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First Person Shooters (Games)

Epic's Rein On Next-Gen And Secondhand 42

Posted by Zonk from the hard-to-get-a-handle dept.
Computer and Video Games has an interview with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games. He expounds on Epic's role in the next generation of consoles, along with his opinions on the industry in general, and the sales of secondhand games. From the article: "Unreal Tournament, the original, is still our biggest-selling game ever. Because we sell our games now in instalments, no single instalment is going to sell in the same way as a single game across multiple formats. We're really recapturing a lot of the original, with less jumping around - it went a little crazy with the double and triple jumps. It'll be toned down and a little more skill-based."
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Epic's Rein On Next-Gen And Secondhand More

Epic's Rein On Next-Gen And Secondhand

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  • Second hand games royalty? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nb caffeine ( 448698 ) <nbcaffeine@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:00PM (#13624747) Homepage Journal
    Sorry, nope. I don't agree with the prices ebgames charges for used games (save $5! wooo), but theres no way they are going to get kickbacks off of that system. Record companies dont get any money from secondhand album sales. If i sell a videogame to a friend of mine, would I be obliged to send the publisher 10%?

    It seems as he has lost touch with the people BUYING the games. I buy almost all of my games second hand (because they arent worth fullprice, usually). You got your money, let me have my fun

    • The used game "deals" offered by EB Games & other retailers are ridiculous. Sure, game publishers need to make money, so they'll keep making games...

      But it's time for Peergamez. Maybe they can use the same 'currency' as peerflix?

      http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/22 26220&tid=187&tid=17 [slashdot.org]

    • I don't agree with the prices ebgames charges for used games (save $5! wooo)

      Actually I think EBGames uses a "supply/demand" algorithm for determining used game price. The more people ask for it, the more it goes up. If it's a new title everyone wants, you're not going to save much. If it's an old title few people want, it's going to be cheap. If it's an old game everyone wants and no one has, it's going to be even more than retail! (I believe I heard Suikoden 2 would go for $80+ from the guy at t

  • One thing I really like about onslaught is that long range movement is delegated to vehicles. CTF turned into 20 teleporters streaking every which way and that just took the fun out of it. They now have vehicle CTF, but I think it still allows teleporters.

    I know it's Unreal Tournament, and so it doesn't have to be realistic, but teleporters are solving a problem that doesn't exist anymore with vehicles available.
    • play on servers with translocator disabled. it is a built in option for every game type that allows xlocator
    • The problem I see is that if you get stuck without a vehicle you've gotta walk. Thats painfully dull. SO you see players hopping around with X-Locs. Personally, I always thought the X-loc was an annoying feature anyway - the only more annoying feature was the UT sniper rifle. Of course, the constant popularity of CTF-Face (a map for Xloc and sniper and nothing else) meant that I was in the minority.

      Still, I know a lot of UT fans that were disappointed with the newer, complicateder, faster, Quakier UT.

  • Sorry Mark. (Score:4, Informative)

    by larsoncc ( 461660 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:09PM (#13624816) Homepage
    To ask for royalties on used games is perposterous. It's completely contrary to the Doctrine of First Sale.

    Even if by some miracle it wasn't, how do you expect to expand that model? If we sell our game as an individual, we have to make out a tiny little check to Epic? No? Then a small company does? No? Well, where do you draw the line? It's all in a scary realm which trounces on a company's ability to do business, and introduces unfair competition.

    Perhaps they could make the margin proposition more attractive for retailers, encouraging them to slow down or eliminate their used game sales.

    Perhaps they could eliminate support for "used" / transferred games - like MMOs and such already do.

    Or perhaps they could just suck it up and keep their noses out of other peoples' bottom line.

    • Re:Sorry Mark. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 )
      Perhaps they could make the margin proposition more attractive for retailers, encouraging them to slow down or eliminate their used game sales.

      You can say that a few times. The way things work right now (at least in the console area), EB, Gamestop and others couldn't even exist as "game-only" or "game-primary" retailers if they didn't deal in used games. Their profits couldn't possibly cover their overhead, especially when a game just doesn't sell.

      The other thing that tends to be glossed over in the "

      • Your argument is so well-reasoned that I am surprised it was not moderated "-1 Redundant."

        I'd add that as a gamer, you can also take some risk and cut out the resellers from the profit, too - Ebay. I sold a ton of Xbox games through there at much higher prices than EB would be willing to pay for them.

  • They make a big point in the article about hiring. Here's the link to their open positions:

    http://www.epicgames.com/epic_jobs.html [epicgames.com]
    • It's always interesting to see who they're looking to hire and what qualifications they're looking for. It gives you an idea on what they're researching and developing. i.e. They're looking for programmers with multi-threading experience, which kinda tells you where game engine programming is headed.
  • the existence of Unreal Engine 4
    Wow, not even the first paragraph and they screw up. Its Unreal Engine 3, because the UT2k4 engine was not a new version, rather UE2.5. Pretty lame that they lose crediblity so quickly.

    • Re:Someone needs an editor (Score:5, Informative)

      by cyxxon ( 773198 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:41PM (#13625094) Homepage
      You know, and if you had paid some attention, you would have learned that UE4 is indeed in existence, they have already talked about that. Currently only Tim Sweeney doing stuff with it, but it is obviously being worked on for 2 years. And that with UE3 not yet powering any title on the shelves (that I know of). Weird, but true.
    • You need to read the article that was linked to in that sentence. Epic revealed they already have Engine 4 in the works, and have been working on it for the last 2 years parallel to Engine 3.

  • MS to Developers (later): Oops, DVDs are too small (Score:5, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:50PM (#13625179) Homepage

    Unreal Tournament was 6GB compressed. Next Generation games are going to be 20GB plus, and how we're going to fit them on DVD9's I don't know, they'll probably be a few of them. On the PS3, we're going to be using the majority of the space on those Blu-ray disks. So, online isn't really the best option in some instances.

    Downloading 30Gb isn't really feasible. What online could be, is the back-channel to get additional content. Patches and things like that. I think what Valve has done is great. It'll be interesting to see where marketing fits in. Now they're going with EA in the future, the biggest publisher of all. You can't do one without the other, otherwise no-one knows about your game. Unless you have the huge marketing budgets that major retailers have when launching your game, so I think there's still a very important role for retailers.

    That says it right there, doesn't it. MS is going to have a hard time keeping content on discs. People argue whether you need the space between BD-ROM and HD-DVD for video, but I think this is even more important on the video game side. This is one of those things that could become a big problem for MS.

    What about Nintendo? For some reason I don't see it as such a big problem (maybe because they aren't focusing on HD this and HD that), but it could still be a problem.

    As for the used game comment, I don't blame them. There are many times that I would like to buy a game used and have money go to the publisher to support the people who made the game. The problem is that shops like EB would just take that as an excuse to raise the price higher (used games already cost enough). I buy very few games these days because they just cost too much for the risk. I agree with him that the price of a DVD would be an ideal price ($20-$25), but I don't know how they'd achieve that (except making most games smaller, which in many cases might not be so bad :). There is no good system for this right now, but I think moving to a steam/iTunes like model (where you buy the game online and download it for $15 instead of buying a used copy for $15) makes a lot of sense. That would allow people to play older games, but without paying much, and still have the money go to the publisher. Plus these days it would be feasible to have people download PS type games (one or two CDs) here in the US (let it run overnight). It might be a while before you can do that with current and next-gen games due to bandwidth problems.

    • Well, I have to say - are they going to fill up the Blu-Ray discs with actual game CONTENT (i.e. textures/models/maps .. the important stuff) .. or do they want to stick feature-length cutscenes?

      If it's the latter.. then it's no big loss. I have trouble seeing why 9 GB is going to be that big of a problem for this generation of games. Sure, music will probably be the largest assets, but there are nice ways to losslessly compress them.

      There's no news here, in particular.

      • Sure, music will probably be the largest assets, but there are nice ways to losslessly compress them.

        Games already use lossy compressed music. For instance, Dance Dance Revolution Konamix and Katamari Damacy use Sony's VAG codec which is supported by PS1 and PS2 hardware, and Unreal Tournament 2003 and newer use Ogg Vorbis audio. Do you expect publishers to go below the quality of MP3 at 128 kbps on console games? The only music compression that can get really tiny and still be listenable is reorchestra

      • This is Epic we're talking about and the 6GB were without videos. I have no doubt that the 30GB they're talking about will be only game content as well. Lots of highly detailled game content.
        • This actually really bugs me. The massive size of game content means that mods are pretty much undownloadable - In old UT with a well-configged server you could hop on and fetch the files quickly. As files get heavier you take longer to fetch files. Pretty much means that nobody plays on servers with 3rd party content because of the endless waiting.

          The worst part is that most of the downloading is for textures. Textures are, to me, the least important part of the game. Use a friggin low-res JPG for all

    • How much more does a store make on the sale of a used game over a new one? They've still got to purchase the used copy from someone after all.

      I can understand wanting to support the people who made a game, but why should the publisher benefit from a second hand sale? They've provided nothing of value in the transaction. They may have enabled it in the first place by producing the product but they were already compensated for that.

      • How much more? Lots more.

        Retailer margins on new games can't be more than $5 or $10, and some of that is eaten by shipping costs. 50/45 = 11% margin.

        Used games are generally purchased for less than half of what they're resold for - $15 for a game that will be resold at $45. 45/15 = 200% margin, and since it's resold in the same store, none of that is eaten by shipping costs. Even if it's resold online, there's no shipping overhead as the buyer pays it.
    • " but I think moving to a steam/iTunes like model (where you buy the game online and download it for $15 instead of buying a used copy for $15) makes a lot of sense."

      The problem with this model is that while I would trust a company like Apple to do it correctly, I would NOT trust Valve to handle such a distribution system responsibly.

      What I and many other gamers fear is that once Valve gets Steam as the de facto for their games and has most of their player base using it, they will start trying to get all mo

  • It's the Sale Model, Stupid (Score:3, Informative)

    by Castar ( 67188 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @07:16PM (#13626144)
    He has a problem with secondhand games, and I see his point - support and infrastructure costs going to customers who haven't paid the developer.

    On the other hand, though, he's not going to have any luck convincing me or anyone else that we can't resell something we've bought - games, books, music, teddy bears - no one will accept limits on the First Sale doctrine.

    But, there is a way out. An article recently on Gamasutra here [gamasutra.com] talked about how the pricing strategy for games and the entire sales model is based on an old, old way of doing things that's far more suited to cabbages and sealing wax than digital information. If game companies got over the retail model, and instead did interesting things like web-based delivery, episodic content, subscription-based models, and so forth, they would solve the secondhand-games problem and make more money to boot. This becomes more possible as game consoles and even handheld systems gain Internet connectivity.

    Steam (as badly implemented as it is) is a glipse of the future.

    • The support and infrastructure is still going to a copy of the game which the developer profited from. Should the support stop simply because it changes hands?

      Besides, there's probably a few people who would avoid buying games if they knew they weren't going to be able to sell them on again. A shrinking market would probably hurt the developers more.

      Steam probably won't be the way of the future for mainstream releases, not enough people have the bandwidth available. It'd be much more useful for companies

    • He has a problem with secondhand games, and I see his point - support and infrastructure costs going to customers who haven't paid the developer.

      That is a completely bullshit argument. The original buyer paid the developer and then *sold* the game to someone else. So after the sale you again have one customer, not two. Support and infrastructure costs don't change at all due to second hand games, but they probably do increase due to bootlegged games, which are a completely different issue.

      His argument is

      • I think you'd find that their support costs would go up even if that single customer played the game constantly. They would still have problems there. The problem is not that people resell the games, the problem is that their costs have gone up and their revenue has not.

        Now, if their costs go up, they make less money. Developers, generally speaking, don't get rich. So, if their costs go up and there is no added revenue, either there will be less developers, or less development companies.

        Arguments about

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