shenstra

@YukoAsho said:

While he had every right to bring up his trademark, Microsoft did exactly the right thing. This was clearly a move for a payoff on the Trenched name, probably to help with his own endeavors, and his video game was only announced to establish the potential for consumer confusion should Trenched actually come out under that name. MS denied the troll his publicity, dodged a legal hurdle and ensured the safe passage of the game into European territories by changing the name. It's sad that the game won't have the same name globally, but that's trademark law.

All this if fine and well if he actually is a trademark-troll. The thing is, he doesn't appear to be one. He's had this trademark for some time and has clearly been developing a product to go with it for even longer. Long before anyone outside of developers and publishers new about Trenched. In fact, he filed his claim before Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight which resulted in the concept for Trenched.

Another thing to keep in mind: once you own a trademark, you have to protect it. If this guy hadn't protected his trademark on "Trench" and variations (which, granted, is a broad trademark to award; but that's an entirely different problem) , he would've lost his trademark. That usually doesn't happen, unless another company uses the mark and gains notoriety that the owner must have been aware of. Clearly this guy was aware of Trenched and realized that it would be, or rather that it already was, more notorious than his little game-to-be. Had he not taken legal action, which was provoked by Microsoft not doing its research, he could have lost his trademark.

Why didn't he just give up on the trademark and come up with a new name? Well, because he picked this name, took the trouble to apply for a trademark, was granted the trademark, paid for the trademark and owns the trademark. You wouldn't expect me to give my car to Carlos Slim if he couldn't find his own. Why should this guy just give up his trademark when Microsoft decides it wants to release a game which violates said trademark?

Perhaps Microsoft would've had to part with a tiny bit of money in an agreement. Entirely reasonable, if you're going to let someone violate a trademark you own. Or perhaps they would've only had to add a subtitle, or a pre-title of some sort. Or maybe all they'd have to do is ask. It would be mighty nice of this Portuguese guy to let someone violate his trademark without compensation, but it's not quite the same as giving up your trademark. Microsoft could've published under the name Trenched, without paying him anything, but with his permission, which would've left him with a strong trademark claim against all future challengers.

@squidracerX said:

My only question here is: isn't everything in Europe more expensive? Not trolling, just actually curious. Europe is huge so getting prices down as a constant might be hard. But how much is a new CD? Like who's a band we'd both have easy access to, how about the new Radio Head album. i will look it up now: If you go on USA amazon.com you can get it for $5.99 download, or $9.00 as a CD. Amazon UK is WAY more expensive. The download is 6.32, so like $9.48, and the CD new is 7.99 in pounds, which is like $12.00. And just going by the amazon list price, the new Rise Against album is $9.99 here but 8.79 in pounds in UK, so about $13. So yeah when i went to ireland it was the same, CDs were more. So is gas. (so maybe shipping costs are more there?). What about cars and stuff i wonder? I think you just pay more for stuff over there? Maybe not?

Looking at Dutch stores, CDs prices are pretty much the same as game prices. We pay as many Euros as you do Dollars. However, most European stores include sales tax in the listed prices. You should generally assume sales tax to be roughly 20% in Europe. As far as I can tell, from experience, the $1 = €1 rate is pretty consistent for most electronics and such. So when the actual exchange rate is €1 = $x, we pay a premium of x / 1.2. Last summer, the Euro hovered around $1.20 for a while, so converted prices were pretty much exactly the same in Europe as they were in the US. Right now €1 = $1.44, so we pay a 20% premium.

Gas prices are on a completely different level because we pay real taxes on fuel. You express your fuel tax in cents per gallon, we use Dollars per gallon (except we don't use Dollars, or gallons). Currently, the current fuel tax in the Netherlands in roughly equivalent to cost of fuel in the US (tax included). At the pump down the street, I'd have to pay roughly nine Dollars per gallon at the moment.

@mnzy said:

@shenstra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28seventh_generation%29#Sales_standingsLook at the numbers, 40mio 360 & PS3 in the US, 30mio in Europe (note that this is whole Europe, with about 700mio people, about twice as many as the US). Same with the Wii. Consoles are very much not as widespread in Europe. And yes, in the UK and Scandinavia that's different, UK has always had more consoles and Scandinavia has been more into gaming in general. Western and Southern Europe is ok and in Eastern Europe the PC dominates by far.

Nobody considers "all of Europe" as their market. They sell to Western Europe, roughly. That's where they make money. Whatever they sell in Eastern and Southern Europe is nice, perhaps even profitable, but no console manufacturer in their right mind considers Europe a market of 700 million people. You can roughly cut that in half (not literally, on a map, but just as a number), from a selling-games-for-profit point of view. I'm not putting anyone down or anything, but there's no way Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft keep their prices high because of all the cash they rake in in Poland.

Even putting that aside, the idea of keeping profit margins high in areas where your sales are low doesn't make much sense either. The only way to increase those sales numbers is to lower prices. If any country was (pre-crises) going to buy consoles at higher prices, it was the US. One of the reasons they don't lower prices in Europe in an attempt to increase sales, alongside the fact that they're selling gangbusters in Western Europe and can't lower prices in Eastern Europe without losing money in Western Europe, is that they can't risk a USD/Euro surge that would have them losing a lot of money all over Europe.

Basically all I'm saying is, they're not keeping prices high in Europe because hurr hurr let's milk European gamers. The price differences aren't as bad if you take sales taxes into consideration, as well as the general cost of living in some European countries. There are still an undeniable price differences between electronic entertainment in Europe and the US, but there are many reasons for those differences and it's more about economics than about differences between the actual markets. In fact, Europe and the US are more alike than ever before. We both have countries/states that are basically bankrupt, countries/states that are healthy, we both have problems with the underlying economy, we're both headed into pension crises, we've both been living beyond our means, we both have currencies that maybe aren't quite the bulwarks of financial stability and security that we thought they were, et cetera et cetera.

@mnzy said:

@shenstra: This has absolutely nothing to do with the current crisis, it's been like that atleast since the early 90s. And your explanation on exchange is weird. You're making it sound like the strong currency should suffer which is ridiculous. No other industry does it this way, it's a simple supply and demand equation, the tipping point in europe is different, that is all. Consoles here are not for the big masses like they are in the US, the crowd is smaller but enthusiastic. Just look at the PSN numbers from the hack. Over 30mio accounts in the US, eventhough the 360 is more dominant in the US.Of course sales suffer, but you don't need to sell as many if your margin is bigger.

Everything has something to do with the current crises. ;-) But seriously, I didn't pin anything to "the" current crisis (which current crisis are you referring to?). Euro/Dollar exchange rates aren't all that affected by the current crises (or rather, both are similarly affected, roughly cancelling each other out, give or take a few percent) and the strong Yen has many more reasons than the current crises. In fact, a strong Yen contributed to the credit crisis through carry trade. Most recently, the Yen has surged because of the big earthquakes and tsunami as well as the US debt ceiling crisis.

The strong Yen DOES hurt Japanese companies. Strong currencies pretty much always hurt companies and countries that rely on export. As the Yen rises compared to the Euro/Dollar, one of two things happens. Either Japanese companies adjust (read: raise) prices in Europe/America accordingly, leading to lower demand, lower sales and less income, or they keep the prices level, leading to steady demand, steady sales, steady income measured in Euros/Dollars, which equals less income measured in Yen. I'm oversimplifying the issue, but the basic principle should be clear and the effect is real. As a general rule of thumb, a strong currency is good for import, a weak currency is good for export. That's one of the reasons why China likes to keep the Yuan so low.

Your assertion that consoles are not for the masses here (I'm in Europe too, by the way) is not applicable to all of Europe. There's probably a significan North/South split on this issue, and Germany's a weird exception when it comes to games (for many reasons), but I find it hard to believe that consoles are significantly more niche-dependent in Europe as a whole than they are in the US.

As for those numbers from the PSN hack, they're completely unreliable. For starters, weren't those just "accounts", as in "free accounts that anyone can make as many of as they want and can set to whatever region they like"? I know plenty of European gamers had US PSN accounts just to download US-exclusive demos or even purchase games with a US credit card/point card.

@100_Hertz said:

It was always an extremely niche product, and is only more so today, but I really wish SACD had gotten a firmer foothold in today's music market. As a semi-audiophile, it's sad to see the quality of consumer video continue to go up, as the quality of audio stagnates (or goes down--1411kbps CD audio vs. 320kbps sometimes being the best you can even get today). It's a real shame that very few even care about.

Agreed. The problem is that most people don't have the equipment to hear the difference and can't tell the difference when given the proper equipment. It's no coincidence that the SACD is most strongly represented in art music. Classical and jazz are perhaps the only two genres in which the increased sound quality actually makes a significant difference, and they're musical styles that are very popular with audiophiles. (Perhaps for that very reason? Chicken meet egg.)

@mnzy said:

@CrazyChris said:

I just can't understand why more people aren't up in arms over this kind of behavior. If the PS3 was 100 Dollars more expensive in the US than in EU I'm pretty sure half the Internet would flip the hell out. But since it's only affecting dirty, filthy Europe I guess it's not worthy a second glance. Whatever, I'll hold my breath for a Sony console until next generation, because there's no way I'm paying $350+ for a console that's more than five years old.

Yeah it's crazy, but i raged about it for years. I don't know why it is like that. I guess somebody did the math and management thinks that this is more profitable. What it actually does is, though, that it makes the PC really strong in Europe, because PC hardware and software(!) does have an accurate exchange rate.

PC gaming isn't all that big in most of Europe. A bit more so in Germany than elsewhere perhaps, but overall console is king, just like in the US.

As for the price differences, I get worked up about it from time to time as well, but it all makes sense. No, really. It does. First of all, you need to account for sales tax. That isn't included in American pricing, but it is in European pricing. And European countries tend to have a fairly high sales tax. At least we do up North-East.

Then there's the uncertainty of exchange rates. You may not have heard, but the US Dollar is going through some rough times. People talk a lot about how the Euro is about to collapse, but compared to the good old USD it's doing just dandy. Back in Januari, a Euro was worth about $1.30. If you subtract sales tax, we ended up paying maybe around 10% more. In May, the Euro peaked around $1.50, at which point we were paying almost a third more than Americans. However, had prices been lowered accordingly, with the Euro coming back down to around $1.40, we'd actually be paying less.

Most of the game industry is based in the US or Japan. American companies deal in Dollars. As such, American prices aren't affected by exchange rates from their point of view. European prices are, but they have to err on the side of screwing us over to avoid screwing themselves over should the Euro plummet. Besides, current exchange rates mean they're making more money and sales don't seem to be suffering. As for Japanese companies... they have bigger problems. The Yen is so strong compared to the Euro AND the US Dollar that it's actually hurting their bottom line. They can't afford to lower prices in Europe. If anything, they'd want to raise prices in the US.

@100_Hertz said:

I didn't even know the PS3 ever supported SACD. Interesting, but are SACDs even made anymore?

Most worthwhile classical music (good performances that is) and some jazz is released on SACDs. Looking at my own collection, all my RCO recordings are on SACD. I can't find any SACDs amongst my jazz CDs, but that might be because those labels have a habit of releasing both regular CD and (more expensive) hybrid-SACD versions of albums and I usually go for the cheapest available version. The SACD versions also tend to have small print runs and can become prohibitively expensive very quickly, so you have to be on the lookout for SACD rereleases of albums you want.

For some reason, Amazon.com doesn't have an SACD section (anymore?), but Amazon.co.uk does.

I ordered a PSP3000 last week, which the mail company managed to lose, just like the previous thing I ordered. Eff you PostNL. But, postal rage aside, I ordered a PSP3000 and will soon be getting my money back.

I've actually been seriously considering this new, cheaper model. The new-PS3-like finish sounds great and other than WiFI, this model doesn't seem to be missing anything. I could live without WiFi. There's probably no worthwhile online functionality within most games and I don't care much about online gaming anyway. Downloading games would be a bit more of a pain, but I could download them on my PS3 and transfar them to the PSP. Browsing on the PSP only seems appealing until you realize it has no keyboard or battery life.

But then, there aren't really any details yet AFAICT. When is this thing coming out? How big will it be? How much on-board storage (if any)? Will it ship with a decent memory card? (Answer: No it won't.) What will the screen be like? This is clearly Sony scraping the bottom of the barrel for the cheapest parts and remove all non-essential functionality. Maximize the profit margin and push that crap on people who don't really know what they're buying. I have a feeling that I'll be much happier just getting a PSP3000. It's only €20 more and probably a superior product, even if you don't consider WiFI.

Boohoo, I bought something and now other people get to buy it for less and all Nintendo is doing is giving me free stuff that they have no obligation whatsoever to give away.

People are the worst! Consoles and portables have become incredibly complex, powerful pieces of hardware and at the moment they cost less than most older hardware did at some point. Game prices, when corrected for inflation, are incredibly low even though game development is more expensive than ever before. And the quality of these games, both production quality and entertainment quality, is higher than ever before. Yet all people do is bitch and moan about how expensive games are and how they should be getting more for less. People are the worst!

I'm hoping this'll also result in a significant price drop for the DSi XL. I've been eyeing the XL to replace my DS Lite, which is starting to show its age. Hopefully that'd tide me over until Nintendo puts out a new 3DS model (3DS U?) or at least until the 3DS has a more interesting software lineup.

Unfortunately, the DSi XL is now exactly the same price as the 3DS here in the Netherlands. Maybe the XL will get a price drop on August 12, when major retailers start selling the 3DS again at its new price point.