Why do videogames have such a short shelf life?

[Ack]

Sadly the PC has its own issues. I walked into Best Buy today and saw Bioshock 2 on the 360 for sale at $19.99. I walked to the PC section and found it for $40. Pathetic.

[sabrage]

Sadly the PC has its own issues. I walked into Best Buy today and saw Bioshock 2 on the 360 for sale at $19.99. I walked to the PC section and found it for $40. Pathetic.

Yeah, the thing about PC is it's not really practical/feasible to own physical copies of most of the games. But I've seen Bioshock go as low as $5 on Steam, so you need to decide if that box is really worth it for you (that Big Daddy figurine is one of the few limited edition pack-ins I truly like )

[Zing]

Xbox 360 games are ridiculously cheap. If I were to get into the 360 right now, I could probably pick up 20 top tier games for $100 total at EB. I see games that I thought were AAA titles in the $9.99 bin. I guess it's a repeat of the first Xbox. These same games will be selling for a couple dollars at most by this time next year, and be essentially worthless in two years.

[BoringSupreez]

Xbox 360 games are ridiculously cheap. If I were to get into the 360 right now, I could probably pick up 20 top tier games for $100 total at EB. I see games that I thought were AAA titles in the $9.99 bin. I guess it's a repeat of the first Xbox. These same games will be selling for a couple dollars at most by this time next year, and be essentially worthless in two years.

I happen to love that about Xboxes. It makes it very easy to swoop in at the end of the generation and build up a good collection for a reasonable price.

[J T]

Check out the Steam charts right now. There is an Elder Scrolls sale.

Skyrim is #1 in the top 10 chart for sales, as you would expect.

However, #3 is a $50 collection of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
#8 is Morrowind (GOTY) simply sold by itself for $10
#9 is Oblivion (GOTY) for $12.50

See, if I were a retailer and there was a hot new game like Skyrim, I would want to have all the old Elder Scroll games on my shelf at that time. I don't know why the game industry doesn't do stuff like that outside of the digital distribution world, where it's obviously performing pretty well on Steam to have these old games take place in several of the #10 seller spots for the week.

[Erik_Twice]

I think the entertainment industry and games more than anything suffer from a huge "sitting on a pile of gold" problem. The amount of profitable properties that are left gathering dust because is staggering and I won't even say that distribution methods are a problem because, in the end, the real issue here is pure executive inertia.

Tell me. Why isn't Pac Man being ported into iOS? Or Arkanoid? Or Centipede? There's a lot of money to be made here but game companies don't even notice it. They own classic games with amazing gameplay that blow the competition out of the water and enormous brand recognition and they don't use it. And really, given how iOS games look, you can sell many SNES/Megadrive games here.

Really, Cave is going down the drain and instead of trying to sell their games on Steam or just the rest of the world they would rather stop making shmups and get into crappy shovelware. That's simply bad management here. I mean, they have talked with MAME developers very often about the emulation of their games so they very much know that there's an audience waiting for them.

The amount of good games that can be remade or ported with little to no effort is simply staggering. It's pure money here and it's also money that will made you more money in the long run as your brand naming grows stronger and stronger.

They don't even think their own games are worth it. Releasing a bunch of roms is not how you capture a good market segment, sell each game separatedly and add some extras if it's needed. Really, they would get more money out of reprinting Sonic and Donkey Kong Country on a CD than they do with their new sequels.

And there's nothing we can do about it. It's just sad.

[Zing]

Check out the Steam charts right now. There is an Elder Scrolls sale.

Skyrim is #1 in the top 10 chart for sales, as you would expect.

However, #3 is a $50 collection of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
#8 is Morrowind (GOTY) simply sold by itself for $10
#9 is Oblivion (GOTY) for $12.50

See, if I were a retailer and there was a hot new game like Skyrim, I would want to have all the old Elder Scroll games on my shelf at that time. I don't know why the game industry doesn't do stuff like that outside of the digital distribution world, where it's obviously performing pretty well on Steam to have these old games take place in several of the #10 seller spots for the week.

The people buying these games from Steam are not buying them at retail, and vice-versa. It's conceivable that retail shoppers are not the type who would buy older games, especially when shoppers who would buy the older games are likely already drawn to buying from Steam instead.

Maybe publishers are content with older games being digital-only?

[RCBH928]

Thats easy to figure out why
1)System updates. We have DVD since like '96 I think. But since then we have been gone through 3 system generations and we are on the verge of the 4th this years(N64,GC,Wii,WiiU), and DVD is still around and I guess king of video viewing. I can say same about CD, sure digital is king now, but don't forget u can make any CD into digital music in like less than 5 min. So, imo CDs are even better than DVDs. You have the hard copy and can make the soft copy(dvd's will take like 2hrs for 1 movie) .

2) Videogamers want the latest. A movie will always be a movie and people will watch it unless its from a different era. You can happily buy The Godfather from the 70's and have a good time watching it with friends. You can't have the same feeling buying PACMAN for the atari 2600. Although this can be false if we movie into different era in time, for example a movie from the 50's just might not cut it, or a silent film, which might be an equivalent of an atari 2600 game.

3) People in video games want the latest and greatest, usually the sequels are better than the original games with better graphics, more levels, and extra features. You can compare GTA4 to GTA3 for example or Assassin Creed 2 is better than the 1st. On the opposite, in the movie industry, books, and music too usually original and earlier work is better than sequels. I think Shrek2 was the only movie to make more money than the original. So older titles are better there. In video games, I hardly know any sport title that has an earlier version that is better than the latter. For example, usually Fifa 2012 will always be better than Fifa 2011 and 2011 is better than 2010 and so .

4) I noticed that in movies and books, people just want to watch a good movie or read a good book even if it is from the 1500's. With video games, people just want new and latest , now one will look for a great game from 2006. I understand why they won't do that with earlier systems, for example if it was a game on the n64 because probably the graphics are old etc, but I don't understand it if it s on the current gen. system like 360. Music is in between. A good song will always be a good song, but usually people will pick up the new stuff even if it isn't that great and will leave out better songs just because they are old.

[Curlypaul]

Fair enough with the points about the complications with playing older games on current systems, and the hardware churn in gaming is faster than it is for films and TV, but why do I struggle to walk into a shop and buy a game that is 12 months old?

Sure I can get used ones, but it seems that once the initial batch of a game is sold then thats it - no more new copies shipped to the stores.

I also get what you are saying about sequels generally being better, and therefore negating the need to play the earlier ones. For most gamers, anyway.

I do feel that devs would do better if they released less games and let them sit on the shelf for longer, rather than constantly rushing at us with the next greatest thing.

[RCBH928]

Sadly the PC has its own issues. I walked into Best Buy today and saw Bioshock 2 on the 360 for sale at $19.99. I walked to the PC section and found it for $40. Pathetic.

I thought one of the PC advantages is that PC games are cheaper than consoles ones