Quote:Original post by LynxJSA
First of all, I specifically stated that I was talking about the 'classics' and 'cult hits'. I did not at any point say that someone would not buy a current game for a current platform solely because of graphics.

So you think people won't buy old games because of the graphics, but they will still buy a new game if the graphics are bad? How does that make sense?

Quote:Second, if a PSP 2 came out today, how many people would be buying an old PSP two months from now?

Millions and millions of people. Outside the realm of the enthusiasts are the vast majority who don't feel the need to upgrade their hardware the instant something new appears. In many cases it's only because it becomes hard to get games that they move on to something else. It's easy for developers and enthusiasts to believe that the world loves new and shiny tech just like they do. But in the real world, PS2s outsell PS3s and PS2 games outsell PS3 games. People want good games, and will happily buy eight-year-old technology to play them if they know that is what it takes.

Quote:Third, Casual games are really fun games to play for FREE on the web. Very few people actually buy them in a store. For the few people that do buy them, I already stated that they are stocked in the stores and are all in the bargain rack off to the side. You can walk into any Wal-Mart, Frys, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc to see that for yourself.

I would certainly hope that you can see the flaw in your logic here. On the one hand, you believe that the retailers are simply following market forces. On the other hand, you say that these retailers all stock games that few people are buying. Either one of your statements is wrong, or there is more to the system than mere supply and demand. My belief is that it's a bit of both.

Quote:Honestly, it's not some insidious plan by game companies to dictate what the world buys. It's what they'd like to do, but it all comes down to the consumer in the end.

I don't think it's insidious, just short-sighted. The consumer is only one part of the cycle. Consumer demand is modulated by producer supply. Supply doesn't magically arise out of demand. Somebody first has to spot that demand and choose to invest in exploiting it. But instead the producers are playing it safe, only attempting to match supply to the demand that they've seen in the past, dropping support for the more experimental products, creating a feedback loop of gradually safer and safer product portfolios.

Quote:

Quote:Yet I can't get the original Diablo. Is that down to a wider lack of demand?

Yes. Uncategorically, yes. People love D2. Given the choice of Diablo or D2, msot people would rather play D2. Don't believe me? Do a poll... anywhere. Why stock something that only one guy within 50 miles of the store wants?

But I think that's a large part of my point. You ask someone, "Do you want Game XYZ?" and they say, "huh? What's that?", and they say that not because it's not a good game, but because they don't see it for sale anywhere or talked about, despite it having the 13th highest MetaCritic score of all time.

Let's read that again: it's got the 13th highest MetaCritic score of all time for a currently supported gaming platform, yet you cannot buy it in a shop.

Now find me a non-specialist book shop that doesn't stock the top 20 books or a non-specialist music shop that doesn't have the top 20 albums. I can go into any DVD store around here and find all the non-foreign films on the IMDB top 100. That's not because people don't love new books, music, or films, which they blatantly do. But it's because nobody in those industries is kidding themselves into believing that they don't like old ones too.

Quote:IF the game playing consumerbase was interested in diversity of titles or a wide selection of games, then that would be of value. They are not. You need to accept that fact before you go any further. It will greatly help in your understanding of all of this.

Of course, you insisting that I need to accept that 'fact' is a very convincing argument.</sarcasm>

Quote:Now, do not confuse that with not wanting more new titles. Every gamer would tell you that they would like a wider selection of new titles. NEW titles. Older titles they don't care about.

To a gamer who does not know all the old titles, they are effectively 'new'. They are novel. They don't need to have been created this year to provide an entertaining experience. It's just in the industry's interests to pretend that you do need the newer games, so that they can afford to keep making them.

Quote:I would suggest going for Diablo 2, though, unless there was something in particular that you enjoyed about the first one.

I already have Diablo 2, since it's actually stocked in local shops...

Quote:Original post by dashurc
This isn't a fundamental flaw with the videogame industry. It's the same in all industries.

The concept of reducing risk is indeed common to all industries. But the videogame industry takes it a lot further than most other creative industries, stifling diversity. As I said above, other industries which make money from selling us intellectual property do a much better job at guaranteeing diversity both during production and at retail.

Quote:This is the same reason an artists follow up album is always more hyped than their debut, and why movie sequels are popular (and why new movies are always billed as "by the director of "INSERT HIT MOVIE"")

That's fine, but in those industries the range of intellectual property is higher, and the shelf-life of the better properties is longer. I have no problem with sequels, franchises, licenses, etc, only the way in which other properties are neglected under the supposition of 'lack of demand'. Failure to exploit a market effectively doesn't mean the market doesn't exist, and I think there's plenty of evidence to show that it does actually exist.

Okay, so here's a short story. This morning I've finally got around to trying Fallout 3. Naturally, I hold Fallout (1 and 2) among the best gaming titles that have ever graced my HDD. But that's probably because I'm subjective and nostalgic and somehow overlook all the fun aspects of modern games, while keeping older games on a pedestal they don't deserve. Right.

I've heard a lot of negative things about third though, from trusted sources (ie friends who got it a few days ago). So I borrowed a copy just to see how bad it could possibly be, as if the terms "Bethesda" and "RPG" on the same product weren't enough of a hint already.

It wasn't bad, it was insultingly terrible.

So just for the sake of this thread, I looked up the first review that I could find on the net. I deliberately didn't do more research than that, because an average user doesn't do that either. Here's what came up:

Quote:Faults be damned, though; this is the kind of hugely ambitious game that doesn't come around very often, and when it does, you'd be a fool not to play it and enjoy the hell out of it

According to a certain Demian Linn (http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3170949) - I am, quite literally, a fool. And so is everybody else of a similar opinion as mine. We're obviously a grumpy, weird and unnatural hardcore minority that doesn't seem to be able to "enjoy the hell" out of a game that is apparently has got to be so utterly fun and enjoyable for everyone.

This is probably the most ideal example of how games are made and marketed today. I suppose Fallout 3 will eventually go on and pick up various "RPG of the year" awards all over the globe as well, which will then become a key counter-argument to anyone trying to say how Fallout 3 is, in fact, terrible. It was the same case with Oblivion.

Quote:So you think people won't buy old games because of the graphics, but they will still buy a new game if the graphics are bad? How does that make sense?

You are either twisting words or you simply just do not understand this at all. Graphics on a GBA may be lower quality than a movie or a console game but as long as they are good quality for current tech (the GBA) people find that acceptable. They do not perceive graphics on their handheld to be 'bad' if they are on par with the tech. Now, if you release a monochrome game for GBA, will people buy it? Most likely, no. The graphics are behind the tech for that device.



EDIT: I read through the rest of your response and either you are either being completely obtuse or you just don't understand any of this - not the consumer behavior... not the marketing aspect... none of it. Rather than pursue this any further, I'm going to just agree to disagree and head on out. Good luck.

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf

Quote:Original post by Kylotan
But it's a fact that often large areas of shelving are taken up with repeated copies of the same game. Yes, consumers want that game, and yes, they may want that game in that proportion, but that doesn't require that many physical empty boxes on the shelves. The boxes are doing nothing but catch the eye, when that space could be used for other games. So that's purely a marketing decision, not supply and demand.

From my dealings with publishers, this is entirely the truth. A store like GameStop or Walmart doesn't just say, "Let's see here ... we'll face out 8 copies of this, 5 copies of this, etc". Instead, a publisher goes to the distributor and pays for x amount of shelf space for x amount of weeks. A distributor works out their shelf layout based on these deals. This is why retail stores get diagrams from corporate for where to put what games, movies, magazines, etc.

You are wrong.

Publishers don't pay for shelf space. Ever. Ever ever. Retail buyers pay attention to the market and stock their shelves with the games they think will sell best. They have the control.

The best a Publisher can do is, say, force a retailer to take a certain quantity of a game they don't necessarily want in exchange for stock in a game they do... i.e. if you want GTA4 you'll take this other game too.

BUT... Publishers don't do that often because anything a retailer doesn't sell, they return, and that has negative financial impact for the Publisher.

OK we have one person claiming that retailers control shelf space, another says publishers control it through money.

OK, so... proof, guys?

Quote:Original post by QuantifyFun
Publishers don't pay for shelf space. Ever. Ever ever. Retail buyers pay attention to the market and stock their shelves with the games they think will sell best.

This reminds me of a scene from the anime Ebichu. One man was talking to phone and few office ladies looked at him. When he finished one sentence, they started to think "virgin". He said another sentence. They thought "unkissed on top of that".

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf

Quote:Original post by QuantifyFun
You are wrong.

Publishers don't pay for shelf space. Ever. Ever ever. Retail buyers pay attention to the market and stock their shelves with the games they think will sell best. They have the control.

The best a Publisher can do is, say, force a retailer to take a certain quantity of a game they don't necessarily want in exchange for stock in a game they do... i.e. if you want GTA4 you'll take this other game too.

BUT... Publishers don't do that often because anything a retailer doesn't sell, they return, and that has negative financial impact for the Publisher.

Uhmmm ... no? The game I was JUST working on ran into issues with this because the Publisher paid for X shelf space for so much time with Best Buy. Wal-Mart, etc, and then due to a butt load of changes they had us make to the game, we missed the target windows they paid for. They lost money.

I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't have more or less first hand experience with this. My boss used to work at Sony and they did the same thing.

Also, note that publishers don't control 100% of what is stocked on the shelves of a store, so part of what you're saying is true. Rereading my last post, I can see that it could be interpreted as me stating as such. Stores don't HAVE to enter in the deal, obviously, but expecting that a store WOULDN'T take money to offer a display slot for a given game is inane.

Quote:Metallon
OK we have one person claiming that retailers control shelf space, another says publishers control it through money.

It isn't really an either or situation, it really is a combination of the two.

It IS an either/or situation and your Publisher didn't buy retail shelf space. It simply never happens.

They might have purchased end-caps, meaning store displays that sit at the end of shelves, etc. They might have purchased some POP (point of purchase) displays, etc. But they did not purchase shelf space. No one does. If people could purchase shelf space, there wouldn't be a shelf space problem (which you'll commonly find discussed everywhere) - just bidding wars FOR shelf space. But there aren't any bidding wars for shelf space and you've never heard of them because they don't exist.

Retailers have people called "Buyers". Those buyers have one simple job. To put product on shelves. Buyers don't take money to do that, and there's no economy behind getting shelf space. Instead, when a Publisher comes to a buyer asking them to take 500,000 copies of their latest game, the buyer's job is to determine the likelihood of turning a profit from those 500,000 copies, because if that game isn't going to sell, that shelf space is better off going to a product that WILL generate dollars at the cash registers.

So they ask questions like "How much are you spending on Marketing?" i.e. will anybody know about your game? "What will you do to drive people to my store?" i.e. are you going to give us a pre-order bonus, etc. "Is the game any good?" i.e. what's your editorial coverage been like and are people excited about it? "Are you going to do a demo?" i.e. to drive consumers to buy your game? "Is this a new IP? If so, how have other games in the genre sold, and why will yours be better or different?" i.e. are you trying to sell me a flaming turd with a different name on it?

Based on that, buyers decide whether or not to take your game and in what quantity, and that's called "Sell-in". You're selling product into the stores based on your discussions with buyers. You're not buying shelf space. "Sell-through" is when consumers finally come in and buy your game. "Returns" are the difference between the two, and if any retailer ever allowed a Publisher to buy shelf space, the volume of returns would be crushing for everybody.

I suppose, in a world where people don't communicate the fullness of a situation, the people around you might be looking at all the money they spend to Market a game and just figure that a lot of that money is the "cost of entry" into retail and that ipso-facto they're buying shelf space. But that's abstract. The literal notion of buying shelf space is a myth (and crazy).