17 Responses to “Drunken Gamers Radio: 10.30.2009”

1. Ryker XL Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 10:15 am

   **Sniff** This is by far **Sniff** the GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE! ( I know kinda sad)

   Thanks Guys! And thanks Phneri…You Bitch!

2. John Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 10:25 am

   Ryker, we’ll have to plan a night to grab a beer together so we can get you your prize. I smell a Donny Dirk’s run…

3. Ryker XL Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am

   Donny Dirk’s would be great, sans the micro-recorder of course!

4. Zinswin Says:
   November 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm

   John’s thoughts on Forza mirror mine. Fuck Hilden! I’m biding my time in getting #3 as other games already have my dollars at the moment, but I can’t wait for when I pick it up.

5. fluffy_nuts Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 3:25 am

   I have a job opening for a used up promo model whos not good for anything except reeling in internet nerds, if you know anyone send them my way, a casting couch will be arranged, wink wink

6. carrotpanic Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 7:31 am

   Guys, I agree that the hard drive pricing situation on 360 is quite pathetic. However, this wouldn’t deter me from clearing some fridge space on my 20 GB to install Forza. Why, might you ask? I install whatever game I’m currently playing anyway, to save load times but more importantly stop my disc drive from laboring while I play (to cut down on noise and more importantly extend the life of my 360). I mostly play one disc based game at a time on the 360 (along with a bunch of xbla games), so this isn’t TOO much of an issue.

7. John Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 11:52 am

   You know, we just received a letter on the whole Forza/HDD discussion and the guy made some good points. However, I think what I’m most irritated with is not Turn 10′s decision to have an “optional” install, but Microsoft’s bullshit HDD pricing that forces me to have to decide if I’m going to play the “complete” Forza and spend time deleting shit off my HDD, or play just a portion of the game.

   That said, I have cleaned off my HDD multiple times and don’t really have anything on there that I would consider “junk”. It’s all XBLA games and game saves for games I still play. I have a launch 20GB HDD with, I think, only 1GB left. I’d love to buy a new one…if it wasn’t absurdly expensive.

8. phneri Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 3:59 pm

   As I’m sitting on 5gb remaining on my 120gb drive, I fail to see the major issue with the 120gb elite pricing. Why?

   Because Microsoft is winning, they know it, so the accessory markups are staying. If the PS3 Slim puts significant dents in the 360 market, I’m sure that the 120gb drive will magically become far cheaper. I don’t see that happening for a while with MS sitting on a huge market share with the 360. Yes, it’s a more expensive system. It’s also the one I can actually anticipate playing a cooperative multiplayer game on, and fills that need along with a variety of others.

   And John, the 120gb pricing is ridiculous, but also getting heavily discounted from a lot of distributors. I picked up my 120 for $75 a while ago, and while the amazon base pricing is still an obscene $140, other retailers with cheap drives exist. Should it be cheaper? definitely. The Wii should also cost about $80 at this point, and the DS should come free with subscription to Nintendo Power. But none of those devices are getting cheaper until they have to be so.

   Fair pricing went out the window roughly the same time when everyone said games needed to be $60 to cover development costs then kept charging the same for identical iterations of sports games and shooters. Hell, how many shitty PS2 ports are $40 on the Wii?

   I guess I look at this as a relatively recent PC gamer, who was accustomed to upgrade costs of $200-$500 to keep a system current in the continuing graphics card/memory/processor arms race. At that point it isn’t about segmenting the market. The market is and forever will be segmented, and it’s no different for the consoles.

   The gamer buying an Arcade and Halo 3 is not the same as the gamer who owns an Elite and a dozen blockbuster titles, and neither are the same as the parents who own an Elite for their child to play the newest movie tie-in games on. I don’t have a problem with Microsoft catering to a specific market segment anymore than anyone else has been doing for the last several years.

9. John Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 4:13 pm

   So because Microsoft is getting away with it and making good cash, I should smile and bend over. Is that what you’re saying?

10. awesomo316 Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    I disagree on the comment about PC and Console audiences being segmented. The reason you have to spend $200-500 for PC’s is to have the technology to run a game, Forza 3 can run on any 360 console but it’s segmenting its audience based on your HD Space – which as John says isn’t cool.

    There’s no other titles on the 360 I can think of that force you to upgrade your 360 or HD to play a particular game. The same can be said for the PS3, PSP, Wii or DS (until DSi only games start coming out). Just because you buy an Arcade model doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to play particular 360 games.

11. Ryker XL Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    I agree, retail prices on the 360 Hard Drive are outrageous, but until we STOP paying those prices it will continue. I also think the business model has changed from disc-based games to digital distrubition (at least that seems to be their strategy against the blue ray). That being said, the original 20 gig HDD was fine for their original business model, but hardly sufficient today.

    Clearly John needs more HDD space, and if he doesn’t want to pay the market rate their are plenty of other avenues to choose from. I personally got my 120 Gig HDD off craigslist for $50. There are a ton of folks who upgraded to an elite or bought new ones and have an extra HDD, you just gotta look. I bet you can even find one cheap on Ebay.

12. phneri Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    John, I’m saying that while I see it as an insane markup, these exist everywhere. As a consumer you can either decide the product is worth your cash and go for it or not. To get a little Marxist here, the raw value of the HDD is irrelevant. It’s the exchange value. Ridiculous markup or no, do you get your 75-100 chicken sandwiches worth from this? That’s the purchase decision here.

    and awesome, while the console market by default does not segment the market, the market is very clearly segmented. By time commitments, budgets, etc. The PC market emphasizes this point by having you drop $300 on a new graphics card to be able to RUN the latest 300-hour timesink, but those timesinks sitll exist, and they still cater to a vastly different market.

    That’s what I see the elite/120gb system doing with the 360. Some people will not care and sit on their arcade indefinitely, because they own two games and never take the system online. The people with the disposable income to buy into a live membership and multiple titles are going to get the HDD, because they have disposable income and it’s quickly becoming a necessary feature of the console for this market. Is MS shitty for doing this? The 120gb pricing and eleven different versions of vista say ‘a-duh.’ But there are so many other gouges to look at beyond this.

13. John Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 10:02 am

    To me it’s black and white: does it suck or not. Answer? Yep, it sucks.

14. phneri Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 10:06 am

    Then enjoy your bushel of chicken sandwiches instead. And send me one.

    I enjoy a good chicken sandwich.

15. John Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    I honestly have no idea what point you’re arguing here. I’m simply making the fairly obvious point that MS’s HDDs are priced insanely high when one compares them to other storage mediums of similar or far-greater capacty. That’s it. Nothing more.

16. carrotpanic Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Not to sidetrack us from discussing chicken sandwiches, but at no point do you need to buy a $300 graphics card for your computer to get it to run new releases. Anything in the $150 area at any given time will be slightly off cutting edge but run the games GREAT, and $250 will get you cutting edge-came-out-a-month-ago-got-to-have-it-cause-I’m-a-psycho-pc-builder.

17. Rusty Shackleford Says:
    November 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    I liked Mitch’s contest entry the most. I have nothing to add to the HDD talk.

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