)! Big Business is all about ripping you off as much as they can, but without pissing you all off - at least it is today.

But yeah, my other core point is that in exchange for loosing the "security blanket" of a PHYSICAL HARD COPY, we should pay less for it. Only fair.

Retail is a waste of time, go with e-tailers. I purchase my games online but not through D2D or Steam. I'll buy the boxed version from NewEgg, etc. I really doubt that boxed PC games will cease by 2011 though. I'll be buying the boxed PC version of Aliens vs Predator and Assassin's Creed 2 as well.

You couldn't pay me to put Steam on my computer.

Zepher said:

JonM33 said:

Retail is a waste of time, go with e-tailers. I purchase my games online but not through D2D or Steam. I'll buy the boxed version from NewEgg, etc. I really doubt that boxed PC games will cease by 2011 though. I'll be buying the boxed PC version of Aliens vs Predator and Assassin's Creed 2 as well.

You couldn't pay me to put Steam on my computer.

You know what the coolest thing with steam is? You can copy your entire Steam Folder to an external drive, bring it to a friends house, install the steam client and then point the install to the external drive and then play all of your games without needing to install anything but the Steam Client.

When I load a new OS, I install Steam and point the installer to my other drive where my Steam Games are loaded and then just play.

Steam also auto updates all of your games so you don't need to keep running patches manually.

Steam is junk - if the patch breaks the game you can't remove it. What kind of app forces you to update? Its a waste of bytes. If you can connect. I prefer Games for Windows Live anyday.