Personally I suspect a lot of games (particularly ones not attached to an on-going series or well known IP) would make more money if they were sold at £20 from day one. But by the time they reach that impulse friendly price point, any editorial coverage and advertising they might once have had is long since gone, and it's probably almost impossible to find a new copy of the game in most retail stores (or if they do have any, it's one copy hidden away on a shelf at the back of the shop). While franchise blockbusters like CoD and long tail Nintendo fare like Mario Kart that's constantly advertised for years after release can command a premium price for a long time, most games (even a lot of major releases) drop to under £20 within a few months of release. Last edit by Terence Gage on 12th September 2011 12:44pmġ) As Guillaume says, new game prices are too high in most cases. I also think a different pricing structure needs to be considered by publishers and retailers while big budget games with millions of marketing dollars like Deus Ex 3 or Gears 3 will sell well at £40, lower-calibre releases like El Shaddai probably won't.Īlso, as a closing thought, I wonder how many of those 1 million 'used' sales might have been rentals?Įdited 1 times. I do like Fondaumiere's comments though, and particularly the fact he's talking about the tough economy and different pricing as opposed to Online Pass-style initiatives (even though I think I'm broadly in favour of them these days).
To be fair, two playthroughs could end up very differently depending whether you succeeded in certain sections and what characters lived or died, so I think there was a good amount of replay value considering it was a linear story-driven game. "I think QD's problem was also helped by the fact that it's a linear, story-driven adventure, that totally loses value after the first playthrough"
#HEAVY RAIN GAME FOR SALE FULL#
The full interview with Guillaume de Fondaumiere, where he also discusses the developer/publisher relationship, why self-publishing is "idealistic" and why videogame ratings need a radical rethink, can be read here.
He continued: "Now are games too expensive? I've always said that games are probably too expensive so there's probably a right level here to find, and we need to discuss this altogether and try to find a way to I would say reconcile consumer expectations, retail expectations but also the expectations of the publisher and the developers to make this business a worthwhile business." So I don't think that in the long run this is a good thing for retail distribution either." And we'll all, one say to the other, simply go online and to direct distribution. "Because when developers and publishers alike are going to see that they can't make a living out of producing games that are sold through retail channels, because of second hand gaming, they will simply stop making these games. Because we're basically all shooting ourselves in the foot here. "Well I'm not so sure this is the right approach and I think that developers and certainly publishers and distributors should sit together and try to find a way to address this. "Now I know the arguments, you know, without second hand gaming people will buy probably less games because they buy certain games full price, and then they trade them in," said de Fondaumiere. While he sympathises with the consumer who is faced with expensive titles, he also said that the simple problem is that developers will stop making games if they can't recoup a profit, which harms all areas of the ecosystem in the long term. And my calculation is, as Quantic Dream, I lost between €5 and €10 million worth of royalties because of second hand gaming." On my small level it's a million people playing my game without giving me one cent. "I can take just one example of Heavy Rain - we basically sold to date approximately two million units, we know from the trophy system that probably more than three million people bought this game and played it.
And I think this is one of the number one problems right now in the industry," he told in an exclusive interview. "I would say that the impact that the recession had, especially on AAA games on console, was the rise of second hand gaming. The second hand sales were fuelled by the last recession, said co-founder Guillaume de Fondaumiere, where high games prices forced consumers to seek out cheaper deals in the overpriced AAA market. Quantic Dream believes that the company lost between €5 and €10 million of royalties due to the second hand sales of influential PlayStation 3 title Heavy Rain.