Faiblesse Des Sens Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 The pre-loading and unlocking process isn't necessarily dependent on retail release dates. Except in this case it is. Thus the comic. They have the game. They just can't play it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P4: Gritty Reboot Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 I get that part of it, but I'm saying that Blizzard, at some point, had to pick an official release date for advertising purposes, for business purposes, or just because they felt like it. May 15 was the day they picked, and they still would have picked a certain day (May 15 or some other time) some time after the game had gone gold. Having a pre-loaded locked copy doesn't mean that they're being held back by retail necessarily, but just by the official green light at Blizzard's discretion. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 But the official greenlight is dictated by the retail release they'd set. There's absolutely nothing Stopping Blizzard hitting the big red button and unlocking the pre-loaded copies now. Other than the arbitrary date. Which retailers are tied to and some digital distribution channels also tie themselves to for needless purposes. Game is done, finished, in boxes, on computers, on servers etc. It works, it runs, just...it doesn't. It's kinda silly. I swear there's been examples of games where the digital release unlocked before retail came out. In fact wasn't it StarCraft II? I know it won't have been a Steamworks game cos they're tied to the arbitary retail launch date too despite the pre-loading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P4: Gritty Reboot Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 I guess what I'm saying is, had Blizzard picked May 9 for the official date and had no retail release, you'd have had the "locked" copy on your hard drive a week or two before that anyway. Even though we always like to have things now, companies have every right to hold back a release until they're ready to deal with customer service, support, server load, etc. In this case, yes, they coordinated the date with a retail release, but that is likely not the only factor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Why not set two release dates? Digital has the advantage of having it the day it's gold. Why hold back digital because of an old way of releasing games? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Even though we always like to have things now, companies have every right to hold back a release until they're ready to deal with customer service, support, server load, etc. Thing is holding out digital release until retail release does the exact opposite of helping with server load and customer support since instead of a rolling release of a million one day and a million more a few days later you have several million all on at once. Which then leads to the stupidity of Diablo 3 having you wait out 40 seconds before you can log in to play your game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted May 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Yeah, there's no good reason why a digital distro game can't just be available to play as soon as (or shortly after) it's finished. This isn't a problem with Diablo 3 specifically, it's a problem with the entire system. Like the comic says, they're making all the cars drive slow so the horses don't feel bad/can still compete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Even though we always like to have things now, companies have every right to hold back a release until they're ready to deal with customer service, support, server load, etc. Thing is holding out digital release until retail release does the exact opposite of helping with server load and customer support since instead of a rolling release of a million one day and a million more a few days later you have several million all on at once. Which then leads to the stupidity of Diablo 3 having you wait out 40 seconds before you can log in to play your game. This is exactly why even if I had the money I would not buy it on day one. I want to warn my friends about this... but it'll break some of their hearts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Well, I think the whole point is fairness among retailers in general. I think from a business standpoint Activision/Blizzard is trying to let every reseller have equal footing on the release date of the product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Well, I think the whole point is fairness among retailers in general. I think from a business standpoint Activision/Blizzard is trying to let every reseller have equal footing on the release date of the product. Well then surely it's only fair that cars drive at a few miles an hour so as to be fair to the horse and cart industry? Blizzard can directly sell to the consumer their own product and at a much higher profit and an earlier release. So why not do that? I thought you were all for a free market. If a company can offer a better product(or more a service here I guess) and at a higher profit then more power to them and all that. Then it's up to the consumer, early access (though with potential hiccups) by buying it through Blizzard. Or a disc copy, potentially for cheaper and a few days after the main hiccups, but several days after most other people. Heck. "Pay $10, get early access" or "Pre-order Heart of the Swarm, get early access", "Buy 6 months of WoW membership, get early access". Make even more profit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 (edited) Well, I don't know the business so I'm not sure exactly why it is but I think there are certain contracts and deals for distribution that Activision may have with retail distributors and as part of agreeing to stock their product and sell it Activision may be agreeing not to undercut them. You could sell for more profit and earlier on your site but if you're limiting your distribution that way you could only be undercutting your self in terms of total sales if retailers don't want to stock your product anymore if you're undercutting them. TN should chime in here, he may be able to provide a better explanation. Edited May 9, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 I think with a game like Diablo III, a game over a decade in the making, years of hype, etc etc, that it's more of a "well we'll let you in on this party" than a "please Gamestop, please stock our game or our company will collapse" kinda deal. I think something like 70% of Acti-Blizz's income was digital, and given they've got the rather hefty sales figures on COD on consoles bringing up that 30% it points to Blizzard as a large chunk of that digital purchases. They probably could make it digital only and still take home a fair amount of bacon. Just a bit of old school thinking keeping them with traditional retailers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 (edited) I don't think it matters what the game is because I think they negotiate the contracts for stocking all of activisions games so I think it's something to the effect of "we'll let you stock Diablo III but you also have to stock our shovelware too". As part of that deal of getting as many retailers to stock as much of their product as possible to make it available to as many people as possible they agree to not offer it cheaper or earlier themselves. I could be wrong though. I'm still all for the free market but this is probably the best business move for Activision. Edit: It might be like how a car dealer can't sell only Toyota Prius's. If they want to be a Toyota dealer they have to stock all of Toyota's vehicles. Edited May 9, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P4: Gritty Reboot Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 In Diablo III's case, there probably were some retailer considerations. But it's not the whole picture and it never will be. Case in point: Legend of Grimrock went gold on March 23 but didn't come out until April 11, and there were no physical boxes to wait for. We can't point the finger squarely at some publisher/retailer conspiracy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Perhaps Grimrock was still figuring out it's GoG deal and stuff. It's not self-published like D3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Like P4 is saying, retailers is very unlikely to ever be the only consideration. May 15th is the absolute deadline where they need to have EVERYTHING sorted. Yes, if we ignored retailers and just made all digital games release when the rest of it is ready, we could probably shave off a few days here and there... but especially when you're talking about an online game that needs all the server infrastructure, customer support channels, etc. to be in place I see it as incredibly unlikely that they'd be able to launch the game as soon as the code got gold. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 They're Blizzard. They already support roughly 12million+ customers. I've a feeling server and customer support is something they're not exactly lacking in. Also waiting until the magical day arrives doesn't lead to any guarantee nothing will fuck up. But a soft launch at least means if/when it fucks up, it only fucks up for a few people instead of all of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P4: Gritty Reboot Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Internally, the development focus for Blizzard shifts from develop---[goes gold]---> market ---[game ships]---> support. Obviously there's some overlap there, but I can't imagine its being anything but confusing for the customer and the game staff alike to have multiple ship dates, early activations, and the like. If a company wants to try it, great, but retail is certainly not the only consideration, self-published or no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 What's the point of even trying to play Diablo III on launch day when all the copies "activate" simultaneously? We all know what's bound to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 9, 2012 Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 Fair few games come with an early release though. Blizzard isn't really a small(or even medium sized) studio that'd struggle to have a staggered release. This is a company that as of a couple months back (since we can assume Diablo is now done with development) was working on an MMO expansion, an RTS expansion, action RPG, and a brand new MMO. "Diablo 3. Launches 15th May! Buy it from the Blizzard store and activate the game 8th May." Wouldn't be much of a confusion, and would potentially alleviate any issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted May 10, 2012 Report Share Posted May 10, 2012 P4 nailed it early on. A release date is picked one or two years out. All being equal everything is ready to go for that release date, and you release it. Some business reasons for locking release date to one day rather than a digital / retail release: 1. You don't upset retailers. This is getting less and less important. It won't be long till the industry realises that retail needs us more than we need them. 2. Everyone is working to the same schedule. Marketing are all talking about the same release date. Pre-order offers or limited time offers do not have multiple start/end dates which lead to consumer confusion and errors in the publishers back end systems. 3. A bit more complicated this one, but Revenue Recognition is a big deal. Essentially what rev rec means is that you can't count your chickens before they've hatched. Or rather, you can't recognise the revenue for a product until you have delivered the entire product, including any promised (specific) DLC or services. Dates are important here because you want to your business to be predictable. That means that revenue must be recognisable in the quarter you planned for. You don't want to be tracking numerous dates for revenue recognition as it is a major headache and can make it look to investors like your numbers are not as good as they really are (because you are splitting revenue over two quarters). On the other hand, for Online titles like BF3 and Diablo, the more you can spread out your release the better as it allows you to ramp up server capacity and make sure that all your systems are scaling up correctly. Basically it boils down to, online and IT wanting as staggered a release as possible. Marketing and Business want as simultaneous a release as possible. Business and marketing usually win. That's not really a good thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strangelove Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 Youve probably all discussed this already, but when is DD going to be more convenient than buying retail? For every step forward, there are 1 or 2 steps back. The availability is getting there, but the resources to do it aren't. I always thought it would be in less than 5 years till DD would be the main way to get games, but im not so sure anymore. I bring this up again because Square Enix said that a game using their new Luminous engine would probably be too big for even a 50gb bluray. Currently, I will NEVER download a game that size. it would take me about a week to do it. My connection is shitty and my cap is slow. That's a big chunk. Online for the average joe needs to change. We need faster speeds and bigger caps, or just no cap at all. Even if streaming is the new big thing, when I had Netflix I always came dangerously close to going over my cap. Now add downloading or streaming a large game and it's impossible to me. Not to mention that really huge harddrives would have to go down in price. I have a 160gb in my PS3 and about 500GB in my laptop. It really isnt enough, and I only have about 2 or 3 games installed. Maybe its just something really rich people with fast awesome uncapped internet will enjoy. Cus it sure wont be me. I understand gaming itself is a luxury, but it shouldnt be THAT much of a luxury. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted June 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 I'd argue on PC it's already more convenient than retail. Except if you have slow speeds and caps, but that's an issue with your ISP. I have uncapped cable and can pull about 30 Mb/s, or about 3.5 MB/s, and it's only $53/month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 Yeah, DD on PC has been more convenient than retail for years. I think the last PC game I bought retail was The Orange Box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted June 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 I still buy retail for bigger purchases because I don't trust my DD purchases to not just vanish into the ether some day, but it's definitely more convenient to buy DD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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