The Games Industry thread.

[child of Thor]

well i wouldn't mind it if the games represented good value from my point of view. There are games(such as Civ,Xcom etc), that i would have happily paid more for at the time.
Still in our current generation, we have very few games that i end up finding good value even now - so adding another £20 on top of the buying price will most likely make me become a 'hire' instead of 'buy' gamer.
Which cant be good for the games companies, as i doubt i'm the only one thinking this?

[LDiCesare]

I tend to agree. The price of some games has already stopped me from buying them (I won't spend more than 50 euros on a game without good reason). And even for a game that I had played a demo of and seemed addicting. But then I also knew its appeal would not last long so more than 50 is out of the question except for games that I know will be good (which is currently limited to Galciv2 - I won't even buy Civ4 just on the name and info we've got yet, however good it sounds).

[child of Thor]

Its funny really because i can understand that it will cost much more to produce these games, BUT i cant help but feel the industry may be shooting itself in the foot?
Its crazy as i want to give them my money and support gameing, but i dont really want to end feeling like someone's patsy all the time.
I was considering getting the new xbox to play Oblivion(i'm really only just interested in that title on this next generation so far). But its quite an outlay for what i expect will be one 'must have' game. And if this plan goes ahead the game will cost me of itself.

So we have this trend:

Hours of gameplay/replayability getting less + Games getting more expensive(heck you could buy a PS2+games for the price of one next gen game when they come out).
Are we really perceived as being this dumb a customer base?
Maybe i'm getting ants in my pants over a small detail, but imho the current price of PC games contibuted much to piracy, which in turn had its own nail to put in the coffin of modern PC game development.

Strange days

[DrSpike]

£60 will never work for games that last 10-15 hours.

[child of Thor]

Some fresh news to irritate the gamers amongst us - head over to OT http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...hreadid=134426

Could this be gamers armagedon? or just another step forwards to better product?

Thanks to Aneeshm for bringing this up

[Urban Ranger]

I don't think that's going to work, because of all the prior art.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Well, we have Britney Spears and The Sims. What more could anyone possibly want?

[Ted Striker]

Sim Spears? I'd hit it!

[/Ted Striker]

[child of Thor]

1.Eidos has finaly been bought up by SCi.

2.Ubisoft after putting up resistance to an EA takeover, has been making sounds that if a big media/film company wanted to approach them they would be open to dialoge. I guess EA is still not invited?

source: Games(tm) magazine uk.

http://www.gamestm.co.uk/pm/1

And while not GI news its kinda fun:

Doris Self of Fort Lauderdale(usa) is out to reclaim the title for 'worlds oldest videogame champion'. The 80 year old first won the tilte in 1984 after becoming the world Q*Bert champion aged 58.

So 'old gamers' like me can feel a bit more spring in our step

[DrSpike]

Hope I'm still gaming at 80.

[Vince278]

Amongst other things...

[Skanky Burns]

Yes yes, and posting on Apolyton.

[DrSpike]

I'll be up to 100K by then.

[Vince278]

All on topic?

[DrSpike]

I'm bound to slip occasionally.

[child of Thor]

more GI news:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/16/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

"NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Atari was king of the video game mountain. Now it's barely the court jester."

I dont think its just Atari that this can be levelled at, ok they are one of the oldest names in games, but i can see other big name companies haveing the same kind of problems.

Not sure why this is, but maybe now with business firmly in control of games making its hard to consistantly match up good game designs/ideas within a very heavily money orientated system?

Not that making money and games should be mutualy exclusive, but it does seem often the end result we get as gamers could have been so much better if money hadn't had the final say on when a game ships, something like that. (i'm not 100% sure that i've got what i'm trying to get at in this paragraph ).