Spring RTS Engine

steam should be a cheaper then retail because only I can play the game (or those I share my username/password with), it's non-transferable and the distribution costs are marginal (server load/bandwidth) compared to packaging and distribution... at some point consumers will realize this and demand it.

SinbadEV wrote:steam should be a cheaper then retail because only I can play the game (or those I share my username/password with), it's non-transferable and the distribution costs are marginal (server load/bandwidth) compared to packaging and distribution... at some point consumers will realize this and demand it.

Maybe another decade or so.

Oh Look... Something Shiny!


Authoring Tools Beta Release
http://www.thinkwithportals.com/blog.php?id=5443&p=1

Regret wrote:

SinbadEV wrote:steam should be a cheaper then retail because only I can play the game (or those I share my username/password with), it's non-transferable and the distribution costs are marginal (server load/bandwidth) compared to packaging and distribution... at some point consumers will realize this and demand it.

Maybe another decade or so.

Steam has real cheap huge % off sales, which you can check for from the comfort of your pc (vs retail).

dizekat wrote:

Regret wrote:

SinbadEV wrote:steam should be a cheaper then retail because only I can play the game (or those I share my username/password with), it's non-transferable and the distribution costs are marginal (server load/bandwidth) compared to packaging and distribution... at some point consumers will realize this and demand it.

Maybe another decade or so.

Steam has real cheap huge % off sales, which you can check for from the comfort of your pc (vs retail).

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love steam sales but from my perspective a digitaly delivered non-transferable game SHOULD already be %75... I shouldn't have to wait for the sale.


Oh, also, I forgot to mention I managed to convince my wife to play co-op with me... we've beaten the first 3 courses in the Hub... it's been quite fun.

Your game is redeployable on as many computers as you have, for the most part. You aren't paying for redistribution rights when you buy a physical copy, and companies would stop you from reselling if they could.

I do agree that you should pay less by default, but then you'd have less drastic sales. I do not think you should pay 75% less by default. As much as I'd like to whinge about the inequities of the gaming industry, it is very expensive to produce and distribute games.

Well, it makes a lot more money to put it out at 10$ and have people who 'want it now' pay $10, then put it at $5 deal and have people who want to pay $5 but not $10 pay $5, then at $2.5 .
Ultimately some amount of money has to be collected to pay for the game development and also to amortize the risk, and the more effective is the money-collection the higher budget the games can afford, or the larger are the risks they can take (being creative with gameplay is a risk).