High Price Scare Tactics

GamesIndustry.biz has comments from Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, stating that he considers the recent talk about sky high game and console prices nothing but scare tactics on the part of large publishers. From the article: "'I guess they just don't have productive tools like we have,' he went on to suggest."

Comments

Trip Hawkins Mows My Lawn

[King Fuckstain]

" More people need to start following your lead. If you see a game that's priced out of the norm £40 for the UKers, $55-$60 for the Americans, etc...skip it."

If more people waited 6-12 months to purchase a game, the length of time before the publishers dropped the price would just increase. You should be encouraging fewer people to wait 6-12 months. The more people who buy the game on the first day it is released, the faster the publisher will drop the price.

"Last year, some publishers finally got smart, and gave us discount games like Katamari Damacy, Gungrave: Overdose and the ESPN sports titles."

Bargain games are not exactly a new innovation. The only difference is that now major publishers are taking a cue from the cheapie companies and considering development costs when pricing their games.

"Reward the good companies willing to stick their neck out like that, and punish the ones just trying to stick their hands out into your wallet."

Stick their neck out? Yes. Not putting their hands into your wallet? No. The $20 price point some companies are releasing games at is merely an attempt to take a product that they don't believe will sell well at $50 and make it more of an impulse buy at $20. At the end of the day, they all want to get into your wallet and would be happy to it empty.

"Eventually, the publishers will notice that there are pathetic sales for the games in their first weeks out of the game, and phenomenal numbers after the price drop. Then maybe they'll get it."

The market functions nothing like you think it does. The companies want to meet a certain target of units moved at the $50 price point - calculated by market research. Once they believe that they've sold all the copies they're going to sell at $50, they'll lower the price. Waiting will merely lead to the company waiting longer because their research shows the game needs to sell X number of copies before they will lower the price. Look at the cost of Mac games and how long it takes for the price to be reduced on those - it's quite a long time. Then, look at the EA Sports line of games for the PC. Those are reduced in price much more quickly than the same products on the consoles because EA believes fewer people are destined to buy at the $50 price point.

Finally, a post on Slashdot telling people not to buy games is going to in no way have any impact on an international marketplace, ever. God Bless.