@azxcvbnm321 I'm with you 100% on this, if the game justifies a high price tag with excellent content and graphics I have no problem at all paying for it and then paying for DLC, expansion packs etc. I don't exactly have unlimited funds either, I'm usually quite strict with myself for a gaming budget but for a full-on Sims game that has been fully developed? Take my money now!
I try to play the Sims wannabe game, since I was foolish enough to buy it (I do not buy EA games anymore at this time, I even stopped playing DAI and have not bought any dlc).. My mod folder stands at over 4,000 files of CC.. I make unique Sims and homes in that manner, because the traits are absolutely useless and the emotions just blend the same sims in all sims..making them not unique at all. But still as I do this intended on playing the CC loaded Sims and homes.. I can not more than a few minutes. The game lacks even more than the uniqueness of the Sims..shallow as shallow as can be..And I got tired of Oh, my Sim sneezed let's throw a party attitude of the game. Or my loner sim needs social and all the gabbing of a talk show..
I make the characters for my hubby on GTA 5, and she is very unique from over thousands of players.. It isn't about graphics.. it is about an AAA price game that looks like a rip off IMUV or Facebook/mobile game. It is about paying for a quality game that has been torn apart and expecting customers to fill that empty high price shell of a game with dlc and even the dlc is shallow to date..I expect this from mobile/face book/IMUV but those don't charge an AAA price tag...
I play a game now that has quality and I didn't pay an AAA price.. No the character doesn't have a uniqueness to it yet or it may never have it. But it does have a sandbox world, dinos that you can now breed, and a true you rule game. The devs listen to their customers, they care how their game is review.. They want it to succeed.. and they want their players too be happy and enjoy their game (no every customer is not please and there is heated debates, but it never leaves the top 20 best seller list to date most times in the top ten). Not ONCE have I heard them say it is too hard or expensive to do something that was asked by the community. The community wanted to breed their dinosaurs and they gave it to them. I will buy their dlc if they ever do that.. They respect their customers and their views on their product and they give AAA quality and charge less..
I applaud them because they like Rockstar stand out in the money grabbing greed of most AAA companies today. I tell people a lot about them because seriously this should be how games are made for the customers not how much money they can squeeze out for lacking base games released. Gaming should be fun and developers should be at one with their customer base. Has Rockstar messed up or my favorite game I play now? Of course, but they are quick to make it better for customers. Do Rockstar and my favorite company want to make money? Of course they do and they do make money by providing a stand up game that their customers enjoy..
The reason that I don't just buy the Olympus explanation is that it assumes that EA's top are amateurs who don't know anything about marketing or how to sell a product. This explanation assumes that they act in a very incompetent way when it comes to economics, PR and marketing.
It is precisely because of this that the Olympus explanation makes sense. Let's say you already spent 2 years and a good portion of your budget on something not viable. Some companies would just scrap the project, but the top brass at EA probably thought that they could market whatever could be salvaged, though it wouldn't appeal to the old Sims fans. That's why we have such a difference in marketing from previous Sims games and why this new Sims 4 seems targeted for a new crowd. As shallow as it is, EA must have realized that it could only appeal to the mobile gaming type who are used to shortcuts, goal-oriented play, and small worlds.
However this is a bad strategy in the long run as it alienates your hardcore longterm loyal customers and tarnishes EA/Maxis with a bad reputation of producing low quality games. There was a time when Maxis was seen in a better light than EA because of the quality work they had done before. That is all but gone, the Maxis brand is all but worthless, or rather the same as the EA brand.
Maybe it would have made sense if TS4 was a smaller not so important game for EA without any planned expansions. But we all know that this wasn't the case at all. The TS4 basegame was a very important game for EA because if it became too small or unattractive then all the huge number of planned expansions couldn't be expected to sell very well. Therefore I just can't believe that the top of EA would make TS4 basegame into a small game which couldn't be expected to get could sales numbers.
There are two doubtful things in the Olympus theory:
1. Why would EA spend a huge number of millions of dollars and two years of development time on Olympus and then drop it completely? Why didn't they drop the idea much faster or release the game if it was nearly finished?
2. If EA really after two whole years of development saw no way to finish the Olympus game then attempting to make a whole new TS4 basegame in no time for almost no money would be just bad business when high sales numbers were so important for EA.
EA's top doesn't know the details in the game. So they can't evaluate consequences of every small detail. They have to trust the developers in Maxis about such things. But they know that they have to give Maxis the resources which Maxis needs to make a good game possible. This means that they will give Maxis approximately the same resources as they gave Maxis to make the previous Sims games. I am sure that this would also have been the case if Maxis had to start over when a Olympus game was completely cancelled unless Maxis had told EA that most of the content from Olympus could still be used in the new version of TS4. But why would Maxis tell EA that if it wasn't true?
So I don't think that Olympus really took that much time from TS4. Instead I believe that Maxis just used too much time on the new things which fail to impress us as much as Maxis and EA had hoped anyway.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Revenue doesn't include expenses. Producing games can be costly. Profit is what we need to be looking at.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Revenue doesn't include expenses. Producing games can be costly. Profit is what we need to be looking at.
1.5 Billion dollars! I would wager their net profits are going to be just fine.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
You're absolutely right, games are pretty expensive these days as it is. For me, it's more just wishful thinking than anything else because if Sims 5 was announced to be in the works tomorrow, I wouldn't be particularly excited because EA has just done too much damage to their reputation to warrant me ever buying anything from them again without seeing it in action and reading full reviews from customers.
That said, if a bit of healthy competition was to come into the market and that meant a smaller company bringing out a great game with a higher price tag, the price itself wouldn't put me off.
You know, someone working at Maxis confirmed the on line component, but said they scrapped that because the game just was not shaping up the way they liked it -- and that happened before Sim City 2013.
I agree that what EA is doing makes no sense, btw. But it won't be the first time they did something that made no sense. I think it's a combination of things. They didn't complete scrap olympus (they couldn't do that). And in the leaked screenshots, you can see a lot of similarities. The way the game is set up would make sense for an on-line game as well, so they kept a lot of the game design choices.
What I think their biggest mistake is they're underestimating their audience. Also, the RF has expressed some thoughts about animations/abuse that lead to some things being removed/changed.
When DA2 was quasi-announced, most people on the forums didn't believe that that date released could actually be for the next game as everyone there knew that there wouldn't be nearly enough time for development for a complex game. Yet that was what it was (though it got delayed a couple of months). EA was so intent on capitalizing on the popularity of Dragon Age that they seemed to think no matter what crap they shoveled out, people would buy it. And they lost a lot of goodwill doing so. They did learn their lesson, at least in BW.
My point? It wouldn't be the first time that EA totally misunderstood their audience or what made a game successful and made really bad decisions based on that misunderstanding.
You know, someone working at Maxis confirmed the on line component, but said they scrapped that because the game just was not shaping up the way they liked it -- and that happened before Sim City 2013.
I agree that what EA is doing makes no sense, btw. But it won't be the first time they did something that made no sense. I think it's a combination of things. They didn't complete scrap olympus (they couldn't do that). And in the leaked screenshots, you can see a lot of similarities. The way the game is set up would make sense for an on-line game as well, so they kept a lot of the game design choices.
What I think their biggest mistake is they're underestimating their audience. Also, the RF has expressed some thoughts about animations/abuse that lead to some things being removed/changed.
When DA2 was quasi-announced, most people on the forums didn't believe that that date released could actually be for the next game as everyone there knew that there wouldn't be nearly enough time for development for a complex game. Yet that was what it was (though it got delayed a couple of months). EA was so intent on capitalizing on the popularity of Dragon Age that they seemed to think no matter what crap they shoveled out, people would buy it. And they lost a lot of goodwill doing so. They did learn their lesson, at least in BW.
My point? It wouldn't be the first time that EA totally misunderstood their audience or what made a game successful and made really bad decisions based on that misunderstanding.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Agree, and then you have some people defending them on the notion that EA/Maxis not bringing in enough like they can see the spreadsheets or sitting in on the board meeting. IMHO it is the refusal to put up the money and just get what they can get without putting the necessary cash. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the problems with Sims 4 and figure that it will not get beyond the addition of items and really get worthwhile features.
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I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Why you ask?
Because according to themselves They released the game unfinished. They encouraged people to buy by making all sorts of promises they are yet to deliver. They acknowledged this game had issues and they encouraged people to buy by asking for goodwill. They then turned round once people bought to try to make out the people who gave them the benefit of the doubt were unreasonable to expect those improvements they promised.
If they didn't want their long term customers why on earth would they do such a thing to retain them?! Why would they promise things they had no intention of delivering? I think because they expected goodwill to keep coming. They kept hanging hope out-when bad news emerged they would release something, anything, to try to retain that goodwill. They thought we would all continue buying against hope. They thought they could use some funding from the new content to make small improvements to claim they were listening. Then when simmers started saying hang on a minute, where are the improvements before I hand over more money that compromised that plan. So the improvements started to become smaller in scope and took longer. And why 'big jobs' like the toddlers they promised to keep preorders have slipped into excuses why they aren't forthcoming.
Bottom line-TS4 was acknowledged as unfinished. They said so themselves. Going against what Andrew Wilson promised-when he said EA would absolutely not be releasing unfinished games. And despite all the excuses people know the base was unfinished because those in charge admitted it pre release.
Well, depends, actually. If someone is trying to break into a market, they sell cheap. You have to demonstrate value for your product. Also, you have to measure at what price point will maximize your profit. That's usually not the highest price that you can find a buyer for.
Economics is not a hard science, and there's a lot of guesswork involved when it comes to marketing.
I actually tell Simmers to wait until there are 50% sales for the base game. The $60 price tag isn't worth it. I do think $30 is more reasonable of a price for it. I think the price of the EPs and GPs are too much too. SPs I think are priced right. If GT is setting the standard of no more supernatural states in EPs, there is no way I'll be supporting that decision. I like supernaturals and was one of the major reasons why I preferred EPs over the other packs.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Why you ask?
Because according to themselves They released the game unfinished. They encouraged people to buy by making all sorts of promises they are yet to deliver. They acknowledged this game had issues and they encouraged people to buy by asking for goodwill. They then turned round once people bought to try to make out the people who gave them the benefit of the doubt were unreasonable to expect those improvements they promised.
If they didn't want their long term customers why on earth would they do such a thing to retain them?! Why would they promise things they had no intention of delivering? I think because they expected goodwill to keep coming. They kept hanging hope out-when bad news emerged they would release something, anything, to try to retain that goodwill. They thought we would all continue buying against hope. They thought they could use some funding from the new content to make small improvements to claim they were listening. Then when simmers started saying hang on a minute, where are the improvements before I hand over more money that compromised that plan. So the improvements started to become smaller in scope and took longer. And why 'big jobs' like the toddlers they promised to keep preorders have slipped into excuses why they aren't forthcoming.
Bottom line-TS4 was acknowledged as unfinished. They said so themselves. Going against what Andrew Wilson promised-when he said EA would absolutely not be releasing unfinished games. And despite all the excuses people know the base was unfinished because those in charge admitted it pre release.
You and others have had to explain this over and over to same person about charging a AAA price for an unfinished game that does not deserve an AAA title which EA promised to complete. Unfortunately I think is a lost cause trying to explain
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Why you ask?
Because according to themselves They released the game unfinished. They encouraged people to buy by making all sorts of promises they are yet to deliver. They acknowledged this game had issues and they encouraged people to buy by asking for goodwill. They then turned round once people bought to try to make out the people who gave them the benefit of the doubt were unreasonable to expect those improvements they promised.
If they didn't want their long term customers why on earth would they do such a thing to retain them?! Why would they promise things they had no intention of delivering? I think because they expected goodwill to keep coming. They kept hanging hope out-when bad news emerged they would release something, anything, to try to retain that goodwill. They thought we would all continue buying against hope. They thought they could use some funding from the new content to make small improvements to claim they were listening. Then when simmers started saying hang on a minute, where are the improvements before I hand over more money that compromised that plan. So the improvements started to become smaller in scope and took longer. And why 'big jobs' like the toddlers they promised to keep preorders have slipped into excuses why they aren't forthcoming.
Bottom line-TS4 was acknowledged as unfinished. They said so themselves. Going against what Andrew Wilson promised-when he said EA would absolutely not be releasing unfinished games. And despite all the excuses people know the base was unfinished because those in charge admitted it pre release.
You and others have had to explain this over and over to same person about charging a AAA price for an unfinished game that does not deserve an AAA title which EA promised to complete. Unfortunately I think is a lost cause trying to explain
I only gave you an awesome because I know screams can fall on deaf ears.
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Let's use the words quoted in context, please. "EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing."
What you are calling marketing investigations is called surveys in the USA. Everyone does them. The information is used for more than marketing; it creates what is called a demographic database which is sold to other companies for the purpose of marketing a product to the target audience. Could the 'spying software' you are referring to be 'cookies?' or are you considering 'Malware' or 'Spyware' both of which are stopped fast by a good security software.
Let's use the words quoted in context, please. "EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing."
What you are calling marketing investigations is called surveys in the USA. Everyone does them. The information is used for more than marketing; it creates what is called a demographic database which is sold to other companies for the purpose of marketing a product to the target audience. Could the 'spying software' you are referring to be 'cookies?' or are you considering 'Malware' or 'Spyware' both of which are stopped fast by a good security software.
I think that is what annoys me most about the Sims 4 is how tied it is to online servers and Origin. I don't like having the game feel like it is spying on me tracking how many times I woohoo or kill my Sims. I felt like the game was spying on me too much with the Sims 3 and the telemetry is even worst in the Sims 4.
Plus it is like what happens when those servers shut down and Origin is gone? Will Simmers still be able to play the Sims 4? I'm not sure, but the game does feel like it is going to be very short-term at the rate it is going. Basically what we got told is that the Sims 4 will continue to be develop until it doesn't make sense anymore, so the project can be pulled at any time. It seems like a very rocky and unsteady game to me.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Let's use the words quoted in context, please. "EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing."
What you are calling marketing investigations is called surveys in the USA. Everyone does them. The information is used for more than marketing; it creates what is called a demographic database which is sold to other companies for the purpose of marketing a product to the target audience. Could the 'spying software' you are referring to be 'cookies?' or are you considering 'Malware' or 'Spyware' both of which are stopped fast by a good security software.
I think that is what annoys me most about the Sims 4 is how tied it is to online servers and Origin. I don't like having the game feel like it is spying on me tracking how many times I woohoo or kill my Sims. I felt like the game was spying on me too much with the Sims 3 and the telemetry is even worst in the Sims 4.
Plus it is like what happens when those servers shut down and Origin is gone? Will Simmers still be able to play the Sims 4? I'm not sure, but the game does feel like it is going to be very short-term at the rate it is going. Basically what we got told is that the Sims 4 will continue to be develop until it doesn't make sense anymore, so the project can be pulled at any time. It seems like a very rocky and unsteady game to me.
I don't know if it is set up like Sims City 2013 - but when I launch Sims City now I can play it. The only annoying thing is it has a message in the top right corner saying it can't find the servers but will keep trying to connect.
I also would have no problem paying 100 or even 200 for an outstanding 64byte game. It would be totally worth it for a rich base game.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
EA's financial year starts April 1 and ends March 31. We are now in EA's financial year 2016 which began April 1 2015.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
"EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4"
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Why you ask?
Because according to themselves They released the game unfinished. They encouraged people to buy by making all sorts of promises they are yet to deliver. They acknowledged this game had issues and they encouraged people to buy by asking for goodwill. They then turned round once people bought to try to make out the people who gave them the benefit of the doubt were unreasonable to expect those improvements they promised.
If they didn't want their long term customers why on earth would they do such a thing to retain them?! Why would they promise things they had no intention of delivering? I think because they expected goodwill to keep coming. They kept hanging hope out-when bad news emerged they would release something, anything, to try to retain that goodwill. They thought we would all continue buying against hope. They thought they could use some funding from the new content to make small improvements to claim they were listening. Then when simmers started saying hang on a minute, where are the improvements before I hand over more money that compromised that plan. So the improvements started to become smaller in scope and took longer. And why 'big jobs' like the toddlers they promised to keep preorders have slipped into excuses why they aren't forthcoming.
Bottom line-TS4 was acknowledged as unfinished. They said so themselves. Going against what Andrew Wilson promised-when he said EA would absolutely not be releasing unfinished games. And despite all the excuses people know the base was unfinished because those in charge admitted it pre release.
You and others have had to explain this over and over to same person about charging a AAA price for an unfinished game that does not deserve an AAA title which EA promised to complete. Unfortunately I think is a lost cause trying to explain
Yes games should be free to play or even better: We should be paid for playing them
Comments
I make the characters for my hubby on GTA 5, and she is very unique from over thousands of players.. It isn't about graphics.. it is about an AAA price game that looks like a rip off IMUV or Facebook/mobile game. It is about paying for a quality game that has been torn apart and expecting customers to fill that empty high price shell of a game with dlc and even the dlc is shallow to date..I expect this from mobile/face book/IMUV but those don't charge an AAA price tag...
I play a game now that has quality and I didn't pay an AAA price.. No the character doesn't have a uniqueness to it yet or it may never have it. But it does have a sandbox world, dinos that you can now breed, and a true you rule game. The devs listen to their customers, they care how their game is review.. They want it to succeed.. and they want their players too be happy and enjoy their game (no every customer is not please and there is heated debates, but it never leaves the top 20 best seller list to date most times in the top ten). Not ONCE have I heard them say it is too hard or expensive to do something that was asked by the community. The community wanted to breed their dinosaurs and they gave it to them. I will buy their dlc if they ever do that.. They respect their customers and their views on their product and they give AAA quality and charge less..
I applaud them because they like Rockstar stand out in the money grabbing greed of most AAA companies today. I tell people a lot about them because seriously this should be how games are made for the customers not how much money they can squeeze out for lacking base games released. Gaming should be fun and developers should be at one with their customer base. Has Rockstar messed up or my favorite game I play now? Of course, but they are quick to make it better for customers. Do Rockstar and my favorite company want to make money? Of course they do and they do make money by providing a stand up game that their customers enjoy..
There are two doubtful things in the Olympus theory:
1. Why would EA spend a huge number of millions of dollars and two years of development time on Olympus and then drop it completely? Why didn't they drop the idea much faster or release the game if it was nearly finished?
2. If EA really after two whole years of development saw no way to finish the Olympus game then attempting to make a whole new TS4 basegame in no time for almost no money would be just bad business when high sales numbers were so important for EA.
EA's top doesn't know the details in the game. So they can't evaluate consequences of every small detail. They have to trust the developers in Maxis about such things. But they know that they have to give Maxis the resources which Maxis needs to make a good game possible. This means that they will give Maxis approximately the same resources as they gave Maxis to make the previous Sims games. I am sure that this would also have been the case if Maxis had to start over when a Olympus game was completely cancelled unless Maxis had told EA that most of the content from Olympus could still be used in the new version of TS4. But why would Maxis tell EA that if it wasn't true?
So I don't think that Olympus really took that much time from TS4. Instead I believe that Maxis just used too much time on the new things which fail to impress us as much as Maxis and EA had hoped anyway.
I'd have to disagree with these sentiments. Games are plenty expensive these days. If I recall correctly EA's revenue for 2014 was something like 1.5 billion dollars. The idea that these companies just aren't bringing in enough money to justify making quality games is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
So financial year 2015 covered most of 2014 and the start of 2015. EA's revenue was $4.319 billion. But with 8400 employees to pay EA's income of course was much lower. So EA's net income was only $806 million.
But the idea that EA could just use all this money on our favorite games and not care about profit isn't realistic at all because if this was EA's attitude then EA wouldn't exist for very long time. Instead EA would just go bankruptcy or be bought by somebody else just as most other game companies have been.
EA also lost a lot of money under the financial crisis and therefore now only have 8400 employees while they earlier had about 10,500 employees. So about 2000 employees have lost their jobs because EA's economy was in crisis.
If we really could get bigger games by paying a little more then I wouldn't mind doing it. But we can't because game prices depend on the customers' economy. If EA made their games bigger and more expensive then a lot of EA's customers would decide that the games now had become too expensive for them to buy. So sales number would go drastically down. The current prices are calculated to be the optimal for the game companies if they want their income to be maximal. Lower prices wouldn't increase the sales numbers enough to be profitable and higher prices would decrease sales numbers too much to be profitable too.
Revenue doesn't include expenses. Producing games can be costly. Profit is what we need to be looking at.
In the USA, companies charge what ever the market will bare. If we pay $80, gaming companies will charge that much. If sales drop, then the amount the gaming company charges will drop. Most companies have a set profit margin for pricing of products and services. That margin will only go down if the number of sales goes down (that is the company will only reduce their margin requirements.)
Downsizing is not necessarily a financial crisis. Markets change from year to year. Some companies become more efficient and do not need as many employees; others change the business model and release those employees who had jobs in places that are no longer needed.
Along with employees to pay, and the usually debt, EA must also pay out dividends. Stockholders enjoy increases in market values, but they want to see dividends paid out to them when the business is doing well.
1.5 Billion dollars! I would wager their net profits are going to be just fine.
We taught the business students about the difference between total elasticity and no elasticity at all. For some kinds of goods you can raise the price without any significant drop in demands. For other kinds of goods the demands will drop about 100% even if you raise the price by the smallest amount because then people will be able to buy the same product cheaper at a nearby competitor.
So companies should make as precise market investigations as possible to be able to decide the optimal prices for their products. Very small businesses don't always do that. But big companies like EA know how important such market investigations are. So they always do them.
You're absolutely right, games are pretty expensive these days as it is. For me, it's more just wishful thinking than anything else because if Sims 5 was announced to be in the works tomorrow, I wouldn't be particularly excited because EA has just done too much damage to their reputation to warrant me ever buying anything from them again without seeing it in action and reading full reviews from customers.
That said, if a bit of healthy competition was to come into the market and that meant a smaller company bringing out a great game with a higher price tag, the price itself wouldn't put me off.
I agree that what EA is doing makes no sense, btw. But it won't be the first time they did something that made no sense. I think it's a combination of things. They didn't complete scrap olympus (they couldn't do that). And in the leaked screenshots, you can see a lot of similarities. The way the game is set up would make sense for an on-line game as well, so they kept a lot of the game design choices.
What I think their biggest mistake is they're underestimating their audience. Also, the RF has expressed some thoughts about animations/abuse that lead to some things being removed/changed.
When DA2 was quasi-announced, most people on the forums didn't believe that that date released could actually be for the next game as everyone there knew that there wouldn't be nearly enough time for development for a complex game. Yet that was what it was (though it got delayed a couple of months). EA was so intent on capitalizing on the popularity of Dragon Age that they seemed to think no matter what crap they shoveled out, people would buy it. And they lost a lot of goodwill doing so. They did learn their lesson, at least in BW.
My point? It wouldn't be the first time that EA totally misunderstood their audience or what made a game successful and made really bad decisions based on that misunderstanding.
Exactly. Well said @ejoslin
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I disagree. No amount of market research can prepare a producer for the actual response of the consumer. In most parts of the USA, an increase in price of an item does not always equal a reduction in demand. The cost of smart phones is very high even though there are lower-cost options.
Marketing strategy is dependent on economy and culture. Most USA companies know what the base market value of a product is and adjusts it for their region. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is used in the USA as a base margin of profit; however, because income changes from state-to-state or even amongst communities, the MSRP changes. The price is also changed by cost of warehousing. A company with more traffic can charge a lower price because they can purchase or produce in bulk and turn over that bulk rather quickly. A smaller company with less traffic will have to purchase or produce a smaller number or face warehousing costs. EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing.
Maybe. But why should they?
Goods from big professional manufacturers are never priced as low as they theoretical could be unless the company has hard competition from other manufacturers! If you have something you want to sell then maybe you could just give it away for nothing. Or you could sell it for the lowest price people would buy it for. But would you really do that instead of just selling it for the highest price that somebody would pay?
Marketing investigations are done all the time. I am very often contacted by phone from a market investigation company who just want to ask me a few questions about my job, age and which products I use. The types of products they ask about differ depending on which company they are doing the investigation for. There are also all kinds of spying software on webpages who also collect statistics. I am sure that EA uses such things too.
Why you ask?
Because according to themselves They released the game unfinished. They encouraged people to buy by making all sorts of promises they are yet to deliver. They acknowledged this game had issues and they encouraged people to buy by asking for goodwill. They then turned round once people bought to try to make out the people who gave them the benefit of the doubt were unreasonable to expect those improvements they promised.
If they didn't want their long term customers why on earth would they do such a thing to retain them?! Why would they promise things they had no intention of delivering? I think because they expected goodwill to keep coming. They kept hanging hope out-when bad news emerged they would release something, anything, to try to retain that goodwill. They thought we would all continue buying against hope. They thought they could use some funding from the new content to make small improvements to claim they were listening. Then when simmers started saying hang on a minute, where are the improvements before I hand over more money that compromised that plan. So the improvements started to become smaller in scope and took longer. And why 'big jobs' like the toddlers they promised to keep preorders have slipped into excuses why they aren't forthcoming.
Bottom line-TS4 was acknowledged as unfinished. They said so themselves. Going against what Andrew Wilson promised-when he said EA would absolutely not be releasing unfinished games. And despite all the excuses people know the base was unfinished because those in charge admitted it pre release.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Economics is not a hard science, and there's a lot of guesswork involved when it comes to marketing.
You and others have had to explain this over and over to same person about charging a AAA price for an unfinished game that does not deserve an AAA title which EA promised to complete. Unfortunately I think is a lost cause trying to explain
I only gave you an awesome because I know screams can fall on deaf ears.
Let's use the words quoted in context, please. "EA should be able to charge a lower price for the TS4 game because one does not need to warehouse digital copies. However, digital copies comes with the costs of maintaining servers which is the virtual version of warehousing."
What you are calling marketing investigations is called surveys in the USA. Everyone does them. The information is used for more than marketing; it creates what is called a demographic database which is sold to other companies for the purpose of marketing a product to the target audience. Could the 'spying software' you are referring to be 'cookies?' or are you considering 'Malware' or 'Spyware' both of which are stopped fast by a good security software.
Plus it is like what happens when those servers shut down and Origin is gone? Will Simmers still be able to play the Sims 4? I'm not sure, but the game does feel like it is going to be very short-term at the rate it is going. Basically what we got told is that the Sims 4 will continue to be develop until it doesn't make sense anymore, so the project can be pulled at any time. It seems like a very rocky and unsteady game to me.
I don't know if it is set up like Sims City 2013 - but when I launch Sims City now I can play it. The only annoying thing is it has a message in the top right corner saying it can't find the servers but will keep trying to connect.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg