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Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time that Peter Moore has been wrong about something.
“We as an industry have to embrace change,” [Moore] explains. “We can’t be music. We cannot be music.
“Because music said, ‘Screw you. You’re going to buy a CD for $16.99, and we’re going to put 14 songs on there, two of which you care about, but you’re going to buy our CD.’ Then Shawn Fanning writes a line of code or two, Napster happens, and the consumers take control. Creating music to sell is no longer a profitable concern. The business model has changed to concerts, corporate concerts, merchandise, things of that nature. Actually selling music is not a way of making money any more, except for a core group.”
The point here is that the model changed for music, and if EA (and the industry as a whole) doesn’t think of new revenue streams quickly, they’ll share the same fate of the product they sell not making them much money. Hence the rise of free-to-play games stuffed with microtransactions, something that’s proved so popular in the mobile sector. He says “core” gamers dislike this practice, but they’re missing the bigger picture.
I think Moore is the one missing the lesson of the music industry, and I’m not sure the situation is even comparable to gaming in the way he wants it to be.
The music industry and the games industry face opposite distribution problems. Music fans disliked the idea that they were forced to buy an entire album, when they’d much rather have the option to purchase individual songs for cheaper. Out of this philosophy (and the fact that CDs were too pricey to begin with) Napster was born. The piracy platform was eventually legalized (and then killed), but that paved the way for the industry-standard iTunes today.
Gamers have opposite problem as the industry continues to grow. Years ago, no one was complaining about their ability to purchase complete games for a set price, and there wasn’t some idea that they wished that they could simply the first three levels of Sonic the Hedgehog for $10, and skip the rest if they wanted. Other than the fact that the overall price may have been a bit too high for some, the issue was not about what was packaged together in that purchase price.
But now that’s exactly the problem.
The industry is breaking up content despite the protests of fans, not because of them. It’s why we see the rise of games that cost $60 plus another $60 or more of DLC, when such a thing wasn’t even thinkable previously. And now this is why there are “free-to-play” games that feel like shells unless you spend $1, $5, $10 a time in order to populate them with more items, characters, content or simply buying the ability to play the game more, skipping arbitrary wait timers inserted to frustrate you into spending more money. It’s as progressive an idea as feeding coins into an arcade machine thirty years ago.
This is the problem “core” gamers have, because it looks like the gaming industry is actually doing the opposite of what the music industry did. Developers and publishers are taking something people wanted as a whole experience, and breaking it into tiny pieces for distribution. A more appropriate comparison would be the TV and music industries, where people are tired of paying for bloated cable packages, and are desperate to subscribe by the channel, or simply purchase/stream individual shows.
I sorely believe that the video game industry needs to experience another 1983-like crash, and the sooner the better, if not necessarily for the same reasons the original crash occurred. Hopefully, if it does happen, the terrible companies like EA will be washed away, and the current crop of indie developers (which actually include a lot of veteran former-AAA developers who simply got fed up with the current AAA-industry bullshit) will rise up to take their place as the de facto standard of how video games are made. Then, we'll have a decade or two of "golden years" before it all mucks up again and becomes in need of yet another crash. ¬_¬
“We as an industry have to embrace change,” [Moore] explains. “We can’t be music. We cannot be music.
“Because music said, ‘Screw you. You’re going to buy a CD for $16.99, and we’re going to put 14 songs on there, two of which you care about, but you’re going to buy our CD.’ Then Shawn Fanning writes a line of code or two, Napster happens, and the consumers take control. Creating music to sell is no longer a profitable concern. The business model has changed to concerts, corporate concerts, merchandise, things of that nature. Actually selling music is not a way of making money any more, except for a core group.”
The point here is that the model changed for music, and if EA (and the industry as a whole) doesn’t think of new revenue streams quickly, they’ll share the same fate of the product they sell not making them much money. Hence the rise of free-to-play games stuffed with microtransactions, something that’s proved so popular in the mobile sector. He says “core” gamers dislike this practice, but they’re missing the bigger picture.
I think Moore is the one missing the lesson of the music industry, and I’m not sure the situation is even comparable to gaming in the way he wants it to be.
The music industry and the games industry face opposite distribution problems. Music fans disliked the idea that they were forced to buy an entire album, when they’d much rather have the option to purchase individual songs for cheaper. Out of this philosophy (and the fact that CDs were too pricey to begin with) Napster was born. The piracy platform was eventually legalized (and then killed), but that paved the way for the industry-standard iTunes today.
Gamers have opposite problem as the industry continues to grow. Years ago, no one was complaining about their ability to purchase complete games for a set price, and there wasn’t some idea that they wished that they could simply the first three levels of Sonic the Hedgehog for $10, and skip the rest if they wanted. Other than the fact that the overall price may have been a bit too high for some, the issue was not about what was packaged together in that purchase price.
But now that’s exactly the problem.
The industry is breaking up content despite the protests of fans, not because of them. It’s why we see the rise of games that cost $60 plus another $60 or more of DLC, when such a thing wasn’t even thinkable previously. And now this is why there are “free-to-play” games that feel like shells unless you spend $1, $5, $10 a time in order to populate them with more items, characters, content or simply buying the ability to play the game more, skipping arbitrary wait timers inserted to frustrate you into spending more money. It’s as progressive an idea as feeding coins into an arcade machine thirty years ago.
This is the problem “core” gamers have, because it looks like the gaming industry is actually doing the opposite of what the music industry did. Developers and publishers are taking something people wanted as a whole experience, and breaking it into tiny pieces for distribution. A more appropriate comparison would be the TV and music industries, where people are tired of paying for bloated cable packages, and are desperate to subscribe by the channel, or simply purchase/stream individual shows.
I sorely believe that the video game industry needs to experience another 1983-like crash, and the sooner the better, if not necessarily for the same reasons the original crash occurred. Hopefully, if it does happen, the terrible companies like EA will be washed away, and the current crop of indie developers (which actually include a lot of veteran former-AAA developers who simply got fed up with the current AAA-industry bullshit) will rise up to take their place as the de facto standard of how video games are made. Then, we'll have a decade or two of "golden years" before it all mucks up again and becomes in need of yet another crash. ¬_¬
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Date: 2014-07-03 05:56 pm (UTC)From:A song in the music industry is comparable to a game in the gaming industry. They cost drastically different amounts but then they each have drastically different costs to create. But essentially one song is a completely independent item unless the song writer deliberately has it flow into a second song - a sequel so to speak. But even then the song should be able to entertain all on it's own.
So what is a CD/album then? It's a compilation of many often unrelated completed works. (This is all the more obvious if you consider the mix albums that had popular songs from multiple artists.
Thus, back in the day, to get a song you wanted, you had no choice but to buy a package of 8-15 songs in a package deal. Each one costing the full amount. This pissed people off and why consumers of music gladly welcomed the change to get individual songs. The industry hated it tho, because they could no longer sell about 70% of their inventory except to the diehard fans that wanted everything from particular bands.
Read that over again substituting song for game, band for dev group.
The game industry would have also been desperate to get things cut down like that if the only way to buy a game you want (Let's say Call of Duty for the popular kiddies :p) was to buy it along with 11 other games such as Civilization V, Gears of War, Mega Man X, Super Mario Bros (first one), River Raid (Yes, that 2600 game), Silpheed, Battlefield, Fatal Frame III, Tetris, Halo 4, and Pokemon Black.
And you had to buy them all together on a single compilation set with no other way to get them, and the total cost of the set was a mere 720 dollars.
That is, the full cost of each game as if they were brand new. Same way CDs of music cost MORE than 1 buck per song (And back in the day, it cost closer to 2-3 bucks per song before digital distribution became it's competition.)
I picked the games in the set on purpose to show the differences between songs on a typical cd. There'd be a song/game you really wanted, a few games that you might be interested in as well... but the rest would be things you really probably don't give a shit about.
Luckily for the game industry. We never had to deal with that situation. We always got our game/song sold individually at launch. The COMPLETE song.
Music fans would have been just as pissed off as many gamers are now if a single song cost a buck to buy. But then if you wanted to hear the awesome guitar solo that'll cost you an extra 30 cents. If you wanted it in high-def (non-compressed for the loudness wars) that'll be another 20 cents. If you wanted the backing vocals added, cough up another 15 cents dude. Also the last 30 seconds of the song are optional unless you buy the premium version of the song from Wal-mart. The HMV version has alternate lyrics.