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Evening Reading: What Price Digital?
by Garnett Lee, Dec 30, 2009 5:00pm PSTSteam's dramatic holiday sale prices may (as I asserted yesterday) provide Valve a significant bump in their customer base but what then? Should it succeed the expectations will have been set at bargain basement deals. In the unstable online economy of digital distribution that's anything but the norm. Along with the still young search for the "right" price as dictated by the market, digital distributors face pressure to keep prices at a point that won't completely cannibalize sales for traditional brick-and-mortar stores. The result puts the online price at pretty much the same number as it is in stores.
The whole issue of pricing poses one of -- if not the -- big roadblocks in the system. Over Christmas I was reminded of how out of whack it is in the TV world. To catch up on a single missed episode of a TV show costs $3 if you want to see it in HD. It's hard to see the value in that when it was originally broadcast for free, will most likely be shown again as a rerun, and if I set my DVR I can get it to watch whenever I want.
Games, though, pose a different value proposition. At a store my $50 or $60 bucks gets me a box, manual (though not much of one anymore), and a disk but, let's be honest, what's that really worth? The value is more perceived than real. When it comes down to it I'm mostly paying for the content and the rest just happens to be the delivery method.
Download is just another way of getting the game. That puts digital distribution as merely the latest frontline for the real battle of whether the $50-$60 game model holds the future for a growing video game business. Or for that matter, is it even sustainable?
Here's what was sustaining us today:
- Blood Bowl hits 360 and boxed PC copies in January
- iPhone gets Plants vs. Zombies in January
- Latest Divinity 2 trailer shows off dragon flying combat
Ladies, how do you feel about a Chinese shopping center that has a special parking lot for women motorists with wider spaces?
It had evidently grown a little long in the tooth but still an iconic passing with Tavern on the Green closing after New Year's Eve
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All this British man who had his kitchen stolen had to do was check eBay to nab the thief and get his stuff back
According to American Cinematographer, the production started with Sony CineAlta 950 bodies and went over to the Sony F23 bodies towards the end of production. This gives you an idea of how long ago physical production on Avatar was, since the 950 was superseded by updated bodies like the F23 and the F35 years ago. Those bodies all shoot at a resolution of 1920x1080, with more of the vertical resolution thrown away for 2D presentation since that was projected at 2.35, not 1.78 aspect ratio. I'm sure that visual effects were done at a higher resolution, that seems to be the way it goes.
The cameras were side-by-side, or in the case of steadicam work (this must have been heavy) they were in an L-configuration with one body perpendicularly oriented and shooting into a beam-splitter mirror. That's how we did the 3D on T2:3D, except that they were with full IMAX cameras and the damn things weighed as much as a fridge.
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The same is true for the cinema for the most part too. I mean, most of the closer seats could realize a good bit more than 1080p resolution but from what I've read (see post above) you typically don't even get 1080p actually making it to the screen in your average theater. It probably varies a lot, and I would guess it's higher in many places though.
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