Half Of PC Gamers Wait For Sales To Buy

Command and Conquer 4 killed pre-orders for me. I was a huge C&C fan and when they announced C&C 4 they automatically had my money. Even more foolishly, I didn't read into the game at all because I didn't want to wreck any of the surprises once I had the game. I learned my lesson.
 
Games have simply gotten too expense to justify a at-launch purchase, added to the fact that many games are often released unfinished or with many features cut out of the game and sold as DLC.

It makes far more economical sense to wait until they are fixed, cheaper, and in their entirety via buying the GOLD versions.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Of course they're stifling revenues... but they're doing so mostly for AAA title companies, for smaller indie developers they're a god send, while yeah they're not getting as much but they're selling to so many more that it's not funny.
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Most AAA titles are reminiscent of the mistakes from the gaming idustry from the 70's in that everyone is too busy trying to copy each others success. This is what created the great gaming crash before Nintendo came around and fixed it.

GRAPHICS GRAPHICS GRAPHICS!

Every ones too busy trying to make visuals more appealing that they forgot what made a game fun. Indie developers with low budgets have to work mostly around game mechanics over GRAPHICS!
That said, maybe PC users have been burned too many times by day 1 purchases? Maybe we don't need to have the game this fucking second because we have a back log of other games never played?
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PC users are also dealing with an over saturated market. You do have a lot of choices for games today. Unlike the PS4 and Xbone where your choices are limited and suck, the PC has nearly unlimited backwards compatibility. A bigger market makes for great competition.

#1 You can buy older games like Mass Effect or Fallout 3. Sure most of us have played those games but most people don't have the time to play every great game that appears. The games by now are so cheap that why would you even think about spending $60 on the latest game that doesn't assure it to be a good game? How sad is it that that a $6 game which has gained a reputation over the years is more likely to be a good game than one that just came out in stores for $60?

#2 Retro games are making a comeback. Apparently people realized that games from the 80's and 90's were also good. Who would have thought? And of course those games are dirt cheap as well, even the remastered editions. Like before, why buy a $60 game when $6 games from the past are praised to be good?

#3 Indie games galore! Finding a good indie game is like finding a good car sales man, but when you find one it's cheap fun. Logging into Steam is just a mountain of Indie games.
 
Heck yeah. I've paid full retail for a game twice, maybe three times. One was star wars: jedi academy, the other was starcraft 2. There are some indie projects I might consider supporting at full price if I really like the game, but in general? Why pay 60+ for a game that will drop in price two-three months later?
 
Borderlands 2 - $60
Mechromancer - $10
DLC Campaign 1 - $10
DLC Campaign 2 - $10
Creature Slaughterdome - $5
DLC Campaign 3 - $10
Vault Hunter Upgrade - $5
Psycho - $10
DLC Campaign 4 - $10
Vault Hunter Upgrade 2 - $5
Headhunter 1- $3
Headhunter 2 - $3
Headhunter 3 - $3
Headhunter 4 - $3
Headhunter 5 - $3

Total Price? $150

Or . . . wait for the Game of the Year Edition. On sale now for $40.
 
This is no surprise, but the console kiddies are the bread and butter of the gaming industry anyway. They pre-order games for bull shit weapons or Armour and play the game for a couple of days, then sell it at gamestop for a quarter of the price. This is why most games basically suck if they are cross platform. Most PC gamers have higher standards when it comes to games and have been burned way to many times to pay full price, let alone pre-order. Most games today are made for console kiddies with ADD, no substance just eye candy and achievements designed around a social media facebook like status. Sad, very sad.
 
I didn't see anyone mention that this didn't take into account that more games are now being purchased now and never even played. People have libraries full of games that never see the light of day because they're all on sale in packages and people think "I'll get to it one day!' So they could be making MORE money than ever before because of impulse buys which are now affordable!
 
I'm surprised they did go on to say the other 50% are pirating the games. I guess that excuse does no carry the sensational weight it used to.

That being said, I agree with most others that if publishers/devs etc want us to start paying full price they need to stop release half finished games and missing content as DLC's two weeks later. Short of a couple of kickstarters/crowdfunded games the only game I have paid full price for in recent history is The Witcher 3, because frankly CD Project Red deserve to have the game paid for at full price.
 
I barely play AAA games anymore, the only reason they end up in my library is because of some big sale, free promo or DRM free bundle.

Most of what I spend on gaming now is on Indie stuff, and I imagine for them this is actually a positive, and of course the gamers; AAA houses not so much. I say a major net positive.

And yeah burned many times by AAA games making wild claims and not coming through, I don't pre-order by policy.

The only game I pre-ordered in the last few years was Binding of Isaac Rebirth, an indie game. It was only because I know the work of the indie dev team behind it quite well, I know how much pride and care they have in their babies, helps that there's no publisher twisting their arms into releasing half-baked products.

I say the AAAs brought this lack of trust in their brands upon themselves, the same happening in movies, lotsa crap on big screen this year and they wonder why their current sales are down.
 
oh and screw DLCs, one of the big reasons I don't buy AAAs much, and when I do it's only the GOTY edition stuff on big discount.
 
m heisty said:
It's a catch-22 gamers don't pay full price because developers release buggy shit games.
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Can you blame them?
Would you pay full price for a car that breaks down every 5 minutes, stalling any time you hit the breaks and then takes 30-45 seconds cranking on the ignition before it will start again?
m heisty said:
But developers release buggy shit games because they don't have the money to fix them.
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I'm sorry, fix them? Fix what? You can't fix it if it's not broken! If they gave more than 2 fucks they would CREATE a WORKING game. This whole mentality that an AAA gaming company can't afford to test a game in-house (bullshit! bullshit! bullshit!) and the only way the game will EVER get created is if they blackmail your emotions for the sake of $$$ in their pockets with paid alpha/beta testing just needs to STOP ALREADY!!!
m heisty said:
So one side has to budge and from the looks of the last 5 years or so the games aren't getting better.
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I agree, one side needs to budge, and by the looks of it, I don't think it will be the gamers. Gamers are waking up and voting with their wallets (OMG wtf capitalism?)
The more the Studios try to pull this bullshit, the more I foresee gamers waiting for sales/humble bundles/etc.
 
I agree that less needs to be spent on marketing and more on QA. Unfortunately the pre-order and console culture shows that more marketing spending on creating hype results in more money returned initially than a quality product. Share holders and investors want to see a quick return, and creating hype gives that to them. These analysts need to realize that PC gamers are older, smarter, and more experienced than the average console or casual gamer. We hold developers to a higher standard.
 
steam has spoiled me. these days I tend to only buy something if it is like $5. Or some cases i will splurge for a $10 game if it contains all the dlc. I have such a huge backlog I can afford to wait for those prices.
 
illli said:
steam has spoiled me. these days I tend to only buy something if it is like $5. Or some cases i will splurge for a $10 game if it contains all the dlc. I have such a huge backlog I can afford to wait for those prices.
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Same. Every couple weeks or month I look through and add stuff to my wishlist, then Steam will be nice enough to email me when it goes on sale and I can decide if it fits my game $ budget right in my inbox(which is about $10). Newegg works same way but they seem to actually customize sales and coupon codes per user's wishlist. The only other place I buy games is used off the forums cheap or amazon, which will almost always beat steam non-sale prices anyway.

A side benefit of the game sale thing, is it keeps me a year or two behind on games, which keeps my hardware cheap and still performing very well. It's a win win.
 
Armenius said:
I agree that less needs to be spent on marketing and more on QA. Unfortunately the pre-order and console culture shows that more marketing spending on creating hype results in more money returned initially than a quality product. Share holders and investors want to see a quick return, and creating hype gives that to them. These analysts need to realize that PC gamers are older, smarter, and more experienced than the average console or casual gamer. We have unrealistic expectations of developers and when they aren't met by the slightest issue we send them death threats.
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FIFY
 
I apply the same logic with most purchases. Even at grocery stores. I typically don't buy stuff at list price.
 
Oh and if they didn't market and get the sales volumes up they would have to charge you MORE in order to cover the high development costs associated with the wide variety of hard ware out there.

What you ask them to do is impossible and then you ask for it for free.

Focus of graphics and system crushing details. GAME TOO SHORT AND SHITTY STORY.

Focus on gameplay, story, and hit a good percentage of hardware. GAME DOESN'T CRUSH MY EIGHT GRAPHICS CARDS SETUP ZMOGG!!!

If I was in business I wouldn't touch the PC market.
 
As long as PC gamers with their $2000 gaming rigs continue to pirate or not will to pay full prices for games, PC games will continue to be a second thought for developers and publishers.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
As long as PC gamers with their $2000 gaming rigs continue to pirate or not will to pay full prices for games, PC games will continue to be a second thought for developers and publishers.
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Well, as long as developers keep putting out buggy, shitty console ports then PC gamers will continue to pirate or not pay full price for games. :p
 
MavericK96 said:
Well, as long as developers keep putting out buggy, shitty console ports then PC gamers will continue to pirate or not pay full price for games. :p
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In addition, there are plenty of examples of awesome PC titles (Witcher series, Skyrim, etc.) where people have paid full price because the game was worth it. So I don't really think it's gamers that need to change so much as developers. Fact of the matter is, they don't care about PC because they can force people to pay full price with console games.
 
I payed full price for Shogun Total War 2 and Civ 5, but everything else I get, I get on sale. With steam sales, I'll sometimes buy a 4-pack on good multiplayer games like Borderlands 2. Another factor is that some games I have (Dota, Civ, etc) can occupy hundreds of hours of time and are still interesting, so there isn't a pressing need for new games.

I will very likely pre-order the new Alpha Centauri game though as I've always been a fan of the series (Civ 1 was the first game I bought for my first pc - a 25mhz 486).
 
So? Waiting for sales is called being smart with your money. I buy things on sale all the time (real sales, not the double the price and then 50% off type of sales). I usually stock up on consumables when things are cheap too. I don't see why shopping for games is different from shopping for anything else. Value per $ is king. The less money I spend = the more money I can invest to put to work making even more money.
 
jpm100 said:
Really? Most of those sales are digital. Costs nothing. What they lose in price per unit they make up in volume. Just about every PC oriented 'gamer' here likely has a backlog and not a tiny one either. There was a period when this first started, I couldn't resist a sale because before then game prices would stay way too high for a long time. There are some games I've bought that I'll never play.
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How do you come to the conclusion that a digital sale doesn't cost any overhead?

Bandwidth is not free, not even for game distributors. Someone has to load things up, someone has to host it and be paid for it. I think it's a pretty stupid comment to say this.

"Just about every PC oriented 'gamer' here likely has a backlog and not a tiny one either."
I think your wrong, I don't have a single thing you could call a backlog. Every game I buy I have played and still play or a shelved it. But I don't have anything I bought and never installed and gave a try. Just because you do it and maybe some others do it, that don't mean everyone is that .... wasteful.
 
By Ashbringer;
#3 Indie games galore! Finding a good indie game is like finding a good car sales man, but when you find one it's cheap fun. Logging into Steam is just a mountain of Indie games.
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I'm sorry, they might be ok for you, but to me they all look like trash. I log into steam and I am amazed at all the stuff that just looks like garbage to me. When I look there I am looking for a main stream title that's heavily discounted but even when I do bite I wind up dumping it in about a week if not sooner.

I play World of Tanks almost exclusively. It's free to download, free to play although spending some cash helps quite a bit so I do. And I don't mind either if it keeps them turning out the content and fixing the problems and they do do both. I have been on that one for over two years now and still going strong.

The only other one I am even giving time at the moment is Defiance but that's because when I am tired of Team Oriented PvP sometimes I need a little alone time, just me and a good gun with a lot of bad guys to smoke.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
As long as PC gamers with their $2000 gaming rigs continue to pirate or not will to pay full prices for games, PC games will continue to be a second thought for developers and publishers.
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Hmm, me thinks you got it completely fucking backwards.

First, it's developers that drive those expensive rigs. Take Blizzard, the purposefully keep the overhead on their specs low so anyone can run their titles on almost anything.

Then look at titles that were known more as a benchmark then a good game, Crysis anyone?

It's not the customer's fault, the developers put themselves into this pickle. Oddly enough much of this falls back into Blizzard's lap too. WoW was so huge and profitable that developers were seriously working to try and steal that crown and the treasure chest that comes with it.

But those devs need investors and investors don't want to lose money and they don't want to wait either so they push the dev and the publisher and they cut their own legs out from under themselves cause they just can't wait to make their money. Face it, in their eyes the same money they put behind a game title could have been sitting behind a tech company, a Fortune 500, or Pork Bellies. They only care about bringing gamers a great game if it puts great profit in their pockets and profit can come from many sources.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
As long as PC gamers with their $2000 gaming rigs continue to pirate or not will to pay full prices for games, PC games will continue to be a second thought for developers and publishers.
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Translation: Publishers released a crap overhyped game full of bling that everyone hated that didnt sell so it must be piracy.
 
lcpiper said:
Hmm, me thinks you got it completely fucking backwards.

First, it's developers that drive those expensive rigs. Take Blizzard, the purposefully keep the overhead on their specs low so anyone can run their titles on almost anything.

Then look at titles that were known more as a benchmark then a good game, Crysis anyone?

It's not the customer's fault, the developers put themselves into this pickle. Oddly enough much of this falls back into Blizzard's lap too. WoW was so huge and profitable that developers were seriously working to try and steal that crown and the treasure chest that comes with it.

But those devs need investors and investors don't want to lose money and they don't want to wait either so they push the dev and the publisher and they cut their own legs out from under themselves cause they just can't wait to make their money. Face it, in their eyes the same money they put behind a game title could have been sitting behind a tech company, a Fortune 500, or Pork Bellies. They only care about bringing gamers a great game if it puts great profit in their pockets and profit can come from many sources.
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The expensive rig comment was meant to be ironic. They have the cash to spend on building/upgrading their monster PC but they are not willing to pay a full price for a game.
 
Tak Ne said:
Translation: Publishers released a crap overhyped game full of bling that everyone hated that didnt sell so it must be piracy.
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Yea well, you have to have something to take to the investors or you'll get fired and sued for losses incurred by mismanagement. etc ... you don't want to try and read the legal document.

Face it, that's what this new movement is about, getting people to pay for games that are not even in a true Alpha state. It lessens risk. You get to see what's happening as you go along. Personally I deplore the practice and think gamers are again letting developers get away with murder, pay me know for something that I might finish tomorrow, if I am still making enough cash off it. It will really surprise me if any of them ever reach an actual finished state.
 
Apart from a small collection of games (The Witcher series) who provide DLC for free, if there is any to provide. I wait for a game that looks interesting to hit the sales, especially if it has a crap ton of DLC they want you to buy, or it's included in the GOTYE that might be on sale.

I did the same thing with Mass Effect 2 Deluxe edition (through Amazon, EA wanted $35 at the time), bought it for $8, bought the rest of the DLC afterwards, and essentially didn't break $40.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
The expensive rig comment was meant to be ironic. They have the cash to spend on building/upgrading their monster PC but they are not willing to pay a full price for a game.
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I love this sort of mentality cause I get it all the time with my Corvette. You'd be surprised how much the PC gaming industry and sports car industry share a lot of practices. You got that kind of money for a Vette then you an afford to do this and that with the car. That's not the way I work. I set a goal and I try to reach that goal as cheaply as possible. Even though the car literally shares a lot of the same parts as many other Chevy cars, but for the Corvette it gets a special tax known as the Corvette tax.

The same can be said about gaming PCs. Soon as you add the word "GAMING" to anything the price suddenly doubles or triples even though the results do not. I'm the kind of person who likes to build powerful PCs but only to reach a goal. I want it to perform this fast, which might result me in spending $700-$800. I have no interest in overpriced Intel CPUs with SLI/CROSSFIRE graphic cards that cost $500 each.

How much do I spend on games? Not very much. The most expensive game I've had was WoW and I quit that game. I spent $30 on DarkSouls 2 this year and that's about it. Most of my games I play are not new like Skyrim and Borderlands 2. Even then I bought those games for a few bucks on sale. Cause no matter what there's always a game I'd rather be playing then whatever new releases they have. New games are too risky and I'd rather others take the time to try out these new games then for me to spend $60 for crap. Was really looking forward to the new Thief game until the reviews came in and it was crap.

Why can I afford a monster PC? Because I'm not wasting money on overpriced crap games. It's called being fiscally responsible with your money.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
The expensive rig comment was meant to be ironic. They have the cash to spend on building/upgrading their monster PC but they are not willing to pay a full price for a game.
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So many things wrong with that mentality (not saying you have it since you said it "ironically", but still)

1) If you spent $2000 on a PC, who says you have $60 to spend on every game? Assumption of regular income is a fallacy.

2) Why would I pay $60 for a game I can finish in only 4-5 hours? That is NOT a good $/hr investment.
 
boomboy2k1 said:
The expensive rig comment was meant to be ironic. They have the cash to spend on building/upgrading their monster PC but they are not willing to pay a full price for a game.
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Fuck irony, try reality, they have more money to spend on games if the damn Devs didn't jerk the code to drive the system requirements up just to push hardware sales.
 
lcpiper said:
Fuck irony, try reality, they have more money to spend on games if the damn Devs didn't jerk the code to drive the system requirements up just to push hardware sales.
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I'm not sure there's anything deliberately malicious going on in terms of "bad coding", I think it's more of a laziness issue where it's cheaper/easier to just do a direct console port and fuck it if it runs like shit on a high-end PC.
 
I do, I am pretty damn sure of it. Malicious is probably a bad word for it tho, corrupted greed would be more like it. Oh, you thought they were sincere when they said "Runs best on NVIDIA" in the splash scene credits sequence? Or where the game code was doctored to run better on one manufacturer's card then on the other. Benchmark apps built into the game have what purpose for the gamer/consumer?

I'll tell you what I remember, I remember thinking my laptop's video card was getting weak and then I loaded , Quake 4 if I remember correctly, and it ran sooo fast. Wow it was smooth as silk. I was running jumping, shooting, that game ran unbelievable and as far as I was concerned the graphics were great. So then I am thinking why does all this other stuff run like shit?
 
It really seems stupid to me for ANYONE to pay out the full retail they charge at a games first release.
Especially the state things are in today, where promise so much and deliver so little. You are NOT getting your money's worth, you are just the first kid on your block.
So I find this is more of a kid mentality. "I'm the first".

Personally being a father of a 9 year year old I go to great lengths to combat the pressure his little friends exert to "be cool".
One is a game console, like an xbox or playstation. He has a PC that blows all of them out of the water. On that level it is a win-win. He plays many of the same games and pays a few bux when they are paying $40-$50 for he same title for a console.

Last Christmas we got him a Asus NotePad 7 tablet. For the money this (cheap) tablet ROCKS! He has an N64 emulator on his PC he likes to play Mario Kart and Zelda on and asked me how to get these for the tablet. I explained to him what an emulator was and how it worked. His eyes got big and asked about Nintendo DS games. (all his buddies have DS handhelds)
YES, you can emulate those.
So he plays his favorite N64 and NDS games on a cheap tablet and next to no cost. (the NDS EMU for Android was like $5.00) That is a gaming -win-win-win-.

IT is TOO FUNNY to see him his friends, they have their NDS, and he busts out his tablet, with the exact same game on a larger screen, running just as fast. And his friends are saying "Whooa dude!! How did you do that?"

My son (the technomancer) answers "Yeah, my dad told me how all this works; you have to know the secrets of game technology"

My son is cooler that I ever was as a kid. :D
 
Dr. Righteous said:
It really seems stupid to me for ANYONE to pay out the full retail they charge at a games first release.
Especially the state things are in today, where promise so much and deliver so little. You are NOT getting your money's worth, you are just the first kid on your block.
So I find this is more of a kid mentality. "I'm the first".

Personally being a father of a 9 year year old I go to great lengths to combat the pressure his little friends exert to "be cool".
One is a game console, like an xbox or playstation. He has a PC that blows all of them out of the water. On that level it is a win-win. He plays many of the same games and pays a few bux when they are paying $40-$50 for he same title for a console.

Last Christmas we got him a Asus NotePad 7 tablet. For the money this (cheap) tablet ROCKS! He has an N64 emulator on his PC he likes to play Mario Kart and Zelda on and asked me how to get these for the tablet. I explained to him what an emulator was and how it worked. His eyes got big and asked about Nintendo DS games. (all his buddies have DS handhelds)
YES, you can emulate those.
So he plays his favorite N64 and NDS games on a cheap tablet and next to no cost. (the NDS EMU for Android was like $5.00) That is a gaming -win-win-win-.

IT is TOO FUNNY to see him his friends, they have their NDS, and he busts out his tablet, with the exact same game on a larger screen, running just as fast. And his friends are saying "Whooa dude!! How did you do that?"

My son (the technomancer) answers "Yeah, my dad told me how all this works; you have to know the secrets of game technology"

My son is cooler that I ever was as a kid. :D
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So you are teaching him to pirate to save a few dollars. Awesome.. my kids have ds handhelds a well, I've rarely paid more than $5-$7 for games.. used ds games are awesome and you get to teach your kids the value of money instead of how to pirate.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
used ds games are awesome and you get to teach your kids the value of money instead of how to pirate.
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You can act high and mighty by buying used games instead of pirating them, but in both cases, the developers are still getting $0.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
So you are teaching him to pirate to save a few dollars. Awesome.. my kids have ds handhelds a well, I've rarely paid more than $5-$7 for games.. used ds games are awesome and you get to teach your kids the value of money instead of how to pirate.
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Pirate? The PC games he plays are paid for via steam.
His cousin has a xbox 360 and they played some mech warrior type game together. My sister said that game cost her $45.00. I check on Steam when we got home. Same game available for PC $5.00.
I asked my son if he thought that game was worth $45. He said "No, that is crazy".
I agreed. I asked what he thought it was worth. He said "Uhh, maybe 4 or 5 dollars I guess"
I told him it was available for his PC for $5. He paid for it out of his own "money jar" savings. He has a real idea of the value of these things regardless of cost.
He is nothing like most of my relatives kids and many of his friends that are constantly yelling "gimmie, gimmie, gimmie!" to their parents. He thinks that kind of behavior is shameful.

As far as the EMU roms; gimme a break. Yeah, they call me blackbeard. :rolleyes:

Been playing arcade games on PCs since MAME came out. I still play the MAME ROM for the arcade game Galaga every once in a while. You know how many quarters I pumped into those arcade machines in the 80s?? :D
 
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