GOG.com

[ekianjo]

So whats your point ? Of course they aren't "everywhere" never said that, I mentioned it to emphasize on the fact that physical retail isn't completely dead, Boxes of games are still sold.

Physical retail only exists because consoles still exist, otherwise if it were only for PC gaming it would be mostly gone.  

And I still would like to know if you really think that up to 75% of retail price are swallowed by physical distribution, or if I misinterpreted your posts

See my earlier post where I replied to that.  

How big is the percentage of titles in the 40-50 dollar price range that do not offer multiplayer in some way ?

I was not talking only about 40-50 dollars games here.  

as these services all have overlapping user groups for the most part.

The overlap surely exists but varies by country - some services are more implanted in some geographies than others, so it's more complementary than overlap.  

Mind giving any evidence for this ?

The evidence is the market itself. It if were not the case, it would be impossible for indie studios to survive if the economics were that of the physical retail ones. Now you can make a game, sell the dozen of thousands copies and still make a good living out of it because of digital distribution. That's because the margins are very high.  

 

[thatgui]

Physical retail only exists because consoles still exist, otherwise if it were only for PC gaming it would be mostly gone.

Store shelves in Europe seem to disagree (local telco infrastructure isn't there yet to accomodate).

Edit: And as it looks like in the rest the situation isn't that much better as MS buried his original ideas about a distributing games for the xbone, digital only, rather quickly.

See my earlier post where I replied to that.

Yes, you wrote something, but that does not answer my question: 75% of the end user price is made up of distribution costs and margins => really ??

Edit: see my next post, missed your answer to that question

I was not talking only about 40-50 dollars games here.

Thats my whole point: you grab arguments accross the board as you please but nothing is consistent - I thought the whole point was about games that are sold in that price range, otherwise they aren't in the focus anyway - or are they ?

The overlap surely exists but varies by country - some services are more implanted in some geographies than others, so it's more complementary than overlap.

I disagree

The evidence is the market itself. It if were not the case, it would be impossible for indie studios to survive if the economics were that of the physical retail ones. Now you can make a game, sell the dozen of thousands copies and still make a good living out of it because of digital distribution. That's because the margins are very high.

Indie studios are only a fraction of the market and usually play in another lague regarding products, production costs and expectations both from their shareholders and their market. But again you are shifting the focus as you please. And nobody said that the market mechanics were the same. I would also be interested (out of interest, not for the sake of this discussion) in numbers about how good indie studios are living off this - and how many struggle and ultimately fail as the indie market is already pretty saturated.


Edit: @ekianjo


I do not know why, but it looks like I missed some post, please ignore this post for now, till I find time to read them - sorry

Edit2: see my next post

 

[WizardStan]

You cannot save money by having the more expensive employee doing tasks that a less expensive employee can do.

Having worked in an environment where money ran tight and a lot of "non-essential" employees had to be let go, I assure you that you you find a way to make it work. You'd be surprised at how productive you can be when staring down the barrel of unemployment without a backup plan.

 

[Klumpen]

There's no reason to pay games so expensive in the age of digitial distribution. That cut down so much of the "inventory + distribution + intermediates" costs that existed before in the age of 40-50 dollars games, now virtually all new games should be sold at less than 15 dollars or less than 10 dollars even and devs and publishers would make just as much money as before.

A bachelor degree programmer works for 36K € per year, a master degree programmer works for 48K € a year (without retirement fund, health insurrance etc). Lets say 60K € per year for a master programmer with social security costs (in Germany).

Dafuq? Well, that's steep...

Where did you get those numbers, which countries do you mean and why do they earn so much (wherever this may be)?

 

[elwing]

Where did you get those numbers, which countries do you mean and why do they earn so much (wherever this may be)?

or why do they earn so few?

 

[klapse]

You cannot save money by having the more expensive employee doing tasks that a less expensive employee can do.

Having worked in an environment where money ran tight and a lot of "non-essential" employees had to be let go, I assure you that you you find a way to make it work. You'd be surprised at how productive you can be when staring down the barrel of unemployment without a backup plan.

That is an exceptional circumstance.

If it were the rule, you'd have the president and top managers cleaning the office and toilets instead of the janitors.

 

[rohezal]

Where did you get those numbers, which countries do you mean and why do they earn so much (wherever this may be)?

I am talking about Germany. I finished my Master of Computer Science degree 2 weeks ago with a friend of mine. He got a job at a contractor company of Volkswagen Wolfsburg and earns 50K Euros a year, which fits 4K Euros a month. When I started studying they told us, that you can earn 3K with a bachelor degree and 4K with a master degree. But I am not as "lucky" as my friend, finding a job soon after graduating. I have currently almost no money, but lots of time which I spend in parks having barbeques and drinking beer with friends .

But you can earn way more then 50K Euros a year with a master degree, when you are doing database (oracle, ibm db2, sap) stuff you can earn 80K Euros per year.

 

[KickAss]

im a m.d. and dont earn that much. my brother's a fuckin lawyer and earns way way way way more...


lawyers, you just gotta hate em.

 

[thatgui]

It's not too much. There are many sources on the web for the cost split of  a physical game. 

Out of 50 dollars, something betwen 10-15 is coming back to publishers. That's what I am saying. The rest goes into distribution (the point of sale, whether it's Amazon or BestBuy or wherever you shop at), transportation, inventory cost, warehousing, production of CDs, printing stuff, boxes, etc... You are probably underevaluating the amount of work and resources needed to distribute physical things (and I know that very well myself since I am working on physical stuff in my day job).

I had also to do with "physical stuff" in the past, and the goods where far more delicate regarding transportation and far more "wanted" by the market (my old company practically had a monopoly at these things) still even with the cut the indepent sales person got, we still would not have a pricing structure like that.But as you and I have the same problem - the lack of presentable evidence - I suggest to agree to disagree, otherwise we just fill pages with going round in circles.

You don't need 100's of people to distribute something online. You can open a server for xx USD/month with a payment system and you are done. You don't have to take care of the logistics yourself. And the cost of digital media is falling constantly. It's cheaper than it ever was.

Don't you think its a little more cost intensive, to provide server capacities for such a service? Especially in the gaming sector with most games usually having sizes above 1 GB and people start complaining when their connection to you drops below 2 MBit ?

If anything, the cost of digital solutions is DECREASING over time vs Physical solutions.

That may or may not happen (at least in a scale were in matters), but you will see an increase in other areas (like wages) which should pretty much chew that up.
back on topic:

Did anyone not get the alpha invitation for the gog Galaxy client ?

Looks okay, reminds me of the Steam client. Its bin a while since I fired that one up so this might not be the case anymore.

Nothing spectacular though, for now it looks like an installer and starter - the options dialog suggest some Steam like future features, lets see what they come up with.

 

[ekianjo]

Don't you think its a little more cost intensive, to provide server capacities for such a service? Especially in the gaming sector with most games usually having sizes above 1 GB and people start complaining when their connection to you drops below 2 MBit ?

Look at Hertzner costs for a full standalone server with great bandwidth and pretty good specs for distribution of files or heavy traffic websites : you can get something pretty rock solid for about 60-70 euros per month.  

 

[ekianjo]

That may or may not happen (at least in a scale were in matters), but you will see an increase in other areas (like wages) which should pretty much chew that up.

Cost of storage/distribution(online) is still decreasing as we speak, yet games rarely take more space than they did 2 or 3 years ago. Sure, you get exceptions with games such as GTA V which high disk space requirements, but most other AAA games (and let's not talk about indies where disk space requirements are very low usually) fall in the range of 3 to 20 gigs of space. 

 

[rohezal]

I worked intern (trainee without payment) for a game company. The server and bandwidth costs were very low. The most costly part were the programmers and artists. They created a Dota like game. A newly made hero costed around 30.000$. And this was, when the Engine was done already, and most of the work was modellling, rigging, voice acting and scripting. And a bit programming if they could not implement the abilities completly in scripts.

 

[thatgui]

Don't you think its a little more cost intensive, to provide server capacities for such a service? Especially in the gaming sector with most games usually having sizes above 1 GB and people start complaining when their connection to you drops below 2 MBit ?

 Look at Hertzner costs for a full standalone server with great bandwidth and pretty good specs for distribution of files or heavy traffic websites : you can get something pretty rock solid for about 60-70 euros per month.

Sure, if you want to provide a micro-scale-service, otherwise you'll burn through the traffic limit pretty fast

Cost of storage/distribution(online) is still decreasing as we speak, yet games rarely take more space than they did 2 or 3 years ago. Sure, you get exceptions with games such as GTA V which high disk space requirements, but most other AAA games (and let's not talk about indies where disk space requirements are very low usually) fall in the range of 3 to 20 gigs of space.

I doubt this will continue endlessly, the market is still settling and with goverments still needing to catch on law-wise ( like network neutrality) no one can tell were this will be going

 

[thatgui]

See my earlier post where I replied to that.

I found an article that states 35% for distribution, which sounds a lot more sane to me, but they also lack evidence > Link (mind, its a poor translation and you need to hit esc early on to prevent a redirect)

 

[Klumpen]

This is kind of a big deal:

http://www.gog.com/news/major_releases_unchained_from_drm

Metro: Last Light Redux

Saints Row 2

Saints Row: The Third

Darksiders

Darksiders 2

Legally DRM free for the first time.

 

[rohezal]

Saints Row: The Third

4 Euros? Mine!

 

[PowerGod]

Battle Realms FREE

 

[Klumpen]

Battle Realms FREE

With addon btw.

Excellent game, it was part of a retail compilation I bought 10 years ago.

 

[PowerGod]

So, Morrowind on GOG... that was really unexpected O_O anyway seems not so cheap as on Steam...

Now I suppose they will add even Daggerfall and Arena, them are already free...

EDIT: OH, how cool, them are already there bundled with Morrowind itself

 

[Klumpen]