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Atrocities said:
Ok let me put it too you this way. I used to pay $40.00 to $50.00 for a game that actually came with a manual. It didn't cost me any thing extra.
Today I still pay between $40.00 and $50.00 dollars for a game but no manual. So now not only do I have to pay full price for the game, I have to pay even more for the paper and the ink to print the game manual???? In todays age publishing a manual is no where near as expensive as it was five or even two years ago. Hell with all the new Xerox and LeXmark copier and printer technology they could mass produce manuals all day and still cost only penies. Whereas the cartrages of ink for my HP printer costs $50.00 dollars each and last only about 250 pages.
No Thanks. That is just greed on the game publishers end pure and simple.
Even more evidence of greed. We used to get nice solid jewel cases for the game disks. Now all we get are paper disk covers. Hum... how much do jewel cases cost? While we pay about $20.00 for 100 of them, they the game publishers pay about $0.6 cents for them.
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And I used to buy comics for $0.25, too
It's called inflation.
The cost of a printed manual would add another $5-$10 to the game. The fact that you still pay
only $40-$50 for a game, 10-20 years later is pretty amazing to me. If you compare the value of the dollar to the price you spent on games 10 years ago, you'd realize you're getting a hell of a lot lower price now than you did then.
The only reason that cost is still low is economies of scale and the fact that publishers don't add any "frills" to the games (like printed manuals). Its not like games cost less to produce now (it's
exponentially the opposite in fact!)
The jewel cases added cost as well, but that's not why pulishers got rid of them. Publishers got rid of the jewel cases because they didn't fit very well in the smaller game boxes (ironically, this was many times because the manuals were too big!) They had to have smaller game boxes because they wanted to sell games at Walmart. Walmart said, a while back, that games must come in standard-sized (small) boxes so that they can fit more on the shelves. And what Walmart wants, Walmart gets because a HUGE portion of the games sold are through Walmart and they have the games industry by the balls.
So, you can blame Walmart for the lack of jewel cases. You can blame people who won't pay $60 for a game instead of $50 for the lack of printed manuals.
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(Small game publishers like Shrapnel are exempt from this. Their profit margins are so small that these costs do end up saving money and are perfectly valid cost control measures. But larger publishers who sell tens of thousands of games can aford the extra $2.06 that it would cost to include a manual along with a protective jewel case for the game.)
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OK, I just meant to a short reply, but it turned into a soapbox rant...oh well.
<soapbox rant>
I'm not sure you understand the realities of the publishing business. Shrapnel makes money because they cater to a small, very dedicated, techno-savvy niche market. They don't have the overhead of retailers and that allows them to make a modest amount of money. Yay for places like Shrapnel!
The larger game publishers spend millions of dollars to produce a game, usually. 1 in 20 (or less) make enough money to break even after the retailers take the lions share of the profits just for the publishers to have the right to sell the game on their shelves.
The larger publishers survive only because that 1 in 20 (or less) game that is a hit has high profitability for them. It's not because they make much per copy, either, but because they sell a LOT of copies (this is also why sequels are so popular - they're considered less risky when they have a proven hit in their past). The profits the publishers make on those hit games and endless sequels are what supports the other 19 (or more) games that lose money.
This is why, to me, still being able to buy a game for $40-$50 is pretty damned amazing. This is also why I will also tend to always buy games online (where the publishers and developers get a larger share of the profits) rather than from retailers because I think that online sales will be what saves the games industry and makes it so that there's still enough profit for people like Aaron to continue making a living making games that we love.
</soapbox rant>
Re: SE:V Manual Released
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