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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"?
$40-$50 seems more like what I'm seeing.
I too have noticed where games have come out on all platforms simultaneously the pc version is usually the cheapest or equal priced with the GBA game. It kinda negates the argument that console gaming is cheaper. The hardware is cheaper, sure but if you buy a lot of games and they're multi platform, it all adds up (or down) over time.
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*)
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
May we never see th
...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.
I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines.
"smaller [PC-developing] companies often can't handle the loss of revenues from lowered prices, so too dramatic a drop might jeopardize their existence"
Review of Econ 101 for those slashdotters that need it:
Lowering the price of a product does not inevitably lead to lower profits. Nor does raising the price lead to higher profits. The higher priced that a product is, the fewer people willing to pay for it, and vice-versa. Theoretically, there is an optimum price that will bring in the most profit for a company.
There should be NO loss of revenue from a price drop made to bring the price closer to the optimum. So unless the argument is that game companies have lowered prices for reasons of insanity, then there should not be much to worry about simply from the fact of lower prices. They are just adjusting closer to the optimum profit point.
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.
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.
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.
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