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."

Comments

Epic called BS on this:

[Drakino]

Slashdot already covered this from the other point of view, where Mark Rein of Epic found no reason games should be jumping to $60.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/07/ 1759251

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.

$39.99 Was Too Much

[EngineeringMarvel]

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.

Re:$39.99 Was Too Much

[Evro]

"What the market will bear." If the quality of the games increases along with the price then it sort of makes sense, but somehow I don't see that happening.

I expect them to come back with the piracy argument, which is totally backwards. "We're competing with a cheaper alternative (the same game for free) so we... raised prices... to... compensate."

Sounds about right

[vasqzr]

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.

Re:Sounds about right

[PoderOmega]

I posted about this is a similar slashdot posting... but here we go. I'm not sure where you got the NES games costing $60/$70, but I do remember Genesis and SNES games costing that much. I would say that $70 for Street Fighter II for SNES was worth the price. $70 for Strider for Genesis was fair, and it is a matter of opinion if $80 for Phatasy Star 4 was reasonable. Yes, the argument was for the ROMs being larger, but I don't know if that is the real reason why. Anyway, compared to other games at the when SF2 for SNES came out, it was amazing. An almost perfect translation from the arcade. If they can release games that blew me away as much as SF2 for SNES back in the day, they can charge $70 for a game today. Unfortuantely, I don't think that will be the case.

I'm not a fashion snob

[SunFan]

I can wait until next year and pay $20! Even less! HAHAHAHA!