"Earlier this week, darkzero was able to obtain an exclusive interview with the CEO of Ouya, Julie Uhrman. We see the Ouya as a system with quite a bit of potential, and Julie's comments about the system reveal that not only is her company aiming to revolutionize the market, she wants to challenge the established hierarchy of gaming. Yes, that means you, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft."
From systems that could keep your beer cool, to oddities trying to get in on the popularity of VHS and laserdisc, you’ve got some very, very weird video game consoles out there.
I had the LaserActive... it was a nice collectors piece but not very practical. Especially when it came to needing recapping. I think i paid all of about $50 for the floor model from an incredible Universe back in the day. I ended up selling it many years later for $300 at the time due to it needing a new laser and the aforementioned recapping.
An honorable mention not on the list would be the VM Labs Nuon. It basically looked like any regular DVD player but it had ports on it for controllers to play specific games. one of which is still exclusive to it with Tempest 3000. It also offered nuon enhanced DVD movies with extra content not accessible by regular players.
Epic Games winning its cases against both Apple and Google is shaping the way forward for the future of mobile gaming.
I feel alot of mobile gamers are kids which will at some point probably turn to console or pc. Mobile gaming just doesn't cut it for me.
tru dat, but i feel like it's gonna be a lot more viable for people who travel a lot or don't want to invest in a full gaming rig. Think of it as a Switch on drugs, with a LOT more room for free illegal downloads.
from eXputer "These multi-billion-dollar cases mean more savings for both devs and consumers. Public reactions to these lawsuits have been mixed, with some in favor/against the points being made"
They lost one, won one, and are about to go do sony. Yeah, Yeah, so where is the win part for gamers? This is about industry dividend regulation and enforcement, and has nothing to do with gamers (Studios will take a larger cut before you get a discount). The win and gratitude should be diplayed by the creators/publishers; way, WAY before the cosumers or a game jurno. Good Grief. Most of this is correct, but who it is really aimed at is misleading in its inclusivity as some kind of shoe-in for future savings/discounts for gamers.
The argument is pretty easy for why it's a win for the consumer
More competition often equals reduced prices for consumers which is not the case here since Sony established the price point for the whole industry due to the price parity clause.
Here's an easy example of what could happen if it went through.
MS wants to acquire more market share and decided to reduce the 30% cut to 20% for publishers willing to reduce their price by 5%.
Sony would have to follow suit
or feel that their consumers would be okay with paying more for a Playstation product (like often the case for Nintendo).
Right now this scenario can't work because the publisher would have to offer the same price on Playstation despite them still paying 30% due to the price parity clause So there's no pressure for MS to reduce their 30% cut.
Now you're just arguing for the biggest corporations model. Not everyone can afford to follow that model. Some rely on game sales not subs.
@Mkis007
I fail to see what my comment has to do with sales versus subscriptions.
In my example, MS reduces their 30% cut (the same one Sony charges) to 20% because they want ppl to buy Xbox instead of publisher.
MS gives the 10% reduction to publishers who will reduce their Xbox price by 5% (so consumers pay less and publishers still make 5% more profit on a sale.
We already know from real life that Activision had a deal with MS to reduce their 30% platform fee to 20% for Call of Duty. That did not result in lower prices for Xbox gamers. It only mean a wider profit margin for Activision. In addition, it did not result in Sony having to follow suit and lower its platforming fees. Activision still wins because paying 10% more to triple your sales is a win. Here, the actual end users (gamers) are not made better or worse just because companies are negotiating platforming fees. In fact the only way for competition to reach the consumer is for Activision to offer its game cheaper on the platform it pays less for... which it obviously doesn't (you know because its actually the PUBLISHER who sets the price). Ubisoft already cut the price of Avatar. Games are constantly on sale on PSN without being on sale on Xbox and vice versa.
There are some potential arguments to make but you don't make any of them and you conflate corporate welfare with consumer advocacy. In a real world example, it turns out Sony does not have the power to force Microsoft to charge a higher platforming fee. You made it up. Or you were lied to and you didn't do your own research. You have a real concern over competition but misrepresented it in your example and made us all worse off.
Xbox would be more likely to cannibalize sales for subscriptions. Especially if it would get rid of the competition who does not have the ability to play with fire.
@eonjay
Of course Activision would not reduce the price on Xbox due to price parity clause.
Meaning that if Activision would reduce the price on Xbox ( because it’s cheaper to produce) they would have an obligation to match the price on PlayStation ( despite costing more).
https://www.ign.com/article...
a win for consumers 🤣 … you lost me at reduced prices but read a bit more and the cut fee to publisher doesn't benefit consumers on anything at all dont kid yourself!
@peterbloodyonion
What i fail to see is how can MS console exclusive have the same price as sony exclusive? If you say MS reduces the cut at least do it in their console exclusive first so we can actually see that they actually do it, not wishful thinking because of parity. More competition is good? yeah i agree but not all because MS is the one who indroduced pay to play online and the others follow it. As long i dont see any price reduce in games i dont see any benefit in consumers period..
@pete
I read that IGN article you linked, and nowhere does it mention “price parity,” console cut, or anything of the sort. Just a clause in the Sony contract not to make the RE Village game worse on PS. Stop making shit up.
The case is against monopolies.
When you have a monopoly, companies can charge as much as they want knowing they have no competition.
If you are able to buy PlayStation games from places other than the PS Store, then Sony will lower their prices to make people continue to buy games from their store.
It's not rocket science
Simce when do digital cards get markdowns. To this day the card for breath of the wild is full price.
The vast majority of third-party content is already not exclusive to one platform. Leading a market does not necessarily mean monopolizing it, especially when the content is generally available on several platforms. What is your evidence for monopoly?
I agree we the consumers won’t see half’s penny from this it’s just the developers getting the fair share of their hard work it’s not like all of the sudden we will see digital games prices go down 10% from their already equal to physical games prices.
From a business viewpoint, especially small developers these wins are a good thing. But what I’m curious about is the fallout. How would this affect game prices down the road? Will big corp just pass it to the consumer?
Hopefully this will lead to better profits and discounts for the consumer.
I agree with sony should sell digital stuff elsewhere besides psn. I used to get some good deals on Amazon. The amount their being sued for is kind of an issue though. Maybe them selling elsewhere is a win there shouldn't be a dollar figure attached to that. Imo.
This
They should just be told "you have to make digital keys available anywhere".
You can now but I don't think it's official. Eg I bought GOW Rag digital key off CDKeys.
I put in the key, it was legit, it worked, zero issues, but I've noticed the store doesn't register it as a purchased game.
I've played the game, completed the game, but PSN still marks it as a game I can buy.
I think its more game sales would increase. For instance, while you could still buy keys off Amazon for ps3 I bought dead Nation. It was like 10 bucks on psn while it was 3.99 on Amazon. Now it was the same price when it was on sale through psn , but at the time it just wasn't on sale(through psn) when I wanted to buy it. So it's not a decrease in game prices to me its just an increase on the times you can find games on sale at good prices.
That's a win for gamers no matter how you look at it. More chances to find a game you want on sale through different outlets. It's no different then buying physical games through different outlets depending who got the best price =Win
A win for gamers or game publishers? Publishers don’t want to reduce prices. They just want the stores taking a 30% cut on game sales. If you can side load games on PlayStation, you will PlayStation price increase and turn the console into another gaming PC. No thanks.
Publishers don't want to reduce prices because they have to compensate for the 30% commissions. Once commissions get reduced, they will reduce the price they set to compensate for them but keep the game price the same.
An example: a hypothetical game costs $50, $20 extra is put on the price tag to compensate for the commission. With a lower commission rate, the game can continue to be $50, but now you can set the compensation rate to $15 instead of $20.
This way you're making the same amount of profit, but the customer pays less. Hope this makes sense.
ZZZzzzz...
if this fool think that a litle box that's no better than a mid-range cell phone can compete with sony/ms/nintendo, she has another thing coming.
and once the hackers get their hands on it, they're going to ruin it for everyone or do nothing but make s****y emulators for s****y 30-40 year old games.
Day one
yep looking forward to this infinitely more than the next 360/PS3 or Wii. Indy devs are doing fresh interesting stuff - not just making the same AAA game over and over and over again.
Doesn't automatically make it a good idea or something.