"Thin Tail" Call of Duty Drags Down Sales
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I hate to ask this... but I need concrete definitions, which I havent heard on alot of these terms.
What makes a gamer a casual gamer?
What are thin-tails, fat-tails, and long-tails?
Examples would be nice to. Im just in the dark with those terms right now.
What makes a gamer a casual gamer?
What are thin-tails, fat-tails, and long-tails?
Examples would be nice to. Im just in the dark with those terms right now.
I'd say it's more likely that people are starting to look for innovation in their games and are turning to indie titles. The last 8 or so games I've bought were either on special for under $10 on steam, or an indie title.
Article posted April 11...about 'predicted sales' for March.
Am I missing something here?
Am I missing something here?
Probably because you're receiving a vision of the future direction of the CoD series. It's a lucrative line of children's books called The Adventures of Captain Mustache and Raul the Talking Comet. It's a colorful romp that follows Mustache and Raul as they set out to find the true meaning of Festivus, all the while teaching children about good personal hygiene, Ukrainian cuisine, and proper firearm maintenance.MammothBlade said:
The sad part, if we spread this around enough, we could probably get the publisher apologists to start outright saying that sharing is stealing. And replaying is stealing.Irridium said:
Damn filthy replayers. They're just as bad as pirates!
You know, I've noticed when Blops came out, months and months went by before you could find a copy of it at the store. As soon as the store got a couple, they would fly off the shelf. Didn't matter if it was used or new (Al though I remember Used copies specifically).
But with MW3, I've seen stores with plenty of copies available. So...from my amateur point of view, it seems like Blops was more of a keeper, while MW3 is a game that you can play for a while, smile in satisfaction and can easily depart with. I mean, hey, there's a reason why there's that rumor going around about Blops 2.
I believe there's a lesson to be learned about that. But I just can't figure it out...hmm...
A hardcore gamer is someone who would play Skyrim and try and level up everything, read every book collect every item and so on. Or someone who's level 123653512 in MW3. And so on.
A casual gamer is someone who can still play any of those games but doesn't feel the need to collect everything or level up to the max and stuff. It doesn't mean they're not good at gaming, no, no. It just means they have better things to do?
I once was a hardcore gamer. I'd level up my character to the limit and collect everything. Then I went to college. And got a job. And now, leveling up and being the best doesn't seem as relevant as just playing whenever I have some spare time and having a good time while doing it.
An extreme example I heard was this: Let's say you're playing WoW or whatever and you're in the middle of a dungeon but you gotta leave because of whatever reason, you'd be presented with two options:
1. Stay and finish the dungeon no matter how long it takes. It could be 5 minutes, it could be hours. Whatever it is that you had to go to can wait and WILL wait. You'll figure out a way to sort that out later.. This is just more important. Congrats, you're an HXC gamer.
2. It's a really cool dungeon and you could use the exp. points and loot and stuff and your friends are counting on your...but you really gotta go. It sucks and you might be left wondering what could have happened if you stayed, but that wasn't a choice. Congrats, you're a casual gamer.
Mind you, I think those definitions are kinda dumb to begin with. But eh, such is life.
As for your second question, I believe a 'long-tail' happens when a game is just so successful and good that it overshadows other titles even long after it was released. Now, I'm no expert, but it seems this happened when Homefront and KoA: The Reckoning came out. Like I said before, Blops was pretty popular up until MW3 came out, so when Homefront came out, even though it was around 7 or 8 months after Blops, people just didn't care much about it. Yes, the fact that the game sucked didn't help either. But it sucked in comparison to Blops.
The Reckoning is a pretty good game. But it came out around 3 or 4 months after Skyrim, a much-anticipated RPG. Still, most people were still busy playing Skyrim to even glance at The Reckoning. It's getting more and more recognition with each passing day, mostly because the hype about Skyrim is settling down at last. But yeah, you get the idea.
Or, the ultimate example of bad timing/ new titles-explosion and possibly long...beaks (Hype about a game BEFORE it comes out) and why not, short tails: Rayman Origins. Great game, plenty of fun. Awfully overshadowed by AC:Rev., Skyrim, Zelda, etc. No one had the chance to even look at this title because of the Holiday madness and the release of big titles. One month later, when the Holidays were over, Rayman was still there, as untouched as the day it came out. But hey, once that was over, people started paying attention to the game.
Anywho, I think I carried on more than usual.
NOTE: I AM NO EXPERT! I can clearly see someone coming in trying to tell me I'm wrong for whatever reason. It could be; my only source of information is what I see at work everyday. SO I could be wrong or right. Just chill. No one is saying otherwise.
But with MW3, I've seen stores with plenty of copies available. So...from my amateur point of view, it seems like Blops was more of a keeper, while MW3 is a game that you can play for a while, smile in satisfaction and can easily depart with. I mean, hey, there's a reason why there's that rumor going around about Blops 2.
I believe there's a lesson to be learned about that. But I just can't figure it out...hmm...
Interesting questions. I'd say a casual gamer is someone who plays...casually. Okay, maybe I need to be more specific.thethird0611 said:
A hardcore gamer is someone who would play Skyrim and try and level up everything, read every book collect every item and so on. Or someone who's level 123653512 in MW3. And so on.
A casual gamer is someone who can still play any of those games but doesn't feel the need to collect everything or level up to the max and stuff. It doesn't mean they're not good at gaming, no, no. It just means they have better things to do?
I once was a hardcore gamer. I'd level up my character to the limit and collect everything. Then I went to college. And got a job. And now, leveling up and being the best doesn't seem as relevant as just playing whenever I have some spare time and having a good time while doing it.
An extreme example I heard was this: Let's say you're playing WoW or whatever and you're in the middle of a dungeon but you gotta leave because of whatever reason, you'd be presented with two options:
1. Stay and finish the dungeon no matter how long it takes. It could be 5 minutes, it could be hours. Whatever it is that you had to go to can wait and WILL wait. You'll figure out a way to sort that out later.. This is just more important. Congrats, you're an HXC gamer.
2. It's a really cool dungeon and you could use the exp. points and loot and stuff and your friends are counting on your...but you really gotta go. It sucks and you might be left wondering what could have happened if you stayed, but that wasn't a choice. Congrats, you're a casual gamer.
Mind you, I think those definitions are kinda dumb to begin with. But eh, such is life.
As for your second question, I believe a 'long-tail' happens when a game is just so successful and good that it overshadows other titles even long after it was released. Now, I'm no expert, but it seems this happened when Homefront and KoA: The Reckoning came out. Like I said before, Blops was pretty popular up until MW3 came out, so when Homefront came out, even though it was around 7 or 8 months after Blops, people just didn't care much about it. Yes, the fact that the game sucked didn't help either. But it sucked in comparison to Blops.
The Reckoning is a pretty good game. But it came out around 3 or 4 months after Skyrim, a much-anticipated RPG. Still, most people were still busy playing Skyrim to even glance at The Reckoning. It's getting more and more recognition with each passing day, mostly because the hype about Skyrim is settling down at last. But yeah, you get the idea.
Or, the ultimate example of bad timing/ new titles-explosion and possibly long...beaks (Hype about a game BEFORE it comes out) and why not, short tails: Rayman Origins. Great game, plenty of fun. Awfully overshadowed by AC:Rev., Skyrim, Zelda, etc. No one had the chance to even look at this title because of the Holiday madness and the release of big titles. One month later, when the Holidays were over, Rayman was still there, as untouched as the day it came out. But hey, once that was over, people started paying attention to the game.
Anywho, I think I carried on more than usual.
NOTE: I AM NO EXPERT! I can clearly see someone coming in trying to tell me I'm wrong for whatever reason. It could be; my only source of information is what I see at work everyday. SO I could be wrong or right. Just chill. No one is saying otherwise.
How ironic. People claim that CoD is holding back the industry, when really it's one of the things that's keeping it afloat.
Did they think that the release of Battlefield 3, a far better game, at roughly the same time had something to do with it? I imagine that BF3 must have taken some of the market share...
So blame Call of Duty. Great...how original. Maybe there are other factors involved? Granted MW3 isn't as good as Black Ops in the opinion of a loyal Call of Duty player like myself and people may not be buying it as much, but could there be other factors here? Just a thought.
Or you could just do what I did and pull out an earlier generation system.Scrumpmonkey said:
Hello there, PS2, I've missed you.
I'm going to make some educated suppositions; I can't be certain the way I'm defining these things would be exactly the way the article's analyst would do so, but here's my take.thethird0611 said:
When he's speaking of "casual gamers", I imagine what he has in mind is not the people who've been deeply invested in games for more than five years- the people who've probably owned more than one generation of console, keep up on upcoming titles, read magazines and news sites about gaming, and so on. I think what he has in mind is more like the people who have been introduced to gaming through more friendly, intuitive, and unthreatening means- the Wii, the Kinect, Facebook games, cell phone games, etc. Some of those people may have gone "Hey, this video game thing is pretty neat, what else is out there", and unsurprisingly been informed by Activision's massive media push that they were about to introduce this movie-blockbuster-scale thing called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. And some of those "casual gamers", curious and/or swayed by a massive media push, bought it.
...And not long after got called a homosexual by a caffeine-addled adolescent on multiplayer, and are now rethinking this whole "video games are neat" thing. Thus "casual gamers leaving the market".
...Okay, that may be a bit of an oversimplification. But it wouldn't surprise me that many "casual gamers", after exposure to what we typically think of as AAA-games, decide that they're just as happy playing Sims Social on Facebook or Cut The Rope on their iPhones, experiences that require a good deal less investment of both time and money. Market analysts are just starting to climb out of their holes, see their shadows, and realize that the "casual gamer" market isn't something that their old market models (the big publishers putting out AAA-games) can necessarily depend on as a cash stream.
As far as the "tails" thing goes, I think it's pretty simple. Imagine, say, a dog, seen from overhead in silhouette. That big blob that's the dog's body? That's the big bulk of sales that occurs when the game first comes out, after all the ads and announcements and reviews. Trailing away from that dog is the tail... that's the smaller but still very significant and important sales that occur after that first frenzy has diminished. So if the tail is "long", it means the game continues to sell long after that first push. If the tail is "fat" or "thin", that's an expression of how many units sell during those "tail" months.
I suspect those dimming sales numbers are a reflection of the market's new reality. I think what we think of as mainstream gaming has been slowly heading towards a crash for some time.
I honestly believe one of the reasons is that everyone that wanted the game now has it. Call of Duty has garnered so much hate from people and those people are dedicating their lives to telling everyone who'll listen the series is crap. People who have been following the series and know it isn't anywhere near as bad as everyone says it is most likely will have wanted to get it as soon as possible thanks to the cliffhanger ending of MW2. People who care will have purchased. People who don't will continue to whine and ***** about how dare anyone play a Call of Duty game.
As for the gaming industry having problems I have a suggestion. Lower the prices. I'd be much more inclined to buy a new game as soon as possible instead of waiting a year for it to become really cheap if it was just a bit lower, to say, $50? I'm sure I'm not the only one like this. The ONLY game I intend to purchase new on release day this year is Fall of Cybertron, and a game needs to do alot to ensure I'll be willing to fork over $60 the second it comes out.
Not to mention a slight price drop would possibly dampen the used game sales. People buy used games because games are so horribly over-priced these days.
Of course, lowering the prices like that could kill off the industry completely, so I guess it's not worth the risk. But my idea was that despite the fact you'd make less money each sale you'd get so many more sales it would make up for it and you'd get more money. This is a theory I've had for a LONG time.
As for the gaming industry having problems I have a suggestion. Lower the prices. I'd be much more inclined to buy a new game as soon as possible instead of waiting a year for it to become really cheap if it was just a bit lower, to say, $50? I'm sure I'm not the only one like this. The ONLY game I intend to purchase new on release day this year is Fall of Cybertron, and a game needs to do alot to ensure I'll be willing to fork over $60 the second it comes out.
Not to mention a slight price drop would possibly dampen the used game sales. People buy used games because games are so horribly over-priced these days.
Of course, lowering the prices like that could kill off the industry completely, so I guess it's not worth the risk. But my idea was that despite the fact you'd make less money each sale you'd get so many more sales it would make up for it and you'd get more money. This is a theory I've had for a LONG time.
I still mostly play CoD4, it's aged really well as far as I'm concerned.
I tried MW3...it was fun, for sure. But it wasn't anything really NEW. It felt exactly like MW2.
I tried MW3...it was fun, for sure. But it wasn't anything really NEW. It felt exactly like MW2.