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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."
Games are already too expensive as it is, which is one reason I quit playing them about 2 years ago. I can get a lot more enjoyment out of $60 doing something outside or with friends and family than I can spending hours in the basement mashing buttons.
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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.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sony has stated they have no real answer for Halo 3. Sony's tech demos and specs were less than overwhelming. Even Microsoft, who seemed to enjoy rising with Sony to the top during the last console generation, has come out to say that they're siding with Nintendo (alright, not literally, but you know what I mean). Finally, sony announces that they will most likely raise prices a 'bit' above the already high $59.
Someone's smoking something, and if it screws up their logic this badly, I might just want some.
The Sony Playstation S&M: Sony's got the "S" covered, guess where that leaves you?
Do they have any toes left at this point?
When you buy a PS3, someone from Sony will come and kill your puppy or kitty. If you do not have a puppy or kitty, one will be assigned to you, and then it will be killed.
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".
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Description: This cursed weapon deals +3 damage against wielder's own feet.
Price: Credibility and market share.
Weight penalty: Ponderous, especially to those with foot damage.
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Given their grave concern that the PS3 isn't expensive enough, it's a short jump to being concerned that the games don't cost enough either.
So, two games will buy a Wii, one and a half get a DS lite. Apparently Sony has taken the "There is only one PS3" slogan to heart, literally. If they sell one I'll be astounded.
This article is flat-out misleading.
He was asked about prices going higher. He didn't bring it up. He didn't say they would go higher. He didn't hint they would go higher. He meerly refused to rule it out as a possibility in an uncertain future.
So not only are they charging through the roof for their technologically "superior" console, like SNK before them with the Neo*Geo, but they are going to charge more than their competition for the games as well! Admitedly, even without adjusting for inflation they don't sound like they are going to go the 100+ dollar extreme that we saw with the Neo*Geo home system (at least the NG carts cost almost made some sense due to the relative high cost of making the boards). Is it just me, or is the PS3 starting to seem more and more like some kind of bizzare temporal echo of the failed business and technology mistakes of yesteryear?
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...
I'm as much of a gamer as most people, but honestly, who the hell are they marketing this towards*? The "my parents are divorced and one parent is over-compensating with insane toys" subsect of the market doesn't seem to be large enough to sustain a console. How many teenagers/college students can afford something like this? As a college student myself, I work more than I probably should, and I don't come close to breaking even after tuition and such. I purchased a PS2 not too long ago, and generally don't get any games that are much more than $20. If I ever purchase another console, it's probably going to be a Wii just from an economical standpoint. I don't care if Sony has the OMGLOOKATTHATZ polygons (which, from hardware comparisons, it won't) or if they have a GTA for every city in the country (which, since it's not exclusive to their console, everyone will)...with $600 + ~$80 per game, I could invest in Microsoft and Nintendo and watch Sony weep as their computer without a keyboard fucking tanks.
* -- Don't end sentences with prepositions, kids.
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.
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.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Don't buy stuff on release day, or even release week or month.
If you can train yourself to not give a rats ass about hype, gaming is cheap, cheap, cheap.
Eventually EVERYTHING ends up in the $20 bin, maybe even in the $10 bin. I remember hearing what a great fantastical game MGS2 was for the PS2, well guess what, I saw it for 6.99 and picked it up. It's pretty good.
Sure I'm playing stuff thats months, and often years old, but fun games are still fun, and it saves me a ton of cash.
Browse the older pages on sites like 1up or whathaveyou, pick up old copies of game informer you see lying around. There's plenty of great old classic games, and just games that aren't brand new. I picked up Destroy all Humans for 14.99 the other week.
Works for consoles too. I completely ignore all the XBox 360 and PS3 hype (and that's all it is), and when I finally pick one up, it'll be for a third of what the early adopters paid.
Yessir, learned my lesson long ago. Paid full price for the dreamcast on 9/9/99, and full price for a couple of games. A year and a half later, the dreamcast was worth 20 bucks and the games were worth as close to nothing as you can get.
Especially ridiculous to me are those who need to have this years madden game. 60 bucks a year, for the same game as last year.
But, this is coming from someone who sort-of collects old consoles (like neo geo cd, saturn, 3DO, TG16) and has six old full sized arcade games, and would rather revisit XMen vs Streetfighter on his CPS2 system, than pay 60 bucks for Tekken A-Jillion.
Just one little bears opinion.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
I've stopped at a couple of video rental places looking to rent 360 games. Both places (a Movie Gallery and a mom & pop shop) have told me that they won't stock 360 games because the cost for them is too high. Now granted, I haven't done an exhaustive search and I'm not near a major metropolitan area, but it's not a good sign with the usual 360 $60 price point. I wonder if the PS3 games will be stocked at $70-$80...
It's the socket the Wii plugs into that I need.
Man, if you're not liking the price of the PS3, just wait till you see the price of these sockets!
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I object to PS3 and XBox 360 being termed "next generation". They're exactly the same as what we have now, just at higher resolutions. Resolutions hardly anybody has. Most people I know think they have HDTVs, and then I point out that they have merely EDTV, or a HD-Ready TV. I tell them to truly experience the XBox 360, they have to drop some serious $$$ for something that does 720P and a DTS system. Then they can go spend another $$$$ on a BluRay or HD-DVD player, and basically gamble whether they're getting another BetaMax.
High Definition is such a stupid direction the industries taking. People don't care, they aren't flocking to Best Buy to upgrade. I'm a geek who's into and actually understands all this crap, HDMI, 1080i vs 1080p, and so on, and I don't care. I really don't give a rats ass about high-definition anything, it doesn't improve the experience of TV, movies or console video games.
So Sony and MSFT have hitched their wagons to the HDTV "revolution" that isn't going to take place. They can only force upgrades, a la "buy a PS3 because we aren't making PS2 games anymore".
Now, Wii is different, watching the videos of the guy playing Red Steel, made me wonder "why didn't we have that before?" It looks like such a natural way to play an FPS, it looks like it may even be SUPERIOR to a keyboard and mouse. I'll have to wait and see. It seems like more of a gimmick, and something that will be here to stay. The first time I saw the NES control pad, I thought it was a cheesy gimmick, and could never replace the Wico Command Control I used with my C64. Games are played with joysticks, not stupid little boxes with buttons to move, I thought. I was wrong.
Wii and it's wii-mote are something different, and flunk or fail, actually innovative.
Of course it's all about the games, and a "killer app" can change everything overnight. Halo was MSFT's crutch for the XBox, but that seems like a fluke. It won't happen again with Halo 3. So far I see nothing coming down the pipe from Sony or MSFT that piques my interest. But damnit, I want to play some FPS with that pointer, and I want to be able to cheaply download some of nintendo's past hits. Right up my alley.
IMO, Wii is the only truly "next generation" system. It actually offeres something evolutionary over the last generation. All PS3 and XBox 360 seem to have is high prices, faulty hardware, and "new features" that would cost me 5 grand to be able to use.
I think Sony and MSFT going the high-end route is going to hurt them, and Nintendo just might rise back to the top. They seem most likely to put out the next "killer app" at this point.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"Clearly, we're intent on preventing anyone from actually buying or using this product" he said, "but, just in case, we've also added a small amount of plastic explosive to the power supply and dipped the game controller in anthrax."
This is the same company that allows pre-orders for an expansion that it knows is going to be rendered worthless with upcoming changes to the game, doesn't announce those changes until the credit cards are billed, and then claims that everything is okay despite emptying of their online servers. This is the same company who's BMG branch allowed rootkits onto our computers without express or even implied consent, increasing the security threat both from malware and allowing people to cloak hacks for games, and a host of other problems I'm sure. This is the same company that treats its customers like idiots - and then feigns ignorance when people stop plopping more money down. I do have to admit - I'm curious to see which PR guy they send out to handle this, and how they spin things going forward.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
Is that Halo 3 will launch when the PS3 does. Now that may not happen, 2007 is the stated launch date, but I could see it. There's been quite a bit of time to work on it, I'd say there's a reasonable chance it could be made ready to release on short notice. So suppose MS does do that, the PS3 launches or is about to launch and they go "Hey guess what? We decided to drop the 360 price... Oh and look what we found in our back pocket, it's Halo 3 and it happens to be on sale now." That would be a major blow to the PS3 launch. Sony would need a game to compete, so to speak, the killer game that people are waiting for that makes the $500-600 worth it. Otherwise, maybe they decide a 360 and Halo 3 are more worth it.
The problem isn't if they have something specific as a Halo 3 response, the problem is if Halo 3 (and the Wii launch) are able to take enough of the wind out of their sales and really cripple PS3 adoption. Consoles are very much a feedback cycle. The more people that own them, the more interest there is in making games for them (because of mroe sales). More games drives more ownership and so on.
Already the game industry is a bit skeptical of the PS3. Between the shifting information, the delays, the price, and the slow dev kits, there's concern about it. If MS and/or Nintendo successfully deal a major blow to the launch, that could really screw them over all because it could convince devs that the PS3 isn't worth porting to, or at the very least isn't worth going exclusive on. That alone could be enough to ensure that it isn't all that successful, and given the amount of R&D dumped in it, they need a deceant success to see black on the project.
This isn't a doomsday scenario or anything, but it's a real concern. MS is not stupid and they know a thing or two about crushign competitors. Don't put it past them to go full court press and try to fuck over Sony's launch in every way possible.
There exists a strange group of people called "Early adopters" who will go to amazing lengths to have the latest and greatest. These folks will gladly shell out $600 for a console and $70 each for games. And, if your intial run of consoles is small enough, they will buy them all. Perhaps Sony knows this...
Here's my take on Sony's strategy.
I. Soak the early adopters for as much cash as possible.
II. Follow the launch with a rapid and drastic price drop for both consoles and games.
III. Profit.
After all Sony may have made it's share of mistakes, but they've had one or two small successes as well.
Sadly, it appears I have another reason not to buy a PS3 on arrival -- and maybe ever. Weve already seen an increase in next gen games prices with the 360 -- I would expect similar from Sony, but even TALKING about it seems to imply a greater increase than what we currently have -- and nobody is happy about those costs either. Games are getting too damn expensive -- this will only feed the rental market.
Who do they think is going to buy this thing and its associated games? Im in my early 30s, with lots of disposable income and a gaming appetite Ive fed since I was four, yet I will NOT be buying this. Kids are going to suck $60-$100 a pop for games? In an industry that is exceeding the revenue of the movie industry? Yeah, right. We are now approaching the cost of a full system for a single game. Remember when Nintendo was $100? How about the Atari 2600? We are now approaching that cost for a single game and I FINALLY ask myself: Is it worth it? From what Ive seen -- NO. Theres nothing out there coming out that impresses me that much. NOTHING. And there is too much other content out there competing for my time and dollar. Its got to be pretty seriously special to command that kind of scratch.
As a audio-video phile I love the whole Blu-Ray concept, but this is just too much. Sony is offically on my shit list. Ill wait for the $149.99 version with the $20 games. Not that Im cheap, but the price is right.
The wheel gets reinvented so much because it has a low risk factor value. Graphics are what keep raising the developing costs for a game, I think it costs millions these days to be able to get a game out the door that meets the "standard" of a good game with good graphics. And since people want games with better and better graphics, I figure either companies have to cut costs somewhere or raise the cost of a game. I blame the general public for the state that games are in.
Its because of the high development costs that publishers are only willing to foot the bill for a game they are sure will produce revenue. Read, a sequal, or a flagship title. Gods only know what HD Graphics are going to do to development costs in the next generation games.
_I_ _own_ _Steel_ _Battalion_
For the uninitiated, it's a $200 game you basically justify by telling yourself (Or significant other...but who am I kidding?) you're paying for the controller it comes with (Which consists of a three-foot-wide control panel with 44 buttons, 5 toggle switches, two joysticks, a radio tuner dial, a gear shift, and let us not forget the three foot pedals...also, most of this is lighted), and not the game.
I, however, despising the Xbox entirely, was forced to grudgingly buy one JUST for Steel Battalion.
So, I'm not really bothered by this, despite being broke most of the time. I mean, they're going to be GREAT goddamn games. A quantum leap in graphics and gameplay. And frankly, if the profit-per-unit goes up, chances are more developers are going to be able to take risks on edgy or niche titles.
Look at Steel Battalion. It cost $200, and is really a game only a mecha otaku could love. But they took the chance and made it because it was manufactured in limited quantites, and sold for a shitton.
Even without a fancy controller, I'd gladly pay upwards of $100 for a great game that hits my strikezone dead center, something that really resonates with my interests. At $60, it might not be reasonable for a game to be made for such an audience, see what I'm getting at?
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Actually, the summary on Slashdot is highly incorrect. If you read what the guy says on Gamasutra, it's
A) in response to Activision's making a fuss that games should be more expensive, since apparently Activision's development costs are too high to be covered even by $59, and
B) all that the Sony guy basically says is along the lines of "well, we can't go much higher than $59, because people expect games to be between $59 and $39. We can't suddenly price a game at $99, because noone would buy it. Even if we could slightly increase the price, it would be at most a very small increase, not what Activision wants."
Basically that's all there. It's _not_ about Sony wanting to raise game prices, it's Sony telling Activision "dude, put down the bong, we _can't_ sell your games for $99." I.e., pretty much the opposite of what the Slashdot summary says.
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