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Batman: Arkham City


Cobra1000

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Unfortunately the retailers are getting wise to this, Gamestop in the US have stated that anyone buying pre-owned copies of Arkham City will be given a code to get the Catwoman content anyway.

 

Perfect - that way the developers get some money from the 2nd hand sale, and everyone's happy. The markup on a 2nd hand game for a place like that is insane anyway, they can take a 2-3 quid hit and still make good margin.

 

 

It's a good excuse for bad studios to hide behind as well, Black Rock were unfortunate in that they were a Disney studio and Disney were looking to cut costs across the board but Codemasters Guildford just made a really really average game which didn't sell well because it wasn't good enough and wasn't promoted enough. Judging by the amount of copies of Bodycount which are now selling for a pittance in Blockbusters I don't think the pre-owned market hurt that title a great deal.

 

As for EA Brightlight, they've been making the Harry Potter games for the last god knows how long and not doing a great job at it so it's no surpise that they were a candidate for winding up now that the series as finished. My only sadness from that is that it's a very depressing end to the studio once known as Bullfrog (yes that Bullfrog), just as one of their finest titles is being remade/rebooted.

 

It's not an excuse - it's just economics. If studios make bad games that don't sell, they'll fail and that's part of life. However, the job of breaking even is made much harder by 2nd hand sales. I think everyone will agree that Burnout Paradise was a good game that did really well, but they didn't even nearly recoup the costs of developing it - it was only through the generosity of EA that the studio survived. Had they got a share of all those resales, they would have been fine.

 

The pre-owned market undoubtedly hurts the games market, but not to the extent that the studios want you to believe. Much like the piracy issue, I would wager the majority of people buying the game used would have never bought it new until margins were so low as to make no difference. Same with piracy, the majority of people who play pirated games would have no intention of buying them legally should there be no option to get it illegally.

 

I don't think that's borne out by the numbers I've seen. Back when the Xbox got broken and pirated games became rife, sales slumped, and picked up again when the transition was made to 360 which is secure. And since the introduction of this code-locked content, early new sales of large games have been improved. Also, if people wait for a month and buy a new-but-discounted copy of a game, then the developer still gets their cut! So that sort of behaviour is what we're looking for.

 

I don't think a lot of people realise how expensive it is to make a modern videogame - way more expensive than making a film in a lot of cases. A Hollywood blockbuster has its cinema receipts, but also a 2nd bite of the cherry in DVD sales, and then tv rights etc etc. Up until recently, the model for videogames was - you work on it for 2 years, then you get 10 weeks to sell as many copies as you can, and then it's over. That's jsut so risky. So what games developers are trying to do is turn a "product" into a "service". If you buy the game new, you'll continue to get content for the game, some free and some as a microtransaction, for maybe 12 months afterwards. Once that's established, they'll move away from boxed products altogether and the cost of games will come down when they're exclusively bought over Origin, Steam, Xbox Live and so on.

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Some interesting points there Loki.

 

I certainly see gaming going into full digital distribution very soon, I think maybe even MS next console will do this, as I don't see them using sony's blu ray, by that same reason the ps4 will still have that, but I think they will still be putting some focus on digital distribution too. We saw them do it with the PSPGO, digital only, now that thing was a flop, but thats because its the PSP and theirs already a PSP out that suited most peoples needs.

 

The death of the high street is fast approaching imo, some say its already here, I guess you could say that might be true, as far as gaming though, I think eventaully places like CEX will be fucked unless they change their business plan, reminds me of Blockbusters, although that was a rental place, which as mentioned in here does not bold well for gaming rental services either in this coming digital future.

 

I have to admit to not liking the idea of not fully owning the game I buy, my friend joked it will get to that stage where you have to buy each stage or episodes, which is actually happening in some cases already, I believe Back To The Future was like that and that Siren game on the PS3.

 

At the moment the most major games don't do that, its just extra levels that don't really effect the main game much, but in the future who knows.

 

Didn't know about all those major uk studios closing down, shame really, there was a great article in Edge a few years ago about the state of the UK industry, it was very bleak from what I remember reading, they said most people were just moving aboard to places like Canada, and that the pay here compared to places like that were crap.

 

I'm interested to see how Onlive does, that could end up being something massive or not, gaming is still a young industry when you think about it, who knows where it is going next, but full digital distribution seems to be the direction.

 

Oh and Im very much looking forward to Batman.

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The UK games industry desperately needs the same tax breaks that places like Canada get, and that the UK film industry (a much smaller employment sector) already gets, otherwise it can't compete. The last Labour budget was going to introduce them but the Tories wiped it in their first mini-budget. You can attribute the closure of Black Rock quite considerably to that decision, IMO.

 

The pay in Canada is good, but personally I'd rather live here! I've had/have the opportunity to move abroad to do my job, but at the end of the day, for all its faults, I like England. It's my home. I shouldn't have to leave just to be able to make a decent wage.

 

I too am worried about DL-only games, but possibly for different reasons. There's no real effort being made to archive old games - for old machines like the Spectrum there is, but how about the Xbox or the Playstation? The possibility of games disappearing for ever is compounded when they're only ever distributed digitally, with no actual physical copies, I suspect. For the user at home, I can still dig out a PSOne game and play it on an old console, but once we move on to the Xbox 720, what happens to all the Live games you've invested money in? Will it be backwards compatible? Will you be able to download the games again? I can see games becoming much more ephemeral objects, a bit like mp3s.

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It's worse than mp3s. Mp3s aren't a format that will go out of date within a couple years that you have no way of using. And you can store and control them as you please. With games that's all very tightly controlled by Microsoft/Sony. It's not like you can even save the games like you might a PC game (whether it be on a burnt disc/hard drive or the original copy).

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I'm trying not to think about what'll happen when we move to the next version of the consoles, I think more backwards compatibility will be something users demand more than ever. I'm most worried about the 700 DLC tracks I have for Rock Band more than anything, they've transferred from version to version so far but doubt they'll be transferable to a new console.

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*we should split this off into a "future of games" thread.

 

Burchill, you're right to worry. I had a cracking collection of those Arcade Collection compilations for my Xbox, arcade perfect versions of tons of great old games. Then of course they released the 360, those games weren't made compatible, and magically those old arcade games suddenly appeared for sale on Xbox Marketplace :rolleyes:

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Hmm yeah you're both right about that.

 

I guess its like trying to find old web pages now, at the time, nobody thought to archive them and still don't, WCW website would be a good example, I know theirs a few little things from it still around, but mostly that site is gone forever, yet an old WCW magazine you can pick up when you want, I guess thats always going to be a negative against digital.

 

It does indeed make it hard for games now that will be retro in 10-15 years, kids of today are going to have hard time getting "those classic" unless MS/Sony want to put them out.

 

It almost reminds me of that South Park episode were Cartman goes through all that trouble of getting a Wii, but in the future theirs no where for him to even plug it in lol.

 

Yeah another thread might be a better idea, and about music games, I think they have killed that off now, used to be big sellers as well.

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and about music games, I think they have killed that off now, used to be big sellers as well.

Never! They've pretty much fallen completely out of the mainstream, partly because of Guitar Hero oversaturating the market and Rock Band failing to do any kind of decent promotion or marketing on Rock Band 3 (I think most people still don't know it has a real guitar and keyboard for it). However Rock Band DLC is still going very strong, 200 consecutive weeks of DLC now and over 3,000 songs to choose from. There's still a really strong community of people buying stuff each week.

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Copies of films for rental have different licensing agreements don't they - there must be the same thing for games too, right? Maybe they could work something out within that. It's clearly an issue that needs to be addressed anyway.

Rental copies of films often don't have the extras, or have a very stripped-down selection of them. Though some films have bare-bones retail DVDs now anyway with the bonus stuff kept for the Bluray.

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I picked up Batman AC today (good old G-force) put in about 5 hours and It feels like I'm still at the start, the main story has loads of side missions feels way bigger then AA so far and the controls seem like they have been made a touch better the gliding around is much easier then it looks and so far NO MORE AIR VENTS!!

 

I have been playing it in 3D also and it is stunning.

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