They're getting their cut.

You've made this point in the past and it's still BS. Companies over charge for their games most of the time, rarely have I bought a new game and thought that they should have raised the price.

All sales in perpetuity are considered typically when deciding how much to spend producing a game, and those later sales are the ones that are more likely to determine how long the product is maintained and how often they release it in collections. Just because it's less certain doesn't make it any less supportive of the model.

Same goes for used games sales, the developers opted to overprice their first sales and the second hand market makes up for that oversight. The developers get their cut earlier and the customer pays what it should have cost in the first place.

You keep a disc in the tray at all times? Hun that ain't good for it. D:

If you think Fallout 3 should only get $5, minus retailer cuts, then all I can do is vehemently disagree with you. I think it is important to support game development. A "fuck 'em I'm saving as much money as I can" attitude doesn't play in my brain. I love games and want to support the ones I like and want more of.

If more people supported a lot of classics we whine about disappearing they wouldn't have disappeared.

Anyway, the OP is basically bragging about supporting developers and publishers as little as possible. He seems to get off on it, and in rubbing it in their faces. That couldn't be more opposite of my feelings on such matters, I want to support them as much as I can when they make games I like.

I think Fallout 3 should get $0.00, because it's a shoddy game and ruined a good game series. You shouldn't reward bad developers.

You look so badass with your niche opinion and your "fuck you" attitude. All you need is a cigarette.

I don't like swearing, so no. And it's called "voting with your wallet", no?

"As my current living situation does not allow me access to a PC regularly"

Let me guess.

Asylum?

Fallout Tactics ruined a good game Series. Fallout 3 was a great game, and I was pretty damn skeptical about it before it came out since I wasn't fond of the step to real-time/first person *at all*.

It crashed too much, that' I'll agree with, but it was a good game, and did right enough to the Fallout world in my opinion to make it enjoyable.

The heck are you talking about, Tactics was a spin-off, not a sequel, that's why it was called Fallout Tactics and not Fallout 3. It was a real-time tactics game, in the Fallout setting, nothing more. It didn't loudly proclaim to be the sequel to Fallout 2, which F3 did, while at the same time throwing out the top-down RPG and making it a first-person shooter and dumbing down the RPG aspects to nothing.

I see. So the only thing standing between you enjoying Fallout 3 and not enjoying it is this concept of it being a sequel rather than a spinoff? Because it's still a good game. If you just looked at it as a spinoff then you'd suddenly have a new good game to play.

I hope I got the gist of your text, since I've been thinking about these things too. Sorry i didn't read all the text, but e.g. this caught my attention: For one thing, in retail times I many times impulse bought lots of PC games, out of the fear that if I don't buy that only copy on that shelf NOW, it could be I never get another chance to get it. And frankly, quite often that seemed to be the case, I have or at least had lots of the (also rarer) games that I see people here wishing to reappear and which are hard to come by, from Blade Runner to Final Fantasy 7-8 PC to Neverhood to System Shock 2 to The Reap to... you name it.

Anyway, digital systems take that stress out. If the game is offered digitally now, it is very probable I can buy it also later, and probably even cheaper. Hence, especially with DRM-games, I hold of my purchases until I'm really going to play the games.


About the lack of pressure to lower the price of games: while it is true there are no need for actual clearance sales now, as was and is the case with retail games, the digital distribution has opened the gates for soooo many more games than retail ever could, that the wealth of games alone pushes the prices down, even those of new games. Think of the flood of indie games, for example. If people use their time to play some $4 indie game on IPad, instead of buying an EA AAA title to their console or PC, that puts pressure to lower the price of the AAA titles as well.

Also, as the old games don't disappear from the digital shelves, they have to enter some lower price categories so that they got noticed at all. Or most probably, they will be sold only through crazy 80% discount sales.

In retail times, EA Ubisoft etc. were the kings because they had the retail connections, and without them you couldn't get your game sold, period (shareware was still very niche market, most copies of Doom were probably sold from retail shelves, not online). Nowadays these big old companies are starting to lose their power at least on PC side because now practically anyone can try to sell his game through a web site, or the likes of Steam or GOG.


As for the second-hand games dropping prices, I still reiterate that taking the possibility away for them will have to lower the prices of new games too, period. I feel that has pretty much happened on PC side already, you see completely new entry price categories for "lesser games" (20€ and less), while in the past all games that appeared on retail shelves seemed to cost the same 50€ in the beginning, even if it was some simple puzzle or electronic pinball game.

So from a consumer point of view, I wouldn't be too worried about the prices, we vote with our wallets. I feel nowadays there are far more options for cheap games than in the past, retail times.

I'm sure many (big) publishers are bitching that the game market is saturated with too much competition now. Gee, tough. If you can't take the heat etc., <insert a Robocop quote here>.

The thing is, no one is forcing them to sell it at such a low price point. Just look at Blizzard, how their games keep their price years from release. Or at least it used to be that way in the retail-only times.

The problem for publishers is not that some people wait for prices to drop. The real problem is that there is now so much more competition in the market due to digital delivery that people have no need to buy exactly that game for 50€. They can buy some older or cheaper indie game instead and play it. In the past, if they decided to wait, it could be they wouldn't necessarily see the game they really wanted ever anymore.


Your argument of "supporting the devs" could be twisted any way, like that if you buy certain new game for $50, that is money away from 10x $5 indie games that you could have bought instead. Shame on you, then.

The real question is, are people today using less/more/the same money to buy games, than before? If it is "less", then you have some point. Otherwise not.

People may now buy 100x $5 games (of which they play only dozen) now, instead of 10x $50 during the same timespan, but they are still using the same amount of money to "support the game market". They are just dispersing the money more widely than before.

If the price falls quickly enough for it to be a problem, then they have more pressing things to worry about. If it's still worth $5 years later after the developers are probably doing well and that's going to be pure profit.

If OTOH, they're still needing that money to turn a profit then they're probably just about bankrupt anyways and not likely to be doing a new game with any scope.

Yeah of course Fallout 3 is in NO WAY related to fallout 2 the "3" is for marketing the game play sucks, the story sucks, power armor sucks too, companions suck, consequences suck, un-killable kids ruined it.. hell little lamplight was disgusting, and super mutants they suck too.

Yeah but most indie games suck.