User Information - WaltC

User information for WaltC

Real Name

WaltC

Nickname

WaltC

Email

Concealed by request

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http://

Signed On

Jan 31, 2003, 04:03

Total Comments

310 (Amateur)

User ID

16008

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News Comments > etc.

Something to remember...

May 24, 2006, 20:59

WaltC

My dear, departed Dad gave me some advice I have found very useful all through my life. He said, "Son, always remember this about Doctors if you remember nothing else: doctors bury their mistakes."

At the time I thought it was a pretty funny remark, especially considering that my Dad's brother was a practicing surgeon at the time. The older I've become since, though, the more truth I can see in his evaluation of the current state of medical science--in any generation. Through the years the list of associates and well-known celebrities who checked in to a hospital for some "routine" surgery or other, but never checked out, has grown far too long for comfort.

Frankly, the specter of surgeons playing videogames like "Half-Life" and thinking they've improved their surgical skills in the process is so frightening I may never dare venture into a hospital under my own volition again...;) Brrr-r-r-r-r, shudder...!




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Into the Black

Re: SEC alleges ... Infinium Labs

May 17, 2006, 07:16

WaltC

To my knowledge, no pre-orders for Phantom systems were ever made. I've always thought the name "Phantom" was a tip off as to the likelihood of a privately funded startup competing successfully with Microsoft and Sony, but there are a couple of things the CNN article forgets that might explain the SEC's apparently weak slap on the wrist:

*The company was associated with a Microsoft co-founder, and companies like SUN, who were no less gullible than anyone else, apparently.

*I doubt it will ever be known how much the [H] publicity did to damage the company's prospects long before the company ever got a product out of the door

*Investors are grown adults who frequently invest in all kinds of technologies and companies based on the flimsiest of information, and often lose their money in this fashion, and as such I find it difficult to feel sorry for them in this particular case. Talk about faxes--often people routinely invest in companies on the strength of nothing more substantial than a positive email they receive from a total stranger.

*Adults employed by companies which opt to pay them in private stock certifcates instead of money should know better than to complain when they accept such worthless stock as compensation, most especially as issued by a company which hasn't produced a product. My thought is that they should've hit the door the moment their paychecks stopped coming.

My opinion has always been that if [H] had simply waited on the company to fold or else to ship something before publicizing its "investigation," then Roberts would be receiving far more substantial penalties than the slap on the wrist the SEC seems ready to mete out presently. There's no telling how much the [H] publicity drive centered around IL served to mitigate IL's behavior in the eyes of the SEC. From the record as publicized by [H] we know that it wound up costing [H] well over a hundred thousand dollars or so in legal fees and court costs, and I have great difficulty ascribing a "victory" to [H] for exactly that reason.

It's bad enough that investors are as gullible-because-they're-greedy as they seem to be, and unfortunately this incident seems not only routine in investment circles but it was also far overblown. If you want to consider massive investor fraud then look at companies like Enron and WorldCom as examples of that. Although IL got tons of tech-sector publicity and attention because of [H], in reality it was always little more than small potatoes.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > ATI Oblivion Beta Driver

11.

Re: No subject

Apr 6, 2006, 21:53

WaltC

I have an x800xt, too, and thus far not a single crash--solid as a rock for me. Am using the DHZer0point 6.3 drivers with Adaptive AA enabled (something the stock CATs won't let you do.)




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > StarForce Class Action

43.

Re: Bogus suit

Apr 1, 2006, 07:23

WaltC

Both of those were pretty suspect claims and yet resulted in settlements for the consumer.

Most class-action suits which aren't dismissed or dropped and which actually result in a monetary settlement tend to distribute settlement funds like this:

The lawyers bringing the suit get 90%, the so-called "consumers" on whose behalf the suit is ostensibly brought get the remaining 10% to divide up among themselves. Typically, the major "class" benefitting from such suits is the "lawyer class" as opposed to the "consumer class"...;)

In some class-action settlements, the consumer gets a penny for every thousand dollars paid each of the litigating attorneys. This ought to give pause to anyone tempted to believe that class-action lawsuits are brought "on behalf" of consumers. The central goal of such attorneys is self-enrichment and "the consumer" is merely a means to that end.

Last, of course, is the fact that the cost of such suits is simply passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices to the people who consume the products the target company makes, and class-action suits do nothing and care nothing about that.

Of all the possible "consumer remedies" for poor products, the class-action suit typically benefits the consumer the least. Most of the time, sheer market forces will force the companies who do release poor products to change their ways or else go out of business.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > etc., etc.

Re: Epic

Mar 25, 2006, 07:16

WaltC

You can always tell when a relative technology n00b writes an article that, in reality, is a puff piece for the featured company. Lines like, "Mods on PS3 or Xbox 360 games could open up a new stream of play possibilities for gamers -- and, just maybe, a load of potential headaches for companies like Microsoft (Research) and Sony," are dead giveaways.

Mods are something only possible for online consoles like xbox 360 and the coming PS3, but they've been around for years and years inside PC games--and I've yet to see one yet which has given Microsoft (or anybody) any "headaches"--umm, apart from the end users who may install mods for this or that game that are buggy and don't work very well, that is...;) The ability to mod a game is there to enhance a game's popularity and ultimately its sales--just ask Valve, for instance, about HL1. Developers don't intentionally build their games to accept mods to cause *anyone* a "headache"...;)




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Evening Metaverse

Re: Net Neutrality... R.I.P.

Mar 22, 2006, 06:53

WaltC

Let's see, it was "big business" that rolled out computers, software, and the Internet in the first place, and engaged the mass production required to consistently lower their prices, wasn't it? I mean, it surely is *not* the government that has given us anything relative to these technologies (likely that the only interest of government will be to tax/regulate these technologies.)

I'll just remind that greed is a universal human foible and isn't restricted to any particular nationality or economic system. Communist Russia, for instance, was one of the most corrupt political systems on earth--which, of course, is why it did not survive. Blaming business for greed is about like blaming business for the fact that most people are born with with two legs...;)




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Evening Consolidation

Re: Phantom

Feb 24, 2006, 06:53

WaltC

People sadly have no clue as to how much money is transferred from the pockets of one investor to another's, every day of the year. One man's loss is always another's gain. Companies like Netscape raised hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, just to quit and go home the minute some competition emerged. After dooming the company, the CEO of Netscape, Jim Barksdale, "retired" with a Golden Parachute worth millions. Then there's AOL, World Com, and the list goes on and on...

Investors lose money because they are willing to gamble with their money in the hopes that one dollar invested will return them ten dollars in return--in the hopes of making money they never earned themselves. An accurate description of this phenomenon is "greed." As long as there are people who believe in something for nothing, people will continue to lose money when they invest.

This particular case is literally small potatoes in the scheme of things. If not for the attention the Phantom console garnered by web sites seeking to capitalize on publicity they could generate around it, the Phantom console would have come and gone with hardly a blip and no one would ever have been surprised. This entire "story" has literally been much ado about absolutely nothing.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Evening Safety Dance

Re: re: pipeline flaw

Jan 13, 2006, 06:36

WaltC

Yes, and I thought this quote was amusing:

The practice is, in fact, common; attackers often have no idea that a vulnerability exists until a patch is released. By examining the fix, they can often backtrack to the bug, then figure out how to exploit it.

Heh...Notice how the "security expert" is careful to avoid saying "attackers often have no idea that a vulnerability exists until my security firm broadcasts the vulnerability to the Internet"...?

By trying to setup a scenario in which "security experts" are blameless for hacker behaviors, he sets up a beautiful contradiction. He's actually saying that if Microsoft didn't patch then hackers wouldn't find the holes they find--ergo, there'd be no need to patch in the first place. I think it's very amusing how the so-called "security experts" enjoy pretending that their "flaw announcements" on the Internet, the main purpose of which is to draw attention to themselves and their "security firms," has nothing to do with "hackers finding holes," but that it's Microsoft's fault for releasing a patch to seal the hole. My goodness, what people will do to ride Microsoft's coattails--amazing (but true.)

Edit: BTW, whenever you read text from a "security firm" that characterizes holes in otherwise perfectly functional software as "bugs"--beware. If a person doesn't know the difference between a hole in software which has been exploited by a hacker, and a simple software bug, which is merely a failure of software to perform a specific function it should perform, and has nothing to do with a hacker at all, then you know right away that this particular "security firm" isn't knowledgeable enough to do much of anything except to serve itself.

This comment was edited on Jan 13, 06:44.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Quake 4 Demo Follow-up

23.

Re: No subject

Nov 29, 2005, 06:35

WaltC

I'm betting they were more concerned about shipping a product (both PC and 360 versions) that would earn them cash as opposed to a demo that wouldn't...

Strange bet, as the purpose for a demo is to earn more cash by selling more copies of your game than you would have without a demo. A good demo of a good game is great advertising. It does stand to reason, though, that if you have no confidence that your demo will be well received that you'd go ahead and ship the game. Wouldn't want to reveal too much about a mediocre game before we sell through a certain number of copies, would we? That's my bet as to why so many games only get advertising demos long after they ship.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Quake 4 Demo Glitch

57.

Re: I installed it and briefly played.

Nov 26, 2005, 07:32

WaltC

So I was correct, you pulled it out of your ass.

I guess you can't fathom what "primary development platform" means, can you?

BTW, since I provided the link you asked for, it seems the only thing I need to "pull out of my ass"...is you...;) [j/k]

Also, the issue with respect to 3d API development is far more complex than merely Proprietary vs. Non-proprietary, and always has been. Aspects like "support" and "advancement" of APIs in general, not to mention the development tools that go along with them, are certainly critical to any intelligent person's assessment. D3d wins hands down in those respects.

Last, never forget that all APIs are entirely secondary to the games developers create with them. That's the most important point of them all. Right now, the "proprietary" API, as you put it, is chosen 19 times out of 20 by game developers in preference to the "non-proprietary" API. In short, developers just don't care about it like you do--what they are interested in is expense, support, and development tools when it comes to *any* API they contemplate using for their games.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Quake 4 Demo Glitch

40.

Re: I installed it and briefly played.

Nov 25, 2005, 06:49

WaltC

And your source for this is???

I'm hoping you just didn't pull this out of your ass.

I knew there'd be at least one person who would say something like this...;)

Source is:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22654

There's not much in the way of making his development target an xBox 360 that's going to work out with OGL, is there?




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Quake 4 Demo Glitch

20.

Re: I installed it and briefly played.

Nov 24, 2005, 17:10

WaltC

The fact is people, we have hit the wall. It's easier to make a friggin feature film now than a blockbuster game. These companies have no clue where to take the games next. Projects like STALKER have some good ideas, but who knows if that will ever come out? If it does it will likely be a half ass version of what it was supposed to be.

I installed the demo and while I think some of the technical elements in it are good--a few of them--the game itself lacks depth and scope, and just doesn't involve the player. I have to agree with most of the negative comments I've read here about Q4. It's a few years late and way short of the mark, unfortunately.

ID Software's a game engine company as opposed to a game creation company. So where does that leave Raven, in this case? ID created the engine and Raven created the game, and it just doesn't work. My own opinion of that is that the D3 engine well and truly sucks, sad to say. Even Raven can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but--it's obvious they tried very hard to do so with Q4. But it didn't work.

I think the "old-school," Q3-type shooter has run its course, and people have just tired of brain-dead, unimaginative, unoriginal shooting-fish-in-a-barrel games.

I should think of something to be thankful for today, so...I'm thankful for the fact that Carmack is now working with D3d as his primary development platform instead of OpenGL. No doubt this is in tacit acknowledgement of just how far short of the mark the ID game engines and games of the last few years have been. Hopefully, the change will free him and ID to wax creative in the future as opposed to perpetually trying to squeeze blood out of the turnips known as the Quake3/Doom3 game engines. The D3 engine is just an evolution of the Q3 engine, and accordingly has many of the same glaring deficiencies.

Hopefully, the mess of Q4 won't knock Raven off its perch and will serve as incentive for Raven to expand its horizons dramatically and get out of the Q3/D3-engine rut the company has fallen into. It's a dead-end street.

In short, I'm thankful that Q4 is so poor a game because hopefully we've seen the last of this mediocre, overhyped game engine. I'm also thankful that, hopefully, game publishers will stand up and take notice that simply affixing a sequal number on an ancient blockbuster game name is absolutely no guarantee of success. Unless the game itself matches the expectations of the title, it's merely a sure-fire formula for market failure.

So this Thanksgiving day I'm thankful for Q4 because I hope it shocks the right people into a realization of just how far off the mark their efforts have become. Game companies need to pay as much attention to compelling stories and player involvement as they do to special effects and loud noises and bright colors. The dismal reality of Q4 just may be the catalyst needed to do it, finally, after so many years of boring repetition.

This comment was edited on Nov 24, 17:18.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Evening Metaverse

Re: IPv6

Nov 19, 2005, 06:42

WaltC

Sincerely, this has to be one of the most poorly written articles I've ever read--to the point of being nearly incoherent. Other than complaining about the workings of economies the author clearly doesn't comprehend beyond a third-grade level, he misses a very important point. Without the billions of $ spent in laying the current hardware infrastructure that supports the WWW, especially broadband access, there'd be no Internet at all--whether IPv6 or otherwise. This was money spent not by governments or programmers, but by private companies. By any measure you want to talk about, private companies have done so much more than governments to create the WWW and make it accessible to the masses that there cannot be any rational comparison in my view. The most significant contribution governments have made to the WWW is that they've more or less left it unregulated and untaxed so that private companies could create and expand it.

As far as China goes, considering that government's position on basic human rights in general, such as free speech, for instance, I think it will be a long time before the Internet sees major growth there--at least, as something besides a propaganda organ for the Chinese government, that is.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Best Buy's Pre-pwned Program

81.

Re: Marc Rein = Music Industry

Oct 2, 2005, 11:30

WaltC

Businesses soley exist to make profit. If Best Buy didn't think they would make lots of money doing this, they wouldn't do it. The publisher DOES lose out, because the person that comes in to buy a used copy instead of new doesn't give them any money.

OK--that's just dandy--but tell me, is Epic and/or Atari any less of a for-profit "business" than Best Buy? I don't see any difference at all, frankly. As I said, if I buy a game for $50 from Best Buy's and I give it to my son when I'm done with it--the game publisher doesn't make any money then, does he? Or, if I go to the library and check out a book instead of buying it then the book publisher loses potential profit, too, doesn't he?

Your analysis, like the RIAA analysis, is missing a key component fact, and that is that my son might never have had the game if he had to buy it because he didn't care that much about it in the first place, and although I might check out a certain book from the library I might only do so because it's free as the book didn't interest me enough to go out and buy it. And, despite the fact that public libraries abound nationally and millions of people swap and trade computer games daily, many book publishers and game publishers are thriving, are they not?

The fact is that if someone obtains a copy of a work via fair use that does not mean he'd have bought it given no other opportunity to obtain it. People find they can live quite well without all kinds of things--especially things they don't want enough to buy in the first place, right?

Likewise with Best Buy, if you think about it. Obviously there are many people who won't run out and buy a game at $50, but who might very well buy the game at $25-$30. Why should Best Buy miss out on these sales opportunities just because the game publishers choose to forego them?

The remedy for Epic and its publishers is right in front of them: if Epic and its publishers cut the prices they charge their resellers in half, for instance, then they'll sell many more games and strike a vicious blow against both piracy and the used-game market at the same time.

I really think it's funny to hear Mark passively "threaten" to go to a Steam-like sales approach...;) The fact is that whether a game is sold online or whether it is sold in a box in a store it will only bring what the market will bear and no more. All this talk about $40-$50 MSRPs being the "lifeblood" of the games industry is garbage and self-defeating. It is thinking that stems from 15 years ago at a time when the game market was at least 100x smaller than it is today. Today, what is keeping the game publishers afloat is *customers* and it's a sure thing that the higher you keep your MSRP's the fewer customers you will have.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Best Buy's Pre-pwned Program

78.

Re: Marc Rein = Music Industry

Oct 2, 2005, 10:42

WaltC

I go out and buy Unreal Tourney 2007 for 50 bucks, I go home I install it, put all the crap back in the box and go back to the store to trade it in/sell it. The retailer, in this case EBGames, puts it right back on the shelf for 10 bucks less. Rinse and repeat as many times as you want. Eventually the game will loose value due to the brand new version's price being dropped.

There are so many blind spots in this idea that I don't know where to begin, but I'll take a shot...;)

The retailer first buys the games from the game publisher for a certain amount per copy--let's say $25 just as an example. If he sells the game for $50 his gross profit is $25. OK, so what happens if his customer comes back with the game later and the retailer buys it back for $25? Answer: the retailer just lost all of the profit he originally made when he sold the game the first time. The game publisher, otoh, has lost nothing, since he was already paid for the copy the retailer sold before the retailer sold it the first time. The game publisher gets paid before the game ever sits on the retailer's shelf.

Now, as it is a used copy of the game that the retailer now owns, the retailer of course cannot sell it for $50 again, but must reduce the price because the game is used. This time, however, the retailer has $50 invested in the copy of the game--the $25 he originally paid the game publisher when he bought it for retail and the $25 he paid out to his customer to buy the game back! So at this point our "greedy" retailer has a total of $50 invested in a game which he cannot sell for $50, so right away he's losing money, isn't he?

Of course, that means that our hypothetical retailer is not going to offer previous customers anything like 1/2 of the original purchase price in a buy-back. Instead, it's likely that our retailer will offer customers only pennies on the dollar for a buy-back of the original game, and that in itself greatly reduces the number of people who will be willing to part with their games in this manner. If he buys the copy of the game back for, say, $10, then he's reduced his original profit to $15 versus the $25 he made by selling it new for $50 the first time. But the customer is only going to recoup 20% of his original purchase price, and he may not wish to sell it back for that amount, especially if it is a good or classic game.

So, if the retailer then successfully sells the used game for $35 then his gross profit on the resale would be $25 and would be added to his original gross profit of $15 on the new sale, which would then drive his total *gross* profit on the sale of the same copy of the game to $40. This is apparently what you object to.

But right here allow me to point out that if instead of selling my copy back to the retailer I elect to give it to my son or daughter, or I swap it in trade or I sell it to a friend, then the game publisher is theoretically losing the same amount of "potential" profit, isn't he? Books, magazines, newspapers, computer games, movies and music CD's are all traded around by people in exactly this fashion on a routine basis, millions of times per day, and it is not deemed a copyright violation nor is it deemed to be "piracy" of any kind. Instead, it is deemed "fair use" of the copyrighted material which the original purchaser of the material is entitled to. If we were to adopt the RIAA way of looking at things then even public institutions as highly esteemed as public libraries would be shuttered and closed because the book publishers are being denied theoretical sales every time someone checks out a book. (Trust me, that isn't going to happen...;))

But this is only the first problem with Mark's stated objections that I see. What happens when a game is released that few people want to buy at any price because it isn't esteemed to be any good? Assuming that the retailer buys those games back, too, it is much less likely they will sell even at a used, reduced price, isn't it? And that will eat into the retailers gross profits, thus reducing the amount of reseller profit hypothesized above. Yet, even for poorly selling games, the publisher gets his cut before the retailer puts it on the shelf for the first time.

This brings us to the last major blind spot I see in Mark's analysis. Mark assumes that his retailers have no expenses such as physical storefronts to buy and maintain, employees to pay, inventory to stock, utilites and taxes to pay, etc. ad infinitum. Mark is speaking as if the retailer has but a single obligation which is to Epic and its publishers. That's what's really wrong with his opinion here. The situation is nowhere near as simple as Mark apparently wishes to see it, and imo it's this kind of wilfull myopia which has the potential for bringing down game developers--moreso than many other factors. Mark doesn't seem to understand that the companies which retail the games they buy from Epic and its publishers are struggling to survive so that Epic will have retail outlets such as Best Buy's in which to sell its games in the first place. The minute game developers see themselves as separate and apart from the retail structure that supports them is the minute they will start getting into real trouble.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Best Buy's Pre-pwned Program

77.

Re: GameStop & EB

Oct 2, 2005, 09:31

WaltC

Different markets, methinks. They may achieve similar sales, but the movie market is significantly larger than the gaming market (gaming PR aside.)

Interesting, though, to hearken back to the days when movies were first released by the film companies on VHS tape. It wasn't unusual to see them priced at > $100 each--it was common, in fact.

Enter the video rental store. $100 per movie was far too much for the majority of people but renting the same movie from a video store for 3-5% of that amount hit a nerve with the movie-going market and the video rental stores took off like rockets. What created the video rental markets in the first place was the price gouging the film studios attempted when the market was young. Had the film companies come out of the chute charging $5-$15 a movie I think there's a real possibility that all of these rental stores would've begun as retail outlets for movies, instead.

By contrast, even though today the quality of DVD movies far exceeds the old VHS copies by about 100%, I can buy brand new movies on DVD for $5-$15 dollars each, and often on the day they are released into the DVD markets.

With this blind allegiance to a $40+ MSRP for computer games, game developers and publishers are setting themselves up for all sorts of things that will happen in the market as it searches for ways to meet the demand for those products at lower price points (and I'm not even talking about software piracy, of course. IMO, game devs and publishers have enshrined the $40+ MSRP to the extent that they are far more concerned with preserving it than they are by piracy. It's obvious that given a choice between greatly reducing piracy and preserving $40+ MSRPs the game companies will take the MSRP every time.)

On the sticker price front, I do think that (PC) games are much more heavily discounted than they have ever been in the past...

Yes...because their markets are so much larger than they were in the past--the game devs are hitting the same MSRP wall that the movie companies hit when the VHS market was young. The larger your market becomes the more downward pressure is placed on the MSRP. If game companies do not themselves respond then the market will find ways around propped-up MSRPs every time. It's just the economic facts of life. Rather than stubbornly cling to the MSRP strategies of the past the game companies need to develop new strategies based on their current and future markets. If they don't then their resellers will.

This comment was edited on Oct 2, 09:38.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Best Buy's Pre-pwned Program

50.

Re: GameStop & EB

Oct 1, 2005, 19:31

WaltC

Yes, but his complaint is that you cannot find "his" games there, just resales (for which he makes nothing).

If that's his complaint (and I don't think it is) then it is just plain wrong. Every Epic game I own I bought at BB's and not a one of them was used previously.

You are joking, right? You think it costs the same to create, say, HL2 or Doom3 as it did to make Wolfenstein 3D or Eye of the Beholder?!?!? Think again. Costs have skyrocketed due to the work required to create these titles.

Of course costs have risen dramatically, just like it isn't unusual for feature films to cost more than $100M dollars to make these days--but I can buy such a film on DVD for $10-$15 right off the shelf at Walmart. We haven't seen the computer game yet that cost $100M to make (or even close to that), but they are still selling for $50 anyway, aren't they?

As well, if you look at the best selling computer games you'll see that none of them cost the buyer $50--many of the best selling games cost just half of that, And that's why they are best sellers, obviously.

I can think of no defense for the $50 computer game. I still pay it, of course, for the games I want, but the upshot is that I buy a lot fewer games than I would if they were half that cost.

No, because a lot of folks want to get the game at a store and not off ebay or some shmuck standing at a flea market. He's saying the deliberate minimizing of the new product shelf space to promote the used (store makes money, he doesn't, for a product he/they created)forces them to raise prices on the new product.

I never said from "some shmuck at a flea market"...Heh...;) I said from "friends and acquaintances" which ought to be both revelatory and self-explanatory. Face it: all BB's is doing is catering to the vast market out there which thinks Epic's games might be worth $25, but are definitely not worth $40-$50, right?

You tell me--what's stopping Epic from catering to those very same people? Nothing, as far as I can see, except this looney idea that computer games *must cost* $40-$50 at retail. That's nuts--as the market decides what a given item is worth--it isn't arbitrary.

It's basic economics: the lower the price the more copies Epic will sell. To say that it isn't OK to sell a game at $50 but it isn't OK to sell the game at less than $40, is just bonkers, imo. With that kind of nutty reasoning the market will find a way to satisfy demand for the product at the lower price points--and that's just exactly what's happening here. It's Epic's fault that they are missing out on that market--not Best Buy's. In fact, retailers like BB are what keep Epic and its publishers in the green in the first place. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

Uh, exactly the opposite.

Not at all...Mark is saying that he thinks $50 is too much for Epic's games but that less than $40 is too little. That makes no sense, since he's already said he wanted to drop the price to $40 to sell more games. OK, so if Epic drops the price to $25, they'll sell a lot more games than they would have at $40, right? So while he's saying $50 is too much he's still sticking at $40 anyway, even though by application of the very logic he used when slashing the price $10 he would sell *even more* copies of Epic's games at a price point lower than $40. But Mark apparently wants to draw the line at $40 when it's apparent that a lot of people are only willing to buy Epic's games if they cost less than $40--which is presumably what the second-hand copies would cost. So, he's drawing a line at $40, it seems to me, rather than being willing to let the market determine the price and make his money by volume--similar to how money is made in the computer hardware business.

No, it is turning into a subscription service, though. They are going to start releasing "periodic" content on a regular basis for online purchase only (IIRC), sounds like a "subscription"-type service to me, if you want to keep playing newer material.

Regardless of what you think it's "turning into," it isn't a subscription service because after you buy the game there are no monthly or recurring fees to pay. None. Complaining that you have to pay for "new content" is idiotic, since if I for instance buy new content for a game in a store in a game-box off the shelf, I have to *pay for it* don't I? Lots of games offer "expansion packs" that you *must* buy at retail to enjoy--so what the heck is the difference? You're being ridiculous. My Steam account has received numerous updates and upgrades to Valve's software and I've *never* had to pay for it. You pay for "new content" whether you download it from the Internet or you buy it in a store. But I'd call neither a "subscription" of any kind.

Yeah, because making money off someone else's products is a real burden, isn't it.

Why don't you ask that of Epic and its publishers, since it is the money paid to them by retail outlets like BB that support them monetarily in the first place.

Don't you know that when you buy a game off the shelf at BB's that *Epic and its publishers have already been paid all they are entitled to by the retailer*? Whatever profit there is in the price you pay for the game off the shelf goes to BB and not to Epic or its publishers anyway because they have already been paid their asking price by the retailer before you buy the game!

If Epic thinks it is losing sales opportunities then this is something Epic needs to take up with its publishers, isn't it? The publishers *sell* to the retailers and *then* you and I buy the game off the shelf.

Mark is just crying in his beer, it seems to me...;)




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Best Buy's Pre-pwned Program

13.

Re: A Comment From Mark Rein

Oct 1, 2005, 07:48

WaltC

Want to respond briefly to a few of Mark R's comments as quoted here:

We pay to drive traffic to these stores, we pay MDF (market development funds), we pay for end-caps, we pay to be in newspaper circulars, we pay to advertise the games and we pay to develop the games in the first place.

For some reason, Mark forgets that "these stores" are paying far more to buy these games from Epic and its publishers than Epic is paying the stores to promote them. Also, he's forgetting that these stores spend millions of dollars of their own money to "drive traffic" so that there will be a lot of people in them to look at Epic's games on the shelf and hopefully to buy them. Mark's comments are very one sided and incomplete in this regard. Chains like BB's do not exist to serve only the needs of game developers and Mark should be able to figure this out.

I don't like paying $50 for a game. I think the real way to grow the market is for the price of games to come DOWN. I personally spearheaded our efforts to work with Atari to sell UT2004 for $10 less than competing games and offer additional discounts to buyers of UT2003. I did that because I thought we could sell more at the lower price.

The market for games today is 100x the size it was just 15 years ago--no exaggeration. Game prices, however, are eerily the same as they were 15 years ago. This suggests to me that game developers for some reason have come to believe that games "should" cost $50 due to some kind of natural law, and this is borne out by Mark's comments about "competing" games, etc.

If Epic wants to lower game prices it is very easily done by lowering their costs to resellers like BB and insisting that the reseller MSRP them at specific, lower price points. Lower game prices are the best defense a game developer has against piracy, as the lower the price the lower the piracy rate per title. Also, Mark forgets about the "bargain bins" in these stores where people already can buy older games for $5-$10. Strange not to hear him object to them as the principle is exactly the same.

Someone in this thread was saying the way to beat this is to price games lower but if you have resales & rentals without compensation, you price games lower, and you fail to grow the market then you go bust. Growing the market would be a win-win situation for everyone.

Uh...what difference does it make if half the people who buy a game at $50 turn around later and swap it or sell it to a friend or acquaintance, or whether BB's buys the games back from those people and resells them? From Epic's point of view the result is exactly the same.

Mark keeps talking positively about "lower prices" because he knows that's the answer--but if you'll read his comments you'll see that all he's really doing is trying to justify the higher price points games enjoy currently.

Last, it's surprising to see that Mark doesn't know that Steam is *not* a subscription service. Rather, it's a delivery vehicle for software. I've had a Steam account for years and have never paid even a single monthly subscription fee...;) But the truth is easy enough to see--Mark's real objection to Steam is that Epic doesn't want to have to pay the kind of overhead costs Valve must pay to make Steam work, and Epic does not want to carry the added in-house workload that a Steam-like distribution network would demand. No, Epic wants resellers like Best Buy to carry the distribution and sales burden instead--but at the same time Mark resents them using common sense in order to increase their own revenues.

This is good to see, however, as I think it denotes the soon demise of the $50 price point for computer games. Mark needs to realize that if game developers don't kill their high prices then the game resellers will kill it for them. And that's about the size of it.

This comment was edited on Oct 1, 18:47.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > etc.

Re: Dead Viet Guy

Sep 25, 2005, 08:30

WaltC

I think the chances are excellent that this is merely part of a government-sponsored propaganda ploy in several dictatorial Asian countries to discredit computer tech in general so that they can be seen as doing something positive when they start censoring, regulating, and ultimately banning Internet access inside their countries. Basically, the Internet and dictatorships do not mix...;)




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

News Comments > Morning Tech Bits

Shimmer this--my foot...;)

Sep 12, 2005, 21:06

WaltC

Odd, I've been running my x800 xt with the 5.8 CATs for weeks now and have never seen the "shimmer" issue mentioned oh-so-briefly and flippantly here.

Indeed, the first mention I saw of the G7x nVidia shimmer issue came not from ATi at all, but rather from an independent web site which also published the nVidia instructions to hardware reviewers not to run benchmarks with the nVidia drivers set to "high quality" because the image quality was too good for mortal man...;) No, nVidia instructed reviewers to benchmark its hardware with its drivers set to "quality"--and that's where the web site picked up the shimmering in the first place. I'm assuming ATi picked up the info from the same place I did--a source outside of ATi to begin with. Kind of sad to see the facts so distorted by this "hardware analysis" site, and I can only hope whatever it is that the site attempts to analyze is analyzed with a lot more depth and clarity than these remarks contain.




It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

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