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On the other hand games on PC have a much longer tail with much less effort and can often bring in money decades after release (see GOG). There's also a differe

On the other hand games on PC have a much longer tail with much less effort and can often bring in money decades after release (see GOG). There's also a difference in store design that makes it really easy to find things on steam you didn't know before and are relevant to you, even if they're really old; while the stores on consoles are utterly useless if you are not buying the newest games or know which game you're looking for. As for the freemium comment, you didn't understand him correctly. There's different ways to do freemium. One way is to sell cheats, and design the game so it becomes progressively more unfun to play without cheats. (mobile games) The other is to make the game free to play and offer either cosmetics (tf2) or pieces of the gameplay (warthunder) for cash. The latter is really nice, and seems to happen exclusively on PC.

Zikes 11y ago
I'm utterly baffled at how terrible the Playstation 4 store experience is. I can't help but think it's somehow intentional, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  It's not intentional. Just like Nintendo, Sony is just very helplessly ignorant about many things. Even their webstore has childlishly naive failings. They recently added a wishlist, which has a maximum of 100 entries, and doesn't automatically remove games bought. As well, when they update the webstore, on tuesday, it becomes a literal minefield because they update every single item slowly, over the course of 3-4 hours, in production, and often the storefront will display different prices for items than you see in the cart.
soylentcola 11y ago
I'd also add the model that's essentially the same as shareware (also popularized on PCs and other home computers). It's not as common as I'd like but on both PC and mobile, I occasionally run across games or other applications that offer the first 10 levels (for example) out of 100 for free and then you can choose to buy the full game after getting a chance to try it out. Or maybe the first chapter of an interactive story game or the first third of a point-and-click adventure. The point is still the same and some non-game programs do similar things (free version gets the main function, paid version unlocks all of the more specific options of features). I really like this model because I'm not buying a game or application sight unseen but I also don't need to keep feeding it quarters in order to progress. I have no problem buying software on PC or mobile but it's a lot easier to buy something without reservations if I know it's what I want. Likewise, when I buy something, I generally want to buy it once and not get stuck in a cycle of endless microtransactions or open-ended subscriptions. I'm sure I'm not the target market but when I play a mobile or PC game, I find myself wanting to pay when it's something I enjoy or find useful. But if a game uses microtransactions (pay to win), I basically refuse to ever spend any money on it at all and just play until it gets old and then move on to the next distraction.

Zikes 11y ago

I'm utterly baffled at how terrible the Playstation 4 store experience is. I can't help but think it's somehow intentional, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

Mithaldu 11y ago
It's not intentional. Just like Nintendo, Sony is just very helplessly ignorant about many things. Even their webstore has childlishly naive failings. They recently added a wishlist, which has a maximum of 100 entries, and doesn't automatically remove games bought. As well, when they update the webstore, on tuesday, it becomes a literal minefield because they update every single item slowly, over the course of 3-4 hours, in production, and often the storefront will display different prices for items than you see in the cart.

soylentcola 11y ago

I'd also add the model that's essentially the same as shareware (also popularized on PCs and other home computers). It's not as common as I'd like but on both PC and mobile, I occasionally run across games or other applications that offer the first 10 levels (for example) out of 100 for free and then you can choose to buy the full game after getting a chance to try it out. Or maybe the first chapter of an interactive story game or the first third of a point-and-click adventure. The point is still the same and some non-game programs do similar things (free version gets the main function, paid version unlocks all of the more specific options of features). I really like this model because I'm not buying a game or application sight unseen but I also don't need to keep feeding it quarters in order to progress. I have no problem buying software on PC or mobile but it's a lot easier to buy something without reservations if I know it's what I want. Likewise, when I buy something, I generally want to buy it once and not get stuck in a cycle of endless microtransactions or open-ended subscriptions. I'm sure I'm not the target market but when I play a mobile or PC game, I find myself wanting to pay when it's something I enjoy or find useful. But if a game uses microtransactions (pay to win), I basically refuse to ever spend any money on it at all and just play until it gets old and then move on to the next distraction.