[QUOTE="Fallensting"]

Well if it actually results in more people buying the game then I obviously understand. But I don't think so. I stated this in the last sentence of my first post. I know plenty of people who will refuse to purchase a game because it doesn't have at least two player compatability. I believe developers who make the decision to not include more than one player compatability in games that should have it such as racing games and first person shooters are foolish. They aren't getting my money nor the money of a lot of people.

MrGeezer

Other people have brought up other valid points, such as hardware limitations and the fact that most people never really DEMANDED split-screen multiplayer for most games anyway.

And yes, it's true that split-screen multiplayer is not DEAD. There are still companies doing it.

But it IS getting phased out. And I truly believe that the PRIMARY reason is because of the way in which it gradually leads to a world in which if you want to enjoy the game at all, you've gotta buy it. Hell, hasn't there been a recent controversy about the gaming industry trying to make it illegal to resell or buy pre-owned games? If the games industry is pursuing an interest of trying to prevent me from taking a game that I bought, and then selling it secondhand, then I guarantee you that what I said plays a motive in why split-screen is dying. It's a tiny little step towards a world in which you don't play the game unless you buy it at full retail price. There are other reasons, sure, but this is the PRIMARY reason.

The gaming industry is also trying to move towards downloads instead of sales of physical media. Again...there are other very different reasons for this. It's more convenient for people to download games from their own homes than to go out and try to buy a game at Wal-Mart only to see that the game is out of stock. It's more efficient for companies to use that model, since they don't have to waste money making physical copies. Yes, I understand that too. But aside from that, there's the other motive...you download something that's tied to your account, it's easy to make it so that it ONLY works on your machine. After you're done, you can't pop the disc out and give it to your friend. No...if he wants to play the game, he's gotta buy it too.

That's the direction that the industry is going, and it's deliberate. It's also going to be gradual. But I absolutely guarantee that this is gonna happen. Split-screen gaming didn't die overnight. That'd be too sudden and obvious. But it is dying. Before long, it's gonna be GONE, and people will have forgotten that it was ever standard at all. People will refuse to buy games that lack split-screen multiplayer NOW, that's why some games still have that capability. But the number of people who demand that feature is declining, and soon no one's gonna care when that feature is gone entirely.

Thank you for the reply and enlightening me MrGeezer, I can definitely see that the video game industry is heading towards that path. It's kind of sad really. In the future, we'll have to have two or more of everything in order to play a video game with each other. There won't be a middle man anymore because like you said games will be download only and borrowing games from a friend won't be an option anymore. I probably won't play video games anymore if this happens so I hope dearly that it doesn't.

I can see now that the reason why they aren't adding splitscreen anymore is because they're trying to phase it out like you said. Consoles won't be consoles anymore. People might as well just play video games on PC's then.

[QUOTE="SuperfastSonic"]Nintendo not reducing prices is the only thing I hate about Nintendo. And the DS has been quite the same too: Mario 64 DS is still $35, Mario Kart DS is still $35, and even after it's been outdated once and has been out for 3 years Pokemon Pearl/Diamond are still $35 a piece. I'm freakin' sick of this. I can get Final Fantasy Dissidia for $20 5 months after release, Crisis Core for $20 a year after release, and even crazier I can get Little Big Planet for $20 like 3 months after release date - yet I can't get a DS game OR a Wii game for a reduced price?!! I'm glad that this topic came up, because really we shouldn't be paying that much for Wii or DS games.Mitazaki

But as been brought up a few times with these posts, Nintendo games still manage to sell well enough over a great period of time, despite been at full price. And so to Nintendo the number of people still buying these games are at a greater amount of numbers than those that want it and waiting for it to be redudced.

Again I would love to see them go down in price but all it would do is cause a spike in sales for a short amount of time and therefor after that they would be losing the profits they were gaining. I know a company caring so much about how much profit they can make, the never of them.

Yup. As Mitazaki has said, Nintendo's thinking is to make as much profit as possible, possibly because of what happened last generation with the Gamecube, in order to have more of a safe zone when making new IPs and what not.

However, Nintendo is missing another good point which is lowering the price of games that have been out for more than a year will increase sales but in turn, lower profits. A good thing out of this is there will be more people who have the game which will increase the amount of sales for future games (in Twilight Princess' case Skyward Sword) which will in turn get them lots of revenue.

My point is that I believe Nintendo should do the latter and lower prices in order to increase sales which will increase their fanbase. Especially because old games like Twilight Princess aren't selling well now and they have already made a lot of money off it. I believe the smart thing to do right now is to raise sales and their fan base.

[QUOTE="Arc2012"]But its really not a simple answer. And his question was actually, "what ever happened to Player's Choice?" not "Can someone explain to me the market principle behind Nintendo not lowering its prices of games" which is what most people decided to answer while subtly calling him and idiot.

It's a fair question: How was Nintendo able to afford Player's Choice games during all past generations, but not this one? Is it really a change in the market system or just a change in philosophy? If its the latter, and I think it is, then that really sucks for us, because it has nothing to do with reality (either having Player's Choice in the first place was wrong or they're wrong now).

JordanElek

It's not really a matter of Nintendo being able to afford Player's Choice in the past but can't now... Of course they can afford it, but they're not doing it.

And after doing a little research, I just realized that the Player's Choice brand covered both first AND third-party games. One article suggested that third-party publishers might not want to wait around for Nintendo to approve them for the Player's Choice ribbon, so they've just ignored it so that they can do whatever with their prices.

So if third parties aren't interested in it, Nintendo might further incense them by creating their own first-party Player's Choice line, since third parties already have a hard enough time competing with Nintendo's games.

And Nintendo might have the mindset that ALL of their games are the players' choice, so they'd have to put a label on pretty much all of them, which they might see as redundant. I don't know. :lol:

If nintendo were to put player's choice on all of their games that are at least a year old then that would be great :)

IX is the best

VIII is my favorite though

Tactics was excellent too

I haven't played all of them though only: IV, V, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, Tactics

[QUOTE="Fallensting"]

This is my biggest complaint of games nowadays. It seems there has been a trade that has taken place in which splitscreen multiplayer has been tossed aside for online multiplayer. I don't know about you but I'd much rather play with someone next to me than with someone in a different room. With that said, I also like online multiplayer. Why must there be a trade-off in most games?

What really gets on my nerves is that games whose previous installment had offline mutliplayer such as Killzone, Resistance, and Race Driver have ditched splitscreen multiplayer in their latest installments (Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Grid/Dirt 2) and have decided to only have online multiplayer. Killzone and Resistance had BOTH offline splitscreen and online multiplayer. I'll be playing Killzone 2 and my cousin would like to join to play together against many bots with just us two vs them like we used to on the first one but would be unable to.

There are some who have got this right such as Borderlands, Resident Evil 5, Warhawk (which actually has splitscreen online multiplayer). But they are few and far between. Why has this happened? Are there technical/graphical issues that would plague the game if splitscreen were to be implemented? Or do they honestly believe not including offline multiplayer/splitscreen will result in more people purchasing the game in order to play with each other?

MrGeezer

It's very simple.

It's because when two or four people play splitscreen on one TV, they're doing so with ONE console and ONE copy of the game. And why allow four people to enjoy one copy of a $60 game, when you can make each one of them buy their own copy?

Well if it actually results in more people buying the game then I obviously understand. But I don't think so. I stated this in the last sentence of my first post. I know plenty of people who will refuse to purchase a game because it doesn't have at least two player compatability. I believe developers who make the decision to not include more than one player compatability in games that should have it such as racing games and first person shooters are foolish. They aren't getting my money nor the money of a lot of people.

Yes, Halo Reach is a blast along with Call of Duty World at War zombie mode with a friend. Blur is also a fun one with a buddy.

Developers need to realize that more people are willing to play next to people in the same room than to play with people who you can't really interact with besides voice chat which isn't always reliable nor personable. It seems to me that the Wii is doing the exact opposite of the Ps3/Xbox in terms of the Wii neglecting online play for offline multiplayer and the other systems neglecting offline multiplayer/splitscreen for one player/online multiplayer.

Sorry. I don't mean to drag system discussion into this discussion.

This is my biggest complaint of games nowadays. It seems there has been a trade that has taken place in which splitscreen multiplayer has been tossed aside for online multiplayer. I don't know about you but I'd much rather play with someone next to me than with someone in a different room. With that said, I also like online multiplayer. Why must there be a trade-off in most games?

What really gets on my nerves is that games whose previous installment had offline mutliplayer such as Killzone, Resistance, and Race Driver have ditched splitscreen multiplayer in their latest installments (Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Grid/Dirt 2) and have decided to only have online multiplayer. Killzone and Resistance had BOTH offline splitscreen and online multiplayer. I'll be playing Killzone 2 and my cousin would like to join to play together against many bots with just us two vs them like we used to on the first one but would be unable to.

There are some who have got this right such as Borderlands, Resident Evil 5, Warhawk (which actually has splitscreen online multiplayer). But they are few and far between. Why has this happened? Are there technical/graphical issues that would plague the game if splitscreen were to be implemented? Or do they honestly believe not including offline multiplayer/splitscreen will result in more people purchasing the game in order to play with each other?

This is all assumption, though, so both views are equally valid in the absence of any hard data from Nintendo (which we'll never get). One could compare Nintendo's games to some of the more popular titles on other consoles that have gone a long time without a price drop too - offhand I can think of Halo 3 and Borderlands. They did rerelease each game, but even still the originals sell for close to their launch price, presumably because they're still pushing a decent number of copies. It also helps that many of the great-selling Nintendo games have no direct sequels. NSMB and Mario Kart on the DS have no follow-up game to squelch the original's sales, and the same goes for Mario Kart on the Wii, NSMBW, Twilight Princess, Brawl, etc. Maybe we'll see a Twilight Princess price drop (a slight one) after the new one comes out. Also, Nintendo will have to sell more than twice as many copies of a game if they halve the price, as there's still a fixed per-unit cost that remains constant no matter what the sticker price is.DJ_Lae

I see your point but Super Mario Galaxy is still priced at the same price although its sequel has been out. You are right that there is a fixed per unit cost that remains but they would only be losing the amount in profit. They would still be making a profit. They've had the same price for Twillight Princess for 4 years. They have made a lot of money. At this point I don't think it would be a bad idea to increase sales over profit in order to gather a greater fan base to increase sales of the next title.

[QUOTE="Fallensting"]

[QUOTE="starwarsjunky"]when a game would sell just as well at $30 as it does at $50, why would you drop it??Mitazaki

True but that assumes that the game wouldn't sell well. The thing is Nintendo hasn't even tried lowering the prices so they don't even know if it will benefit them or not. They obviously don't think it will and that's why they haven't. I just find it strange that they wouldn't even try when their competitors still do and they have in the past and it appeared to have worked for them. I also believe it will work for them, then again, that could very well be the cheapskate in me that wants to believe it haha.

BTW I appreciate this discussion guys.

Again as it has been pointed out, so I shall break it down as simple as I can. Lets say on average month to month sales Twilight is getting 30k sales, those buying are probably late buyers, new to the zelda series or even new Wii owners. Now say Nintendo brings it down to half price and sales double for maybe 2-3 months. During those 2-3 months all they have made is the same profit it would have made without price cut and selling double. Now after those months it goes back to what it is averaging at, for each month on it would be lossing half the amount of profit it would be gaining.

To assume that by cutting the price sale would increase and stay increased over a long period off time is not smart business especially on an old game.

Again why cut your profits?

Well for one it will increase the number of people who have the game. More people having the game = bigger fan base. Maximizing profit isn't the only thing a business should consider.

when a game would sell just as well at $30 as it does at $50, why would you drop it??starwarsjunky

True but that assumes that the game wouldn't sell well. The thing is Nintendo hasn't even tried lowering the prices so they don't even know if it will benefit them or not. They obviously don't think it will and that's why they haven't. I just find it strange that they wouldn't even try when their competitors still do and they have in the past and it appeared to have worked for them. I also believe it will work for them, then again, that could very well be the cheapskate in me that wants to believe it haha.

BTW I appreciate this discussion guys.