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Requia wrote:

daedalus-templarius wrote:The only thing about the Wii U that makes me happy is the fact it has hardware to support good 3rd party games now, although from what I've heard the hardware is almost the same as the 360... so unless that controller is just AMAZING, I have no reason to get this new wii console.

Also, 360 controllers are already $60... how much is this monster going to be?

Probably less than 60$. The 60$ controllers on the 360 are to make up for the razorblade model, not because the controllers actually cost that much to make.

You are very optimistic of a low price point for a controller that has an integrated LCD touch-screen. I hope you are correct.

An entire iphone costs a whopping 100$ to manufacture. This is nowhere near that sophisticated.

I'm not sure why you think manufacture cost has anything to do with retail cost, as evidenced by what you've just said.

The concern for the controller costing too much is based on its manufacture cost.

In terms of consoles, the cost to a retailer is often close to the price for the customer. Our store makes on average five dollars from each ipod. In fact we had five stolen by an employee and we won't be able to make up the loss in ipods alone.

Same thing with consoles, the stores make little to no money off of the consoles. The real money comes from controllers, accessories, and games. The average cost to a retailer for a single game is about 15 dollars and those are sold for 60 dollars.

Mark up is huge.

I very much doubt that game markup is accurate. I've sold recently released games for 25$ to gamestop, who turns around and sells them for 55 or so, so they must be paying at least 30$ for the new game, or they'd lose money selling used.


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Digging through some old blog posts by indie game devs, the wholesale cost of a game looks to be 65-75% of the cost of the game. Tis a crap markup, though not as bad as big ticket items tend to be.

Again, console mark up is very little. We make a whole 2-5 dollars off of consoles. As far as videogames the cost to the retailer is about $14 and we sell it for $60 which is why you see sales on games more often than you see consoles for sale. We can discount a game to $30 and still make a profit.

If you want to question it, I work in the electronics which is next to the bike section and we use a system to look at the cost of a bike should a customer want a discount for a floor model, the same can be done for games. The same system also gives us information about warehouse and other store quantities as well as shipment data.

Let's just say I get very bored in electronics and I just look stuff up.

Requia wrote:I very much doubt that game markup is accurate. I've sold recently released games for 25$ to gamestop, who turns around and sells them for 55 or so, so they must be paying at least 30$ for the new game, or they'd lose money selling used.

It is difficult to compare new retail cost to pawn shops and come up with a fair assessment.

Gamestop makes a little less money. They buy for the 14 like most retailers for new ones and they give you 25 to spend 55. They take 30 from you. They also buy games for one dollar and sell them for 14 which is huge profit which helps make up for buying games from customers.

daedalus-templarius wrote:

Requia wrote:

daedalus-templarius wrote:The only thing about the Wii U that makes me happy is the fact it has hardware to support good 3rd party games now, although from what I've heard the hardware is almost the same as the 360... so unless that controller is just AMAZING, I have no reason to get this new wii console.

Also, 360 controllers are already $60... how much is this monster going to be?

Probably less than 60$. The 60$ controllers on the 360 are to make up for the razorblade model, not because the controllers actually cost that much to make.

You are very optimistic of a low price point for a controller that has an integrated LCD touch-screen. I hope you are correct.

Evidently there is full backwards compatibility with the Wiimote. Obviously you'll need the new controller to play certain games, or at least to play them in a certain way, but that's hardly an unprecedented state of affairs.

You can't play Duck Hunt, at least not well, without the light gun.

In any case I think the Wii U looks fantastic if for no other reason than the versatility of the interface. Its like a giant DS.

halonachos wrote:Gamestop makes a little less money. They buy for the 14 like most retailers for new ones and they give you 25 to spend 55. They take 30 from you. They also buy games for one dollar and sell them for 14 which is huge profit which helps make up for buying games from customers.

Where exactly are you getting this 14 number from, cause I can't find *anything* that suggest the numbers are that low for anything but a 20$ game. In fact, everything I can find suggests that its the profit margin, rather than what they pay.


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Ahtman wrote:

Requia wrote:I very much doubt that game markup is accurate. I've sold recently released games for 25$ to gamestop, who turns around and sells them for 55 or so, so they must be paying at least 30$ for the new game, or they'd lose money selling used.

It is difficult to compare new retail cost to pawn shops and come up with a fair assessment.

Gamestop does both, which they wouldn't bother doing at all if they really made 75% of the sale on a new games. For that matter, if 75% of the retail price is really profit, why does Wal-Mart undercut by a whopping 3 cents?

Wal-Mart undercuts prices by 3 cents because they want to seem like a bargain store when that 3 cents is chump change compared to the profit they get from all of the other things they sell; food, clothing, furniture, etc.

I get the number '14' from our inventory program at work. When we look up the SKN number of a certain item it gives us the cost, markup percent, retail price for our store, amount included on an average shipment, whether the shipment is on a boat or on a truck, store inventory for the local area, inventory for the distribution center, sales of that item for a day and for a week, along with how much a store will have by the end of the week if shipments are made.

The cost of the games are often 12-14 dollars and the price is often accepted by all retailers(in fact most stores sell items for the same price). Next time you go bargain shopping for electronics look at the prices at all of the stores and you'll see that if there's no sale all games will be the same price. Game prices vary store by store because of sales, and you'll often get a free game when you buy a console because the store can afford to give away a free game. Its also why games drop in price when they sell so much(look at the greatest hits).

In fact, for our latest asset protection survey we had to look at the loss in cost and the lost in possible sales. The loss in cost was about 2,000,000 nationwide the loss in possible sales was closer to 10,000,000. Mind you it varies game by game because some of them drop down to $15 or $20 when they're stolen.

Wasn't this thread about E3 at one point?

Conversations drift, its human nature.

I saw the E3 live at gametrailers... man... I was really disappointet. they had so much more to show us last year at E3. -.-

Melissia wrote:Wasn't this thread about E3 at one point?

From what I'm getting E3 wasn't as good as it should have been, so in my opinion why bother talk about it.

Just waiting for any DMO stuff at the mo, I assume they won't be having a big fancy presentation, just chatting to folks who come by their booth.

So its more of a case of waiting for news to filter down the chain.

Seen the Halo vids now, and very pleased with both, happy to play through CE again with everything touched up.
However very, very happy with Halo 4 being announced, can't wait to see the interaction of John and Cortanna again on screen. Just the odd stumbling block of a year, plus possible apocalypse to avoid in the meantime.

DMO?

Requia wrote:Gamestop does both, which they wouldn't bother doing at all if they really made 75% of the sale on a new games. For that matter, if 75% of the retail price is really profit, why does Wal-Mart undercut by a whopping 3 cents?

They begrudgingly sell new titles but their money comes from used equipment brought in by desperate gamers. I never said that 75% of retail price was profit so I don't get why you are responding to me with it. Most of Gamestop/EBgames new sales are from pre-orders. They don't like keeping new titles on hand which is why they push pre-orders so much if you are going to buy a new title. If you were a business would you rather sell a new title that will garner you a few dollars in profit or get a kid to sell you a new msrp $60 game for $20 bucks and flip it for $55 dollars? The game developers and publishers have long time hated this practice as it gets people to hold off and buy used. It is one of the reasons they started making more incentives to pre-order games by adding in pre-order only content. It isn't hard to find interviews with developers and producers complaining about the used market, especially that being pushed by pawn shop style chains like Gamestop. If gaming wasn't such an impulse driven, gotta get the nest new hot thing sort of community they probably wouldn't worry to much about carrying new product at all, but you don't want to seem out of touch or not know what they are talking about. We are talking about a community that turned a (actually three) a business trade show into a week long public spectacle to satiate their desire to know what the next new thing is. E3 (or CES or TGS) didn't used to get televised. This isn't a bad thing, it just is what it is.

halonachos wrote:DMO?

Sorry, already used to the acronym, forget its still early in development.

Dark Millenium Online.

Oh! That's a lot better than what I was thinking.

E3 isn't over yet guys

I want to love the Wii U but they're planning not to sell the controller separately and it'll only be packaged with the console. Seems strange to only have one awesome controller while having to use the Wii controllers for the rest of your friends. However Miyamoto said that Nintendo might allow users to bring their own tablet controller to friends houses and/or using their Nintendo 3DS as well. Time will tell but hopefully this doesn't turn out to be Nintendo's Dreamcast of a swan song...

The Space Marine question and answer was nice.

I just want anwsers about pre-order packs... here all we got acces to is the golden chainsaw (the worst of the lot if you ask me) and theres not even a limited edition to be found yet either.

I don't care if I have to pay for it as DLC, I just want acces to all the goodies.

Currently they make me feel a little bit left out :\

1. Mass Effect 3.
2. Space Marine
3. Call of Duty 8
4. Battlefield 3
5. Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm

and then Halo4 pops out.... 0_0
But it will probably be for PS3 and XBOX...
Heretics who pull Halo from PC must be purged!!!

Halo 4 will probably remain 360 exclusive, its a Microsoft IP. If Sony got it then they would have to pay Microsoft but Microsoft would lose exclusiveness of one of its top selling points, so I doubt that they'll even make a deal with Sony.

Not interested in Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, might as well wait for them to make the Protoss campaign and then wait a bit more for all three to be bundled for less. Either that or play the original Starcraft.

Cane wrote:I want to love the Wii U but they're planning not to sell the controller separately and it'll only be packaged with the console.

Clarification is that they have no official position about their sales model, and I can't imagine why it wouldn't be packaged separately given problems with replaceablility.

The Wii U makes me sad and not in the good way.

halonachos wrote:Halo 4 will probably remain 360 exclusive

Yeah, it sucks for us PC players.