This week’s episode is full of computer roleplaying game goodness, as well as some of the disbelief of a Nintendo-owned Harry Potter franchise. All that and Civilization VI and Turok excitement to boot.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
Concord got canceled after only two weeks, Balatro hits the iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play on September 26, EVE players are in revolt over CCP’s blockchain plans and a year after outraging developers, blowing up its reputation, and saying goodbye to its CEO, Unity decides ‘Runtime Fees’ are a bad idea so it’s getting rid of them.
Oh, and the PS5 Pro is $700.
And it’s Friday the 13th.
Other news includes:
Let us know what you think.
The post Episode 732: Let’s Play Balatro first appeared on Gaming Podcast.
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Gaming Podcast’s Jonah Falcon and Shack News’ T.J. Denzer do a totally-not-ripping-off-Zero-Punctuation’s-Let’s-Drown-Out video of the former playing Gears Tactics as they discuss some of the news of the day.
UK developer David Braben from Frontier Developments believes smaller development studios are in the worse position when it comes to re-sale of “pre-owned” video games. Since a developer only gets their cut of the profits when a game is sold new, pre-owned titles allow gamers to play games without paying the developer for the effort.
This also hurts larger publishers, but they’re able to recover because of the sheer volume of games and game titles. One idea David had, was to code each game with a unique license key like a PC game that gamers must enter before playing. This would kill the ability to re-sell video games back to the market for others to buy at a cheaper price (translation: better value).
The future shows a higher degree of downloadable games, which cannot be re-used or sold back to the market, but for now, developers have to deal with pre-owned video games cutting into their profit. Presumably you could have a great game with smaller sales and a high degree of resale in the pre-owned market.
Problem with this take on development? Besides large scale video game sellers like GameStop making 80% profit margins on resold games (rather than a 10-15% on new), gamers want a way to make back some of their money on expensive titles. When you’re paying $60 for a game and you beat it in a week or two, you want to resell it so you can invest in a future title.
My theory… make games more affordable so we don’t feel gouged on the price. We may decide to hold on to it longer and tell our friends about it. A good game reference and a reasonable price will increase sales every time. Don’t try to solve pre-owned problems when the problem is the publisher and the industry making huge game prices.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
