Slashdot Mirror
Higher Game Prices Explored
An Anonymous Reader writes: "Next Generation has a feature interviewing a dozen or so developers, publishers and analysts on the new $60 price for games. Generally, publishers are positive, developers are skeptical and analysts are mixed." From the article: "The next gen world is considerably more complex - and prices for titles that deliver on pushing this complexity will definitely reflect that. We couldn't deliver the type of consumer experiences we're delivering in Full Auto as an example, on an existing machine. Hardcore gamers probably remember that $59 retail price points are not that unusual. Going back to N64 and as far back as the 16-bit generation - there were cartridge based games, some with battery back up that routinely cost $59. Those price points were to cover the larger cost of goods - in the next gen world it's to afford better artificial intelligence and technology, which I believe delivers better value to the consumer."
Although the price is high now, it warms my heart to think that one day all of these great, highly advanced games will be in the public domain. There will be joy and fun for people of all incomes.
Oh, wait...
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
..interviewing a dozen or so developers, publishers and analysts on the new $60 price...
Maybe they should interview some consumers and see what THEY think of the new pricing of these games...
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
games are cheap these days! 10-15 years ago, i remember snes and sega genesis games costing up to $70!
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
They are the ones making most of the money.
:-\
There's a reason why I only buy a game or two a year... I can't afford to keep up.
I'm off to the used game store.
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
Back when they were still shoving games onto disks, and you had to uncompress everything to play (which could someitmes take 2 hours), I paid $70 for a copy of Wing Commander 2. Until the CD came out, and it looked like games were going to occupy even more disk space, many of us had resigned ourselves to paying $70 or more for games.
I haven't paid more than 20$ for a game in a long time. Games sales seem to burst and then dwindle forcing retailers to drop the prices rather quickly. Of course there are exceptions like WoW which I didnt get until 2 months ago when Circuit City had a sale. Plus systems have to have their million seller discounted games so people will buy their systems. People who cant afford or dont want to pay full price for games simply need to wait. This raise would only effect those who cant or dont want to wait.
After you factor in the tools like Renderware as well as others, you realize game designers do far less.
The fact is the line that "The next gen world is considerably more complex - and prices for titles that deliver on pushing this complexity will definitely reflect that."
Yeah I really think the next Need for Speed game really has the same level of complexity that Xenogears (the original) and Gran Turismo have. the fact is that if you priced games by complexity it'd be easier to tell who did the most work.
The reason why the game world is going in the crapper is every other game that is released is a sequal of a lousy first game, or a rip off of another game, or worse a port of a game from a different version (console to console, Console to PC, Pc to console.). I liked Half Life 2, Morrowind, UT2004, and Doom 3, but I don't need Big Mother Truckers 2, BloodRayne 2, or Fantastic 4.
I love most of GTA, but Mafia was aweful, Driver is terrible, and True crime just sucked. Yet all those have sequals coming? And let's not fail to meantion all the RPGs that fell short, all the racing games that just arn't needed, and all action games that is just mindless violence.
And let's remember all those games started on the PC ported to the Xbox (or bought for the Xbox) and then brought back to the PC? Deus Ex was an excellent game, the sequal? restricted. Morrowind at least was done right, Halo had a lofty goal (3 different playable races) until it became part of the Microsoft family, and Splinter Cell? I remembered that game when it was just called thief.
There's too many crap games that try to be different but end up being the same old crap. Of course let's not also meantion those ultra short single player games that get all their points from Muliplayer? And half the problem is these reviewing sites that never rate stuff under 6.0 Let's be honest. Out of the last 12 monthes, there's been some good games but there's been a LOT of bombs. Why arn't I seeing Reviews that are at least honest about that.
The end problem is this. Instead of spending more money to get named actors or named properties, like movies do (which have also fallen) why don't they spend the money making the game better or tighter, no one wants to play a movie based game if it's just movie scene, gameplay, movie scene, harder gameplay, movie scene, if the gameplay is only "hard" because of crap controls.
...but I'll instead just turn to the used videogame store. Why? Because the mom and pop used videogame store is the same price as Funcoland, and I'm instead patronizing a local establishment. But here's the thing - Videogame companies don't make any money on my purchase. They've already made their profit from that particular sale. So, what happens to their sales if high prices drive a larger percentage of consumers to the used bins? With less first release sales, they won't make as much money... ...and then they'll either be smart, and drop the price back down (which will also make them look better, if everyone else is more expensive), or they'll do the sadly more likely, and raise the price again to "recoup lost profits"...
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
I already wait for games to hit the clearance bin before buying them. I think high prices for AAA titles will be a good thing for indie developers, who aren't throwing the kind of money at a game that it requires a $60 price to recover the investment.
We've already reached the point where the cost of art assets is a greater limiting factor than hardware capabilities when it comes to graphics. I believe procedural generation will step up to the challenge and rescue the industry. Procedural terrain, buildings, and plant life are basically solved problems. Wil Wright's Spore is making a credible attempt at procedural animals. Our eyes have such high standards when it comes to the human form that I doubt we'll ever have completely procedural humans, but a number of games now have just a handful of human character graphics and parameterize features such as jaw width, cheekbone height, obesity, etc. to create combinatorial variety with a minimum of artist man-hours.
The beautiful thing about procedural and parameterized art is that they can be open-sourced in a meaningful fashion. There's currently a lot of free/public-domain game art out there, but not much of it helps. The art requirements for games are too idiosyncratic. With parameterized/procedural art you can fit random art from the internet to your needs a lot more easily. Parameterized art is re-usable art, which means less duplication of effort within the community. The collective art output of the indie gaming community will then be able to create games of similar graphical quality and content depth as commercial AAA titles.
So yes, high game prices are a good thing.
For great justice.
If you develop an AI, it costs less per unit, the more units you make. If you use a bigger RAM chip on a cartridge, it raises the cost of every unit!
Reasoning that better games are more expensive and should therefore be more expensive to purchase is a faulty argument. Games should be priced to maximise profts; PROFIT = SALES x (PRICE - COST OF MANUFACTURE) - FIXED COSTS. The fastest way to grow profit is to grow that first term, either through increased sales, higher prices or lower cost of manufacture. Fixed costs generally pay for themselves in increased sales.
The hard part here is that Price is generally inverse related to Sales. That's basic economics. Cost of manufacture is generally out of the hands of game developers, because there's certain minimums you must provide consumers and standard interfaces you need to comply with. So developers and publishers are basically left with a tradeoff between fixed cost and sales x price. Advertising, awesome new graphics, particle effects, those are all fixed costs.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Also, the intrusive rental/DRM systems like Steam are no doubt enhancing revenue by preventing all that piracy they were crying about,
DRM copy protection systems on games do not prevent piracy. It just annoys the people that buy legit copies... Unless they buy the copy and then download the crack.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Let me guess: you've never created a game, or held a job in the industry, have you? Otherwise you'd recognize the above as patently absurd.
Trust me, designers most certainly do *not* have it easier. Even with middleware tools like renderware & havok, and with design tools like Phototoshop, Maya, and 3ds Max, it's still an unbelievablly work-intensive process to create content for a state-of-the-art title.
For example, consider need for speed vs. gran turismo. Let's suspend the argument of which is a better game (GT kicks ass), and just talk about dev costs. You might have an argument that middleware tools have made it easier on a programmer who is relieved of low-level rendering and physics simulation tasks (though I'd wager that a programmer would disagree), but the amount of work required to create the content (audio, artwork, modeling, level/track design) in Need for Speed for the Xbox 360 exceed GT by an order of magnitude. Newer design tools make artists and designers more productive, but these productivity gains are outstripped by the work required to exploit the capabilities afforded by advances in hardware.
But don't take my word for it. Check out a recent post-mortem from Game Developer magazine (or its Gamasutra site)and compare it to one from 5-10 years back. You'll notice that the development staff (programmers, designes, artists, management) numbers have become huge! Licensing and actor royalties notwithstanding, you're still looking at increased costs.
Is the industry producing crap games? Of course. They produced crap games back then, too. It's just that they cost more to make.