Hardware Analysis - Prices will come down

Re: Prices will come down

Kash — 2004-11-16T23:43:34-05:00

Yeah, but they'll still make a killing through Steam. All they have to pay for is the maintenance guys (which don't do much. They'll just moderate bandwidth), the actual servers (which they've already had in place for roughly 1 year), and bandwidth (which they already pay out the ass).

They'll probably make roughly $10 more per copy distributed through Steam than through retail. They don't have to pay for materials, maintenance, deliverers, and in the long run, the machines won't take as much of a beating because it's all done electronically. They might have to spend about $10k on harddrives every few years (from constant access), rather than about $10k per year because their mass-cd-burner and labeler takes a crap.

Re: Prices will come down

Jack D. Hammer — 2004-11-16T23:36:35-05:00

Sorry. I should have been more clear. When I said "online" I meant through steam.

Re: Prices will come down

Mike Casper — 2004-11-16T23:31:52-05:00

I dunno, but the guy who make Half Life 2 will make more money out of online purchase using steam than online purchase like amazon.com or in store purchase.

Prices will come down

Jack D. Hammer — 2004-11-16T23:16:33-05:00

I read an article about the Law suit right now between Valve and Sierra. Sierra is still going to get payed for all the copies that are sold of HL2 (which is why the online price is still the same as boxed) but will be cut out from future deals. At least that is what I got out of the article. I don't think they will be paid as much for the online copies though. I hope they don't completely cut out the middle man. Maybe a smaller middle man because, sometimes I like to have a disc.