Originally Posted by
lendelin
Look, it is actually pretty easy, we don't need sideshows and distractions and questionable reasoning. Just answer this one Q:
Which of the following two businessmodels do you prefer as a gamer and collector? 1) the Limited Run model which gives gamers and collectors limited accessibilty (ten minutes to 24 hours) to get games for retail price, and later on to get these games as a rule for 50% to 600% the retail price on ebay. (Mind you, ebay scalping clearly is part of the businessmodel as LR itself demonstrated); 2) Let's call it the Soedesco-model of so many smaller publishers which publish games of smaller developers and/or so far only digital on physical disc like Limited Run and just sell it, no marketing with limited numbers and rarity hype, access for months and years for retail price and cheaper than the retail price as a rule.
You avoided answering the Q so far by pointing to LR or the other publishers individually, but never answered the Q about the comparison of the two models.
Limited Run could do it for PS4 games (and the Vita!) like the other small publishers do. No problem there. But their model is risk-minimizing at the cost of consumers. Why doesn't LR publish Vita games without this rarity nonsense?
That the second model works is obvious. It isn't an utopian model in an ideal fantasy world. The proof is in the pudding, otherwise Soedesco and many others would not publish more games than ever and would have gone bankrupt years ago. If you look at the DP-list of games of indie/small developers physical releases it is obvious that Limited Run aren't the holy knights in shiny armor who provide us with water in a desert. On the contrary, we are flooded with these games in the meantime.
Play Asia and Reserve Games (or whatever their name is) step in the same murky water in the meantime like LR. It is nonsense except for Limited Run itself. To euphemistically sell this nonsense as a service to gamers and collectors takes a lot of chuzpe.