On The Mysteries Of PC Computer Game Pricing

Thanks to The Adrenaline Vault for its editorial discussing the recent, seemingly strange retail pricing of PC videogames. The author explains that he has "reviewed a series of recent PC titles with an initial retail price of either $19.99 or, at most, $29.99... This is occurring even as console versions of the same games are selling for around $49.99." He concludes: "From a consumer standpoint, this new pricing pattern is heaven. You can buy more hours of quality virtual interactive entertainment for a lower fee than ever before... The one downside is the ability to get titles released more than six months ago, as small profit margins have led to diminishing shelf space in ever-contracting retail stores." But is there indeed a danger that "smaller [PC-developing] companies often can't handle the loss of revenues from lowered prices, so too dramatic a drop might jeopardize their existence"?

Comments

The Theory of Everything (to do with games)

[Txiasaeia]

I think there's a huge correlation between price decreases and the overall decrease in quality of video games. Now, before you go "Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this before," my argument goes a little something like this:

At the very beginning of time (i.e. early 80's), we have two very divergent systems: the computer and early consoles (NES being one of them). Comp games and console games were *very* different - compare and contrast Super Mario with King's Quest I. Sure, there were action games on the computer and adventure games (Zelda) for the NES, but for the most part console and computer games were two very different streams.

Fast forward to the mid-90's -- PS1. Here we have a system that rivals the computer for graphics and actually has fairly complicated games, in some cases more complicated than PC games. PS2 solidified this convergence, and now we have the XBox which is pretty much a cheap computer.

My point: you can now pick up the same game on all three consoles and the PC (Beyond Good and Evil, as quoted in article); the PC copy will have better graphics, sure, but for the most part it will be less polished (as it can be patched, and console games generally can't) and will come with a higher price tag, namely the computer itself. It's hard to compare with the same game and sometimes equivalent graphics (i.e. KOTOR, GTA) between a cheap console and a much more expensive computer.

So, in my opinion, there's no mystery -- PC games will go down in price quicker because PC games don't sell as well as console games. Why? Consoles are cheaper. EB Games and Walmart, a specialty and general retailer respectively, have increasingly offered less shelf space for PC games over the past ten or so years. One day, these game companies are going to wake up and say, "Hey, we're LOSING money on PC games! Forget the comp, go straight to the console!" (*cough*BIOWARE*cough*)

Re:The Theory of Everything (to do with games)

[Blakey Rat]

What makes you think there's an "overall decrease in quality of video games"? You said that in your post as if it was an established fact.

Look at it this way: Unreal 2004 was released at $39.99, compared to Warcraft III released at $59.99. I know some people will disagree with me, but I didn't find Warcraft III all that great... I played through it once, hit the multiplayer a few times, then hit uninstall.

Unreal 2004, on the other hand, is the best value I've seen in gaming in years.
1) It's a damned good game, both singleplayer and multiplayer.
2) It contains, what, 10 different game types, all of them fairly unique.
3) It contains the entire content of a game released just a year ago, Unreal 2003.
4) It runs and was released on every major platform at the same time.
5) It includes all the modding tools and support from Epic you could possibly ask for.

In short, Unreal 2004 is an incredible value and an extremely high quality product.

I'd be interested in hearing why you think the quality of video games is decreasing, though. Remember "Old Fogey Syndrome" where people, as they age, keep their tastes frozen at a certain point and declare everything beyond that point crap. (See older people saying rap music is 'just noise', etc.)

Re:The Theory of Everything (to do with games)

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the publisher doesn't set the price; the retailer does. Unless the game gets specifically re-issued or bundled somewhere down the line (usually at least 3-4 months after first release), this kind of price variance all happens at the retail end. The publisher will have already sold in their copies.

If the same game in the same box gets reduced a few weeks after launch, it wasn't because of the reduced wholesale price.

Console gaming good :)

[UnseenEnigma]

As consoles get more and more powerful with harddrives and online play and stuff their is becoming far less market for the pc (windows) gaming industry. Wine and WineX (which im still subscribed too for another month) can never really get caught up with ms. I dont mind having a console aslong as i can play great games and not install emulator, directX, service packs, CDrom emulators (strictly for speed), 3d acceloration, and maybe windows on a otherwise clean system. They really need mouse and driver support for fps because controllers suck for shooters.

Heres why pc gaming will continue to slowly die: -different OS/Hardware support (try ati with simcity 4)
-easily pirated (have u seen the new ps2 modchips damn!),
-relience on windows (except ut2003 and few others)
-inconsistent performance (different hardware)
-harder setup (drivers, install to disk etc)
-Shrinking market as Linux takes over over next 10 years (LJ prediction)

Re:Console gaming good :)

[j.bellone]

Linux won't take over the gaming market until more developers start making their products work on both Linux and Windows.

Without that, Windows will still be on top. Sure you have wine, wineX, but they are that - emulators. Sometimes they work flawlessly, others they don't. Even though how ironic it might sound (stability on Windows) people want stability in their games, and developers will target the biggest platform of users until something else emerges... as you can see, Mac is still go knows where.

Don't get me wrong, I would love Linux to edge into the gaming industry more. I don't think it's going to happen though; atleast not while the majority of people still have Uncle Bill in their eye.

Licensing

[Singletoned]

Console games have licensing costs. To release a PS2/Xbox/GC game, you have to pay Sony/MS/Nintendo a fee That's how they make their money (or at least how MS makes less of a loss).

PC games have no licensing costs and so should always be a bit cheaper.

Re:Licensing

[j.bellone]

You have to look at the article though; the game is being developed across all platforms (PS2,Xbox,GC and PC) that means it's been developed for a slew of systems anyway. It was probably originally developed for the PC and then ported over.

That's when you take in licensing costs; if the game was originally developed on the PC, there's your inital cost. Porting costs probably don't even come close to that, then throw in the licensing. There's your price increase.

the initial cost of the console

[cyrax777]

is why yeah over time games may cost more but the average consumer they see the price of a console 100-200 dollers as miniscule to the cost of a pc 1000+ for a decent gaming rig. Also the average game buyer doesnt care that the pc version of xxx is a higher resulution since there content with the consoles resulition and pop in disk hit start and off they go. PC games I think will continue to dominate in the FPS market as nothing can replace a Keyboard and Mouse for FPS's (also the whole host of mods for them) To conpinsate for the loss they just drop the cost of the pc version and hopefully enough console gamers will buy a copy to make up for the loss. Also the media is cheaper as almost all pc games are still cd versus most consoles being DVD but thats changing with (ut2k4 for example) didnt notice a price diffrence on that thu as the stores near me didnt have the dvd version.

Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty much inevitable. Price is one of the few areas left in which PC games can compete for a mainstream audience with the consoles. PC games have a particular advantage here for one particular reason, a reason which is both the PC's strength and perhaps its greatest weakness (in gaming terms only, obviously).

Simply put, the PC has no big parent company to push it. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can all put megabucks behind "their" console, developing first-party games and throwing money at developers to give them exclusives, or at least support their machine. The PC has nobody to do this; the only company who might really have a vested interest in doing this this (Microsoft) actually have a bigger vested interest elsewhere (the X-Box). So, the PC essentially gets games from what would, in console terms, be called "third party" developers, who are developing for the system just because they think they can make the game they want to make on it and that the game will sell. In many cases, this isn't a powerful incentive and in some of the cases where it is, it backfires spectacularly given the low-profitability of many PC games and the rampant piracy in the market.

This all sounds pretty negative. But there is an up-side to it. First of all, there is no restriction on what content you can put in PC games, aside from the laws of the country you're developing (and the countries you want to sell the game in). This doesn't just mean that you can make porn titles for the PC... has anybody else noticed how none of the recent Vietnam-themed fpses have been ported to the consoles? Of course, not having to make sure that all of your games look like the visual designs were done by a 5 year old with Attention Deficit Disorder also helps (although developers for Sony and Microsoft can generally get away with this as well).

The relevance to the current pricing situation is also related to this. On every console game sold, a pretty hefty chunk of the money from the sale goes not to the developer or the publisher, but rather to the company behind the console. In many cases, this can be around 10 per game. Indeed, Nintento's share is apparently very large indeed, which accounts for why, in the UK at least, Gamecube games tend to debut at 45, rather than 40 as with the other consoles, and tend to drop in price more slowly. This isn't an issue on the PC - companies like Dell or Microsoft don't get any such cut of the profits, at least not directly.

In short, PC developers can afford to sell their games for less, withou necessarily making less profit per game than the console developers. The danger, of course, comes from the fact that they probably won't sell as many games, even with the lower price.

PC and console benefits

[0x0d0a]

Price is one of the few areas left in which PC games can compete for a mainstream audience with the consoles.

I disagree. I think that both the PC and the console have major advantages over each other that are good for various kinds of game.

The console:

* Number of users. There are more people out there with consoles than high-end gaming computer systems.

* Identical hardware. This significantly reduces development cost and code complexity, since you don't have to deal with making your effects and graphic systems scale to various systems or work at different resolutions -- if it works on one console, it works on all consoles of that brand.

* Control over the entire machine. PC operating systems like Windows (and mainstream variants of Linux) are not real-time OSes. A console can *ensure* that a game gets the cycles it needs each frame -- on a computer system, it's a fair bet that plenty of people are running a software package in the background that occasionally grabs a chunk of CPU cycles, be it a virus scanner, mail client/notifier, weather monitor, or NTP client. It's also easier to debug problems in an isolated environment. It also means that there are fewer variables that will result in Joe User saying "this game doesn't work on my computer" and returing it to EBGames or whatever.

* Reduced piracy. Pirating games for modern consoles, from a pragmatic standpoint, requires hardware modifications. Many people are quite happy downloading a modified CD image of a game to their computer, but are less comfortable mod-chipping their console. I've seen estimates of piracy vary a lot depending upon the particular game, but I've seen claims of upwards of 80% piracy. Now, admittedly, not all those were sales that were lost, but it's also true that some were. If you can make twice the sales on a console simply due to reduced piracy, there's a pretty strong incentive to choose the console (at least as a primary target).

* Gun interfaces. Consoles are pretty much the only game in town for gun peripherals.

* Initial hardware investment. A decent, midrange gaming PC still can be expected to cost upwards of $1000 (assuming no cannibalism of hardware). A console costs below $300.

* Easy installation. PC game installation and configuration is more complex and intimidating than console game installation and configuration.

* Presence of a good general-purpose gaming controller. For most types of games, the typical console gamepad is easier to use and hold, and is better technically suited to games (in that an unlimited number of buttons can be detected as down at once).

Advantages of the PC

* A broader range of input peripherals. You can get authentic fighter jet joysticks, pedals, steering wheels, gamepads of every variety, weird 3d input devices and weird throttle devices.

* Much more memory. Consoles are incredibly RAM-starved. This is visible not only in loading times, but in texture resolution and in less visible loss of functionality. Give a clever programmer some RAM to work with to precompute something, and he can usually whip up some amazing stuff. Less RAM means less wiggle room.

* A large, fast, writeable storage device. Consoles are limited to slow and small memcards (except for the XBox -- and the hard drive is going away in the next generation of the XBox). There are a lot of nice things you can do with mroe storage space -- store temp data, write data files of unbounded size (instead of ensuring that each saved game always uses under 192KB or whatever size limit is chosen). Fast seeks mean that programmers have to hassle less with clever loading of resources on the PC.

* Higher resolutions. This is, IMHO, actually less of an issue in the 3d world, since most 3d games are still playable at lower resolutions (if less attractive). For 2d games, it can be very annoying to have a smaller visible area, with fewer sprites.

* Much more common network connection. It's r

Re:PC and console benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some truth to this, but I think a lot of these factors are likely to disappear or become irrelevant in the short term.

With regard to peripherals, particularly mice and keyboards, consoles are fast catching up in this area. It's a brave man who tries playing the PS2 version of Final Fantasy XI without a keyboard and these are widely available for the PS (and, I believe, the X-Box). Pretty soon, I think console keyboards will become standard for the games that "need them". Mice probably aren't all that far behind.

I don't agree with the point about network connections at all. Most homes that contain a console contain a PC for web-browsing and work - the issue is whether the PC is actually used for games. Two of the three consoles in the current generation have decent network support.

Most of your other points boil down to the PC being better in terms of hardware. This is true, but quite frankly, with a couple of exceptions, you really wouldn't know it from looking at most PC games these days. The vast majority of fpses are based around a several year old engine (quake 3) which was, quite frankly, over-rated from day 1. All three consoles can handle games based on this engine perfectly well, given the resolution factor, and don't look any worse than their PC equivalents, when played on a decent TV. I honestly thought that Farcry might have pushed the PC's limits beyond those of the consoles, but I hear it's slated for a console port. If this port is on a technical par with the PC version, the PC is in very deep doo-doo indeed. Doom 3 is, of course, already scheduled to have an X-box port. Ultimately, while the PC might be capable of better things than the consoles on a technical level, over the last few years, the steady decline in profits from PC games has removed the incentive to actually exploit this.

Re:PC and console benefits

[Retric]

Why do people think you need to spend 1000$ on a gaming PC. A 200$ graphics card works just fine other than that you get normal PC which does everything a normal PC does. A 500$ PC with a 200$ graphics card OWNS a X-BOX in just about ever stat memory cpu graphics card ect. The problem is people want to play a X-BOX at 640/300 and want the PC to run at 1200/1024 most of the time.
Now the real advantage with a PC is that you don't pay microsoft money when you sell a game for the PC but they want there cut when you sell an X-BOX game.

And a PC comes with everthing you want where with an GameCube you buy a memery card. Want to watch DVD's with an X-BOX well we charge 1/2 the cost of a DVD player for the remote ect ect.

Re:PC and console benefits

[0x0d0a]

I don't agree with the point about network connections at all. Most homes that contain a console contain a PC for web-browsing and work - the issue is whether the PC is actually used for games. Two of the three consoles in the current generation have decent network support.

Being able to purchase service for a console is different from that service being widely used (and possible for a developer to effectively rely upon it being there). I know many people that have Internet access, but nobody that has XBox Live or similar service. A monthly fee for gaming doesn't go over very well with many people.

I think console keyboards will become standard for the games that "need them". Mice probably aren't all that far behind.

Maybe. A strong benefit of consoles is that a developer can rely on hardware just "being there". In console history, games that have relied on additional nonstandard hardware have, with only a few exceptions, not done very well. They are generally forced to bundle the peripheral with their game, which drives up their cost. I do not think that any of the console providers are going to start bundling a keyboard as standard -- initial cost is a serious factor in which system people choose, and none of the vendors want to drive it up too far. Same thing for mice. People have tried playing with the idea of additional periperals since at least the NES (I remember ROBBY the robot or whatever the thing was called), and it just hasn't done well.

The vast majority of fpses are based around a several year old engine (quake 3) which was, quite frankly, over-rated from day 1.

I'm curious as to why you're saying this. I admit that I haven't done modding or seriously played around with the Q3 engine, but just from playing Q3A, I've been reasonably impressed. It's quite fast. It supports curves with dynamic polygon reduction. It provides convincing (IMHO) volumetric fogging -- the levels that vanished off into a colored fog in Q3A were quite neat, IMHO. It provides portal support. Id has a tradition of good network engines, though I confess that I haven't done a careful comparison to other modern systems. What about it do you not like?

they sell it at the price..

[gl4ss]

..that somebodys willing to buy it.
just so simple. the game prices rarely have any connection into what the budget for the game was or what you're really getting.

btw, some of the sf2's for snes were retailed at over 100$(what translates to..) back in the day around here(around the time new 'big' pc games cost 40-50$ here). yeah the carts were expensive to make but hell no they were so expensive to make to justify that price. more likely they had decided that if somebody wanted a just a little beefed up version of sf2 they would pay just about anything.

*prices translated from now RIP finnish marks.

Get cheap console games...

[spoodie]

...with a small quantity of patience.

I don't know what it's like in the US but here in the UK I'm able to pick up quality (if not successful) titles for under 20 just 1-2 months after release. Sometimes it takes longer but I'm in no hurry. Yesterday I ordered the XBox version of Beyond Good and Evil for 20 and it's only been available here for a couple of months. Of course this doesn't apply to all titles, for instances Halo has only just been reduced from 40, but hey, it's Halo. And you can keep your crappy, although successful, MOH series.

Re:Thought...

[sheared]

I'm still waiting for KotOR's price drop for the PC. Not only did we have to wait, but now we get to see the XBox version drop to below $30 while the PC version hangs on at $49.99.

Overblown?

[PTBNL]

Perhaps there are a few titles like this. And maybe I haven't bought as many PC games in the last year as most.

I have a hunch the phenomenon may be a bit overblown, though, and inflated through the numbers of expansions and MMORPGs that are available for the PC that don't start at $50 because they're not a full game, or have a different pricing model that involves extracting $13.95/month from your wallet.

Besides, most decent X-Box games end up hitting the "Platinum" series ($19.95 retail) within 6-12 months. Same thing with PS2 - most games are discounted at retail within a few months, save the best-sellers.

Slightly off-topic, I decided I had enough of the pricing model for both sets of games. I no longer use my PC for gaming, and I simply rent my console games from GameFly.

I can't even tell you how much money it's saved me in bad game purchases. You know the ones - pay $50, play game for 3 hours, sell to GameStop for $15. Oof.

Re:yup

[blueZhift]

Well actually, if you count the cost of continually upgrading your PC in order to play the latest PC games, then the cost advantage shifts over to the consoles again. If you're hardcore, then the upgrade cost is on the order of $200/year if you always buy the latest graphics card and do a mobo cpu swap every other year.

That alone would not be so bad except for the fact that many of the multiplatform games are developed for a specific console first and then ported to PC. The results are not always pretty even when paired with godlike hardware.

And of course, consoles win the ease of use hands down, which, if your time is worth a lot to you, is important. Besides, if you wait a few months, the most popular console games end up being $19.95 greatest hits.

In the end, you just have to choose the version that gives you the most bang for your buck.

Little point to making game for Win32 and Linux

[AHumbleOpinion]

There is little point, from a developer's perspective, to making a game for both Win32 and Linux. Linux gamers are already Win32 customers to a large degree due to dual booting and WineX. A Linux version would not typically generate new sales, it would merely replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale. Additional developments costs, additional support costs, and no new money. In short, the Linux gaming market is not the number of Linux users who would buy a Linux game. You have to subtract out those Linux gamers who would buy the Win32 game and dual boot or emulate if there were no Linux version. The Linux gaming market is merely those purists who would never buy the Win32 game.

Linux does make sense for developers with respect to servers.

Regarding Mac Win32 emulation does exist but it is not viable for gaming. There is too much of a performance hit since the x86 CPU must be emulated not merely the Win32 APIs. Unlike Linux, Mac users have to use a native version.

Re:yup

[drinkypoo]

A new graphics card now is $300 or so and a high-end MB/CPU is generally about $400 or $500. That boils down to more like $700/year, plus more in RAM whenever your new motherboard requires a different kind of memory, or when your CPU gets a major FSB improvement and you have to upgrade your memory to fully utilize your system. (Sadly, I have an Athlon XP with the DDR166 bus, and dual-channel DDR333 memory, meaning that my FSB is half as fast as it needs to be to take full advantage of my memory and memory controller.)

Personally, I wait for video cards to get down to about $100 or $150 at most before I buy them, and my last MB/CPU upgrade ran me $230. I will however probably upgrade my mb/cpu again next year (I wanted to wait for opteron, but my girlfriend needed an upgrade so I gave myself an incremental upgrade and handed my older Athlon XP system down to her) so frankly I'm not saving much money by not buying the hot shit, though I am spreading the costs out over time.

Assuming you pay for all your games, it's typically much cheaper to game with a console, at least if you stick with one console. If you buy a new console every time it comes out, you will probably be forced to buy all new peripherals too, and if you buy them all (A generation is 2-4 years long, so a new system should come out every year on average) you're going to be in for about $400 in hardware or more per year anyway.

Piracy

[ameoba]

It's far easier to pirate games on the PC than it is for consoles. Modern consoles generally require some sort of physical modification in order to play burned discs while a simple binary patch will make a pirated PC game playable.

The idea is probably that, since it's easier to get a pirated PC game working, lowering the price will entice more PC gamers to actually purchase the games.