Slashdot Mirror
Large Publishers Pointing to High Prices
Despite Mark Rein's recent statements to the contrary, GamesIndustry.biz has word that Activision, THQ, and Take Two are all indicating that they may be charging $59.99 for next gen titles. From the article: "This strategy is likely to see a two-tier structure emerging for game pricing, where premium titles command a premium price point of $59.99 or more, while less important games are sold for between $39.99 and $49.99 - much closer to the current price point."
You know, they can charge anything they want and still get it. $60 a game is quite expensive. But I guess if you really want it, you'll figure out how to afford it. *shrugs* I think it sucks because not one system is better off than the other being at the mercy of the developers...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
Slashdot already covered this from the other point of view, where Mark Rein of Epic found no reason games should be jumping to $60.
/ 1759251
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/07
All it means for me is a longer wait. I've already been getting tired of buying games at $50 and watching the publisher suck up most of that money. Usually I only buy games at $40 or less. I have such a backlog of games anyhow that by the time I can play something new, it is already $20-$30.
Phony marketing people like to talk about "price points", instead of prices.
Price fixing.
Costs of distribution are far lower today than they were maybe 10 years ago, and systems like steam and perhaps bittorrent mean its possible to launch a game on very little revenue - these consoles have broadband adaptors after all. Why the price hike?
Well the fact that three publishers have announced it at the same time makes me wonder if there is something dodgy here.
Any refutements or evidence in this one?
Can't see it turning out well though: Nintendo were previously thrashed on price for the N64, and they were only able to return to somewhere close to their previous revenue by producing an incredibly cheap console.
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com
When the first Playstation came out, most games were $40, but a few premium games demanded $50. Now you can hardly find a new game for $40 on the PS2 and the XBOX. Looks like its back to the cartridge days and the $60 games.
I have only purchased one game that was at or over the $40 mark, and that was HL2. I have over thirty games and only maybe two or three of them I would say is worth $50. I do however own 2-3 games that were worth $50 at retail, but I recieved them as gifts. By no stretch do I consider a static game to be worth $60, that's just ridiculious, especially with the overall lack of gameplay quality in games nowadays. I believe $60 is too much and any game put at that price will see a reduction in overall profit of that title. I would like to add that I can easily afford a $60 game a month if I wanted. I don't buy them at that price because I can buy other entertainment equal in value for half the cost.
I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so...you're stuck with this.
Compare $50 of todays dollars with $50 in 1990!
Anyone remember paying $60 or $70 for a NES/SNES new release? Granted, you were paying for larger ROM chips...
Look at the budgets of some of todays games. Millions of dollars. How much of a budget do you think Megan Man or Castlevania had?
They have to make the costs up somewhere.
I can wait until next year and pay $20! Even less! HAHAHAHA!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
To be honest, most video games only interest me for a few hours. Either game quality needs to come up or prices need to come down. There have been extremely few games that I've felt were worth $50 in the last few years.
Here in Britain, $60 US would practically be a price drop.
Gran Turismo 4 for PS2 has a recommended price of UKP39.99 ($76.9219 US) and the lowest shop price I found on launch day was £29.99 ($57.6761 US).
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
With the rising inclination of gamers to resort to piracy, you'd think game developers would resort to raising game prices last.
*sigh* The economics of game-making is getting so fucked up. Pretty soon, all we'll have will be a plethora of FOSS games.
Sounds good to me.
i think this will lead to allot more copied games, cause im starting to have problems affording (or saying i can afford, other things have more importaint ques on my money) that are 44$ slightly cause i dont have tons of cash to spend on frivolas things at times, and mostly, cause very few games end up worth nearly that amount. and this price hike isn't going to help there cause i think. oh well. maybe once they get very old game si might be able to afford them (and hopefully that will coincide with the console dropping price too!)
Movies made by a crazy person
http://www.youtube.com/marginalpro
and they think piracy is bad now.
as sales drop publishers will have to be more selective about what they put on the shelves and developers wont be able to get away with the 1/2 assed unpolished crap we see soo much of now.
In Germany you pay roughly 55 Euros for new games, and even 59 Euros is not completely unheard of. That's $71.50 to $76 at the current rate. That's why I usually don't buy 'less important' titles and go straight for the gems.
I recently blogged about this...
http://www.kamalot.com/
This pricing is going to have a detrimental effect on the industry as a whole. With higher-priced games and consoles, people will be willing to buy fewer titles. The pressure will be put on game companies to produce the "next big thing" to ensure that their game is the one that gamers purchase. Publishers will only seek to fund development teams that can create tried-and-true games, ones that have a history of financial success or a recognizable tie-in to other media. As a result, there will be fewer innovative and new titles. More games will be rehashes with a new coat of paint or based on movie/comic licenses.
This is a terrible future for gaming. Gaming was once a bastion of creativity. As prices become so high, it is going to be relegated to 2nd hand status with more re-hashes than Hollywood. The evidence of this is already present.
How many games are TRULY worth the $50 we pay for them?
High prices like these also discourage more casual gamers from picking up a console and getting into video gaming. This reduces the potential audience for video gaming, making it even more of an inaccessible niche market. With the proliferation of gaming on mobile phones, and the rabid success of affordable handheld platforms, it should come as no shock that many people like to play games, if it is easy and affordable.
There is no shortage of free entertainment for me to spend my time on. That isn't to say, however, that somebody else isn't perfectly justified in paying 60 bones for a game if that's what they want. Just count me out.
I would imagine as prices increase along with demand, so will piracy.
Personally if I want a game bad enough, and cant afford it. I will be more than happy to pirate it.
The "they wouldn't have bought it anyway" statement will not hold true in this scenario. Because if they coul afford it they would have bought it.
But because of the ridiculous price hike they pirated it. This way the publishers dont get shit.
And they wonder why people "steal" stuff when the average person makes $10 USD/hr.
Please, someone explain to me how, less than 15 years ago, a *full-priced*, years-in-development, state-of-the-art game cost in the region of 10UKP ($20). That same game would take many WEEKS, if not MONTHS, of game-time to complete if you dedicated yourself to it, many of them much more than that.
[[[Me, my dad, and my older brother once spent night-after-night trying to complete Nonterraqueous and only managed it through sheer brute-force cooperative mapping of the game and many weeks of intense play... Typically, the next week someone else sent in the first ever map of Nonterraqueous to a computer magazine and had it published.]]]
That older game would be programmed by (sometimes) a single-person or at most a small team. That game would interface direct with the hardware (no OS) and take full advantage of the entire machine's capabilities. It would be programmed in the lowest-level language available and be massively MANUALLY optimised to make full use of the available speed and resources, both of which were available in only miniscule amounts.
That same game would be ported, without the aid of cross-platform tools, to numerous platforms (with similar optimisations) and sell for the same price on all platforms. That game would be fun, virtually bug-free, engaging and keep the average gamer with a large software library occupied for years and years.
So why do modern games now cost RIDICULOUS amounts (way above equivalent inflation and way out of pocket-money territory even for modern youth) when they can be completed in a few DAYS of playtime, be in development for the same amount of time as the older games and sometimes never even appear at all.
Admittedly, any game today usually have a larger team behind it and more of a PR push but that must be cancelled out by the comparatively ENORMOUS gaming market of today, the low cost of duplication, the ability to take advantage of massive libraries of pre-crafted code, audio, artwork, the proliferation of available programmers, computer artists etc.
Modern games are also now written in much higher-level languages than older titles, which are easily portable across many platforms, using a massive framework of standardised operating systems and hardware interfaces with well-established controlling libraries (DirectX) etc.
The modern games are buggy, boring, bloated and absent of decent gameplay. Processor power and resource availability has soared far beyond anything the older gamers could ever dream of, yet the games are sluggish and ugly even on the "recommended" hardware.
I haven't played a game in years that engaged me, 90% of them having a single, oft-repeated premise that has been done to death and they provide nothing new but eye-candy that gets in the way of the game.
I've actually got to the ideal point now... I have a massive library of older games and I do not buy modern games much anymore, maybe only once or twice a year, and even then usually from the budget range.
My computer is DELIBERATELY several years behind state-of-the-art so that the only games I can be tempted to run are ones which have been on the market for a long while, allowed me to weed out the chaff and buy the one, single, ground-breaking game of the era.
My last (impulsive and un-researched) game purchase was UT2003 and I installed it, completed several of the ladders and got bored and uninstalled it. Yet Counterstrike is on my hard disk (in fact, I have about 10Gb of installed Half-life games BUT NOT HL2 or CS:Source) and I'm currently engaged in a few games of OpenTTD. The best pieces of software I own are a Spectrum emulator and DOSBox.
I have often wandered into my local game store and walked out again after not being taken by any of the games, even after test-playing many of them.
Why do companies even THINK that people will pay for the rubbish they churn out, except possibly by mistake? Black & White was, for me, the last game purchase I made near it's release date... it was
I have to wonder how much this will really help? Personally, I only buy a few games a year anymore, and I'm somewhat selective in doing so. Usually, I'll try to wait for games to hit the bargin rack, or I'll wait for a friend to buy it, finish it, and borrow it from him. I'll grant that there are some games that I will buy at full price, but those are getting to be fewer. This year, the only game I'm looking at paying full price for is Rainbow 6: 4. And that assumes that it hits this year, and doesn't have a ton of bugs at release. The sad part is, I'll probably only play through it in co-op mode with some friends, whom I've played through 3 with. We just enjoy that sort of thing, and we all need to have our own copies.
The other problem with the prices climbing higher, is going to be piracy. Let's face it, pirating a game is easy these days. And all of the silly key codes are doing nothing to slow it down. Do a quick google for "half life 2 cd key" and you'll see what I mean. Granted, this won't help people with online play, but if all they want is the single player version, then it'll get the job done.
At some point, higher prices are not going to result in higher returns. Too many people will wait for the price to drop or outright pirate the game. Are we there yet, who knows, but we'll probably get to find out soon when the companies start charging more.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
This is complete bullshit. Look at the profits that these companies bring in already.
Go to your local fry's, and compare the sheer amount of today's titles in the bargin bin to bargin bins of the mid 90's.
Look at the sheer number of titles published today compared to the mid-90's.
Look at the growing lack of quality in today's games (though infrequent, I have console titles that crash regularly)
This industry will see another crash similar to the mid-1980's before these assholes are done. They're just scrambling to get thier money before it's over.
Don't get me wrong, because games will never disappear entirely, but they sure will be ridden into the dirt before a new market is resurrected by the same greed that killed it the first times, only to repeat it again.
They can charge what they want. Standard economics, you don't even need to take the class to understand it. As price increases demand falls. At some point there is optimal profit. As you raise prices you are also loosing customers who would buy at a lower price, while lowering prices brings in less customers than the added profit.
They can try raising prices. However I personally consider $25 on a game too much, so already there are many games I personally do not buy. As price goes up more and more people will cross that line. I know many people who would buy more games, but their wife keeps saying that is too much.
But seriously, this is just an effect of production costs spiralling out of control.
Games today are pushing $40 million to make with World of Warcraft and Half Life 2. In two years we'll be looking at Hollywood movie budgets in the $100 million range. Already you can imagine a high quality 3D game requiring as many or more professional animators and modelers as a Pixar movie would require. Add voice acting and super star directors and it's not hard to see a 40 hour video game surpassing the 2 hour movie in budget.
Ahh... save us Nintendo DS. Give wireless delivery to the people!
At that price point, I have some severe doubts about the volume of units they will be able to move.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Sorry big ol' game publishers, but I won't be buying games at $59.95. Fifty dollars is my limit and only reserved for much anticipated titles. I've never seen a game worth more than $50 at retail and I'm not convinced that the next gen games are going to show us anything to make it worth the cost. I would predict that the only game that will get away with charging $59.95 will be the next iteration of Madden since EA killed off all of the competition with the NFL exclusive deal. So they can try charging more, but I'd guess they're going to back off of that real quick!
Unless the game spends the night and then makes me breakfast the next morning, there's no way I'm paying $60 for a game!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I'll add myself to the majority here and say I will not buy a nextgen console game while this pricing scheme is in effect by developers trying to gouge me. Complaining about it is nice and all, but the best voice your opinion to them is through your wallet.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Compared to Australia prices!
US$59 is approx AUS$75!
A new release game in Australia ranges from AUS$79 to AUS$109 for a console (approx US$$62 to US$86!!).
I hope they don't consider increasing prices here!! I will definitely stop buying games locally.
I'm usually importing UK games (which work out to be AUS$75 for a new release!).
I just cannot understand why games in Australia are so friggin expensive! Why is a game that is "manufactured" in Australia the same price as a game that has been imported from Europe?? Wouldn't the locally manufactured game be cheaper?? Just does not make any sense to me at all.
As science struggles on to try to explain.
Oxytoxins flowing ever in to my brain.
The fact of the matter is that for every one person saying they're not going to buy a 10 dollar more game 10 people ARE going to buy that game. Your not making much of a dent in the companies pocket, and besides they're making up that dent with the extra 10 bucks. Not buying their games just denies you some quality entertainment.
Society never gets more or less violent, the definition of violent just keeps changing.
These days I don't pay a lot for a video game unless it's a top-line FPS game (e.g., Doom 3, HL2, UT2004). I'll wait a few months or maybe a year until the price is right.
For example, I been looking at the demo of Empire Earth 2 that's coming out this month. The game is good enough to buy. However, I noticed that Empire Earth Gold (the original game and expansion pack) is available for $20 USD. So I got EEG instead of EE2 because it was cheaper, and I'll probably pick up EE2 Gold when it eventually comes out for $20 USD.
Now, I'm no math-a-magician, but...
If they can raise the price 20% higher than what it is now, without losing 20% of their customer base, then the higher price point makes sense for the company.
If their title is a big one and sells 5 million units, that means they'd have to piss off a million people before they'd start to lose money.
Even TERRIBLE titles when released with the system sell at a 1:3 ratio, so I just don't see where this is risky for the companies, ESPECIALLY when the system is new.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
Almost all N64 games costed $80, and for some STUPID reason I bought them. Never again. I agree with an earlier poster, I will not pay over $50 for a game. I either wait for it to drop or look for a coupon/deal. The developers see the same amount regardless when they have publisher deals.
Companies gotta charge more.
There was an interesting talk at the GDC mobile
this year. With the introduction of 3D
handsets, the cost in producing a mobile game,
in was stated, is slated to go up 10x to
a million dollars a title!
I happen to disagree. Mobile titles
don't need to be so complex. Better
to provide a little bit of fun or
information the user can use.
www.mobilebrackets.com
I spent $50 to purchase the computer game Ultima 3: Exodus in 1983. According to an inflation calculator that price in 2003 adjusted dollars would be $90.91.
Admittedly it came with a really nice cloth map and 3 manuals (2 were spell guides) but that's still a lot of money.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
1. Activision, THQ, and Take Two are all indicating that they may be charging $59.99 for next gen titles.
Well who buys games from these guys anyway? This is just another nail in their coffin. IT would be a bigger deal if it was Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Square Enix saying they are going to charge $60+.
2. The possible main reason for the pirce flux is probably the cost of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on the PS3 or Xbox Next, as oppossed to just cheapo DVD or whatever cheap propietary disc nintendo will use. Other than that, development is no more complicated than making a game for the PC, yet for some reason PC games are generally less expansive than console games (epsecially games released on console and PC simultaneously, see EA games). And we know that even with the next gen of consoles, PC gaming will still be ahead of consoles and always more complex. Once Xbox Next, Revolution and PS3 come out, shortly there will be graphics cards for PC that overshadows them. So "new console development" is no excuse.
3. I have a feeling that if Nintendo can always manage to find a way to keep the prices of their new consoles $200 or less at launch, they will find a way to keep their Revolution games $50 or under. This may be a good thing for them, if PS3 or Xbox Next games will be $60 and up.
I was stunned when I went to AU/NZ how much games & books cost. You appear to import books from the UK. I don't understnad why you don't just import from the US. LA is closer than London, and the books start off cheaper.
In AU my paperback cost AU $20 (US $15), and in NZ it cost NZ $28 (US $21). Compare this to the US prices of US $8 for either book. Plus, Amazon usually offers a discount of 0-30% (0% & 10% on these 2 items). Granted the UK covers are cooler, but they aren't $7-13 cooler.
I was wondering how many books/games I'd have to order from Amazon.com (US version) to make up for the shipping cost to AU/NZ. I already wait till my Amazon order hits the "Free Shipping" limit (US $25) anyhow. What would my limit rise too before I hit the break even point?
Has anyone tried this?
The key is that the game has to be good. I haven't been impressed with a game since Asheron's Call in 99, and Starcraft earlier. I'm playing Halo2 now.
GTA was an awesome series, but I'm past my senseless destruction days.
I think video games are awesome, but there's so much innovation that needs to be done. The price tag isn't something that prevents me from buying. What prevents me from buying is that I don't want to waste my time playing something that's not fun. Bring on the big price tags if thats what you need to make something fun.
God spoke to me.
This is why I have a horizontal game buying strategy, as opposed to the verticle game production movement.
I got an Xbox for free, so I bought some games and have now played and own quite a few xbox games. I enjoyed it a lot.
Now, instead of moving on to Xbox 2, I'm going to purchase a Gamecube and start playing my way through the gamecube catalog. This will take a long time, and the games will be extremely affordable because by then they will be previous generation games.
When I am done with my Gamecube, I will buy a PS2 and move through the highlights of the PS2 catalog. This will be in about two or three years. I bet PS2 games will be cheap in two or three years.
I just can't stand the sick, rampart corporatism in the game industry. I'm all for capitalism, right to the point where it stops benefiting consumers, and instead serves as a cudgel that corporations use to beat profits out of our hands.
I refuse to buy new corporate-produced video games until they stop sucking the heart and soul of fun out of my games. I don't feel invited to participate in gaming. I feel like rediculous ads are screaming at me to bow down and suck some huge company's dick. The marketing is insane and counter-productive to the development of technology and art in gaming.
Every year, I become more and more happy that I "retired" from console gaming about 6 years ago.
I'll pay $300-$500 every couple of years to upgrade my PC, but there's no way in hell I'd pay $60 each for console games.
PC games come down in price so fast that I'm more than happy to wait 6 months to get games at a reasonable price point like $20-$30.
But, I guess as long as people are willing to play those prices, they'll keep charging them. It's just possible that they might not know the limit, they may overstep their bounds and do serious damage to the software marketplace.
Because if they price their games too high and sales slump, do you think the executives will admit that it's because they fucked up or will they blame the "loss" on "evil internet pirates"?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm quite the avid gamer, but I don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on games, but I like to play *lots* of different games, even if just for a few hours.
Solution? Blockbuster Game Pass (or Gamefly, I've had both on and off for a year). That way I can buy the games I know i'll play for a long time... In the past year I've purchased 4 games, Splintercell PT, Halo 2, Mechassault 2, and Fable. I sold back Mechassault 2 and Fable within a month of their release after realizing they wouldn't hold my interest and lost aprox. 15 bucks on each one of those. I have however played probably 35 different games this year, beaten all the new ones including the new Oddworld, Republic Commando, Mercenaries, and Brothers in Arms using the blockbuster pass at an affordable 20 bucks a month.
Rental passes are the way to go when you don't know if its worth your money... You can always buy later.
I have had my Gamefly account now for about 6 months and I have been LOVING it. When a game comes out I am willing to try but am not willing to fork over $50 for, I simply rent it, and play until I get tired of it, then I send it back, no harm, no foul. They almost never are out of copies of games I want to rent (even the new ones). So really, a hike likely would not bother me much.
If a game is worth $60, I'll pay $60 for it. Mortal Kombat Deception had a special version that came with MK1 and since MK Deception was online, I logged over 50-70 hours playing it. It was a good $60 spent, just like Project SnowBlind was worth the $50 I spent on it because I love the online play on PS2.
I buy games much less now however, so in the end it has to be an A+ experience that will last me for a long time for me to warrant spending this kind of money on a videogame...and sadly most games don't provide that and are not worth the $50 to me.
You kinda lost me here. A 1:3 ratio of what?
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
I live in Ireland, and new games usually come out at about 60, about $80. I was shocked to find out that new games are available in the US for $40. I only get them at 45 (~ $60) becuase a friend works in a game shop and I can abuse her staff discount. Damn yanks getting games early, cheaply... grumble..
Reminds me of back when the Nintendo 64 came out. The highest priced games I have ever seen were titles like Shadows of the Empire at AUD$129.99.
Yeah, no one was that dumb.
Microsoft tried something similar a couple of years back, started their games at AUD$109.95. No one bought until that price came down the important $10.
Back in the day I paid AUD$89.95 for Ultima VI on the Amiga. I paid the same price for Rome: Total War. I expect I'll be paying the same in three years' time too.