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Originally posted by Ecchifan:
Those are nice ideas, but mostly unworkable.
The first idea only takes opening one's eyes.
As for the others that aren't related to merchandise or advertisement (basically the demos and other stuff), not only is it workable, it's RIDICULOUS that they don't provide any. The japanese Gamelex has a ton of wallpapers, mp3s, trailers and what not, not to mention the game makers' homepages. All GC has are opening songs, and for only 8 games out of 22.
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I don't think GC has the kind of marketing budget that would be needed to place advertisements.
Well, maybe they could use the money they're putting into VM into getting their game known by people? Like, people don't buy what they don't know, no matter how impossible it is to copy (which is actually irrelevant to people who don't know the game exists).
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GC is getting its licenses from certain developers, like PP, and I highly doubt that they'll be able to go beyond the original group of developers they have on board.
This refers to my "better games" idea, right? Tough for us, I guess. If this is all to blame on the japanese companies, then I withdraw my point.
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As for merchandise, that's an interesting proposition. I know for a fact that there are products floating around (maybe OOP now, though) for some of the GC titles. For example, a few years ago, I picked up on ebay a small painted figure of Maria from Private Nurse. But in order to convince GC to bring more stuff over, there has to a market (as demonstrated through sales of the games) for related goods.
OH, now WE have to convince them to do us the favour of bringing more stuff over... interesting... and here I was thinking that THEY needed to convince me to spend my money on them. Sometimes our views of world get a bit twisted, but please realise the way this relationship works. They have a product they want to sell that we don't need. They have to make us want said product, by means of content, price and whatnot.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but now that I re-read your post, did you mean that "we" (consumers) had to convince GC to bring merchandise to be sold on its own, like artbooks and audio cds? That's ok, I really don't mind if they decide to expand their business from games alone to selling other stuff, but my main point was that they should give small merchandise away with the games (inside the box, taped to the box, whatever) because that would add value to the game and make purchasing it a much better option to pirating it. A box, a laughable manual and a cover simply don't make enough of a difference for most people to justify spending money on a game unless the game is exceptionally good (which is almost never the case). Sorry for any misunderstandings.
By the way, here's an example of a game that's coming out now (if I'm not in mistake) that uses a protection scheme similar to VM, Play-Gate:
http://hrb.jp/bring/01_touji/index.html
As you can see, there are two versions. Normal one at 6500 yens and the P-G one at 4800 yens. This company only has 1 other game out.
[This message has been edited by GoHF (edited 10-29-2004).]