Current marketing and physical retail distribution methods are "inefficient", says Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, who is "looking forward to" a more profitable all-digital future.
The Supreme Court seems to have given it's final verdict on Epic and Apple's legal battle in the US.
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.
oooo shiiiit
well, there ya go
but i think the biggest issue are the judges in these cases.
most of them have no clue about all them things.
ii wonder what the judge will decide Epic actually "won" or what the out come is.
This is terrible news for consumers, while Epic and others get richer we'll now have to pay more for our devices.
Phil and slimey company sitting up and plotting.... expect to hear how Sony is anti-gamer for refusing to have GamePass on their ecosystems they may very well do this to avoid 2027 . I can imagine his email to Satya...."we got them" lol.
The Epic Game Store has two free titles they are giving away this week.
that statement is inefficient to the terms of reality.
Yeah because i can see an all digital future being more efficient.'What's that? Because of some unforeseen glitch every single one of your games are erased? How am I going to pay you back for the hundreds of gigabytes of data that you collected over the years? We can only give you one third of your data back.Why you ask? Well the rest of it is corrupted and can't be retrieved. Sorry but those are the breaks when you have an all digital system. Well screw you too sir. Goodbye.'
Apparently everyone at epic is delusional.
So I see Gamestop hating them.
It IS inefficient and that's why companies like GAME and HMV are going under. The problem is that nobody is suggesting a better way of handling things. Core gamers are worried about not truly owning any of their stuff if it goes all digital, stores are worried about making a loss on any game that isn't super popular and developers want to have their cake and eat it too (high prices, all for them).
Hitman and Far Cry 3 both dropped to a quarter of their initial price, on consoles, within a little more than 6 weeks. They need to fix that issue first, picking a price that's less likely to fluctuate and more likely to hold.
Secondly, publishers need to realize that if a high street store doesn't stock a niche title, people who want to buy that title will buy it from where it's available. GAME, especially, had a massive influence over this industry in the UK and it was all because losing a big stockist would hit sales. With that hold gone, digital prices will drop, but it'll also mean developers no longer have to fight (or make changes to a game, or announce delays on PC) to have decent space on shelves.
We're a way off on that one yet, but with every passing year things are getting better.
Lastly, and this one could take a while, everybody needs to grow up a little. Developers need to stop treating their fans like they're stupid. The recent Rayman debacle? Yeah, that sort of crap happens every day, big and small, and it's all because the developers know we'll buy the game anyway. They also need to drop a little of the greed. If they can figure a way of dropping prices, rather than increasing them, the industry would be much better for it. DmC would have seen much better sales at half the price, because it's less an initial investment and less reason to justify minor niggles and fan disappointment.
But we, the gamers, need to all grow up as well. I make about 50% of my living writing about video games, and I don't take it nearly as seriously as some of the people on here and on other sites around the net. There's a current trend of games failing to live up to expectation and for the fans to say "well, they should have listened to us."
We need to trust that the people that make the games know what they're doing, and that they know a hell of a lot more than we do. If something isn't the way the fans moaned about wanting it, there's a good reason for that. If Square Enix are making Final Fantasy 13-3, it's because they've looked at the figures and they know they can A/ make it profitable and B/ make it enjoyable for the people that have enjoyed the series.
We then have to admit to ourselves that, yes, some people enjoy things that we don't. We need to admit that the industry is growing and the core gamer from twenty years ago might not be the best person to give an opinion on the way things should be today.
With an acceptance that sometimes things will happen in the industry that don't make sense to us or that don't appeal to us, perhaps we can help make a transition to a new system easier and, ultimately, we'll all benefit.