Is he saying what I think he's saying? Is EA actually saying that games should be cheaper/free?? It can't be!
Plus he expresses distaste for the ESRB - is this really EA or did someone hypnotize this guy? link
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello suggests that publishers will soon have to "deal with" the $59 price point for next-gen videogames.
ImageWith the US videogame industry on track for its biggest year ever at $17-$18 billion in 2007 revenues, it would seem that consumers are just peachy with the current price of next-generation games.
But the same kind of complacency and "arrogance" that afflicted ABC, CBS and NBC before cable took over could soon bite videogame publishers who don't take emerging revenue streams seriously, according to Riccitiello.
“In the next five years, we’re all going to have to deal with [the current pricing model]. In China, they’re giving games away for free,” he said in a Fortune blog report. “People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.”
Fortune said that EA is currently exploring different pricing models as well as venturing into digital distribution.
Riccitiello, who was speaking at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, also put in his two cents about media detractors who paint videogames as a harmful pasttime provided by a predatory industry.
"Our industry is exceptionally well-controlled. Every game gets rated [by the ESRB]," he said. “The desire by the media to censor games amazes me.”
How high can the prices go before Average Joe thinks twice about shelling out for the latest release? I Emember Pac-Man for the 2600 was $40 bucks and I thought ' man, this thing is really getting out of hand'
Do not attend any lectures at the Berkeley Haas school, ever.
Okay, fine, even the physics area can fall into power points and pointless statements ("The current state of robotics is currently at the same stage as flight at the turn of the 20th century" *cue video of robot walking down a flight of stairs* *End with demonstration of entanglement using ping pong balls*)
But as even the decent Berkeley physics lectures end with (or better yet starts with) "Hey look at this! This is where I got my data from and tell me to shut the fuck up because hey, you can look for yourself!" (AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNDDDDDD... If your talking about atoms, there god damn better well be a scanning tunneling microscope somewhere on stage) the business school lectures start and end with an abstraction that tries to shovel mass amounts of statistics down everyones throat, or pointout the bloody obvious while pretending its neat and relevant.
Its nice to hear from the guys who your buying your shit from, but they arn't actually making it, instead they have an idea about it that comes from board meetings and creating a "corporate relationship" with whatever their talking about. Just another abstraction based on how they percieve what their selling.
Which is how the majority of the lectures and talks by corporate guys have ended; no data, just their ideas. And if data is available, its just to support an idea they already had. Hey kids! We call that BIAS!
AArdvark wrote:How high can the prices go before Average Joe thinks twice about shelling out for the latest release?
Oh shit.. I never realized that he could actually be talking about raising prices! the whole thing is just so vague.. but "deal with" $60 prices sure could mean that's not enough for the greedy fucks.
It could mean two things. The first is that EA is going to "deal with" $60 price tags (you have to love him calling it $59, though, as if every one of their fucking games isn't $59.99) by putting in in-game advertising and going to digital download ... and yet still charging the same price.
The second way to interpret that is to deal with it by moving it to $80.
Computer and console games can enjoy experiencing the same shit that comic books and arcade games went through. I won't regularly pay more than $0.75 for a game of pinball and $0.25 for an arcade game. "But, but -- inflation!!" screeches Electronic Arts. Tough shit.
Likewise comics. But that's a whole other thread.
$60 is as far as I'd go for a computer game, and Riccitiello (who I think has done more to stifle creativity and ruin video games more than any other human on the planet) can fucking deal with that perception because it's not anyone else's problem. That being said, he's got a built-in cult of zombies in the Madden football series that will pay whatever price he tells them to, for a game with no redeeming features that has never been the best football game in the market in any given year. So he'll probably be able to name his price after all.
I read it as "you had all better learn to 'deal with' $60 games because that is how much they are going to cost for the foreseeable future."
I have never once in my life paid $60 for a video game. I paid $50 for TrackMania United; that was the only time I have ever bought a video game for over $20. Command & Conquer: The First Decade and Total War: Eras don't count because they are compilations: I paid $30 apiece for those.
hygraed wrote:I have never once in my life paid $60 for a video game. I paid $50 for TrackMania United; that was the only time I have ever bought a video game for over $20. Command & Conquer: The First Decade and Total War: Eras don't count because they are compilations: I paid $30 apiece for those.
The most I've ever spent on a video game was probably when I bought Spike's Circus last year for the Vectrex. The author requested payment in Euros. I think it came out to eighty bucks. Spike's Circus is a great game but with how little the dollar is now, I don't know if I could justify a similar expense for the next Vectrex homebrew.
hygraed wrote:I have never once in my life paid $60 for a video game. I paid $50 for TrackMania United; that was the only time I have ever bought a video game for over $20. Command & Conquer: The First Decade and Total War: Eras don't count because they are compilations: I paid $30 apiece for those.
The most I've ever spent on a video game was probably when I bought Spike's Circus last year for the Vectrex. The author requested payment in Euros. I think it came out to eighty bucks. Spike's Circus is a great game but with how little the dollar is now, I don't know if I could justify a similar expense for the next Vectrex homebrew.
We are not counting the grand I dropped on Xenophobe, right? Right.
Lex wrote:Jesus Christ. Our 360 games are £45. Fucking suck it up.
That's, what, ninety bucks? Jesus Christ! And yet all these assholes launch in Europe last. That absolutely estranges me from reality. Why wouldn't you launch at the place paying the most for your wares on the planet? It's not like it's the Moon and people are so desperate for new games that they'd pay $300 for Blasto II.
The older I get, the more I realize that people running enormous, multi-national corporations are just as likely to have their head up their ass as the guy who demanded security torx.
I would never pay more than $40 for a video game. I mean I never pay for video games anyway but...
Come on. CDs and movies cost the same. Which is ludicrous really--CDs should be cheaper and movies should be probably more expensive. They're certainly more expensive to make!
Average production cost of CD: $500,000; average production cost of major movie: $100,000,000
So by that logic if Snakes and Arrows cost $10 (like it fucking should) than Pirates of the Carribean should cost, oh, 2000 dollars per DVD. OF course that's not counting box office earnings which is apparently where everyone makes their money anyways so... tickets for $300? DVD for $700? Cool, cool. Glad you're all going with me on that.
I'm sure you get my point though. video games don't cost any more to make than most films, despite their added complexity, so why do they expect people to pay five times as much for them?
Lysander wrote:I'm sure you get my point though. video games don't cost any more to make than most films, despite their added complexity, so why do they expect people to pay five times as much for them?
Probably because films can gross a shitload in the theater before ever going to dvd while games have less people paying for them and are just purchased on disk. I think i've paid for maybe three games in my lifetime and don't expect to pay for many in the future thanks to having purchased straw's modded consoles.
