RyanB
Legacy of Elijah Guild Leader
Thank you for the clarification on buying games. I may be thinking of sales or something similar, not sure why I had that in my head.
"Second, Steam can only offer that pricing because they spent years being hated for have the MOST STRICT DRM in the market."
I'm not sure how one of these ideas leads to the other. It seems you believe that a company is somehow able to charge less because they'll get so many more sales due to lack of piracy. Let's not forget that by "MOST STRICT DRM" you mean that PC is the easiest system ever for circumventing DRM. It's pretty much impossible to prevent people pirating games that are not online. Even root kitted crap like Spore will have a cracked version available.
Valve offers good pricing because they like money. How often have you heard people talk about their huge Steam library of games that they haven't even played yet? Don't act like easily-circumvented DRM somehow enables this; Valve's pricing does. People also like to collect things and support developers when they feel the developer isn't evil and greedy.
Good will goes a long way. That's why people buy games they aren't even sure they want to play yet - because they feel good about doing so. You act like Steam's stuff is so much worse, and yet even you must admit it is night and day how they are regarded by their customers. Do you think PC gamers are just shills, or maybe Valve is doing something better than MS here?
On service - there are a few things that Live provides than Steam, but this is irrelevant as well. Why would Steam provide voice chat on a computer? Too many VOIPs available. On check-ins, how often are you made to check in when in offline mode? Never.
You seem to be under the impression that it is publisher's goals to charge as little money as possible. That is simply not true. Publishers are there to make as much money as possible, and that is what DRM is for. Only when faced with too much bad PR, like XBox just had, does one back down. Do you think Microsoft was seriously doing this to help the consumers? Come on. It's about maximizing profits, despite a policy that users would obviously hate. Only when their bottom line was threatened did they back down. And that's not really that evil, they are a business.
That's why I like competition. XBox dropped their draconian crap (other than the 1984 camera), and I'd be willing to bet we won't have near-100% failure rate again. It even comes with enhanced AI where fish swim away! And on the other side, it looks like PSN might actually be good this time around, the controller was finally updated, and all for a price less than FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS! All the while Valve is laughing all the way to the bank at $2 a pop.
"Second, Steam can only offer that pricing because they spent years being hated for have the MOST STRICT DRM in the market."
I'm not sure how one of these ideas leads to the other. It seems you believe that a company is somehow able to charge less because they'll get so many more sales due to lack of piracy. Let's not forget that by "MOST STRICT DRM" you mean that PC is the easiest system ever for circumventing DRM. It's pretty much impossible to prevent people pirating games that are not online. Even root kitted crap like Spore will have a cracked version available.
Valve offers good pricing because they like money. How often have you heard people talk about their huge Steam library of games that they haven't even played yet? Don't act like easily-circumvented DRM somehow enables this; Valve's pricing does. People also like to collect things and support developers when they feel the developer isn't evil and greedy.
Good will goes a long way. That's why people buy games they aren't even sure they want to play yet - because they feel good about doing so. You act like Steam's stuff is so much worse, and yet even you must admit it is night and day how they are regarded by their customers. Do you think PC gamers are just shills, or maybe Valve is doing something better than MS here?
On service - there are a few things that Live provides than Steam, but this is irrelevant as well. Why would Steam provide voice chat on a computer? Too many VOIPs available. On check-ins, how often are you made to check in when in offline mode? Never.
You seem to be under the impression that it is publisher's goals to charge as little money as possible. That is simply not true. Publishers are there to make as much money as possible, and that is what DRM is for. Only when faced with too much bad PR, like XBox just had, does one back down. Do you think Microsoft was seriously doing this to help the consumers? Come on. It's about maximizing profits, despite a policy that users would obviously hate. Only when their bottom line was threatened did they back down. And that's not really that evil, they are a business.
That's why I like competition. XBox dropped their draconian crap (other than the 1984 camera), and I'd be willing to bet we won't have near-100% failure rate again. It even comes with enhanced AI where fish swim away! And on the other side, it looks like PSN might actually be good this time around, the controller was finally updated, and all for a price less than FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS! All the while Valve is laughing all the way to the bank at $2 a pop.