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Just for retail vs download. I have the feeling that download should be cheaper. The associated production, storage and shipping costs are greatly in favor of downloads and this efficiency win should be reflected in the prices. Also I do not like this licenses crap - I prefer a medium and no strings attached. But this only as a side remark. Main thing is: download has less production costs and should therefore be cheaper.
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Trilarion: Main thing is: download has less production costs and should therefore be cheaper.
I know bandwidth is cheap but you do have to factor in 'lifetime' downloads to some extent at least. (although with digital retailers that would be the retailers profit margin, not the publishers)
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Trilarion: Just for retail vs download. I have the feeling that download should be cheaper. The associated production, storage and shipping costs are greatly in favor of downloads and this efficiency win should be reflected in the prices. Also I do not like this licenses crap - I prefer a medium and no strings attached. But this only as a side remark. Main thing is: download has less production costs and should therefore be cheaper.
The opposite of that argument is that by making downloads cheaper, they will lose physical sales and therefore lose the money that they already spent on that production. By keeping the prices of download goods equal to physical goods, even if they do lose physical sales, they can still make up some of the difference through the cost savings downloads offer them. If we ever get to the point where physical media truly is dead in gaming (some analysts predict that it will happen very soon), then you will start to see the prices of download goods drop dramatically. A world that is quickly becoming accustomed to only a paying a few dollars for apps on their connected devices is not going to tolerate paying up to $60 for game downloads for very long.
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Trilarion: Some games like assasins creed or others I wouldn't pay more than 10$. For me they feel overpriced here.
Which is exactly why I bought Assassin's Creed and Heroes V during the 50%-off launch sale. To me, they were worth about $10 each.
For some of these games it's offer them at a higher price point or not at all. Physical retail and DD have very different pricing models - especially if retail is selling these games in bargain bins when stores are trying to get rid of excess inventory to make way for new products. At that point especially, DD and retail prices shouldn't be compared.
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SimonG: You have to give GOG credit (or EA) that many of "exclusives", especially from the EA are sold for 6$.
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serpantino: I think that's more to minimize the backlash from lack of extras and expansions more than anything.


People taking issue with those who dislike the price either have too much money to waste or just can't see the long term damage this kind of behaviour will do. I've said from the outset that this shit should have been kept separate and this is one of the big reasons... where do old games end and new games begin? All GoG has done is opened up an opportunity for publishers to continue screwing us over.
I can just about forgive indie (but I won't bother buying any.) but this retail stuff is daft because as many others have said; they're easy enough to find elsewhere and they're easy enough to find a hell of a lot cheaper.

GOG should have made a new site for the newer/indie stuff. The only reason they used gog.com is to use the name and past reputation, but the thing is they're now actively tarnishing their reputation and the name doesn't mean a thing anymore.
That's what I'm worried about myself. They can release all the newer games they want but the reason why I use GOG is for the classic games that have been buried for years and in many cases previously unplayable on newer systems. They are becoming just another online game vendor. What they have to be careful about is somebody coming up behind them in the future (after they have generalized their service some more) and starting another business\site that actually dedicates themselves to "Good Old Games".
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Clownzilla: snip
This arguments about the new price points will be right if:
A) GOG stop releasing good old games that came out before 2005 on max 9.99$
B) GOG transforms in an another Steam

People need to have more faith in GOG. So far they proove us they can make heck of a deals even with sharks like EA & Ubisoft.

For me personally releasing AC 1 here was a great thing - we can see the whole series here. The price point of RCT 3 Platinum is a bit high yes,but yet it is nothing that big - they still sell it cheaper than:
Steam - 29,99€
GamersGate - €17.99

So yes this way we can see games like the last Prince Of Percia,Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory,why not even Elder Scroll series... And I do believe majority of the people will be happy to own that games DRM-free on their shelf.

And yes I'm an optimist and put my trust in TET and the whole GOG team that takes care of us playing great games on a normal prices.
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Roman5: Why on EARTH are RCT3 and Assassin's Creed 20 Dollars? What is this nonsense?

You can get a boxed copy of AC online for like 3-5 Bucks
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StingingVelvet: They are $20 because that is the publisher-set price everywhere for those games. Digital delivery means the publisher controls the price, boxed sales mean discounts from retailers. If this bothers you then you shouldn't use the GOG model at all, you should be fighting to retain boxed copies.
Pretty much, the other option would be for GOG to just not offer those titles. But I'm not sure that's really what anybody here wants.
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StingingVelvet: They are $20 because that is the publisher-set price everywhere for those games. Digital delivery means the publisher controls the price, boxed sales mean discounts from retailers. If this bothers you then you shouldn't use the GOG model at all, you should be fighting to retain boxed copies.
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hedwards: Pretty much, the other option would be for GOG to just not offer those titles. But I'm not sure that's really what anybody here wants.
If you ask half of the people that have issues with the new pricing they will want this games for 2-5$ tops :D
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spinefarm: ...
People need to have more faith in GOG. So far they proove us they can make heck of a deals even with sharks like EA & Ubisoft.
...
It's not really a matter of belief. Our faith simply depends on the actions of GOG. If GOG screws up in the future they screw up. Our good will depends on their negotiating power and efficient organization to get the lowest possible prices to us, the customers. Combined with good service only then they will grow.

Lately there were one or two price points that were a bit too high in my eyes. Also many Indie games are small in content and duration. So I would not price them too high or they might not sell well.

edith: I don't care who sets the price as long as the price is low. And I don't believe people saying the publisher has the only power to set prices. In my experience the prices are still different everywhere. So there must be negotiating power involved. Otherwise Steam couldn't have this great sales. But really, however controls the price, look at the sales numbers and learn.
Post edited May 03, 2012 by Trilarion
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spinefarm: ...
People need to have more faith in GOG. So far they proove us they can make heck of a deals even with sharks like EA & Ubisoft.
...
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Trilarion: It's not really a matter of belief. Our faith simply depends on the actions of GOG. If GOG screws up in the future they screw up. Our good will depends on their negotiating power and efficient organization to get the lowest possible prices to us, the customers. Combined with good service only then they will grow.

Lately there were one or two price points that were a bit too high in my eyes. Also many Indie games are small in content and duration. So I would not price them too high or they might not sell well.

edith: I don't care who sets the price as long as the price is low. And I don't believe people saying the publisher has the only power to set prices. In my experience the prices are still different everywhere. So there must be negotiating power involved. Otherwise Steam couldn't have this great sales. But really, however controls the price, look at the sales numbers and learn.
And for one game everybody is jumping at GOG? They've negotiated the lowest price for RCT3 Platinum on the Digital Market and people are still mad :) Yeah I guess TET was right... sales do screw up gamers :)
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spinefarm: ...
And for one game everybody is jumping at GOG? They've negotiated the lowest price for RCT3 Platinum on the Digital Market and people are still mad :) Yeah I guess TET was right... sales do screw up gamers :)
I am buying mostly during sales, so the normal prices anyway don't reflect the price level I am taking into account when comparing shops.

Also I do not specially mean RCT3 Platinum, for me the culprits are more Assassin's Creed which I would buy for 10$ or even Machinarium which I would buy for 6$.

RCT3 I might not buy at all, because I would prefer RCT2 if I remember correctly.
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Clownzilla: snip
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spinefarm: This arguments about the new price points will be right if:
A) GOG stop releasing good old games that came out before 2005 on max 9.99$
B) GOG transforms in an another Steam

People need to have more faith in GOG. So far they proove us they can make heck of a deals even with sharks like EA & Ubisoft.

For me personally releasing AC 1 here was a great thing - we can see the whole series here. The price point of RCT 3 Platinum is a bit high yes,but yet it is nothing that big - they still sell it cheaper than:
Steam - 29,99€
GamersGate - €17.99

So yes this way we can see games like the last Prince Of Percia,Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory,why not even Elder Scroll series... And I do believe majority of the people will be happy to own that games DRM-free on their shelf.

And yes I'm an optimist and put my trust in TET and the whole GOG team that takes care of us playing great games on a normal prices.
We have a major problem of the unseen possibilities at this point. People need to realize that for every newer game that is released there is an older game that isn't released (or pushed back). GOG is becoming another "everything to everyone" online game provider and not a legendary classic game provider. It's their business so they can do whatever they want but as a customer it's pretty saddening that GOG won't become the classic gaming online source that I wished they would be. If they keep this up there will most likely be some company come up from behind and live up to the expectations that the upset GOGers are looking for.
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Clownzilla: People need to realize that for every newer game that is released there is an older game that isn't released (or pushed back).
What evidence do you have for this?
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Clownzilla: We have a major problem of the unseen possibilities at this point. People need to realize that for every newer game that is released there is an older game that isn't released (or pushed back). GOG is becoming another "everything to everyone" online game provider and not a legendary classic game provider. It's their business so they can do whatever they want but as a customer it's pretty saddening that GOG won't become the classic gaming online source that I wished they would be. If they keep this up there will most likely be some company come up from behind and live up to the expectations that the upset GOGers are looking for.
Actually they are still releasing old games at roughly the same clip - they've simply increased the overall number of releases they do. Before it was only ~2 releases a week. Now it's around 4 releases a week.

BTW I was in favor of creating a sister portal for new/indie games, but let's not get overboard here. GOG is still releasing old games at an impressive rate, but there is a limit to how long they could keep doing that and maintain the quality of releases before scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Now in my opinion they were still a couple of years away from that point - especially factoring in publishers they haven't signed on yet (but they may never be able to for some of these publishers - or in fact this move might help with that if offering new price points and getting a larger audience convinces the holdouts like LucasArts that GOG is worth releasing on). They decided to start releasing newer/indie titles before reaching that point.

Keep in mind, the only truly new games they have released are their sister company CDPR's The Witcher 2 and indie titles. All other games, even at other prices points are several years out of their run and still classify as old-ish by the standards of the industry if not yet classically old.

On top of that, GOG is still adding lots of classic games. I also preferred when that was GOG's sole focus, but let's not exaggerate the effect of the release of new games and recognize that this would have had to happen eventually for GOG to continue to grow their catalog and even survive. They still release legendary classics and they are still the source for obtaining them. Further this move may actually help with that rather than hinder it by giving GOG more recognition in the marketplace and greater negotiating power. Your prognostications seem more based on fear than anything substantial.

I mean lets actually look at the facts, in the 5 weeks they revamped the site and started releasing new games they released:

Thief: Deadly Shadows
Splinter Cell
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Myst V
Ultima 8
Populous: The Beginning
Theme Hospital
Darkstone
Wing Commander 4

That's 9 games, pretty well in line with the 2 games a week release schedule for old games they used to have. So you emphatically cannot claim that they are ignoring the classics.

On top of that they released:

Assassin's Creed
Heroes of Might and Magic V
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum

While at higher price points, these are also older games - in fact 2006 - 2008 in fact which is a range they released games on in the past.

On top of all that, they released a slew of indie games. So if anything, they've sped up the release of oldish games and kept the speed of release of classic games.
Post edited May 03, 2012 by crazy_dave