Spending on Blu-ray Disc software was up 91% in the first half of 2009 to $407 million, according to today's mid-year report from DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group (www.degonline.org).
That's even more notable in the context of the overall market for packaged media, which was down 3.9% to $9.73 billion, and a whopping 13.5% in the sellthrough category alone. Those numbers would have been much worse had it not been for Blu-ray, which saw a 62% increase in rentals, driving that category up 8.3% overall.
Also propping up the numbers was a 21% increase in digital distribution to $968 million, including $196 million for electronic sellthrough.
Microtransactions have gotten ridiculously overpriced in recent years, with titles now offering cosmetic skins worth more than some games.
The elephant in the room tho is personal accountability. It’s easy (albeit basic) to blame the big, bad corpo, but microtransactions wouldn’t be where they are if gamers didn’t spend money on them. As it stands the MTs usually make more than the game. Publishers know raising game prices will cause backlash, so they do MTs to compensate. But the adult conversation is consumers determine the success of products with their wallets. So if MTs are a huge thing, it’s because we as consumers told them we like them by giving them a lot of money for them. So if you don’t want them to be a thing, convince your fellow gamers to stop buying them and expect that games will be decently more expensive. You all can disagree all you want, but reality is a bitch, and eventually you have to live in it.
Trying to convince people is the least realistic thing. If we are trying to be adults, actual action is what changes things not "convincing campaigns" on platforms owned by the people 'you' are going against. It's madness and idealistic.
There never was, the only time I paid for a microtransaction was on Blacklight Retribution (PS4) and it was because I enjoyed the game a lot so I felt the devs should get something for all that entertainment (€5 "membership")
The devs wouldn’t get that though, that shit goes straight to the higher ups who do f*** all let’s be honest.
Probably, but I wasn't as cynical back then and €5 wasn't a big ask to get the guns with grinding instead of renting them, and the game was good (still is on the PS5/4)
I couldn’t believe what Blizzard charged for horse armor and cosmetics in Diablo 4…
I remember back in the day when a season pass was $15 and you got everything included in it. Now, I see them at $60 and you still don’t get everything.
As soon as gaming wasn't deemed nerdy anymore, and reached the casuals this happened. We're smart, but casuals play mobile games and other stuff, and don't really have anything to compare. They think gaming is supposed to be like this and pay for in game purchases.
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“I thoroughly enjoy retro-style games and with that, Magic Orbz modernises the classic brick breaking formula and it has held up beautifully.” - A.J. Maciejewski from Video Chums.
I love blu-ray movies, the picture quality is immense.
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You tell 'em Nature Boy.
BLU-RAY IS DOOMED LOOK AT THE SALES FIGUR... oh wait... quickly bash Sony on something else... PS3 is Doo.. oh wait that's doing surprisingly well... PSP is doo... well actually it sold 50 million units. Sony is doing rather well? Let's hope Sony release something new so we can bash it before it comes out and we've used it in order to have a negative effect on sales and claim it's doomed.
I'm just waiting for the retail value to drop a bit before starting a collection =/