Epic's Mike Capps: We Love PC, But...

[Crotale]

yeah, just wake me up when you guys have reached a sound conclusion

this thread = lolitics for gamers.
it's one big circular argument for which the only available evidence is presumptuous opinions. it's much akin to which came first; the chicken or the egg?

so I say kids, carry on

Why did you come here other than to insult others? You really are pathetic.

If there was anything that damaged PC Gaming, it was the existing price marketing models. While there will always be those who illegally copy games because they can, high priced games drove more and more people to piracy until eventually it became a culture and a way of life. There will also always be those who do the right thing ...because they have the money.

Publishers, I put it to you: Can you change your price marketing models and give everyone what they want? Alas, it may be too late - you've created a monster and the last thing you'll do is admit it.

High prices? In the 1980's, we had games that cost $50 USD. Today, we have most games that cost (discounting limited editions) what, $50-70 USD. Yeah, that is a substantial increase alright. Not.

 

[Jacks:Revenge]

Why did you come here other than to insult others?

last time I checked, I was free to post wherever I want. I came here to read the thread, and then after reading the thread I had a comment to make.
so I posted it, just like everyone else. but I never actually insulted anyone. put your glasses on, go back, re-read my post.
I made a snide remark about the tone of the discussion. guilty as charged. ok sheriff?

now if you want to start name calling, I could easily find several threads in which your only contribution was also to take cheap shots at the tone of- or people involved in- the debate at hand.
if I'm pathetic, then you're my equal.

 

[matw]

High prices? In the 1980's, we had games that cost $50 USD. Today, we have most games that cost (discounting limited editions) what, $50-70 USD. Yeah, that is a substantial increase alright. Not.

One thing I've always found interesting is that if it really were that games were priced so high because of illegal copying, then surely more restricted platforms such as consoles would see price reductions - often it's the opposite, at least where I live. PC Games are often ~$100 in store. This seems to indicate that publishers have a certain pricing model where they charge what they want to. I guess my point is that if you price a product right for a market then you have more chance of selling a greater volume of product and overall making more money. If you go for a high-price you just restrict the market and the amount of money you can make all up.

 

[hal]

Settle down folks. Let's keep to the topic at hand.

 

[Joker_1124]

While sometimes he says some stuff wrong, that not related to management. Studios going downhill? That would be id for me. Epic? UE3 is licensed more than UE2 and UE1 (may be even both)? Check. New sub-studios? Check. New IPs? Check. Doing what people expect of them is the only part where they're not successful and that's impossible with lots of people wanting a lot of things.


Oh, you speak of releasing an huge free bonuspack and 2 patches a year and a half after the release of the game that only a few people play? Yes, I call that caring about PC. Cause other "caring" studios either would make this a paid DLC or just gave up on the game 6 months after release, just because it went bad.

That may be true, but Epic seems to have gone the way of ID software, making games to showcase their engines, not to make a game thats fun. Unreal didn't feel like a tech demo, Unreal Tournament didn't feel like a tech demo, UT3 did. Just like Doom 3 was honestly nothing more than a tech demo. (Can't believe I spent $50 on that.....)

 

[Crotale]

One thing I've always found interesting is that if it really were that games were priced so high because of illegal copying, then surely more restricted platforms such as consoles would see price reductions - often it's the opposite, at least where I live. PC Games are often ~$100 in store. This seems to indicate that publishers have a certain pricing model where they charge what they want to. I guess my point is that if you price a product right for a market then you have more chance of selling a greater volume of product and overall making more money. If you go for a high-price you just restrict the market and the amount of money you can make all up.

There are a lot of factors involved in setting prices for games. Game pricing is set in a range of what the market is willing to pay. I doubt any developer or publisher necessarily wants to restrict potential customers as far as pricing goes. Another thing to consider is that pricing determine market value of a game product. Yeah, I said that. If a PS3 game, for example, enters a market at $20 USD, most of the potential buyers will think the game is crap solely based on the launch price. The sales will never rise above "tanked" status. Set the price to $60 and it is assumed the game is worth it, so many buyers are more likely to pick it up. Most game buyers know very little about the games until they play them.

 

[matw]

There are a lot of factors involved in setting prices for games. Game pricing is set in a range of what the market is willing to pay. I doubt any developer or publisher necessarily wants to restrict potential customers as far as pricing goes. Another thing to consider is that pricing determine market value of a game product. Yeah, I said that. If a PS3 game, for example, enters a market at $20 USD, most of the potential buyers will think the game is crap solely based on the launch price. The sales will never rise above "tanked" status. Set the price to $60 and it is assumed the game is worth it, so many buyers are more likely to pick it up. Most game buyers know very little about the games until they play them.

Agreed wholeheartedly. The whole pricing structure involves a lot of factors. I guess I'd like to see some more of these factors encouraging people to purchase rather than pirate. There is little intrinsic value in the actual product after it has been produced (ie it's not a car), other than the distribution chain etc (offline or online). Therefore the actual sale value should be more flexible at product launch. Although, the last thing I'd want to see is a developer/publisher not covering their costs - that would be catastrophic to gaming as a whole - but I'd like to see them aim more for number of sales than for limiting the number of sales by setting the price high just to cover their costs. Although I think possibly it may be too late as the culture of piracy has already matured. One thing that does give me hope is some of the online digital distribution chains, which often offer the same product for less than I can go buy it in the store.

In any case, keeping it all friendly, I'd like to see PC Gaming come back into the picture more and there being less excuses made due to 'piracy'. As I say: some people will always do the wrong thing because they can; others will always to the right thing because they have the money.

 

[Mister_Prophet]

Personally, I think game prices are hugely bull****. If a movie comes out it will be roughly be in the same ballpark in price a year down the road. But a 60 dollar game? In six months it could be at half that, or less. So, I generally tend to buy all my games after they've been out for a while. It just suits me better this way, although if a particular game purchase is hot enough I'll pick it up upon release (Orange Box comes to mind).

 

[elmuerte]

Given that 'Console Gaming' consists of FIVE platforms, and the PC is only ONE platform, this is a bit of a **** breakdown and poor comparison. You're basically lumping handheld sales in with home consoles, which are more radically different beasts than consoles are to PCs.

I think the full results (which cost money to see) have a proper breakdown.

But it doesn't change the fact that PC Gaming is still a large sgement

 

[Alhanalem]

Heroes of Newerth just hit 30k concurrent players a few days after going retail.
Just to put it in perspective (taken from steam):



86,090 91,395 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer
82,145 85,376 Counter-Strike: Source
65,593 67,265 Counter-Strike
31 000 31 000 Heroes of Newerth
21,766 21,890 Football Manager 2010
20,614 20,644 Team Fortress 2
18,579 20,672 Portal
16,279 16,311 Left 4 Dead 2
10,008 10,008 Battlefield: Bad Company 2
9,238 9,610 Empire: Total War
7,808 7,991 Garry's Mod


Best part of all? They are an indie company and didn't even use popular distribution platforms like Steam to get their game out. Also HoN had almost zero marketing, they relied almost solely on word of mouth.

EPIC just did it wrong!

S2 is great, but I know them better for their lesser known titles, Savage and Savage 2 (You should check out savage 2 if you get around to it)

Piracy is a problem but it still affects the other platforms. Aside from that, Piracy has nothing to do with why Epic's PC titles haven't performed as well as they would have liked.

 

[UBerserker]

But a 60 dollar game?

Add also the whole "pay more 10 dollars to unlock features already found in the game" thing. That's extremely annoying.

 

[GeckoYamori]

If there was anything that damaged PC Gaming, it was the existing price marketing models. While there will always be those who illegally copy games because they can, high priced games drove more and more people to piracy until eventually it became a culture and a way of life. There will also always be those who do the right thing ...because they have the money.

Publishers, I put it to you: Can you change your price marketing models and give everyone what they want? Alas, it may be too late - you've created a monster and the last thing you'll do is admit it.

That reasoning makes no sense at all, since console games typically cost at least $10-20 more than their PC counterparts due to licensing fees, and usually the games take a lot longer to fall in price as well. People pirate simply because they can, it doesn't matter if the games are $40 or 1 cent.

 

[Grobut]

High prices?

Hey, if i only had to pay 50 USD for games i'd probably not be too flustered either, but whatever the reason, publishers think that all of western/northern Europe is full of rich people, and lets not even think about what they charge the poor Aussies..

So yeah, there's room for improvement here, and they just might sell more games if they took at look at that.

 

[ambershee]

I think in the UK, $50 is about right for a new PC game (£35), although I usually pay less.

 

[Wowbagger]

If Epic doesnt have the heart for PC-games anymore they should just go console only, no need for half assed PC-games.
Ill keep playing good PC-games from devs that has the heart in the right place and find ways instead of excuses.

 

[Hideinlight]

I saw ME2 and RE5 standing right next to each other in a shop one day. This was a popular retail outlet so it was at full retail pricing.

Mass Effect 2 was R300 (40$)
Resident Evil 5 was R500 (60$)

Guess which one I bought?
Ironically I had $80 with me that day...

So Capcom lost a sale that day and I'll maybe buy it when it hits the bargain bin which is probably gonna be @ $10-15

If they made it 40$ from the start and it would of sold much better and kept it's value a lot longer too, it's gonna hit the bargain bin fast and hard just like UT3.

 

[ambershee]

I got UT3 on release week for £20, so it's never really been out of the 'bargain bin'.

 

[Beelzebud (Satanas)]

Here is something I think is a reasonable opinion about this whole subject.

Epic blames low sales of UT3 and Gears of War on piracy. Those were the first two games for them that did not do well on PC. Until that time PC games literally kept them in business. The engine contracts did not come until after Epic proved it could be used for making kick ass, profitable games. Piracy was around back then too, but Epic Games was still very successful!

If piracy actually was the reason for low sales on the PC, then explain one thing. Why were sales of UT3 on Xbox360 also lower than average? Why are the player counts on Xbox360 just as low as they are on PC compared to other games? Is it because of piracy, or is it because the game really wasn't very good? I paid for UT3, and I wanted it to be good. But we all know it fell short. They can blame it on piracy all they want, but the fact is they never should have released a BETA demo. That thing should never have seen the light of day, because that demo killed the game. Period. Go back and read what people were writing about that demo after it was released. It was publicly mocked on every game site on the internet. Then when the retail version came out we saw that it had the same issues the demo had. Nothing had been fixed. Yes they delivered two years later with the bonus pack, but at first it took them 6 months to get a patch out that made the server browser slightly more useful than it had been before... They should have held on to the game until it was done, but I'm sure their relationship with Midway at the time didn't help with that.

Gears of War is a whole other story. GoW is actually a pretty good console game. It feels right at home using a controller, and it's a fun shoot-em-up game. The reason it failed on PC was not because of piracy at all. It was because they released it way too long after the Xbox360 version had been out. Let's not forget that a high percentage of "PC Gamers" also have Xbox360s and PS3s and every other game device they can afford. The people who wanted to play GoW had already done it by the time the PC version came out! The hardcore PC-Only folks weren't too interested because they love the mouse/keyboard control setup, and the game is clearly better with an Xbox 360 controller. They didn't pirate it, they just weren't interested in playing it!

Blame it on piracy if you want to, but this isn't rocket science.

Case Closed.

 

[Grobut]

I think in the UK, $50 is about right for a new PC game (£35), although I usually pay less.

The UK is perhabs the only exception, even on Steam, you guys are the only ones who aren't getting slapped by the 1$=1€ malarky.
The rest of us pay more, most of Europe pay's 50€ for PC games i belive, which is around $62 USD currently, here in Denmark we pay around 400,- to 450,- Dkr for a new PC game, which is around $66 to $75 USD, and sometimes they will retail for 500,- Dkr for hot titles, thats a whopping $83 USD, and i belive the prices are similar to that in Norway, and they are worse in Australia.

(Note, the above are retail prices, IE, brick and mortar shop prices)

 

[Hideinlight]

I got UT3 on release week for £20, so it's never really been out of the 'bargain bin'.

In South African rands the price UT3 looked like this compared to COD4 and Orange Box.

Orange Box R299
Call of duty 4 R299
UT3 standard R429
UT3 collectors R499

UT3 did not do too well until the Titan Pack where the game then sold for R99
Suddenly the game sold out and there were lots of activity online. Fun times...

Only problem was game was sold out, steam wasn't an option due to our insane bandwith prices back then. So game couldn't grow anymore and UT3 eventually died +- 6 months later.

Point I'm trying to make. Get the price right and get it right in as many countries as possible.