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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22046 |  HangTime (30) Aug 21, 2009 - 11:14 am
| No, I don't believe thousands of people have been waiting for it get smaller.
I do believe thousands of people have been waiting for it to get cheaper though. Given the choice between buying an EOL discounted 80GB PS3 now, or waiting a little while and then getting the new 120GB Slim PS3, I'd expect many people to opt for the latter. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22032 | HangTime (30) Aug 17, 2009 - 02:50 pm
| Yeah but Crysis was never targeting that market (people only spending $100 on a GPU.... they were saying "OK, if you want playable performance on ~medium settings, you need a fast GPU" (~$300). £If you want playable performance on MAX settings, you need a GPU from that price bracket in a couple of years time".
Crysis was never a game intended to be played on a $100 video card, which may be reflected in (relatively) mediocre sales figures. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21966 | HangTime (30) Aug 02, 2009 - 02:19 am
| Makes sense to me, in a world where development costs are rising. 15 years ago studios were churning out AAA titles in around a year, now you are typically talking 2-3 years.
Don't forget that games have remained relatively immune to inflation too. A game priced at say £55 today is only actually the equivalent of £40 in 1997.
Furthermore when you are talking value for money, the best games usually compare quite favourably with other entertainment media like bluray. Take Fallout 3, I've clocked up over 60hrs on that so far. For multiplayer games, you get even more longevity. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21730 | HangTime (30) Jun 06, 2009 - 11:43 pm » Edited on Jun 06, 2009 - 11:45 pm
| Well, I think the whole blockbusters being targeted for the 'holiday season' thing has been successful enough for long enough that publishers aren't going to change their ways any time soon. Even if gamers themselves may be tight on cash, many of them will be receiving games as presents, so the effective purchasing power of the 'gaming economy' is at its peak in the run up to Christmas.
As for finding the time, you just have to pace your purchases (or stockpile your gifts!). I reckon that probably 30-40% of the games I buy, I don't buy within or close to the release date.... often I'm picking up games months or even years later at knockdown prices, when most of the issues have been patched, and sometimes with a hardware upgrade having taken place in the interim to further increase my enjoyment.
It's one of the reasons why I've never bought into the whole "PC gaming is dying, there are no good games out at the moment" argument - there's such a fantastic backcatalogue out there that even if no games were released for the next 12 months, I'd never get bored. I've recently got Freespace (1998) and TOCA Race Driver 3 (2006) for example.
That said, when you work for a gaming website, I can appreciate that you have to keep up with the latest and greatest. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21652 | HangTime (30) May 17, 2009 - 03:06 pm
| "If you buy a CD in the EU, do you get to return it if you don't like it? If you see a movie at the theater and decide you don't like the movie half way through, do you get a refund? This is no different."
It is different, because we are talking about returning a defective product, not because "you don't like it". IF you buy a cd and it won't play, you return it. If you buy a movie ticket and their equipment fails halfway through, you get a refund. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21652 | HangTime (30) May 17, 2009 - 03:03 pm
| | In terms of recent high-profile games, Far Cry 2 has a bug at 88% complete whereby you can't open a door that you need to complete them game (not everyone gets it, but quite a few do judging by google/forums). The only way I was able to get round it in the end after a couple of months research was by reinstalling the game and then NOT patching it, so that I could use the mortar-pivoting glitch to move through the wall. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21623 | HangTime (30) May 14, 2009 - 05:28 pm
| I'm not sure it's really fair describe the Glide API as a 'miserable failure' - afterall, it was arguably a large part of what made 3dfx so big in the first place. Don't forget that 3dfx didn't even have a full opengl ICD until the release of Quake3 (instead parsing GL calls to Glide via a minigl driver), and one could almost suggest that this was their most successful period. When 3d acceleration was in it's infancy and hardware power was limited, the speed of Glide made it very attractive.
At the end of the day, the decline of 3dfx was largely down to more basic factors such as the lack of performance relative to e.g. the Geforce DDR, R&D delays, STB merger (lack of adequate/diverse distribution channels) etc. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21501 | HangTime (30) Apr 11, 2009 - 04:10 am
| Well, considering that it was released in 2006, that's pretty good going for a 'fad'! Total sales are more than double that of PS3, and in fact total Wii sales are roughly equivalent of that of PS3 and XB360 combined.
IMO a fad is something which is relatively short lived and should not dominate statistics in the long-term in the way that Wii does.
Personally I don't think Nintendo needs to cut prices because until fairly recently there were still seasonal shortages, and they are still shifting them. Even if they are recently getting outsold by PS3 in some regions, I don't think that should be a major concern, afterall they have a large userbase already out there (~50 million consoles) which will help maintain the revenue stream through game sales. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21461 | HangTime (30) Apr 01, 2009 - 10:37 am
| I think that with digital distribution (Steam et al) starting to take off, there's much more scope now for discounted PC games. Historically, you always had the problem of physical production/packaging/shipping/shelf space etc which was a marginal cost (albeit a highly optimised/efficient one due to economies of scale). The marginal cost of selling a game via DD is very low, just the bandwidth really.
Personally while I don't think games are necessarily overpriced per se, I do find myself drawn to 'bargain' older titles. If a game is priced under £10 then I'm much more likely to take a risk on it. I've even impulse-bought games before now when the price drops even lower (say project snowblind for £2.64, or a multipack of three games for £9.99).
I do however disagree with WS in that I don't think lowering the price of games will open up the market to new consumers that much. Generally speaking, people who like gaming buy games. People who don't really like gaming, don't buy games. I don't think I've ever met anyone who claimed not to play games because the software was too expensive (hardware on the other hand...). OK so things like the Wii have helped to introduce more people (especially in the 30+ demographic) to gaming, but those games aren't particularly cheap anyway.
So in summation, I think lowering prices might shift a few more units to existing gamers, but I can't see a massive influx of new players. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21400 | HangTime (30) Mar 15, 2009 - 12:10 pm
| Well, I guess it depends on the relative importance you place on start-up time. It's not something I'm overly bothered by, since once the browser is loaded, chances are I won't load another session for a while (just new tabs).
Also don't forget that by default Safari opens that rather complex fishbowl view showing your most commonly visited sites, if you set it to open with a blank page you'll like see an improvement in startup time.
I did some rudimentary tests at work and found Safari to be the fastest browser; version 3 was lagging behind Chrome in the speed stakes but v4 seems to be very competitive. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21334 | HangTime (30) Feb 26, 2009 - 04:14 pm
| Definitely makes a lot of sense to me, I mean, if you release a GOOD game during a quiet period, it'll get a truckload of publicity because there won't be much competition.
Compare this to around October/November time where you seem to get at least half a dozen AAA titles hitting the shelves, sometimes you almost forget about some of them because the hype machines already moved onto The Next Big Thing (TM) coming out a week later.
Of course, if the game is just another mundane sequel that EA seem so fond of, targetting the holiday season probably isn't so stupid - chances are they can shift a few units to unsuspecting parents buying for their kids. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21313 | HangTime (30) Feb 20, 2009 - 11:40 am
| | One thing about American McGee is that it's around 9 years since Alice was released, and off the top of my head I can't remember another game he's worked on since without looking it up. Aside from his work at id, he's definitely best known for Alice so I guess it's probably seen as a smart financial move to revisit the franchise (and hence EA are involved). Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21308 | HangTime (30) Feb 20, 2009 - 11:31 am
| | I think these kind of discounts are good at accelerating the 'long tail' - by which I mean that normally, once a (good) game has been out for a while, it is still selling to new users albeit at quite a slow rate. Some are waiting for the price to drop a little, others just didn't pick it up close to release date for other reasons (busy with other games, maybe). Like you, they probably planned on picking it up sometime. Anyway, a 50% price reduction gives them the incentive they need to strike, essentially it congests a fair proportion of the sales they would have made over the next 6 months into a shorter timeframe. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21304 | HangTime (30) Feb 20, 2009 - 11:25 am » Edited on Feb 20, 2009 - 11:27 am
| It's not that suspicious - discounted/special deals on prebuilt systems means that they can come in cheaper than self-builds. There are three main reasons for this:
1) Economies of scale. OEMs can get slightly better prices by bulk-buying components they know they are going to use a lot of (the discrete sales market is less predictable).
2) They can use OEM rather than retail boxed components which will cost them significantly less - it's pretty rare that you can buy an unboxed graphics card for example.
3) The fact that they have a guarenteed sale on a whole bunch of components (at least 10) that make up a complete system mean that they are happier to take a lower profit margin on each component. Items sold individually need to have a higher profit margin to make it worthwhile. It's much the same way as you see discounts for bundled items from pretty much every retailer, not just the computer industry. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21214 | HangTime (30) Jan 24, 2009 - 01:27 pm
| One thing I don't get about some of the numbers is that a simple change in resolution (same game/dx version) is changing the running order so drastically.
For example, take a look at the Highend L4D results. This just doesn't make any sense to me. In 1680x1050, Windows 7 is wiping the floor with the opposition, I mean it's nearly an astonishing 20% quicker than the next best, Vista. Yet up the resolution a tad to 1920x1080, and it is left for dead, if you'll excuse the pun. It's over 50fps slower just from a small resolution increase, whereas XP and Vista lose 10fps at the most.
To me those results stick out like a sore thumb and it'd be good to see them get run again. If there was some weird driver issue with that resolution, then I'd have expected to see it in other games too. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/38252/752 | HangTime (30) Nov 25, 2007 - 03:33 pm
| Personally I think Renegade is a little underrated.
Sure, it's not a brilliant or even 'very good' game, but it does have some redeeming features. There's a good variety in terms of level design (towns, bases, caverns, deserts, islands etc... some of the levels are pretty big, too), and it has a very nice selection of weapons. It also has a reasonable storyline/cutscenes, and I like the way you get multiple mission objectives appearing as you progress through the level.
Overall I think Renegade ticks most of the boxes required for a quality FPS - it falls short in a few areas but I've played a lot of inferior games. With enhanced graphics (textures/lighting mainly) and AI, it would be a top notch game. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18309 | HangTime (30) Nov 15, 2007 - 12:51 pm
| Yeah, that was my first reaction.
At 1600x1200, the 8800ultra is getting around 120fps. Yet at 1920x1200 (a mere 20% increase in resolution) with the same levels of AA/AF, the framerate has plummetted way down into the 40s. It's the same across the board for the Nvidia cards, something definitely isn't right there as they are running the show in all the other benchmarks. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17612 | HangTime (30) Sep 28, 2007 - 12:10 pm
| | We own a Wii, and despite having it for over 6 months I still haven't taken Zelda out of the box. Like many people I think we got it in the basis of Wii Sports (bundling it with the console was a masterstroke) but having been a PC gamer for so long I really can't see myself sitting down to play 'serious' games on it. The most modern console I owned before that was a SNES/Megadrive. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/35 | HangTime (30) Jul 20, 2007 - 02:04 pm
| » What, no Quake? :(
Kinda disappointed not to see Quake/QuakeWorld (or Quake2, for that matter) on here, bearing in mind FiringSquad's history. I know quite a few of the staff used to play Quake - plus, of course, Thresh was pretty good at it!
Heck, I might produce a 30sec Quakeworld mblog just for the hell of it, even it's not eligible :) Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=16406 | HangTime (30) Jul 09, 2007 - 04:08 pm
| Another superb article Jakub, although I think some of your figures probably vary a lot depending on factors like where the studio is based. Including that EA logo also struck me as a bit of a cheapshot (given the attitude many gamers seem to have towards them) I didn't expect from you, but I guess there's only so many appropriate logos one could use for such an article :)
I think your conclusion about the cost of games is accurate. $50 (around £25 here) isn't really all that much; in fact £25 in 1990 would translate to around £40+ in real terms.
One thing I can see happening is that with high speed broadband now becoming commonplace across the globe, more and more developers are going to seek to 'cut out the middleman' and go for direct distribution models along the lines of Steam or similar. The traditional publishers will face increasing competition from the likes of D2D, as the cost savings from eliminating traditional distribution methods (cd/dvd production, shipping, shelf space etc) are not to be sneezed at.
In fact if we look back at the 90s, some of the biggest names in the industry such as id software and Apogee/3DR built much of their success on shareware content - initially they didn't have the big publishers backing them. Nowadays with all the gaming/news sites, video trailers, demos etc it should (in theory) be even easier for devs to get themselves noticed without the need for a big publisher backing them. 10 years ago, sure, without the marketing dollars 99% of companies were screwed. But maybe not so much today. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14582 | HangTime (30) Mar 05, 2007 - 05:23 pm
| Heh :)
At the risk of sounding arrogant I'm actually kinda suprised I didn't make the cut, as while not perfect I thought my written style and anecdotes would place me in the top 15, and I put quite a few hours of effort in to it. Maybe I should have stuck to my guns rather than changed the formatting at the last minute as per Jakub's suggestion, or perhaps I underestimated outside influences and should have tried to get more hits/votes for my article rather than relying on the judges.
Still, good luck to those who remain and I will follow the competition to see what budding writers it produces. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/11 | HangTime (30) Feb 25, 2007 - 03:09 pm
| I feel the same - I haven't rated anyone else's work since it's hard to be independent. What I would say is that there are some articles acoring around 15-30% which while not perfect or even especially good, certainly don't deserve that kind of treatment.
After 1 vote my article had 90%, after 2 it had 55% (meaning the second vote must have been 20%, by iteration). Now I'm not some kind of arrogant guy who thinks people shouldn't vote as they see fit, if somebody thinks my article sucks that's fine, but it does show that there's a very wide range of scores being handed out. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61824/124 | HangTime (30) Feb 23, 2007 - 02:42 pm
| I can see where you are coming from.... I guess it's because originally this article was going to be kinda top10 countdown type affair, but in the end I wanted to focus on a couple of titles a bit more.
However I stand by the approach I took in terms of looking at multiple titles, as I think simply analyzing a single game without looking at other alternatives can come across as a somewhat blinkered viewpoint. Flag this | Edit this post |
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