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Technology Lifestyle Games and the older generation | Games and the older generation |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Monday, 30 April 2007 | |
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5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
But jpuddy also made a comment that gets to the heart of the issue: "I think Oakley sunglasses are horrbily [sic] overpriced, but that just means I'll buy something else." Hands up all those who think the inherent properties and production costs of Oakley sunnies justifies their price? Thought so. These and many other 'premium' goods are priced at a level the market will bear. If it's more profitable to sell ten units at a higher price rather than 100 more cheaply, that's what companies will do. (I'm reminded of the disconnect between cost and price whenever I order a Mocha Truffle rather than a Caffe Mocha at a local coffee shop - I don't believe the ingredients cost any more, but I pay the premium anyway. Call me a mug if you like - better still, buy me one!) Development costs clearly increase with each generation of hardware - players expect increasingly detailed backgrounds, for example. The games look increasingly flash, and the facelifts tempt enough people to keep buying what are really the same few games over and over again at steadily inflating prices. There's obviously an 'arms race' going on - console manufacturers bring out hardware of ever-increasing power, and then developers scramble to take advantage of it. But is anyone really better off as a result? The visual appearance improves, and the physics may be more realistic, but the gameplay seems stuck in a rut, with the exception of features affordable steering wheel/pedal controllers, Sony's EyeToy or Nintendo's Wii remote. Drawing a parallel with more serious (and arguably more boring) uses of CPU power, which version of Microsoft Office do you think provided the optimum balance between useful features and hardware requirements? I think the visual fidelity of games is stuck on a plateau. We reached 'good enough' a while ago, but truly photorealistic rendering is still out of reach. Recent improvements look better, but are no more immersive than their predecessors. One final gripe about game marketing: as I mentioned, I do play games on my mobile phone. Why do companies expect me to buy games 'over the air' thus incurring excessively high data charges? I'm ready to buy via the Internet and transfer the files from my computer to the phone. That way, my data costs are fixed - I'm already paying for the connection - and I've got a backup in case anything goes wrong with the phone. If Apple can sell me DRM-protected music this way (and yes, EMI's move away from DRM is a good sign), why can't someone do the same for mobile phone games?{moscomment} |
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