EA says Steam sales cheapen IP, Origin having "cheap IP" sales right now

6/20/12 1:02pm

EA's digital "war" against Valve took an ironic turn after EA decided to hold a massive sale, despite being quoted a week ago that Valve's Steam massive sales were bad for the industry.

Yes, about a week ago the boss of EA's Origin services, David DeMartini, stated he felt the constant sales issued by Valve on Steam "cheapen" the quality and strength of gaming products and properties. His main target was the annual holiday and summer sales done by Valve.

He felt publishers and developers have very little choice but to accept the sales promotion in order to sell more copies of their games, while loosing money as a result. He also felt the constant sales hurt customers as it only encourages customers to hesitate when buying games at launch in order to save money with future sales.

“The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're not trying to be Target. We're trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value -- we're trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount; just don't look for 75-percent-off going-out-of-business sales.”

To help solve both issues, he stated Origin would try a different route with sales as a way to protect those IPs and benefit publishers in the end.

Now for the irony, EA announced starting today Origin would be having massive discounts on a range of titles with the UK alone having about 18 titles on sale. The discounts followed the same style as Steam containing the 87%, 75%, and 66% discounts while EA felt the need to "cheapen" their own IP products since the majority of the big discounts were on titles created by EA.

Origin having its own "Cheap IP" sales

» Source: http://www.destructoid.com/ea-expect-discounts-but-no-steam-like-sales-on-origin-228991.phtml
» Tagged In: #Cheap, #community showcase, #EA, #IP, #Origin, #sales, #steam, #valve

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OmarShido46

November 26, 2012 - 3:00am

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Nexus9113

June 22, 2012 - 2:13am

With EA's original statement they were trying to bank on consumer ignorance of the actual window of profit game developers/publishers look at (the first 60-90 days) in order to incite anger or disapproval.

Anything after that particular period is considered residual as the devs and publishers know that those who are truly interested in a title will purchase within that window. If someone doesn't buy the product in that time frame it means that particular product doesn't provide enough utility to warrant a purchase for them, at least at full price, and that they will probably never buy it at that price point.

Also, more often than not Steam isn't particularily "willy nilly" on sales: 1) Outside of preorders (10% off) new titles are never put on sale within the first six months unless it is doing particularily poor (RAGE being an example). 2) Sales are often done on titles that have a soon to be released sequel to generate interest in the IP in those who may have missed the hype train. 3) Sales are often done on bulk packages of older titles that may have fallen into obscurity (Like most of the publisher catalog sales over the holidays never containing just released titles)

In order to take a "loss" on software, you still need to be under your break even point in sales vs dev/publishing/distribution costs. With digital distribution, distribution costs are minimal as providers usually take a percentage rather than a flat rate off the top of the sale, resulting in less distribution overhead for developers. For example: $10 for the packaging and shipping of one unit no matter what price point you sell at vs 10% of what you take at the transaction ($60 would be a $6 cut, $10 would be a $1 cut). When most of these title's go on sale, they've usually hit, or gotten as close as possible to hitting the break even point as they can.

Like many of EA's arguments against Steam, this is another bunk, and borderline slanderous, attempt to discredit the industry leader in digital distribution.

Frostlyknight

June 21, 2012 - 4:15am

EA is proving they shouldn't exist, let alone be a competitor in the video games market. However their Monopoly on the NFL with Madden and the fact that people still haven't figured out that buying an EA product supports their insanity and anti consumerist ways will keep them around for quite awhile.

If your a real gamer do yourself and every other developer and gamer out there a favor and NEVER BUY ANOTHER EA GAME EVER AGAIN!

They Call Me The Fizz

June 20, 2012 - 11:38pm

First they bad-mouth Call of Duty for cheapening the military shooter (only to adopt the exact same subscription service), now they balk at Valve for hurting the industry (while doing their damnedest to duplicate the Steam formula)

The clout of cognitive dissonance at EA is simply staggering...