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

Even higher?

[Oen_Seneg]

£35 for a newly released (PC) game is already sky-high. £5 higher and its not going to sell anywhere near as well until it drops in price. I'm not as up to date on the console situation, but I believe the cost of console games is even higher in the UK.

Not that it matters, I never buy games until 6-12 months after they've been released just because of the £10-15 price drop.

Re:Even higher?

[Alkaiser]

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.

I don't care how good the game is or how long you've been waiting. Wait until the price drops, then rush the store. We've been paying artificially high prices for games for a long time. Last year, some publishers finally got smart, and gave us discount games like Katamari Damacy, Gungrave: Overdose and the ESPN sports titles.

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.

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.

Maybe.

Re:Even higher?

[chris_mahan]

Nah,

You gotta buy the game at that price.

If good games cost less, they would already cost less. The market is already adjusted to the optimum price to support the greatest numebr of users and the industry.

Re:Even higher?

[ivan256]

That's just not true.

PC game prices have changed. 3 years ago PC game prices were on par with console game prices. Developers realized that they weren't selling at that price though, and now the typical PC game sells for $35 instead of $49. (Blizzard and LucasArts seem to be the exception to the rule. They must put crack in their games because people buy them at any price they stick on the box.)

This EA exec seems to forget that there's more to games than gameplay and graphics. Any two-bit hack can whip up gameplay and graphics to some extent these days. They're becoming commodity. The costs are in the content. You'd think they'd know that having just shelled out millions for NFL licenses.

Let EA raise their prices. Every other developer on the planet that lives in the real world will eat their lunch.

Wow.

[American AC in Paris]

"There's no question that the graphics are going to be a huge upgrade," he commented. "You know, people are such snobs, with this 'oh, it's not about graphics' thing. That's such nonsense. It's totally about graphics. What's the difference between the first Metal Gear Solid and the latest Metal Gear Solid? Right, it's - wow, the graphics!"

Well, duh. When your pony's one trick is looking good, you're not about to go trumpeting the virtue of speedy ponies, strong ponies, or clever ponies, are you?

I mean, c'mon. Take a look at the content of Epic Games' front page navigation box:

• Unreal Championship 2
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Unreal Championship
• Unreal 2
• Unreal Tournament
• Unreal
• Unreal Engine
• Unreal Developer Network
• Unreal Technology Site
• Epic Classic Games

This is akin to the VP of 3DO saying, "Of course it's about little plastic military figurines--and anyone who says otherwise is just a jerk with a silver spoon up his ass!"

Re:Wow.

[BoomerSooner]

The problem is the games were much more playable when the graphics were shit. Now everyone (game developers) think they can substitute great graphics for gameplay when I'd rather play shitty old Thief/Thief II than HALO/DOOM III. After killing 100 aliens/monsters/whatthefuckevers it gets a bit repetitive. Programming for a living is repetitive enough, how about some innovative games?

Bullshit

[superpulpsicle]

The last thing I need is EA dictating what the rest of the video game industry's need. What EA doesn't tell you is that the $50 cazillion budget incorporates fees paid to the NFL for exclusivity player licenses. It also includes lawyer compensation expenses.

Gamers aren't fucking stupid. If only big name companies with a trillion dollar budget can make a PS3 game, this is the end of the industry as we know it.

Genese, SNES games $70

[PoderOmega]

Am I the only one who remembers when Strider for Genesis was and Street Fighter II for SNES was $70? Yes, they were cartridges and you could argue now that were more expensive than CD/DVDs to produce. The best bargain has got to PC games, price usually drops in half in 6-12 months. After 18-24 months they cost $20.

Fairly standard

[DamienMcKenna]

It seems to be a fairly standard business practice these days. Make suggestions that your product could go up in price and people subconsciously start preparing to pay more. That's also why new technologies are always expensive ("it'll be expensive to start because of economics of scale but will come down in price soon", then end up with $50 games and $30+ DVDs). It works, so why shouldn't they push it a bit more?

Damien

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.

Re:Trip Hawkins Mows My Lawn

[Some_Llama]

"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. "

Wrong, doom3 dropped their price in less than 6 months, halflife 2 is still going for 60+, they both sold about the same in the first few weeks/months.

"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."

No waiting will ensure that they go broke if noone buys the game at their artificially inflated 50+ dollar price...

Do the math, 1 million games sold at 50 bucks, or 5 million sold at 20-30 dollars, which generates more profit?

When you make the games affordable so anyone can buy them you will reduce piracy and generate bigger interest in the game.. anyone remember this little title called Serious Sam? How about it's sequel...

----------------
I consider myself a liberal, does that count?

Kismet... wow!

[nacturation]

Everyone's commenting on the cost issue, but the full interview has some really great stuff about the Unreal 3 engine. Here's a snippet regarding Kismet, the scripting environment within the engine:

I have a great quote from one of our team, actually, which describes it perfectly. He's one of our level designers who posted on a private development forum, describing what his working life is like now with Kismet.

They were talking about Unreal Engine 3, and what he said was; "Nothing to do with graphics actually - the tools just ooze creative inspiration. I've never scripted or coded in my life, but our visual scripting - which I know is not an entirely new concept - is a fucking blast to work with. I've created levels with entire mini-games in them, AI behaviours, damage systems depicting various stun events and healing, cinematics, bizarre control schemes, even physically rolling dice telling me totals based on the angle of the surfaces facing upright when the object's velocity reaches zero, which I check every 0.5 seconds."

"I've even coded a random level generator and I've needed virtually no interaction with anyone on the code side to make this work. We've had level designers implementing a fighting game in a level, a driving game with chase cam and effects, targeting systems and etc, with incredibly low learning curve. You could walk into a room in a deathmatch level and suddenly find yourself in the middle of a Dance Dance Revolution mini-game."

"Just last week a potential licensee was in-house, and described the game they wanted to build and how one of their critical game mechanics was going to work. Literally within five minutes they looked over my shoulder, I'd built that core dynamic into a level of our game. The demo went incredibly well to say the least. "

"Typically, I'll sit down with a new recruit, a designer with no scripting experience, for about two hours, and show them the basics of Kismet - how triggers work, characters, toggles, cinematic systems, conditions, variables and so on. Then I'll give them about a day to screw around with it. Within a day I'll see some absurd crap" ... Ah, I'm replacing swear words here! [laughs] "...happening in their levels that would have been an absolute nightmare to get going otherwise, even if they could describe what they were actually looking for to a programmer - and that communication would no doubt affect the outcome anyway."

"The bottom line is that engine tools dramatically affect your creative process, and our engine has been designed with far more in mind than just pretty shadows."

With all the new games requiring a dozen programmers or so, will technologies like this bring back the concept of the one or two person commercial game? Artwork is obviously still a major hurdle, but there are many places to purchase models if you need to. And, finally, anyone know if this will be available for mod developers with the next Unreal game, or only to those who fork over the big bucks for an engine license?

WTF?

[oGMo]

"You know, people are such snobs, with this 'oh, it's not about graphics' thing. That's such nonsense. It's totally about graphics. What's the difference between the first Metal Gear Solid and the latest Metal Gear Solid? Right, it's - wow, the graphics!"

This is a comment from a person who obviously never actually plays the games, just looks at marketing material and screenshots.

The difference between MGS and MGS3 is mainly in the minor changes made to gameplay. Camoflage. Food. Survival. The "outdoors" world. These are mostly small, but they have a huge impact on the way you play the game. (There are also the enhancements to gameplay from MGS2, but these are also minor.)

Sure, the graphics are nice, but you could have made this game for the PSX with its crappy graphics and pretty much had the same compelling experience.

Who are you going to trust on this? Some VP from a 2nd-rate development house, or Hideo Kojima?

Graphics are nice. Gameplay is king.