Enough is enough.....

Let's face it, if you've read this blog for any length of time you'll know how fed up i am with the games industry... it's my main pasttime so of course i'm going to get irate when things make that pasttime less valuable or less attractive. You might, however, join me in an incredulous sigh when you read what i'm about to quote:

But game companies say there is a bigger force at work: the proliferation of consumer choice in the game industry prevents them from raising prices on console games. Games for iPhones are considerably cheaper; indeed, many are free. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, a racing game that has been a longtime favorite on the iTunes App Store, costs $5.99. Zombieville USA, another top seller, is only $1.99. Games made for downloading onto the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii cost $10.

“Video games used to be the type of entertainment that sucked dollars from TV, music and the box office,” said Evan Wilson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “Now, inside the video game industry, it’s having its own internal distraction issues. There are lots of options.”

So, when companies aren't making enough money in the games industry they first blamed the pirates, citing the huge numbers of pirated copies of games and *thus* sales they should be expecting if there were no piracy and they moved to stop that with copy protection and more recently DRM schemes.... then they blamed used games, citing the huge numbers of resold games which was draining the industry of their rightful profits and they moved to stop that by making the DRM schemes applicable to one person only...... now they're blaming CHEAP GAMES?!! Are you serious? Are you fucking with me? MY GOD!

The industry is basically telling the consumers that everything we believe is true in a free and consumer-driven market is just false. Consumer demand shouldn't drive price points, oh no.... companies should be able to set their price points and consumers should be forced to buy those items at the same rate as the cheaper ones they did before. Voting with your wallet to not buy a shoddy, half-finished and/or sloppy port shouldn't count when the industry is hurting - you should be forced to buy them anyway AND buy the DLC (that is actually on the disc) when it is released less than *two weeks after launch.... i mean, who do they think they are?

Companies in the games industry always go on about how whiney their customers are and how they can never please the "hardcore" segment.... well, maybe it's because we're used to the industry being such fucking babies about everything that makes us react in this way. Seriously, grow up! I have to admit that i don't read as much blurbs from other industries so maybe they're all like this but i've never heard so many ludicrously idiotic soundbites from industry executives as i have from the games industry..... When they're not blaming lack of performance on some nebulous thing, they're sticking their feet in their mouths and out the other end so they can carry on walking by making offensive comments about their customers.

*Judging from previous experience with knowing how releasing patches/updates and downloadable arcade games (i.e. Spacegiraffe) goes i know it takes a LOT longer than a couple of weeks to get something onto the online services of the consoles (though obviously the Fallout 3 DLC was just shunted through this process with a pass from some executive somewhere)