i am going to wait for a crazy steam deal

[oncdoc]

you know, steam will probably have civ 5 for 30 bucks around xmas time. I can wait it out. I am tired and tired of spending money on games.

Still need to play civ 4 (barely got to it)

 

[Ramesses]

Yeah, good luck. You'll probably give in within 72 hours of it being released. I know I would.

 

[oncdoc]

Yeah, good luck. You'll probably give in within 72 hours of it being released. I know I would.

you are funny. and may be right. Im just tired of buying soo many games and backlogged.

i still got to play

l4d and l4d2
lotro
aoe3
uncharted 1 on ps3
bioshock1

as a physician i have no time.

 

[Zhahz]

Eh, I can spend $50 taking the wife out to a decent dinner with a drink or two, easily and feel violoated for overpaying for food and drink (but the wife loves it so...).

To me $50 for a good game, especially something like civ with tons of replayability, where I'll get 100's of hours out of it, is a drastically preferrable purchase, and an excellent entertainment bargain.

 

[White Elk]

you know, steam will probably have civ 5 for 30 bucks around xmas time. I can wait it out. I am tired and tired of spending money on games.

Still need to play civ 4 (barely got to it)

This illustrates another potential downside to steams model. These sales are enormous and may come too early. There is bound to be a gamer unfriendly impact on future gaming titles if this phenomena continues its rise. "Why pay full retail when you can wait only a couple months and get three games for the price of one."

Monies earned from the games we purchase today, feed the machine that makes tomorrows games. steam stands to starve that machine by slicing large chunks off the sheep that feed it. If you've got a problem with how the parasitic nature of IP Piracy might affect your access to quality media; then I'm sure you can understand how steams growing market share, combined with its enormous discounts, might have a negative impact on your gaming.

Its a good thing to reduce the price such that those who never would have bought the title, will now do so. That feeds the machine crumbs that would have otherwise been missed. It also adds the potential of opening up new pastures. But that level of sale should occur looooong after the game hits the shelves. Not within months. Such a short window will surely cut into sales from people who were already planning to buy the game. "Hmmm the game is scheduled for a fall release. Might as well wait the couple months and catch the holiday sale. No skin of my nose." Hows this gonna affect release dates? Are publishers gonna push for games to be released to coincide with steams big sales dates? "Wait a couple months, or shave a couple months off the dev cycle. We must release during the winter holidays so as to not have our sales revenue reduced by steams discount days."

To those who would cry "Tin Foil Hat!": Think of walmart and how that retailer giant has taken away your fat game manuals. walmart got stingy with its shelf real-estate such that publishers had to reduce the footprint of their game packaging. And so goes the nix on the manuals. And so might go some fat game content as steam trims that fat to reduce the electronic footprint of the games they peddle. Think twice before empowering steam to become the walmart of digital distribution.

 

[Ramesses]

Oh, well in that case, I am going to make sure I buy the game the very second it gets on shelves. Every second I delay will be like a bullet wound in the game industry.

 

[BobDole]

This illustrates another potential downside to steams model. These sales are enormous and may come too early. There is bound to be a gamer unfriendly impact on future gaming titles if this phenomena continues its rise. "Why pay full retail when you can wait only a couple months and get three games for the price of one."

Monies earned from the games we purchase today, feed the machine that makes tomorrows games. steam stands to starve that machine by slicing large chunks off the sheep that feed it. If you've got a problem with how the parasitic nature of IP Piracy might affect your access to quality media; then I'm sure you can understand how steams growing market share, combined with its enormous discounts, might have a negative impact on your gaming.

But at the same time it's easier to give those sorts of discounts because it costs less to distribute via Steam than it does to put stuff in packaging and put it on shelves. Does it balance out? I'm not sure, I don't work in the game industry. But I'm guessing it helps.

Anyway, it'd kill me to not have it on launch day...

 

[cspyr0]

This illustrates another potential downside to steams model. These sales are enormous and may come too early. There is bound to be a gamer unfriendly impact on future gaming titles if this phenomena continues its rise. "Why pay full retail when you can wait only a couple months and get three games for the price of one."

Monies earned from the games we purchase today, feed the machine that makes tomorrows games. steam stands to starve that machine by slicing large chunks off the sheep that feed it. If you've got a problem with how the parasitic nature of IP Piracy might affect your access to quality media; then I'm sure you can understand how steams growing market share, combined with its enormous discounts, might have a negative impact on your gaming.

Its a good thing to reduce the price such that those who never would have bought the title, will now do so. That feeds the machine crumbs that would have otherwise been missed. It also adds the potential of opening up new pastures. But that level of sale should occur looooong after the game hits the shelves. Not within months. Such a short window will surely cut into sales from people who were already planning to buy the game. "Hmmm the game is scheduled for a fall release. Might as well wait the couple months and catch the holiday sale. No skin of my nose." Hows this gonna affect release dates? Are publishers gonna push for games to be released to coincide with steams big sales dates? "Wait a couple months, or shave a couple months off the dev cycle. We must release during the winter holidays so as to not have our sales revenue reduced by steams discount days."

To those who would cry "Tin Foil Hat!": Think of walmart and how that retailer giant has taken away your fat game manuals. walmart got stingy with its shelf real-estate such that publishers had to reduce the footprint of their game packaging. And so goes the nix on the manuals. And so might go some fat game content as steam trims that fat to reduce the electronic footprint of the games they peddle. Think twice before empowering steam to become the walmart of digital distribution.

There is some validity to your thinking - I have always cringed at buying games at $50 or above, and have no problem waiting for prices to drop since my pc is usually years behind the curve anyways.

But make sure not to fall into the trap of thinking that selling for $50 is the optimum price for developers. Selling twice as many games for $30 will be more profitable. Publishers are extremely familiar with this concept, and they'll do what they can to optimize it, so I wouldn't worry about them too much. Personally I think $50 was an artificially created price point that mostly hurts the industry, and is a huge reason Steam is profiting now.

As for the "Steam is Walmart" stuff, can we stop making lame analogies? I know they seem like such a great way to get your point across and simplify things, but they're so inaccurate. Maybe Steam would be like Walmart IF Walmart was given a template for each product and could make infinite copies and sell to anywhere in the world that has internet and also catered to small business by selling their products and blah blah blah. See, so analogies are like a duck wading in the complexity of water. The water runs right off the duck's back, and... nevermind.

 

[PieceOfMind]

If civ5 goes on sale near Christmas, I doubt it would be by much. Probably 10 or 15% I reckon.

More likely IMO is that there will be a special Christmas DLC pack for the game.

 

[12agnar0k]

Actually you probably wont get much better a deal by waiting for Steams Christmas Bargain's, atm Steam is offering a 25% discount on RRP for Pre-odering + some ingame content bonuses which you won't get after launch. A 25% Discount is pretty good for a new game, It won't be much more of a discount near Christmas, the one chance for a really good deal would to be wait for the "CIV 5 massive discount for one day only deal" they will do that with it eventually, but I doubt it will be mithin mere months of launching.

Piece is right, the discount at christmas isn't likely to be higher, or significantly higher to make it worth the wait, than the discount for pre-odering.

But if you have yet to play all these other games, LFD / LFD2 / Uncharted are all very good games buddy, get to playing them as soon as possible, it will take months of game play even to the avid gamer like myself to get bored of them, I played LFD religiously for like 6 months or more , Uncharted won game of the year I think or atleast won some kind of award, it really is a great game, story line is fantastic and fun to play through. LFD2 is also pretty cool, I brought it but haven't got hooked so much to it as I did LFD but yeah thats also spectacular. So basically why rush into buying ciV if you have all these other titles you have yet to play, I agree with you, you can afford to wait for the deals to come to you.

Me on the other hand have no games currently that I have yet to play, or taking up my time, so I cant wait for ciV. I'm going to play the &%$^ out of it come september.

 

[spyroware]

stuff

1. Printed manuals are unnecessary and outdated. Half of their contents is credits, warnings and obvious BS. They can never contain too much information - prima guys need a job - and for the more important stuff they have already devoted resources to put explanations ingame with tutorials/tooltips/lists/etc. Also "reducing the footprint of their game packaging" is actually a very sensible and sensitive thing to do in twenty-ten. Think of the Amazon rainforests that are chopped down, the chinese kids that get poisoned making the paints, the horses that get killed for the gluing. The charm of geeky fat manuals is undeniable, but they are rightfully a thing in of the past. Game interactivity made them obsolete.

2. Steam never does sales for big releases within a couple months. Sales of big games happen only when the game isnt selling well enough (eg the new Prince of Persia), the game is developed by Valve (eg everything), as a tie-in for a bigger promotion (eg Total War), or the market is totally saturated by now (eg Dragon Age). Also very good sellers (eg Modern Warshit 2) rarely get the sales treatment within the first year(s). Don't get fooled with all the minor releases, ancient games, or indie packs that are on sale these days. Civ5 won't get a reduced price for a long while.

3. Steam retail practices are just too irrelevant to the production cycle of a game. They don't bite the hand that feeds them. Their marketing (narrow sense) options are their own business. What they earn (or lose) with a sale are fluctuations within their retail-markup part of the price. They have bought the game keys they are selling or have paid the distribution contract or whatever. Steam sales revenue really isnt reducing the game companies' revenue. The game developers get their rightful share for the job regardless, and higher sales can only mean more income to the gaming company. Sure the profits will be on steam, but the impact/penetration will always be for the gametitle. So no, I cannot see how this is can affect negatively my gaming.

4. And Steam has the market share it has because it just awesome. It's a digital distribution model that works without forcing convoluted crap to the end user. It's very reliable once you get past the idiotic entitlement that nothing and no one is allowed a minor human or technological error once in a blue moon. It offer comprehensive community features. It has sales. It's a major channel where indie voices are heard, easily accessed and appreciated. This in turn refreshes the industry with new practices, ideas, and value vs price benchmarks. All have helped to erode the corporate evilness that mars oh so many fatcat game companies nowadays, for the benefit of the industry as a whole. Trying to make Steam them the antichrist just doesn't work.

Pitchforks down, brains up.

 

[Schuesseled]

Actually you probably wont get much better a deal by waiting for Steams Christmas Bargain's, atm Steam is offering a 25% discount on RRP for Pre-odering + some ingame content bonuses which you won't get after launch. A 25% Discount is pretty good for a new game, It won't be much more of a discount near Christmas, the one chance for a really good deal would to be wait for the "CIV 5 massive discount for one day only deal" they will do that with it eventually, but I doubt it will be mithin mere months of launching.

Piece is right, the discount at christmas isn't likely to be higher, or significantly higher to make it worth the wait, than the discount for pre-odering.

But if you have yet to play all these other games, LFD / LFD2 / Uncharted are all very good games buddy, get to playing them as soon as possible, it will take months of game play even to the avid gamer like myself to get bored of them, I played LFD religiously for like 6 months or more , Uncharted won game of the year I think or atleast won some kind of award, it really is a great game, story line is fantastic and fun to play through. LFD2 is also pretty cool, I brought it but haven't got hooked so much to it as I did LFD but yeah thats also spectacular. So basically why rush into buying ciV if you have all these other titles you have yet to play, I agree with you, you can afford to wait for the deals to come to you.

Me on the other hand have no games currently that I have yet to play, or taking up my time, so I cant wait for ciV. I'm going to play the &%$^ out of it come september.

but Civ comes up trumps everytime, what he should do is take a vacation buy civ V and sit at home playing all hours of the day.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Like announced, this new steam thread is closed.
Please refrain to open any other steam related threads.