This is the greatest story, ever.
"But it sure doesn't sound totally crazy either, does it?"
Yes. Why? Because revenue is king.
Yes. Why? Because revenue is king.
How many of the same tournies did they even play in during Super's run? Honest question, it simply can't be that many.
Yeah, his Twitter feed during tournies disagrees with you.
Yes, he's very salty.
It takes a thick skin to comfortably rest on the casual fringe of the fighting game community. I guess I'd care more about the PSN messages I get when I actually beat someone (they just lost and they're insulting me?) if I weren't busy laughing.
When's the last time Wong beat Diago in an SF? And with MadCatz intent on bringing the whole of Asia to our shores, it could be a while before we have an American champ in SFIV:AE.
The same blueprint to destruction is provided in the 10-K annual filing that every publicly-traded company is required to file with the SEC. Reading them makes you realize how dependent our economy is on technology, and to more of a point - on Microsoft.
Let's keep the "stay free" to the fighting game community. No need for the thug-nerd parlance to spill over, thanks.
Thank you, thank you. All sarcasm implied in that one.
At what point in time do games become like other software: where you pay for a perpetual license and term (monthly?) maintenance (if you stop paying maintenance, no more upgrades or support for you, but you can run on the lastest version of the software released when you had maintenance); or, does everyone adopt the subscription model, for every game?
Activision, as your example, may very well be profitable (around 10% of revenue after operating expenses are incurred in FY10, up from ~2% in FY09, and a ~3% loss in FY08). But the majority of developers and publishers, including EA, are not.
If you look a little deeper at EA's 2010 10-K, it's pretty obvious that the problem lies in one of three areas: they aren't generating enough revenue (is there ever 'enough'?), their cost of goods is too high, or their operating expenses are too high.
If we start where you suggest, in order to lower operating expenses, we'll develop games on tighter budgets. R&D is, expectedly, EA's number one operating expense. But that's not really an option, is it? This will assuredly result in games of lesser quality than are being shipped today, and that's eventually going to impact your revenues negatively, which defeats the purpose.
So, what's a possible solution? I think EA is blatantly telegraphing, if not simply stating, its intentions. The more games they can push to digital distribution, the more they control not only that the revenue goes to them, but also that it's at the price at which they want to sell the product. Apply the same rules of supply (which is now infinite) and demand over time(which you can help control with your sales and marketing budget) that the resellers have jobbed you with for the past several years, and you should be in a much better position to drive revenue than you are today.
In addition to driving additional revenues, digital distribution also lowers the cost of goods per unit sold, which helps the bottom line.
But this begs the question: will this drive enough revenue and lower the cost of goods enough to balance EA's books, or will it also necessitate the way that consumers purchase gmaes, altogether? What if games were $X as downloadables, and for the low price of $Y per month, you could subscribe to an "online pass" that provided you the ability to play the game online, get all DLC, and implement bug fixes and patches? Now what if you get discounts for bundling games (ie: EA Sports Collection 2011)?
It's an interesting conversation that's already further under investigation / consideration than either of us have implied, and we did look at the two largest (by revenue) publishers. My argument to that would be that if there's going to be a significant change in the ways that consoles facilitate the distribution of games, it's going to be based upon the desires of EA and Activision, not based upon the forced-change by a hardware manufacturer that also makes some good games (here's looking at you, Sony...).
Activision, as your example, may very well be profitable (around 10% of revenue after operating expenses are incurred in FY10, up from ~2% in FY09, and a ~3% loss in FY08). But the majority of developers and publishers, including EA, are not.
If you look a little deeper at EA's 2010 10-K, it's pretty obvious that the problem lies in one of three areas: they aren't generating enough revenue (is there ever 'enough'?), their cost of goods is too high, or their operating expenses are too high.
If we start where you suggest, in order to lower operating expenses, we'll develop games on tighter budgets. R&D is, expectedly, EA's number one operating expense. But that's not really an option, is it? This will assuredly result in games of lesser quality than are being shipped today, and that's eventually going to impact your revenues negatively, which defeats the purpose.
So, what's a possible solution? I think EA is blatantly telegraphing, if not simply stating, its intentions. The more games they can push to digital distribution, the more they control not only that the revenue goes to them, but also that it's at the price at which they want to sell the product. Apply the same rules of supply (which is now infinite) and demand over time(which you can help control with your sales and marketing budget) that the resellers have jobbed you with for the past several years, and you should be in a much better position to drive revenue than you are today.
In addition to driving additional revenues, digital distribution also lowers the cost of goods per unit sold, which helps the bottom line.
But this begs the question: will this drive enough revenue and lower the cost of goods enough to balance EA's books, or will it also necessitate the way that consumers purchase gmaes, altogether? What if games were $X as downloadables, and for the low price of $Y per month, you could subscribe to an "online pass" that provided you the ability to play the game online, get all DLC, and implement bug fixes and patches? Now what if you get discounts for bundling games (ie: EA Sports Collection 2011)?
It's an interesting conversation that's already further under investigation / consideration than either of us have implied, and we did look at the two largest (by revenue) publishers. My argument to that would be that if there's going to be a significant change in the ways that consoles facilitate the distribution of games, it's going to be based upon the desires of EA and Activision, not based upon the forced-change by a hardware manufacturer that also makes some good games (here's looking at you, Sony...).
If I looked like that, I'd be a raging asshole and force employees to work overtime, as well.
I usually forego the petty comment and take the high road, but that seems to have been covered already, and my emotions are fueling my comments.
**CoughDICKHEADCough**
I usually forego the petty comment and take the high road, but that seems to have been covered already, and my emotions are fueling my comments.
**CoughDICKHEADCough**
A start to the end of this problem is not giving the troll an article on Kotaku. For shame, Bash!
Every troll gets in a one-liner (repeated, probably 3-4 times) and resorts to umad until they conjure up another one-liner.
He didn't want to use mute because he was trolling. The Mom didn't want to use mute due to (perhaps) a lack of knowledge, and a serious case of Northeastern Mom Rage (tm).
Well your English is actually quite awesome, glad we could help you hear the song right next time! :D
They're great, super... hard to call anything in the '90's the Beatles... time will tell.
They're great, super... hard to call anything in the '90's the Beatles... time will tell.
Nope. Love some AIC, my cat's name is Layne. :p
Looking at the rest of his 'work', I fell it's safe to say that this is a mentally and emotionally disturbed human that's incapable of dealing with life in general.
That being said... sure. Ok, ship yourself in a box while playing a game.
That being said... sure. Ok, ship yourself in a box while playing a game.
