Community MetaSteam | August 2022 - Remember Ringo, With Great Power Comes No Regional Pricing

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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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I have a 10,000yen monthly quota on video games purchase. I just checked the price of Soul Hackers 2... 9,878yen for the regular version. Even at 50% discount it would still cost around 5,000yen.

For comparison, recent indie titles like Cult of the Lamb or Stray cost 2,500 and 3,500 yen respectively. Jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with you companies.
To be fair it’s Atlus. Chronically late to the party. They barely discovered PC gaming, and now they are in the ‘rob them blind at launch‘ phase. It only stands to reason that next is MTX extravaganza, ala UBI Soft.
 

Cacher

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Jun 3, 2020
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To be fair it’s Atlus. Chronically late to the party. They barely discovered PC gaming, and now they are in the ‘rob them blind at launch‘ phase. It only stands to reason that next is MTX extravaganza, ala UBI Soft.
Sadly Atlus is definitely not alone. For example, FF7R has the same launch price as Soul Hackers 2.

My upcoming post should include more examples on the matter. I will start writing it tonight.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
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I'd be pretty interested to read this.
The same. A Japanese account of the state of PC games is honestly interesting to me.

Sadly Atlus is definitely not alone. For example, FF7R has the same launch price as Soul Hackers 2.
Well I was joking with Atlus, but isn't FFRemake explained by greedy Square trying to follow on Sony pricing footsteps, and also artificially setting the value of their star brand ?

But yeah, again, I always heard about pricey Japanese games, and most of all PC ones. Curious to read your coming post.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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To be fair JPY deprecated really hard in the past few months, so 10k yen is only 75 bucks... But that's not the point haha. Seriously 10k yen on one single game is absurd.

I may write a longer post on the state of gaming in Japan. In short, PC gaming is expensive here and it is definitely one of the factors why many people are playing on consoles instead.
This sounds like a lack of good regional pricing. Sure, the Yen might be very weak right now, but that doesn't magically increase the purchasing power of Japanese customers. By pricing games ever higher to match the USD price, all you accomplish is outprice a large percentage of your consumer base and ultimately get less money.

Steam has already shown that regional pricing enables ultimately more revenue from regions that would otherwise not spend any money on games at all
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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I played when it first released, up until you beat
a big dragon in an arena
I assumed that was the end so stopped playing. Installed it again today in preparation for 3.0, but what the fuck is going on, I can't remember what the story is, all these characters, all these red dots everywhere to claim things without knowing what they are for or if they are good. Completely overwhelming. Going to have a few youtube videos to look at to make sense of things.
Do you mean Stormterror?
But that would have been only the boss of the "prologue" story chapter and the first (and smallest) region Mondstadt :thinking-face:
The second region Liyue was already there since launch though only the first half of its story, second half came 6 weeks after.
But anyway, since then there haven't really been any big changes to the core mechanics of the game, only a whole lot of story and areas to explore.
 

hersheyfan

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To be fair JPY deprecated really hard in the past few months, so 10k yen is only 75 bucks... But that's not the point haha. Seriously 10k yen on one single game is absurd.

I may write a longer post on the state of gaming in Japan. In short, PC gaming is expensive here and it is definitely one of the factors why many people are playing on consoles instead.
Sign me up for that post, for sure. I'm in Japan fairly often (at least, prior to the pandemic) so I've seen the nutty pricing of PC parts and Steam games over there first hand. But the recent experience of a true local would be fascinating, especially after COVID began.

...okay, you weren't kidding about the exchange rate, damn - JPY fell through the effin floor. :fearful-face:
The music :sweaty-blob: (especially once the arabic (I think?) instruments kick in)
Crazy good, as everyone expected!

Yu-Peng Chen is an absolutely amazing composer, he's one of the all time greats at this point. To achieve that kind of quality and maintain it over literal years, with continuous output, is really something else.
 
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Prodigy

Sleeper must awaken
Dec 9, 2018
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Do you mean Stormterror?
But that would have been only the boss of the "prologue" story chapter and the first (and smallest) region Mondstadt :thinking-face:
The second region Liyue was already there since launch though only the first half of its story, second half came 6 weeks after.
But anyway, since then there haven't really been any big changes to the core mechanics of the game, only a whole lot of story and areas to explore.
That looks right, felt like I had played for a long time (probably more to do with the side activities and collectibles etc...) and the boss felt epic enough that I thought I was done. Good to know there was lots I missed in story (damn that was prologue haha).
 
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hersheyfan

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That looks right, felt like I had played for a long time (probably more to do with the side activities and collectibles etc...) and the boss felt epic enough that I thought I was done. Good to know there was lots I missed in story (damn that was prologue haha).
You really should keep it going! Just really solid gameplay and super high production values all around.

I'd never played any gacha games before GI, and I havent played any other ones since. The quality and production values are just too good to ignore, and its pretty easy to play for free or for cheap.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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Yu-Peng Chen is an absolutely amazing composer, he's one of the all time greats at this point. To achieve that kind of quality and maintain it over literal years, with continuous output, is really something else.
Yeah, there's already a full 10:30 hours of unique music in the game, without Sumeru. (I looked at what they put on Spotify, which should be most of it). And it's all quality. Their output is incredibly impressive.

That looks right, felt like I had played for a long time (probably more to do with the side activities and collectibles etc...) and the boss felt epic enough that I thought I was done. Good to know there was lots I missed in story (damn that was prologue haha).
Haha yeah, it doesn't really "feel" like a prologue, but that's what they've labelled it. Sumeru is gonna be chapter 3 so you have a lot of content to go through (+ a number of optional subareas to explore that aren't tied to the main story).
 
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Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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I think Spider-Man's CCUs are disappointingly low. While the price bump and awful regional pricing are primarily to blame, I don't think you can overlook the fact that Sony blocked sales in Russia which is still the third largest Steam region. It will be interesting to see how TLOU Remake does as it will likely be the first $70 Sony game on PC.
 

fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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I think Spider-Man's CCUs are disappointingly low. While the price bump and awful regional pricing are primarily to blame, I don't think you can overlook the fact that Sony blocked sales in Russia which is still the third largest Steam region. It will be interesting to see how TLOU Remake does as it will likely be the first $70 Sony game on PC.
Yeah, people might hate the Russian government (and for damn good reason, they are a bunch of war criminal, fascist fucks), but the Russian people makes up a big portion of PC gaming customers.

There's a reason indies doesn't block their games in Russia.
 

ezodagrom

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Nov 2, 2018
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I think Spider-Man's CCUs are disappointingly low. While the price bump and awful regional pricing are primarily to blame, I don't think you can overlook the fact that Sony blocked sales in Russia which is still the third largest Steam region. It will be interesting to see how TLOU Remake does as it will likely be the first $70 Sony game on PC.
The peak CCUs for Spider-Man are right between Horizon and God of War, so I don't see how they're low when taking into consideration the higher price.
 
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Mor

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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This is a new one, so, you see, Spider-Man works really well on my computer except for a small detail, once my CPU reaches a certain temp. the Q-Led from CPU (red led) starts to slowly blink like sending me a message, of course it is not good if that led turns on but I don't really know what happens with that.

Anyone with an Asus TUF Motherboard knows that does that code mean? btw, only happened while playing Spiderman haha, I'm a bit scared to play it right now, but again, we are in the middle of a heatwave :(




Nice week :cat-heart-blob:


Last week:
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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After 1-2 months of being horribly bored, I’m feeling it. The desire to play games is coming back :drinking-blob:
Yeah long, but I took a combo of surgery and heatwave in the knee.
Right now I kinda furiously want to pick my nose while making strategic decisions. Age of Wonders 3 ?

I may also have sold my switch for near buying price, a nice discount on a 3080 but unfortunately not enough. We need to push further. Maybe if I can sell my 2060 super. The 3ds maybe.
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
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Is there a comprehensive, yet reasonably simple, Steam Deck Emulation guide?

I have this bookmarked but not yet looked at it EmuDeck Guide – Wagner’s TechTalk
Is EmuDeck the thing that most folks use?
I dont know about comprehensive but i followed this vid to some degree...


Its fairly straight forward to set up and get running. Might need to tweak things a bit. It took me a while to get PS3 games going but all the others ive tried work well.

EDIT
Oh, the vid doesn't seem to be working. Not a great start.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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I wonder if the Dungeon Keeper clones are any good. Dungeons and err, War for the Overworld, was it ?
 

NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
Apr 6, 2019
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This is a new one, so, you see, Spider-Man works really well on my computer except for a small detail, once my CPU reaches a certain temp. the Q-Led from CPU (red led) starts to slowly blink like sending me a message, of course it is not good if that led turns on but I don't really know what happens with that.

Anyone with an Asus TUF Motherboard knows that does that code mean? btw, only happened while playing Spiderman haha, I'm a bit scared to play it right now, but again, we are in the middle of a heatwave :(




Nice week :cat-heart-blob:


Last week:
I don't have a TUF mobo but is there a possibility that not enough power is being delivered to the CPU? Apparently Spiderman hammers it very bad.
 
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lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
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VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Instead of going with our usual Sunday bounce around we're going to be playing some more Cult of the Lamb. For those that might have missed it last time, lashman's character accused Li Kao of being a spy and that's still a mystery we need to solve. So feel free to come hang out for some great cult activities like sacri.. uhh.. I mean, our wonderful sewing classes. :cuteblob:

We'll be starting in 10 minutes!

 
OP
Mor

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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I don't have a TUF mobo but is there a possibility that not enough power is being delivered to the CPU? Apparently Spiderman hammers it very bad.
Doubt, this only happens when a certain CPU temperature has been reached, so I dont think it is power, also my PSU is 900W so shouldnt be a problem
 

BernardoOne

MetaMember
Oct 19, 2018
448
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Been playing Hitman 3 a bunch. I really have to resist the urge to just power through the levels to see the story. Kind of an unexpected thing to be really interested in.

I'm up to the Chongqing map at the moment, played through it and next up is clean up bunch of challenges.

And trying to beat LEANIJA in leaderboards. :evilblob: No use even trying to go after BernardoOne . :grinning-face:


Having a weird issue with the online functionality though, I get a short disconnect/reconnect blip every 58 minutes or so. I don't think it's my connection crapping out. But maybe I should get some kind of connection monitoring tool anyway just to rule it out.
now play this. It's a mod but it's basically a IOI quality level bonus mission
 

yuraya

MetaMember
May 4, 2019
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I think Spider-Man's CCUs are disappointingly low. While the price bump and awful regional pricing are primarily to blame, I don't think you can overlook the fact that Sony blocked sales in Russia which is still the third largest Steam region. It will be interesting to see how TLOU Remake does as it will likely be the first $70 Sony game on PC.
I don't think its disappointing at all. Its a 4 year old game at full price. Its also a very popular PS4 game and one of the best sellers on that platform so its safe to say a sizeable chunk of PC gamers have already played it. Sony got greedy and still rewarded nicely for it as the game is reviewing really well with 96% positive. It will sell really well long term once it gets some good discounts.

Also I don't see any 70$ games doing well on PC at launch unless its from really big players like Rockstar or some highly anticipated Bethesda game like Elder Scrolls 6. A new FromSoft game could pull it off too but otherwise 70$ titles are gonna struggle at launch. And probably get review bombed too.
 

AshenOne

Junior Member
Dec 22, 2018
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I don't think its disappointing at all. Its a 4 year old game at full price. Its also a very popular PS4 game and one of the best sellers on that platform so its safe to say a sizeable chunk of PC gamers have already played it. Sony got greedy and still rewarded nicely for it as the game is reviewing really well with 96% positive. It will sell really well long term once it gets some good discounts.

Also I don't see any 70$ games doing well on PC at launch unless its from really big players like Rockstar or some highly anticipated Bethesda game like Elder Scrolls 6. A new FromSoft game could pull it off too but otherwise 70$ titles are gonna struggle at launch. And probably get review bombed too.
I think its a matter of perspective..

IF you're looking it at just a game thats 4 years old but sold at $60 then the numbers are impressive nontheless!

However...this is Spiderman..and you know how extremely highly some people speak of Spiderman, that it'll sell many millions at launch even if the game is old but on a new platform and at least it should've been by far, the top dog whether its player numbers or sales revenue..but i think thats being naive because you're not considering that PC is a different audience that doesn't consist even close to the number of casual players on consoles...and casuals buy these kinds of games the most plus PS players are used to being dimed by sony these days so they don't factor in the extremely expensive pricetag and how a game's age affect's the customer mentally..
 
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NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
Apr 6, 2019
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I don't think its disappointing at all. Its a 4 year old game at full price. Its also a very popular PS4 game and one of the best sellers on that platform so its safe to say a sizeable chunk of PC gamers have already played it. Sony got greedy and still rewarded nicely for it as the game is reviewing really well with 96% positive. It will sell really well long term once it gets some good discounts.

Also I don't see any 70$ games doing well on PC at launch unless its from really big players like Rockstar or some highly anticipated Bethesda game like Elder Scrolls 6. A new FromSoft game could pull it off too but otherwise 70$ titles are gonna struggle at launch. And probably get review bombed too.
66k is fair I think, for an old game that had no regional pricing. It was not gonna sell a million copies, if Sony wants that then they should start releasing the games on the same date as the console release.
 

yuraya

MetaMember
May 4, 2019
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I think its a matter of perspective..

IF you're looking it at just a game thats 4 years old but sold at $60 then the numbers are impressive nontheless!

However...this is Spiderman..and you know how extremely highly some people speak of Spiderman, that it'll sell many millions at launch even if the game is old but on a new platform and at least it should've been by far, the top dog whether its player numbers or sales revenue..but i think thats being naive because you're not considering that PC is a different audience that doesn't consist even close to the number of casual players on consoles...and casuals buy these kinds of games the most plus PS players are used to being dimed by sony these days so they don't factor in the extremely expensive pricetag and how a game's age affect's the customer mentally..
The other thing with Spider-Man is the game didn't really set the world on fire back in 2018. Sony's marketing and hype cycles was big for the game in terms of sales n all but in the end the game only had an 87 on metacritic. The game had criticisms for repetitive quest design n other things.

Unlike say Arkham City which had a 96 meta back in the day and felt like a must play game because there was nothing like it in the open world genre. Rocksteady basically created an entire genre and pushed open world genre in a lot of ways for these type of games. And honestly those 3 Arkham games are still atop of the mountain. Everything since hasn't been able to match the quality imo.

But fast forward to today and Spider-Man is just another open world game in a large ocean of open world games. The brand and character are huge but we've seen lately superhero games aren't making big splashes anymore like Avengers etc. Miles Morales did well for Sony but nowhere near the #s SpiderMan did. There is a little fatigue with superhero stuff in the gaming space. Without the giant marketing blitz that Sony does for its console it will never do those type of numbers on Steam and its several years too late. Still 60k+ concurrent is pretty good for an old full price game. The right play would have been to bundle Miles Morales with this and it would have probably hit 100k+. Sony will still hit those #s by selling them separately so MM should get like 30-40k concurrent and Sony makes more $$$ this way.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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Now I finally have cover for every steam game in my library! Took too long to manage that. Only like three games I couldn't find a cover, so I just hid them instead. I did realise while looking through all my games... that how much trash I have! Im tempted to remove them or hide them... but also the sacred +1!
If you backup your covers folder these will carry across your devices. For example, you can restore the folder if you wipe your PC or transfer them to Steam Deck and not have to go through the manual process again.

I actually sync mine via Syncthing so a change on one is a change on all devices.

I also use this to remove the adverts developers put on their game covers.
 
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