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A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

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Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#141

Post by somenameforme »

hakfoo wrote: post #121
charcircuit wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and are WAY more popular than any anime. Which is why they can get away with charging less per copy.

But it's a self-perpetuating death loop problem. At those prices, the only buyers are extreme fans buying it almost more like a merchandise item (compare figurines) than people who want to view the content. I know this is a thing in Japan-- the anime releases tend to be a few episodes at a time, at prices that would be considered astronomical most places. There are potentially many market equilibria-- selling 200 cop…

The same thing is frequently true of Japanese video games as well, often seemingly arbitrarily costing several times comparable titles. I'm quite curious what drives this "cultural" phenomena. It seems almost certain that their price:demand curve is messed up to the point that lowering the price would result in increased revenue, but they seem very content to stick with this system - apparently outside of games as well.

Anybody with any insights into Japanese culture/business? I've always wondered why this was, or if it's something as simple as inertia.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#142

Post by nightski »

notsapiensatall wrote: post #116
ChrisLomont wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam still has shareholders to answer to, with the same human motives as any shareholder, so I don't think this argument holds water. I suspect they'd try to get whatever growth they can because otherwise eventually someone will overtake them. And empirically they are still growing at rates [1] not common among any class of companies, so someone there is certainty pushing for incredible growth. [1] https://www.stati…

The difference is that their shares are not publicly offered. Their shareholders much more likely to be people with vested interests in the company's long-term health, rather than retail investors and hedge funds who reliably demand short-term returns.

Retail investors and hedge funds do not always demand short-term results. If that was the case, Tesla and growth companies like it would simply not exist on the stock market. Instead, they are wildly popular.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#143

Post by nemothekid »

notsapiensatall wrote: post #99
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

Media embedded advertising has already been a thing for years, but companies hate leaving money on the table so they cannot resist the temptation of showing more ads. I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media have struggled to keep up. You're competing with piracy, but you throw ads in my face. I can download any show or movie I wan…

Among other things, Steam is not operated by a publicly-traded company. They don't need to answer to faceless shareholders at the end of every quarter. They can settle for making whatever they consider to be "enough money" without chasing endless growth.

Netflix is publicly traded and had managed to avoid shoving ads down the throats of user for almost as long as Steam has been around.

Steam is moreso lucky that the PC market was pretty much ignored by all the large game publishers for a very long time and had very little competition. We will see what happens in another 10 years now that even Sony is launching it's own PC launcher. PC is now more important (even Japan is finally opening to the gaming PC scene).

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#144

Post by nightski »

Jensson wrote: post #132
Ekaros wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I'm pretty sure they are making enough money as they are. And don't need to chase that ever increasing stock valuation. Which might not even mean increased profits.

But public stocks seems to focus on valuation over profits, which is reasonable given how things turned out. Apple going from 1 trillion to 2 trillion valuation is much more valuable to shareholders than Apple paying out 100 billion in profits. But if the stocks aren't publicly traded then the main pay-out are the profits, so they try to maximize profit over growth, which is probably much healthier for the economy ov…

This is false. Amazon had zero profits for a very long time and was publicly traded. It did very well. There are numerous examples like this.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#145

Post by dreamcompiler »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
DocTomoe wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's how it starts. Eventually, the cheaper tier will be with more ads, the more expensive tier will no longer be ad-free, but have "some" ads. It has happened before. It will happen again.

HBO has been ad free since the 70s. There hasn’t been a cable service or streaming service that started ad free and then didn’t offer an ad free offering

All cable networks started ad-free because they charged a monthly subscription fee, then almost all of them gradually started introducing ads in addition to the subscription fee. HBO is one of the few exceptions. The fact that cable networks let you pay a second monthly subscription fee for HBO hardly constitutes an "ad free offering."

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#146

Post by pessimizer »

bicdez wrote: post #21
gniv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When casting to the TV you get ads, even though you don't in the browser! I just tried it, since I had the same idea.

Plug your laptop directly in via HDMI/DP. Buy an air mouse/keyboard to control it from your couch. Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Keyboard-W1-Multifunctional-... The flexible sovereign combo of a general purpose computer and a user agent. I use a forever-docked ThinkPad x230 under my TV, which can do 1080p and 802.11n (5GHz).

I've been doing this for many years. The latest incarnation is an Intel NUC, which you can also use for other random home server stuff, and for vintage console emulation.

What we need is a good, simple dumbtv interface for a computer with network access and a DVB card/stick. One that can also bring up a full-screen browser window to deal with streaming service DRM. Have been considering getting something together with rust+gstreamer starting by cloning my old Philips dumbtv interface while using mplayer/mpv hotkey standards for everything else.

The all-encompassing, endlessly complicated yet somehow still inflexible Kodi is a bad solution for people like me. Let's start by making a dumbtv out of a cheap linux box + a monitor.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#147

Post by pixelrevision »

gopher_space wrote: post #135
newaccount74 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are really good at it, too. Fallout 4 for just 8€? Brilliant, I've heard so much about it, let me check it out. But just 5€ more and I get all the DLC? And there's a bundle with Skyrim? Before I realise whats going on I spent 30€ on games released a decade ago that I don't really have time to play anyway.

Bethesda releases aren't games you play, they're hobbies you pursue. Imagine all the enjoyable hours you'll spend browsing nexus and creating a stable environment for each of the games you own. It's almost like having an aquarium.

Skyrim is the raspberry pi of video games. So many hours getting something “just right” to the follow up by never using it for that purpose. Always good to have around though just in case.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#148

Post by blibble »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

Media embedded advertising has already been a thing for years, but companies hate leaving money on the table so they cannot resist the temptation of showing more ads. I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media have struggled to keep up. You're competing with piracy, but you throw ads in my face. I can download any show or movie I wan…

> I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media have struggled to keep up.

it's privately owned

and by someone that loves video games that was already wealthy when he founded the company

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#149

Post by pdntspa »

> all at minimal expense

Come the fuck on. This may have been true during the honeymoon phase of these services where everybody was scamming consumers with the bait part of bait-and-switch, but it has not been true for quite some time. Any of these convenience services charge dearly for the privilege nowadays, through fees, hidden menu markups, shitty subscription "deals" (WOW, I can save 30% on each order for signing up for $9.99/mo or whatever... how about cutting 100% of my order fees for your BS recurring lineitem bullshit?), and just plain general price increases.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#150

Post by lossolo »

pdpi wrote: post #73
AstralStorm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is successful because its advertising is rather low key, showing a popup with offers, and providing a search, directory plus suggestions. Their gain is from consumer analytics too. (They also take a cut for using their platform from the game developers or publishers. It also provides some added value like achievements, basic social media in forms of forums and chat, some (somewhat broken at times) controller ha…

It’s important to take Steam DRM in context. In a world where DRM was becoming more intrusive by the day, and you had to contend with every game having its own unique way to mess your system up in its fight against piracy, Steam provided one single DRM system that almost everybody agrees to use. For consumers, worse than no DRM, but miles ahead of the status quo it replaced. Also, Steam does have an offline mode. You…

Most of the games from big studios still use their own DRM on Steam because Steam DRM is worthless, I can crack it in 5 seconds for any game on steam, that's why you often see games that have Steam+Denuvo or Steam+CustomDRM.
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