EA Outs Battlefield 4, Plans To Charge $70 For New Games 323
Justus writes "Posts at NeoGAF and IGN show that a quickly-removed Origin advertisement for Medal of Honor: Warfighter reveals plans for Battlefield 4 and a new-game cost of $70. With Battlefield 3 DLC promised through 2013 and PC games cheaper than ever with things like the Steam Summer Sale, are gamers ready to buy Battlefield 4 at next-gen pricing?"
No, no no (Score:4, Informative)
Typically Behind-The-Times US of A (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say it's nice to see you finally playing catch-up if it weren't for the fact that it's only going to translate to $150 games here.
Re:Remember when Street Fighter II came out for SN (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument is flawed--$35 of that $70 price was for the media itself because cartridges were expensive little buggers. Today DVD's cost pennies.
Well the thing is (Score:5, Informative)
Sales of games have gone up as well. More people buy them, and marginal cost has gone way, WAY down. Console cartridges had a fairly high marginal cost. Those chips weren't that cheap. DVDs cost next to nothing, a full boxed game costs $1-2 at most to make. Digital distribution is even cheaper, costing only a few cents for a download at most and the cost is borne entirely by the company running the DD service.
Also DD allows for more profit per title. Steam, Impulse, etc take less of a cut than retail. Standard retail markup is usually 100%. So if you want a retailer to sell your product for $60, you have to charge them $30. Just the kind of margins required to make money with all the costs of retail. DD charges less, Steam doesn't reveal their specifics but it is more around a 30/70 split (70% to you) than the 50/50 of retail.
Of course if the DD happens to be owned by the company then all they pay is the cost to host and transfer it to customers (usually they outsource that to someone like Akamai) which as I said is only a few cents.
So really it seems to make sense that maybe games should be costing less. Yes the product cost is higher, but distribution costs are very low and of course we all know from ECON 200 that lower prices equal more sales.
The question is all one of value for the money. If they want $70 for their game and other companies will sell them on sale on Steam for $20, then maybe they don't get many people paying $70.
Re:Remember when Street Fighter II came out for SN (Score:5, Informative)
Remember when Street Fighter II came out for SNES? It was $70 at Target. That was almost 20 years ago.
A large part of that $70 price tag was actual manufacturing costs. Street Fighter II was the first 16MBit SNES game, and producing ROM cartridges that large was not cheap at the time.
Re:uBI and aCTIVision do it too (Score:2, Informative)
I, for one, probably won't be. Battlefield is getting worse.
-BF3 has, in general, meh maps. Flags are clustered in the center rather than spread out. Map design compromises for multiple game types make them mediocre for Conquest AND Rush. So, there might be lots of space, but no reason to be there.
-Login/usage issues with Origin and Battlelog.
-Taclights I could light my whole house with.The blinding factor would be tolerable, if it only did that in dark environments. But even in bright daylight, its just as blinding.
-Being able to fire through cover as long as your hairline is above it. Meaning the shooter is visually all but unexposed, usually including the muzzle flash.
-No squad voice comm. You must do this either by Battlelog party or third party software. I do so love stopping to type to my random pub squadmates.
-Oh, and the love from EA/DICE: if you were one of the pre-order crew, thanks for supporting us! We'll show you consideration by making you pay for Back to Karkand like everybody else when you buy Premium. If you -bought- Back to Karkand.. bahahahahhahaha, we love you even more.
On less egregious notes:
-"decline revive" does not solve the issue of derpfibrilation. Fixing that would require something more like a short (~2 second?) timer during which you can accept a revive. If you accept, then you revive. Cannot extend revivability past your normal respawn timer. If you do not accept, you respawn as normal and no points are awarded to the medic.
-Jumping should not be a part of faster infantry movement.
-Vaulting still not great. Windows that you can vault.. on to. And then you have to crouch walk to get through. Really, DICE? Other objects that look like you should be able to vault, but it just jumps and won't let you over. Awesome.
-Randomly get "caught" on nothing, making you let go of the movement key and hit it again to move.
-Wonky hit detection declaring headshots that don't look like they hit the head. Other shots not being declared headshots, despite the blood spray from.. the head.