Sony Hints At Higher Priced Games

Sony's Kaz Hirai hints that, in addition to the $600 console, we may have even more expensive games to look forward to. From the Gamasutra article: "I don't think consumers expect software pricing to suddenly double. So, the quick answer is that we want to make it as affordable as possible, knowing that there is a set consumer expectation for what software has cost for the past twelve years. That's kind of the best answer I can give you. So, if it becomes a bit higher than $59, don't ding me, but, again, I don't expect it to be $100."

Comments

Great idea

[KDR_11k]

When people are outraged at the price of your console, tell them you'll charge more for the games too. Sure. I'd like to know where that guy learned marketing.

Hit games shouldn't be expensive, except early

[192939495969798999]

If it's a super hit game, then charging $100 on the first day or for pre-release is only good economics -- if there are people willing to pay that much, why not? You can always drop the price later, while increasing it later will definitely sting more. Granted, I would prefer to not see any games over $50, I know that the market is just so high now that if a console is $600 when it used to be $100, then games are probably pushing $100 or even $150 for it! Now if you're dumb enough to buy madden 20XX supreme ultra plus edition for $100, then you deserve to be disappointed if it turns out to be "Yet Another Football Game".

Re:Hit games shouldn't be expensive, except early

[Control Group]

You have to be real careful with this sort of thing.

You really don't want to train people to know that you're going to drop the price of something within a few weeks. It's one thing to know that you could wait a year and spend $30 to get the game you're about to spend $50 on. It's another thing entirely to know that you could wait a month and spend $50 to get the game you're about to spend $80 on.

A lot more people will be willing to wait month to save $30 than a year to save $20. All you're going to do, ultimately, is drive down sales within the first few weeks of release.

It would probably work for the first couple games they did it with, sure...but even the American buying public would catch on to quick follow-on price drops. Note how, even today, MS denies that they have any plans to drop the price on the 360 when the PS3 launches, despite the fact that it's so painfully obvious that anyone with two neurons firing in synch is pretty sure they will.

But you never, ever, want people to believe (much less know) that the thing they're about to buy will be cheaper just a little bit down the road.

Re:Wait, you mean it will play GAMES, too?

[Volante3192]

Well, since you read TDB, I'm sure you caught this comment ( http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa122.html# comp ) where they found out it's the HDMI interface on the Samsung that causes the problems; switching to component placed Blu-Ray nearly on par with HD-DVD.

Hopefully they'll get that fixed before companies start enforcing the downsample flag...

Might be their perspective

[springbox]

I almost get the idea that in Sony's own world this is somehow being presented to "hype" the console. The wording of these articles are priceless since I was honestly expecting someone (from the article) to try and explain how this is a good thing. (as in: PS3 = Fancy resturant, games = fancy desserts.) I am not sure how continuing to leak information about the high cost of the system is going to help Sony.

Even so, it would seem as if there are some fans who would still buy the system and games even if they continued to raise the price.

Re:Already too Expensive

[spun]

I just play two year old games I find in the bargain bin for under $30. Often they come with one or more expansion packs and are pre-patched. I don't have to spend insane amounts of cash on a gaming rig, either. And hey, the games are still new to me.

Let's not even mention "real dollars"

[Control Group]

Let me just head one line of reasoning off at the pass: I'm sure someone's going to start throwing around calculations involving inflation and real purchasing power. Which are right... ...but they don't matter.

People, by and large, do not factor the devaluation of money between then and now into their price comparisons. For example, consider gas prices - everyone complains about them, despite the fact that they're actually lower (in terms of real dollars) than they were 25 years ago.

Yet you'll always hear the stories about how "I remember when a gallon of gas was fifty cents!"

Video games are the same way. They've been in the $50 range for a long time, and people are therefore acclimated to that price point. It doesn't really matter that $50 for a game in 1995 was more money than $50 is now.

According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005. Which means that the premium XBox 360 is a whole $36 more expensive than the NES (and the core system $63 cheaper!), in terms of real purchasing power. This has not stopped plenty of people complaining about its price.

Of course, anyone who figures real purchasing power into the equation is right, when you come down to it...but it doesn't matter when it comes to what drives the purchasing public to either pull the trigger or not on a new toy.

Re:Let's not even mention "real dollars"

[FooAtWFU]

According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005.

A calculator you found online? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you mean this little thing (which returns your answer as $363.01). So you have nothing to fear. From the source note:

The numbers since 1913 use the CPI compiled by the United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics and released by that agency every month.

These are as accurate as the CPI is meaningful. Thank you for using EH.Net.

Re:Let's not even mention "real dollars"

[Chris Burke]

According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005. Which means that the premium XBox 360 is a whole $36 more expensive than the NES (and the core system $63 cheaper!), in terms of real purchasing power. This has not stopped plenty of people complaining about its price.

I don't see why they shouldn't complain if they want to, as far as the console itself goes. The cost of electronics has been going down steadily since the 80s, both absolute and inflation adjusted. This is because producing them has become cheaper. In the late 80s a PC would cost thousands of dollars; today you can get one for $500 at Walmart. A game console in 2005 costing the same as a game console in 1985 after adjusting for inflation isn't impressive in the least. So if people percieve the price of the 360 as too high, well, there's some basis for that. Personally I don't think it's bad.

For games it is easy to see that they have actually gone up in cost to produce, so it isn't surprising that their purchase cost has gone up. I think this gets to people because they have the reasonable expectation based on experience that technology should go down in price (or stay the same in absolute dollars and thus become cheaper due to inflation), and they see the games as being an extension of that technology. This is the acclimation you're talking about. Or maybe they're like me. I certainly appreciate that games cost more to produce, but honestly I don't care. Telling me how many millions a game cost to produce doesn't make the $100 or whatever price any lower, and doesn't make me want to pay that high a price either.

Re:Let's not even mention "real dollars"

[Chris Burke]

I think a 360 has a lot more components in it than a NES had. Take out the hard drive and the DVD drive, memory card ports, wireless, etc. and I think you could make a more accurate comparison... and your point about similar components being much cheaper would hold true.

But those are all things that a modern low-end PC has which a PC in 1985 didn't. Including in many cases the hard drive; my friend's multi-kilo-buck computer had two 3.5" floppy drives to work with. Electronics have gotten so much cheaper that we can have many more components in them and still have them be cheaper than they ever were before. So the 360 costing the same as a 1985 console is really not impressive at all -- or unimpressive, my point being that whether or not it is expensive should be based on the analysis of today, not compared to 1985 before the PC revolution really took off.

Re:What are they thinking?

[blueZhift]

At this point, they'd better not do too much air travel with that stuff in their veins or they'll be arrested. Seriously, Sony seems to be doing all they can to nuke the PS3 launch. Expensive console + expensive games + another confusing format war != success in the marketplace. Assuming they are not high or insane, then that just leaves full of hubris. They must really think they own the market and can do whatever they want. If so, they're about to find out that hype and fanbois/fangrrls cannot carry a console.

Make the comparison then

[Ahnteis]

Nintendo has specifically said that they are aiming for a $50 price ceiling for games. When asked.

Sony? "Well, we doubt they'll get up to $100".

There's a reason people are fed up with what's coming out of Sony currently.

The Higher the Price of the Game

[Greyfox]

The less likely I am to buy it on impulse. Most games suck, as simple as that. I'm willing to risk $20 against the chances that the game will suck. At the $50 I'm much less inclined to buy a game on the spur of the moment. At $70 almost all of the games would look unappealing given that I can wait a year, buy them used (In which case the publisher gets NOTHING) or both. At more than $70, I'd be inclined to chuck the console and find a different hobby.