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Do Video Games Cost Too Much?
Valve's Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year's Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which "resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title's original launch performance." They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount. This will undoubtedly add to the speculation that game prices have risen too high for the current economic climate. G4TV ran a live blog of Newell's presentation, providing a few more details.
Yes. That was easy. Next!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Considering that a $200 million "film" can be obtained in DVD for USD$20 at most, I am sure that there is no way a Wii game should cost more than that... (currently 50 euro!)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
My psychological maximum for impulse buys for games would be about 20$. Keep games around that and I would have a hell of a lot more.
Well, that and wine compatibility but that is a whole 'nother story :)
Yes. 60â for a video game is plain silly. The same goes for music CD's and digital downloads.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: the headline got it right when it said from the depends-how-the-pirate-bay-trial-goes-right dept.
For better or worse, rampant, unmitigated, unstoppable noncommercial copyright infringement committed by ordinary consumers is here to stay and it's getting more and more popular every year. All digital information with any kind of a price tag costs too much when the competition be it legal or not offers it for free.
That is an economic reality, and no amount of moralizing or legislating is going to make it go away. It's time for us to face this already.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Well, but he didn't mention the situation with Valve's store in Europe where prices are much higher for two months now as they used to be. And there's no answer at all from Valve even though there's a massive thread over at their forums and even sites are being created about this issue. Just take a look at http://steamunpowered.eu/ or http://www.steamrepowered.eu/
Oh, and what L4D retail? What does that still go for?
The points he makes in the Gamasutra summary sound remarkably clueful for the co-founder of a semi-major media firm. He seems to essentially "get it", that when selling content you're in a market, and if you're failing to sell as much as you'd want, the best solution is to figure out how you're failing to succeed in the market rather than whining about pirates.
Basically:
1. Price points are not given from God. There's a supply/demand curve, and if you price things higher, you'll get more profit per item but sell fewer items. What shape this curve takes, and where you ought to locate yourself on it, can vary on a lot of factors, and it's your job as a company selling things to research that, rather than decide "games cost $50/$60, and that's that". Maybe they should cost $20, maybe they should cost $100, maybe it varies based on the game and your goals.
2. There are a lot of people are willing to spend money. Some people will always get your stuff off Bittorrent purely due to the price (because it's free there, and you want money). But this is, contrary to what many media firms think, not the only or main problem. There are a lot of people who are willing to spend money on a lot of things. You'd do best to ask yourself if your company is doing something wrong that's keeping even people who would be willing to give you money from doing so (e.g. region-locked DVDs making it impossible for them to buy a legit copy).
3. Along the lines of #2, DRM can be counter-productive, by making the legit copy seem like a bigger hassle than the cracked copy off Bittorrent. People who are willing to give you money for something they like may not be willing to give you money if you come off seeming like you hate your customers.
Of course, #3 is slightly strange since Valve does in fact use DRM on Steam to authenticate your account to a particular machine. I suppose in their defense it's not nearly as draconian as much DRM, so they at least seem to be making efforts not to piss off their customers. And the existence of Steam in the first place, several years before any other major companies did anything similar, seems to indicate a certain understanding of, "if you make it easy for people to buy your things, they might do so".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Back in the day when I had an Atari 800, games were typically GBP35 with the odd extreme one being GBP80 (Some SSI or Avalon Hill game, War in Russia I think?).
My monthly pay at the time was GBP120 so that was basically a weeks money per game.
Bearing in mind how much more effort goes into a modern game, it's amazing prices have effectively dropped. That said, I had more fun then with those old 8K games except the very occassional title that really grabs me now like Bioshock.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
If Sony & Microsoft didn't try to make money by selling their consoles at a loss and making the money on games sales then this proof would never have been nessessary. If you sell a PC game then it's generally priced in line with the console release, which is inflated by the console markup. Rather than blame themselves for pricing games out of peoples spending brackets, both are trying to blame the second hand market for reducing sales and work out ways to kill it. Pro Evolution Soccer on the PS3 is the start of the slope. If you buy a second hand copy you can't play it online if it has been used online before. It won't be long before disks brought in shops only count as a "non-transfereable licence to play" rather than ownership of the game and it'll still be at the current prices.
A game should cost about $5. Really. Otherwise I will do without. The prices on most iPhone App Store games are about right and these type of games match my attention span and interest level pretty well.
I think the prices at release are OK in some sense. Sure, they're expensive but you do get the game right away and you can usually trade in older games for a discount. Once the game has been out for a few months, I really don't feel like paying full price anymore. Some stores seem to get this but a lot of them don't.
"Considering that a $200 million "film" [wikipedia.org] can be obtained in DVD for USD$20 at most, I am sure that there is no way a Wii game should cost more than that... (currently 50 euro!)"
So basically we're comparing the cost of the real universe vs the cost to create a virtual one?
i used to buy my game or two a week, play them and their regret them or finish them before the next week. perhaps i would rent a game and have the same feeling.
since wow was released i cannot really think of any titles i have purchased. a few rentals here and there.
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I did this in Economics long ago. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_elasticity_of_demand.
I think, it means that when stuff costs less more (or less) people buy it differently. It works differently for different stuff. Fuel, for instance probably is not very elastic because it is not a discretionary purchase - you have to get it. I think some really expensive stuff might actually sell more because it is expensive - caviar anyone?
A game is a highly discretionary purchase and so it will be very elastic. Proper capitalism should mean that you try and maximise your profit by lowering the price and increasing sales. Obviously, you can only cut the price so far because you need to make some profit per unit but the theory is sound and fairly obvious to me.
The idiots in charge in the industry seem to see the whole thing differently. Obviously MBA/parasite economics is not the same as real economics.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I wouldn't draw a hard and fast line on how much games should cost. If every PC game was $25 new, I still wouldn't buy every game I was interested in on release day.
I bought L4D this past weekend because it was a steal. Great game (all my friends have been raving about it), and I thought I would like it (it reminded me of counters strike a little bit). Would I buy Mirror's Edge for $25? Probably not. Crysis? Maybe once it hit $15-20, but that'll be much faster than starting at $50
"The points he makes in the Gamasutra summary sound remarkably clueful for the co-founder of a semi-major media firm. He seems to essentially "get it", that when selling content you're in a market, and if you're failing to sell as much as you'd want, the best solution is to figure out how you're failing to succeed in the market rather than whining about pirates."
Are we saying that piracy has no influence on success?
"1. Price points are not given from God. There's a supply/demand curve, and if you price things higher, you'll get more profit per item but sell fewer items. What shape this curve takes, and where you ought to locate yourself on it, can vary on a lot of factors, and it's your job as a company selling things to research that, rather than decide "games cost $50/$60, and that's that". Maybe they should cost $20, maybe they should cost $100, maybe it varies based on the game and your goals."
And the local economic climate. That's why items can cost different prices in different countries. We're ok with that, right?
"(e.g. region-locked DVDs making it impossible for them to buy a legit copy)"
Selling the rights to a local company can do that too. Not to mention cultural differences can play a part.
"3. Along the lines of #2, DRM can be counter-productive, by making the legit copy seem like a bigger hassle than the cracked copy off Bittorrent. People who are willing to give you money for something they like may not be willing to give you money if you come off seeming like you hate your customers."
Will the real pirates please line up against the wall!
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I wonder if Gabe Newell is really thinking what he's saying... or if he's just trying to look like the "good" guy by saying what he's customers want to hear. Is he saying this only as some kind of cheap publicity?
In south-american countries the price are much influenced by the import taxes, they go between 150% and 200% of the actual retail price in the US. Piracy here is not about trying to fool game developers, but tax collectors and overpricing retailers. Digital distribution goes as far as broadband Internet connections, so no real solution for piracy here.
A lot of people say that this price increase is due to inflation etc. and that the prices we all remember are impossible today.
I can only think of the games that come out for Spectrum - 1980's, £10 for a "full-price" game, 99p for a budget game (rising to £1.99 and then £2.99 before the end of the 80's). Let's ignore the high-end stuff for a while, because people buy stuff just because it's full price and just came out - they are the people who are stupid.
Even taking into account inflation, etc. that is a hell of a markup. And these people formed teams like Codemasters etc. (Two brothers started out programming Spectrum and C64 games under the name Codemasters and soon built a company out of it before the Speccy era had ended.) so it's not like they didn't profit from it.
Now, let's look at the Wii... not the newest console but a good seller. The cheapest "new" (not used) game I can find in an average shop is £10 and it's an unpopular title. The average "budget" game (i.e. a popular game that has had it's run and needs to sell more units) is around £20-30. The "good" games can cost up to £60, not including other hardware bundled with them, and stay at that price for YEARS.
The 99p - £1.99 - £2.99 was a fast expansion of price - 300% inflation within 10 years. But since then, we've seen nearly 1000% inflation in 20 years (£2.99 in 1989 -> £20-30 in 2009), just for budget titles. That's exponential growth. Real inflation in developed countries hangs way under the 5% a year mark, so even with the best maths in the world (you can't really necessarily just "add up" the year-on-year inflation for the last ten years), it's not anywhere near 300% and certainly not 1000% inflation over 10 or 20 years.
Prices will be set to whatever people will pay. Unfortunately, people are stupid and a lot of parents spend this ridiculous sort of money because they think they have to. But for, say, half a dozen new (but been out for a while) games to cost a week's wages for the average person, that's just stupid.
However, the prices of the hardware are relatively static. The Spectrum cost £100-200 when it came out, the same price bracket as the Wii. The hardware has inflated a little but not anywhere near as much. Considering that is bound by real-world economics like availability of parts, bulk-orders, raw material prices, I expect it to model inflation quite well and it does. But the software seem to be nothing but pure profiteering - probably based mostly on the fact that once you've bought the hardware, you "have to" buy games for it.
Steam's sales are great. I haven't bought myself anything on Steam in years (I bought my brother a birthday present of Half-Life 2 when it first came out, and nothing before that at all) but I went on there the other month and ended up getting about 12 games for about £25. That's perfect for me, and they were all games I wanted, all big names, two Half-life 2 episodes, the entire GTA and UFO series, (but not GTA4) etc. I could easily have bought another 12 games for around the same price. But when I look at the "normal" prices of some of that stuff, I shriek in horror. £30-50 for a game? Come on, that's *4* DVD's even at "brand-new" pricing, and there's no way that a Rainbox Six game costs as much to make, even taking into account the difference in the amount of final sales, as four Hollywood movies. £50 is a LOT of money. That was once-a-year birthday-treat kind of money back when I was a kid and I could make that run to games, films, books, magazines, etc. for ages. Now that's the price of one game (which isn't guaranteed to be a blockbuster). Inflation hasn't grown that fast.
The scales aren't right - software is far too expensive, especially for the effort that goes into updating and supporting most of it. Multiplayer games are left to die after a few years, patches dry up a matter of months after the initial release, support is non-existent fo
I *always* buy the game long after the initial release when it is on sale. Example: I bought The Orange Box for $20 this last December.
It is important to emphasize that one other reason I waited so long was the DRM. I don't like it and I don't want it. Usually the first thing I do after buying a game is get the no-cd patch, and waiting a while after release gives time for those to appear. However, once the price went low enough I decided to take the risk and give it a try anyway. Maybe if the DRM wasn't there in the first place I would have paid a little more and sooner.
It's really a question on who you ask.
If you ask the gamers: Yes, way too much! I better pirate it.
If you ask the studios: How much can we squeeze the most out of the costumer? Can we put into legislation, that games cost 100$ and every one has to buy one at least once a month? Can we also put an additional tax on everyone, because everyone is pirating anyway?
If you ask some folks how don't feel gaming is of mush value, and do it only as passion: They cost enough to keep me away from buying them. And cool, I have a lot of time I can use for something useful.
Because every game is a monopolistic product by it's definition, you really can't compare it like for instance cheese. It's also not utterly required for survival. At this point it is only a question on priority. Probably the software houses can increase this priority (demand) of third group costumers and increase the legal purchase of the first group by producing better quality games and/or lowering the price.
Close to all games i have bought over the last 5 years or so have been out of bargain bins.
With shops having a no return policy, for fear of those pesky pirates buying a game, make a copy and then return it, comboed with the average price, its just not worth it.
Thing is that no matter how many review one read, view or similar, the only real way to tell if one like a game or not is by spending a day or more playing it. And if the prices are like they are, one cant really afford to buy, play and then shelf the ones one do not like.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I would usually balk at paying more than $30 or so, I would only pay $50 if the game had rave reviews or I was really happy with previous releases from that company. Under Ex Prez George Bush's "New World Economy" where everyone is paid minimum wage, I will consider paying $20, but only if the game is an absolute MUST HAVE. If not, maybe $10, and it better NOT have any crappy copy protection like SPORE did. I have a Linux box, I can program my own games. They will not have glitzy graphics like the gaming house ones, but they are just as much fun. I am working on upgrading a version of ROGUE that I found on Source Forge, just as entertaining as things like EverQuest but you don't need a $6000 graphics card to play it.
Since we're discussing Steam, and some people have highlighted them as "friendly" DRM, I thought I would point out their unacceptable credit card policy.
Firstly, they don't give refunds, ever, for any reason.
Secondly, if you happen to buy a game and e.g. its DRM authentication servers are down for two weeks, and you do a credit card reverse charge for this or any other reason, they will lock you out of ALL your steam games.
So you could have spent a thousand bucks on Steam, and may even believe you are in the right of reverse charging a purchase, but if you do, it's goodbye to all your games. The automatic game ban is explained in the EULA under "Credit card - Fraud/Abuse".
I bought Dawn of War 2 yesterday for £24.99 which personally I don't mind paying for a game.
But then I got home and tried to install it and it requires you install Steam and Games for Windows Live and activate the game via Steam. I tried to activate it and was told I can't because it's not for sale in my country- presumably because although some shops are selling it THQ decided the actual release date was today.
So yeah, that changed my mind, £24.99 is fine for a game I can play when I want and whatever system I want but it's far too overpriced for a game I can only play when they decide I'm allowed to play it whilst also having to give away a bunch of personal details to Valve for Steam and Microsoft for Windows Live.
The box at least said an internet connection and registration was required to play but it still said nothing about having to give away details to register to Valve AND Microsoft and it certainly said nothing about them being able to choose when I can and can't play the game.
It's been said here many a time that pirates provide a copy of a game cheaper (free) and that you can play without restriction when you want and where you want. If companies want to increase sales then perhaps they need to accept that they have to beat pirates on at least one of these levels, by either matching them on price (not gonna happen) or by beating them on product quality. Whilst they continue to do neither they wont get anywhere.
As for me and DoW2? I file a complaint with UK trading standards and will be returning the game tommorrow and they can damn well take it back even if it is opened because as far as I'm concerned if I don't have the guarantee of being able to play it when I want and have to hand over personal details to two third party companies to be able to play then it's faulty or simply misadvertised. Just as I got burnt with Spore's DRM I've now been burnt with Dawn of War II's. You see when I was young I used to pirate games because I couldn't afford to buy them, now I make plenty enough to buy these games I do so, just as I *gasp* bought a copy of Windows for my most recently built PC. I also bought music from iTunes only to find the only music on my iPod that would play on the game Lips on the 360 for my girlfriend was downloaded MP3s and none of my legally purchased music would work. Some may think it's not a big deal having to wait a day to activate but my concern is that they can revoke my access just as easily as they've prevented my access to a game I've legitimately bought.
What they need is a change of attitude and price is only part of that, I wont buy brand new XBox 360 games at £39.99 but at around £29.99 I don't mind because at least the restrictions are pretty obvious when you buy the game and console. It's not ideal that there restrictions exist but it's light years ahead of the unadvertised 5 install limit with Spore on release and the "Valve gets to choose when you can and can't play" with Dawn of War 2. So whilst I'll buy 360 games, I wont buy music, I wont buy PC games, not even if they were £9.99 anymore it's not just worth the hassle.
So yeah, even Valve with their "Hey look at us guys! we think DRM is silly, we love piracy and think it helps! hell we even do great discounts sometimes!" are still the scum of the Earth and as bad as EA when it comes to draconian DRM in that they prevented me playing a game made by the company THQ and bought from the company GAME and could just as well prevent me again any time they wish.
Movie: 3 Hours fun, 10 euro's (recent movies). ;) )
Game: 4 Hours fun average on current titles: > 50 Euro's.
Games are interactive, so i will pay a bit more for them: but not more then 2x the price for a movie.
The real problem: today's games are way to short.
I would pay more (say 100 Euro's) if a game would have enough actual content to last me a while...
(And no: getting all "achievements" is not content, it's a stretch trick
Microsoft in south africa are now charging R1000 for new xbox games (that is about $100/50 GBP) i only paid twice that for the console. That has gotten way out of hand. One local shop has even put a sticker on a 512 memory card upping the price from R250 to R1000. That is roughly the price of a HDD. Luckily some sites still import games at better prices.
I've been a firm believer in the quality over the game over the price. I tend to torrent or warez brand new games to test them out and see if they run on my computer.
I just see too many games that come out, that feature just mindblowing graphics, and nothing really more. Time to time, games even seem half done, and they're really only on their 3rd beta. A very expensive open beta.
What the industry needs to quit complaining over is the effectiveness of DRM, the price of the product, or how many "pirates" out there are "stealing their games." Instead the industry, game studios, and publishers (Yeah, this includes you EA) need to quit half assing, and rushing their work. Providing no or little outside survey panels, seeing what the CONSUMER might want in the new game. Actually take input, and criticism (constructive or not), find the issue, and fix the issue.
And a completely off the wall change of pace here, I think they need to quit invasive and constrictive DRM methods. SecuROM is becoming a headache, offering you at most 3-5 re-installs (Yeah, so if you reformat once a year, or reset your BIOS/CMOS battery, you only got this game for 3-5 years MAX)and really puts your money to shame. So your $50 goes to waste each time you reset BIOS/CMOS, or reformat/install your OS.
So price is it too high? You bet it is. With invasive and constrictive DRM, low gameplay, lack of story/creativity, many bugs, and a half-assed rushed project with minimal/no community input. Maybe they should lower the price down 50% of their already retail amounts.
The distributors, etc. need to realise that they are trying to sell a product that is practically worthless monetarily (anything that can be easily and freely copied is worthless to sell). Therefore they should greatly reduce prices in both digital download and physical copies, remove DRM, and add in multiplayer, etc. where possible to encourage people to purchase it. ATM, most companies charge a small fortune for a more crippled product than you can get for free via piracy, they need to realise that they should be happy with whatever money they can get and that buying games now (especially single-player only) is practically a donation.
The problem is that you don't always get what you pay for. For example, if you go see a movie for $10, you can count on sitting through roughly an hour and a half of film, whether it's quality or not. But when you buy a game, sometimes for upwards of $50, you can't be sure that it will be any good. In fact, it may barely be playable at all. And it might be short or have an inordinate amount of difficulty that makes playing it a chore. Now, I don't even buy games until I see they have super high scores on sites like Metacritic, and then I only buy them if the doodz in my clan are interested. That means I buy about 1 game every couple of months. Developers either need to lower the cost, or raise the standards. I'm talking to you, WII developers!!!
I remember being SHOCKED at the prices of games on Steam. They sold, and still sell, at the exact same price as games at MSRP, which as we all know is more than most stores, let alone online retailers. Yet, apart from the expense of running steam's servers/bandwidth, it looks very much like Gabe Newell just eats up what would have been the costs of distribution, media and the retailers approx 30% cut on top!
Why is this not coming back to us, at least in part? When we were told that one of the advantages of online distribution was a reduction in costs, were we expected to celebrate a rise in profits for industry players? I think we all rather expected online distribution to make games cheaper! Hell, Bioshock RAISED the price of games when it was released on Steam.
When you combine this with the fact that Steam has cut users off from their games who have LEGALLY saved on the price by buying from a different country, and you've got one of the biggest contributors to the high cost of games preaching about how games should be cheaper. To quote the movie Airplane: What an asshole!
What's wrong is that nearly all new games cost 70$. There should be more diversification. Some (high-produciton--value) game might be worth such a price, but a lot other (niche) games not. The question is why free market economy does not seem to work here?
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
I don't use Steam myself (since the Linux client is still supposedly "on the way"), so was misremembering complaints I had read. It's not that Steam ties your account to a particular machine, but that it requires you to "phone home" every time before playing games even if they've already been downloaded. There's an Offline Mode, but there seem to be a lot of complaints about how well it works, and worries that if Steam were ever shut down, your games would basically be useless since they're not playable without authentication.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Try phoning your local Gamestop and asking them how much Battletoads is...
...how else are game studios going to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars/pounds/whatevers they spend on 'development'?
Alot of the reason game prices arent any lower, at least the excuse was thought to be, if they release a game at lower then the normal MSRP of 50/60$, the first question the consumer asks is "Why is this cheaper then the other games if its new? Is it not worth even the 50/60$ that bad/mediocre NEW games charge?"
I am glad that valve has broken this line of thought. At least it has tried to. Keep in mind that the game was not brand new when they cut the price (I for one expected a 30$ game for L4D when it came out instead of full priced, but due to it being on console, I think we got the HD tax). Also lowering the price 2-3 months by 50% is going to make your consumer think "shit ill just wait for a sale to buy". I know I am not going to buy their next game like this immediately now. Its a little bit of a burn.
20-35$ Seems like a good price point for a game to me. I regularly throw this amount at their sales for games that I hear good things about, or that I had pirated in the past. MMO's should have a free client, 40-60$ to start an MMO with a free month are ludicrous. And we can attribute this to them not wanting overloaded servers by an extra 500% of the people who dont intend on making an investment on the game.
No, not, seriously...
This is my sig.
There are plenty of us in small-to-medium-sized businesses who use F/OSS software, and who'd love to "buy" it from the vendor. But the price disparity between the "free" download and the "supported" version is usually quite prohibitive for a smaller business.
We've been comparing groupware/mail systems. We have somewhere between 300-400 users. One company that we're looking at would charge over $1000 a year for this, and we just can't justify that. So ... we continue to use their unpaid "community" edition.
Here's the thing: after using the free community edition for a couple of years, we really don't need the 24/7 support. If we have a problem, we go into the (free) forums, or just figure it out ourselves. Paying $1000 for support that we'll rarely use just doesn't make good economic sense.
F/OSS proponents would then say, "well, at least make a donation." Businesses don't work like that, and PHB's certainly don't think like that at all. For one thing, unless the software vendor is a non-profit, you can't deduct the donation. We COULD deduct, say, a $100 "basic" fee for the software with little or no support.
Compare the price of the downloaded CentOS server (free) with the cost of the supported RHEL (about $350, as of this writing). Now look at it from our point of view. There's part of me that thinks, "wow, that's unfair to Red Hat." But there's another part that says, "you're not giving me any CHOICES here, people!"
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Generally, you are correct. There was one time for me where this did not hold true. I guess with the fluctuation of the American Dollar, Nintendo is scaling back on their sales of software in the U.S. I was going to pre-order Wii Fit but just as you, I didn't imagine how quickly the game would sell out and for how long. It ended up being a full year before I was able to pick-up the game on the shelves. Every once in a while it would appear on Amazon or Wal-mart.com but there were others with their eyes out and always swiping it up before me. I guess that now when there's a game that I *REALLY want, I may just end up pre-ordering it because there's no telling whether or not the company releasing it will create an artificial shortage as we have all seen Nintendo do.
Less-geeky computer repair alternative for Lansing, MI
1. Economic worries
2. Quality of new titles
3. Dangers or Threat of DRM messing up their machine
4. Other, more important things to do
5. Price
I know for me, I cannot narrow it down to any one cause without pulling in from other factors. For example, I tell myself that when I get pulled into a video game I will find myself doing nothing but the game for extended periods of time. This as been true in the past and would likely happen again any time I allow it. But that isn't the whole story. I know that if prices were lower, the temptation to fall into games would rise. So without question, price is a factor. And with economic worries, many people are evaluating needs and wants and cutting out things that are less necessary. Games are probably top of the list. The DRM argument doesn't apply to me since I use Linux for everything except game consoles, but it is the advice I offer to others and lots of people listen to my advice. And while I always have other, more important things to do, even my two older sons (17 and 16) get tired of games and find other things to do... outside! Lately, it is airsoft, football and other sports.
And many of these reasons are tied to one another in various ways, so when one factor is changed, it may change the influence of other factors in the decision making process.
I'm sure Gabe loves to reiterate the 50% off, 3000% increase stats, but L4D is hardly an example of your typical AAA title.
With only four 40min campaigns, 4 player models, and 6 enemy types, the game only offers 160min of playtime and most of that is spent at a crawling pace blasting through regenerating hoards. The replay value is higher then other AAA titles, but maybe not so high to warrant a $50 price. Perhaps "making it up in volume" would work for publishers who spend tens of millions developing a game, maybe it won't. Using a game with such a small amount of content for this example does not make a valid argument to me.
So do Video Games Cost Too Much? Yes, L4D had cost too much.
Controllers, accessories, cables, DLC, X-Box Live subscription, etc. are all marked up just as much or even far more than games are. And let's not even get started on how much it costs to purchase and maintain a high level gaming PC.
Demand goes up as cost goes down; somewhere there is a profit maximizing point to seek.
Next up, Valve announces experiments that show water is wet.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The only industry where $15 a month is "expensive" ?
lowering costs to make more money is no new concept, it's not that you're suddenly making money appear out of thin air, it's that you're cutting into the funds people have set aside for other things like cigarettes. By all means do it, I'd like to see video games become the biggest industry in the world after this economic crisis winds down.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I think people are more willing to accept DRM if it seems like you're actually getting some benefit in return: in return for being able to download your games anywhere, you have to "phone home" before playing them to authenticate your local copy. Most DRM seems like you're getting a hassle for no benefit in return, which is sort of insult-to-injury when you actually paid for the content legitimately.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why spend $60 a month on a new game when you can pay $15 a month for a game that is updated somewhat regularly?
Granted a game can go stale after so much play, but look at whats happening in WoW. They're throwing vehicle combat around like candy. Even their new raid dungeon coming out has the first boss done in vehicles.
New game play, same game, same $15/month. Why buy the $60 game even if it's a new MMO? It'd be interesting to see if WoW pull's an XP on Blizzards new MMO in the works.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Personally, I do a little research before I buy a game since (cost or not) I don't feel like having games I don't like cluttering up my life.
Since my buying habits so rarely lead to a new game being bought, I really don't see the price being prohibitive... (And this is coming from a proud Wii owner where the games all want to introduce their own controllers that makes them even more expensive).
this isn't really the right demographic to ask such a question to. The question actually being answered here is "are consumers arrogant and lazy enough to demand a price that tends towards zero, in return for a product a large number of professionals spent months of their lives working on?"
The answer is a resounding "yes"
Seriously, $50 for about an hours' worth of content? I felt so ripped off when I got L4D on steam.
Also, I also realized I'd paid $50 to be called a douchebag by 14 year olds. Shame on me, I guess.
Well, after you pay your $60, you can play indefinitely. If you ever stop paying $180 a year, you can't play World of Warcraft anymore, even if you've already paid $40 or $60 for the boxed software AND poured hundreds or thousands of dollars into monthly fees.
Many games are good for way more than a month as well, especially if you spend a healthy amount of time on games instead of making them your life. Games like Fallout 1 & 2 (even 3 to some extent), Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, GTA 3 & 4, the Total War series, and so on, have each individually entertained me for many months. And that's not even getting into multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2, Company of Heroes, or Civilization 4, games which you can play for as long and as often as you like, without feeling bored or that you've already "beat it." It's like owning a chessboard, or a deck of cards for poker. Chess and poker never get boring.
Would you rather own 3 new games for the rest of your life, or play World of Warcraft for a year?
Choose wisely.
While Newell said in his speach that one of the advantages of Steam is they can adjust the price of a game runningly to compete, then I've never seen it done. Sure, maybe like 6 months after the game is released it'll be 10 monetary units cheaper.
I'm sure not buying any games on Steam though, I'm european, Danish, to be exact, and a game on Steam, like say Fallout 3 at launch, cost 50 euro + 15% VAT, that's about 80 US $. Later, Valve changed it so that the VAT is included in the price. I believe the current price (I'm too lazy to start steam to check) is 45 euro, VAT included. If I were to go down to the closest game retailer (Blockbuster O.o) Fallout 3 costs 33 euro, and that's including the danish VAT which is 25%.
So, even with 10% less VAT, steam is still 35% more expensive on this particular game (and pretty much eveyr other game), and by buying on Steam I forego the very strong consumer protection my country provides, which I may not need, but you never know.
Answer me this, mr. Newell, why should I ever buy a game from your service? You are not competitive on the price and you are not competitive on service and support. Where is the advantage of buying a game on Steam for me?
Whether the price on Fallout 3 is different at present doesn't matter either, as the price in stores on launchday was the same as it is now.
The only thing I buy on Steam are the extreme sales offers that come and go. Like 1-2 euro games or packages.
I haven't bought a brand new game in a long long while, the reason however isn't that I find them overly expensive (in SNES times you payed pretty much the same for third party stuff), but because prices fall very quickly after the release. Why waste 70EUR for a new game when I can get it three month later for half the price?
Another factor is the gigantic price difference between UK and Germany. Little Big Planet sells for 70EUR in Germany while it sells for £15 in the UK, thats just a ridiculous difference. Of course I am not going to buy the thing in Germany, I'll import it or buy it used. In general games in the UK are extremely cheap compared to stuff in Germany.
Buying games new would be much more attractive if games would start lower at the 40-50EUR mark and stayed more constant overtime. If prices drop as quickly as they do now there just isn't a point buying stuff on release day.
Far worse is the amoral Online activation and "copy protection" - THAT is why I stopped buying it - I expect to be able to install a program as many times is I want not at some greedy assholes whim.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I remember when $44.95 was really expensive for a game.
Now, console games cost $60.
I just wonder, why would the same game cost $10 more on consoles than PC? probably because PC gamers won't pay $60 for a regular edition.
That said, Steam really is great for me. They have sales all the time. When they lower the prices, people buy.
I prefer digital distribution now. Going to the store is bothersome. Having a box and DVD to worry about is too much hassle.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I wait until the games I want are on the bargian shelves then buy them (or cheap on Steam). Ok, this usually means I'm behind other gamers, but new to me is good enough.
I've tried that for two PS2 titles. Both of them ended up with the error "DNAS -103: Online matchmaking for this game is no longer in service."
I know some people that aren't big on that game, but enjoy playing with their friends online so they'll wait for it to go down in price.
But how would someone work around the following set of events?
I bring to my subject these commandments, I call them Laws. Such as Law of Demand and Law of Supply. Here is thy Bible for thee with questions. http://www.amazon.com/Micro-Economy-DiscoverEcon-Solman-Videos/dp/0073137847/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235136905&sr=8-2
After looking at the cost of some of the indie stuff that is as good as or better than some of the block busters out there and at 1/3 to 1/2 the price.
Yep.
I remember buying SNES games for like $60 to $80 bucks. So that seems to be on par for what everyone is spending these days. Then again, there are MMORPGs that cost much, much more over time.
Which works great if you have friends that you suddenly want to play a specific game with. Random gamers is another matter, of course... How many people are trying to play Turok today?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Not that your concerns aren't valid, but you can decouple most non-Valve games from Steam by using a cracked retail executable. I've done it with Grid, works great.
It's more convenient since you can just run it from the start menu instead of waiting for Steam to log on and check for updates. It also sidesteps the whole "All eggs in one basket" problem you describe.
New PC games are bad enough at $49, but console games run from $59 to $69 which is outrageous.
When I was 16, a ZX Spectrum game cost me £10. I was earning £100 a week so a game cost me 10% of my weekly wages.
Cue 22 years later. A console game now costs £30-£40 but I'm earning £500 a week. A game now costs 6-8% of my weekly wages for something that is far far more richer, longer and more involved than the £10 games of my youth were.
So in real terms, the cost of games has dropped as a percentage of income.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Two Worlds has an online activation (which I despise), but the company has promised to release a patch killing that if they shut down. What's cool is that they say you're free to copy the DVD for a backup.
While games come out at higher prices than before, (seems like very few games launch below $50 or $60), it does seem that the prices drop quicker than they used to. Generally it seems that new games only stay at their initial prices for 1-2 months before they rapidly move into the $30, then $20, then $15 bins.
In short, it seems that the system now rewards the patient. If you don't feel that you absolutely have to have the newest sequel to your favorite series the day it comes out, you can save yourself quite a bit by waiting for it to age a little on the shelf.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I spend $60 on a game and get 20 hours of entertainment out of it, then I have paid only $3 per hour for entertainment, which is cheaper than many other forms of paid entertainment. Movies are well over $5 an hour and a $30 dinner at a restaurant would require you to stay there for 10 hours to get the same value.
Then you have games with unending online play, or those games that really have no end, and the cost per hour goes through the floor when you spend hundreds of hours playing.
L4D isn't half the game TF2 is, yet it launched at $50 while TF2 was $20. Even at launch, TF2 was $30 not $50. That's why the sales went up 3000%, the price reached a sanity zone. Imagine if it launched at $30 and dropped to $15!
I hope this is deliberate funky pricing to ride the wave of demand because otherwise it seems half-cocked.
--- Do you believe in the day?
A few year ago, my oldest son bought "Battlefield 1942" with his saved-up allowance money. Don't know exactly how much it cost, but it was a big chunk of change for a young teenager.
Despite our best efforts (and the bored-sounding tech on the help line), we were never able to get it to run. The retail outlet we bought it from (Target) went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that we could not possibly ever return the game for money. Exchange it for the exact same game, yes, but there was absolutely no way they were going to let him get his money back, or even apply the purchase price towards another game.
Eventually he gave up trying. To my knowledge, he has never bought another computer game.
Like a lot of folks here I used to buy lots of PC games but the combined BS of the DRM and the high prices make it easy to stay away. You know, we want to be able to buy these games but like dude found out once again, it's not your game even after you spent your money. The game bastards will decide if you can 'activate' your game and only after you give them your life information so they can sell that and turn you into prey for the marketers. Last game I tried - Civ 4 raped my computer, no more. You all take your DRM and online registration and all of that and shove it up your Valve/Steam asses. I really hate you guys for all you've done to gaming.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Considering most games can be plowed through in 5-10 hours nowadays, they're not worth $50-60. Mass Effect is one of the few that has provided me with a fairly long single player experience, and made me want to play through again. Some games though, are seriously underpriced. I bought Burnout Paradise for PS3 last month for $20. Granted, it's a game that's a year old, but it was a steal at that price, and it's the PS3 game I'm playing the most & having the most fun with at this point.
But I do feel that by and large, most games are overpriced. I think if it's a game that's definitely going to release a yearly version (Madden, MLB, etc) it should be significantly less. Or a game that's going to be releasing a lot of DLC (Rock Band, Guitar Hero).
For me, the cost is to high for the risk that buying them represents to me. When I used to buy PC games, there was a good 50% chance that I'd unwrap the game and try to install or run it and it wouldn't work. Then was un-returnable b/c it's been unwrapped. I've since moved to an XBox360 and only buy new games that I've tried at someone else's house first, or that I know I'll love. Otherwise I buy it pre-owned. $60 for a game that might suck is too much.
I work in the games industry as an AI Programmer and can assure you they certainly do not cost too much.
The 360/PS3 title I'm currently assigned to has cost upwards of $10m to produce, so far - over 5 years. This kind of expense needs to be returned somehow.
I buy a lot of console games used at a considerable discount (if you're willing to wait for the latest and greatest to age a little you can get a huge discount this way). The thing that REALLY worries me is the move towards online distribution, which would destroy the secondary (used) market. I'm just fine with new games costing $60, as long as I can buy it used a year later for $20-$30. I would much rather have it that way than a download system where a new game costs $50, and a year later it still costs $50 because you can't buy it used.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Charge a lot at first for the fan boys then less for the masses. This sets the price at the market-clearing equilibrium for both the fan-boy market, which is in-elastic, and the general market which is highly elastic.
Another way to do this would be to offer the standard edition for $20 and to offer a "collectors edition" at $60 which has some little thing in it that lets you prove to everyone in-game that you paid for the sucker's edition.
Though I am not affected by the $60 price tag. I only bought one non indy release over the last year, and it so happened to be I got $30 off from that, so it cost me $20. Indy games are priced reasonably, and hell more often than not if you pick your game right it will be well worth your money.
Your post is off-topic as hell but I'll respond anyways: one of the main benefits of F/OSS when compared to common freeware is precisely the fact that anyone can support it, paid or otherwise. Shop around, I'm sure there's plenty of other companies offering RHEL support, perhaps even the CentOS people themselves could do it for a good enough offer.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
yup. the cost of video games is why i quit buying them. and no, i haven't resorted to alternate means of acquisition, either. i just quit buying new ones, content on playing the couple dozen or so that are on my gaming pc.
not buying any new games has also saved the money that would've otherwise had to gone into hardware upgrades to even play the new ones in the first place.
$20-30 for a game is much more agreeable to my checkbook than the $50-60 or more some games cost these days.
and then you have series like the sims, which gets you both coming and going. $50 for the game, $20+ for each addon pack. by the time you pick up the entire "set" for the kids, you're looking at a couple hundred bucks or more.
There are many game that quite frankly, are not worth the $50 or $60 price that they cost at launch.
However, even if you consider games that fall only in the center of the bell curve for quality, a typical video game will provide about 15 to 20 hours of entertainment value. (Yes, I know some like Portal are just short, and others like Civilization will consume months, I said typical).
How many forms of entertainment can provide you with 15 hours of entertainment? On a per hour basis, a $60 game is costing you $4 per hour, and multi-player games even less. A movie costs about $10 per person. That is at worst competitive with movies, and the Sims series goes well beyond 15 hours for those that like it enough to pay for any expansions.
You need to look at more than just the initial price of the game. You need to consider how much you are actually getting out of it.
END COMMUNICATION
A brand new PS3/XBOX360 game costs $60 (USD). While this is more expensive than the previous generation or two ($50 per game), it is still cheaper than the Super Nintendo era.
I remember saving up for weeks to afford the $80 Stunt Race FX.
I have a bad feeling about this...
There is nothing new in this... the laws of offer and demand are always the same
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
DRM schemes in the last several years have turned games into rentals (3 uses then beg us for more!). Dropping the price like this is what's needed to justify these games anymore.
You can convert your AAC files to MP3 assuming they are iTunes Plus files.
When VCRs first came out, buying a movie on videotape cost what? $50? $60? It took Hollywood years to learn that they made a lot more money selling a very large number of movies at $20 apiece than they made selling a small number of movies at $50 each. One has to wonder why it's taking the game industry so long to learn the same lesson.
Only very, very rarely have I bought a game at release in the last few years. I think I got WoW, City of Heroes and Civ 4 at release. WoW because Blizzard's always done a damn good job with what they put out, City of Heroes because it was the only Super Hero game around (and I liked the costume creator), and Civ 4 because, well, it's Civ!
But otherwise I never buy at release. I'm not unwilling to pay for games (MMO's wind up costing much more than any other single game, price isn't the issue), but I've been burnt enough, and frankly most titles coming out simply aren't compelling enough, that I'm more than happy to wait a year or so for them to be in the bargain bin.
Last weekend I picked up Sins of a Solar Empire for $12.99 - it's pretty nice! - but there's no way I would have paid $49.99 for it when it came out. Same thing with console games - I've got one of each of the current gen (obviously willing to spend money on gaming) but other than Rock Band, I haven't paid full-price for a game, getting them used or once they become "Platinum Hits" or whatever and come down to $19.99 or so. If I like a game a lot, I'll even buy some DLC (Marvel Ultimate Alliance is fun, and running around with an all-villain team is entertaining) - but there is some kind of psychological resistance I have to paying full-price up-front.
Demos are great, but I know that they're just demos and that usually means that their most compelling features are going to be in them, with vague hints that if I get the full game there will be some super-awesome stuff - but unless the demo is just mind-blowing (and a demo never has been for me), there's no way I'll do anything other than make a mental note to check the game out when it's $20 or so.
Now, if I could get games at release for $20, I'd probably be much more willing to try stuff out. Of course, what would likely happen is that developers would release a slightly feature-richer demo rather than a full game and make everything else into DLC so it'd be a losing proposition again. So, I'd rather they stick with the current set-up - let the people who must have a game on release day pay full freight, and then people like me will pick 'em up a year later.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Exactly. Because some great games become really scarce very fast and are not, and will not be, reedited. The first one that comes to my mind is We Love Katamari on PS2. Only 50 000 ones were produced for France. It was also the same for Rez. Both are great games but were not intended to be best sellers.
Of course, for a Call of Duty, or whatever big budgeted game where the online multiplayer part is not important, it's not an urgent buy. Yes, online multiplayer games are an issue, because after the launch, you cannot easily get people to play with you in most of these.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
It's so much fun, lots of other players, and it is free. So yes, games cost too much. They should be free. Hell, they are free.
Somewhere around 1982 I bought the much anticipated Pac Man when it was released for the Atari 2600 for $30 (US). I'm sure I enjoyed the game thoroughly even though it didn't quite compare to the arcade version. But honestly, there wasn't much to the game.... just a few levels of dots. Other games from that era cost about as much and many offered a little bit more bang for the buck.
New games today are priced around $55-$60, and although it seems like a lot of money, it's only about a 100% increase over 25 years. Today's games seem to provide so much more in regards to depth and game play. Granted, the systems can certainly provide for much more depth. But if you compare the features that you get now for $60... life-like cut scenes, 3d game play, levels upon levels, etc... you'll find that the value of the game far exceeds its 1980 equivalents.
I tend to break down the value of a game in dollars per hour. With games like Oblivion where I've spent a documented 120+ hours, $.50 an hour is well worth it. Compare that to just about any other form of entertainment, with maybe the exception of a deck of cards, you'll find that nothing else comes close.
ALL of these developers could easily sell more if they lowered their prices.
We've been saying it for years and finally someone has the balls to try it.
The Result: PROFIT.
Will anyone learn from this? No.
Why would I pay $60 for a game that will quite likely load DRM and cause problems with my computer requiring me to restore from a backup. Now, instead of "install and play" I have to:
1. Backup my C drive. ... time passes(days or months???) ...
2. Have a restore DVD ready to boot for a recovery.
3. Install the game, give it a go.
4. Restore my C drive because of unnecessary DRM screwing up my own damn property.
5. If days or months went by, maybe I have to update my OS and other software again, change some settings, etc. Hopefully I have all of my data backed up. Maybe some other game' DRM policy will require me to activate it again, and maybe I'll end up using 1 of my precious limited number of re-activations before I have to buy the game again.
Why would I spend $60 for this kind of punishment? I could have sworn I spent money for the 'fun' of the game. I hardly classify 'punishment' as 'fun'. If these 2 words are used interchangably nowadays I need to get away from society. This isn't how I roll.
Also, I'd rather buy 2 games at $30 at the same time, try both and have to do steps 1-6 once than buy 2 games at $60 a piece at 2 different times and potentially have to do steps 1-5 twice. Now i'm wasting my time and spent $60 for the 'opportunity' to recover twice.
Self preservation kicks in here somewhere.
I am fully aware of no-cd patches. They do not solve all DRM problems(starforce), and I should not have to seek them out to have an acceptable gaming experience.
Wine compatibility shouldn't be a goal of game developers, I suppose, but more a goal of Wine. It's Wine's responsibility to be compatible with Windows programs, not the other way around.
That said - I've found that a lot of games are fairly compatible with Wine, unless they are using very new DirectX features, or calling external programs. I have a theory about that - most games, I think, largely only interact with the operating system for low-level input and output (keyboard, mouse, joystick/joypad/wheel, video, sound, network), and all the rest of the game logic and user-interface are generally coded by the game developer and so are part of the game binary or included dll files.
The places where I see the most problems are when games try to interact with something external, like Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, or maybe something like "Games for Windows Live" (I've never actually tried any GfWL games under Wine, but that's the sort of thing I would expect problems with).
Lower the price and more people will buy. Amazing. Do this with any form of entertainment where there are parallel revenue streams and everyone will win big.
Concerts... more people will go, more people will buy shirts, food, cds, and of course gas to get there.
Theatre - movies or plays, same as above (and really they should have shirts, games, DVDs etc available for purchase at both forms of entertainment - who wouldn't buy an XMen shirt with claw marks after watching the next Wolverine film?)
Sports - again, drop ticket price and people will go... and spend more on other things while there.
Keep the price of admission high and you get none of the ancillary spending, it's just too much initial expense when you know you'll have to spend money on the other stuff to actually have a good time.
With games and digital media it's a little less clear cut but still obviously a big win as you'll get way more legal consumers by lowering prices to an affordable range.
Toys are the same way. People will buy multiples products at the same total cost if you lower the individual price point. They feel like they're getting more bang for their buck while still spending more money than on one item. Margins may not be as high but overhead expenses drop as you are moving product more quickly and with less marketing, service, shelf space, etc.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You don't pay for the beer, you pay for the fact that you think you stand any chance picking up any girls in that bar. Surely hope, no matter how misplaced is worth three quid?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Obviously there is a huge potential for for Valve to cut costs and maintain the same level of profits by selling direct to the customer, and they would probably *love* to do just that. The problem is that retailers tend to get pissed off when they are getting undercut by the wholesaler.
Think about it: you pay valve $32 for a copy of L4D, and you turn around and mark it up to $50. A month later valve turns around and sells that game --directly to the consumer-- for $25. Hell, that's $7 less than what you paid! You'd be a tad pissed, right?
I imagine that valve is walking a bit of a tightrope here. Pricing L4D at $25 wasn't so much a gamble in terms of whether it would boost sales (thats obvious), but of how retailers would react. It may be a test of whether valve can just write off retail altogether and go it alone with digital distribution.
That would only apply if Wii consoles were as prevalent as DVD players have become --- there's an inevitably smaller market to sell to for a console (or PC or Mac) title.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
What's cool is that they say you're free to copy the DVD for a backup.
Wow - A company saying you can do something when the law already says you can do it. That's mighty white of them.
The price of games is perfectly reasonable it. The value of money is related to the time it takes you to make it.
The decision to purchase something should follow a similar logic, in the case of games it should be related to how many hours of enjoyment will you get out of it.
While the ratio of hour many hours of enjoyment is worth and hour of work will vary from person to person, but on these boards I figure it should really matter much as most of us get paid decently for our time.
example $30/hr pay rate
a $60 game will take you about 2 hours recoup the expense.
if the game offers 10 hours of solid enjoyment isn't it worth 2 hours of work?
What about 20 hours of enjoyment?
Well quickly falling prices is more an indicator of not selling well in the long run. This seems to me that the current prices are way to exaggerated. For me it was reason enough not to buy either an xbox nor a PS3 but giving my aging PC another nowadays cheap graphics card!
Its called elasticity. Monopolies are elastic, meaning that (theoretically) the price can stretch to infinity. In-elastic means the the more you lower the price the more total overall sales.
There are no games that "cost too much," only games that can't make a profit at a price people are willing to pay for it.
The same could be said of game consoles, actually. But in either case, the problem is not in the price, but in the decisions that led to overspending while developing the product without adding value.
You know - there are a lot of little anecdotal reasons why the yes answers are just from the selfish, greedy, ADD losers who whine about everything else...
But there is one simple response that is not refutable:
If demand in the market is sustaining the price level, then the games do not cost to much. Simple supply and demand, geniuses.
There are more and more excellent games available on recent console's online services. I really applaud Sony for making major titles like Warhawk, Burnout Paradise or WipeOutHD available for below 30$. On the other hand, most of the available addons (eg. all those GH3 addons) don't add enough value to be paid for
For the most part, video games are too much...just like albums and movies are too much. They all have an arbitrary price point irrespective of the quality. However...I would pay upwards of $100 or more for niche market games. Take, for example, the Papyrus group that made the hard-core realistic racing sims of the late 90s. They lost out to watered down, vapid entertainment of EA Sports NASCAR racing series. Sure, the EA Sports ones sell a lot more copies, but nobody in their right mind would consider those games good--especially compared to the cutting edge, no-details-spared quality of the Papyrus racing sims.
A more interesting pricing scheme is the subscription-based ones. I find it laughable that Blizzard charges $20 for the CD, then $15 a month. I've been a paying customer on two accounts for over two years now...do they really need to charge me $20 for the next upgrade?
The prices need to be adjusted for many online games on par with developing countries. The Orange Box is sold for $20 in India, which makes it a killer buy. On the other hand, a person will think twice about buying 'World of Goo' for $20. Something on the lines of Good Ol' Games would be an apt pricing for many games. I think more people need to look into these affordability models if they want to sell.
So, L4D sales grew 30x when you cut the price in half, and this is a game that I'm willing full price, and 2 more to gift 3 other copies (the 4 pack at the price of 3).
It's bloody rare for a game to actually be worth $50. No one want to sink that money on a game that people aren't sure is that fun. At $25, I think that barrier is less, and if people are fans, and rave about it, more would buy it / gift it.
Personally, $20 is my sweet spot. I've spent more only once in the last 5 years (ironically when I had more disposable income)
I don't think you understand what irony means. It doesn't mean "an expected outcome". Which is what buying more expensive games because you have more disposable income is. . .
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I don't even know why I buy new pc games any more (but I still do) because I always go back to this game. Great multiplayer, and even greater multiplayer custom maps www.getdota.com
Which games? I know some of the PS2 online games still have servers up and running.
During tough economic times, luxuries go up in price because fewer people can afford to buy them.
Video games are luxuries.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This is what I do, and it works great for the most part. However, you don't want to get too far behind because some games become harder to find if you don't buy them relatively soon after launch. For example, two years after launch, I wasn't able to find Beyond Good & Evil for the Gamecube on sale in any retail stores, and the few times I've looked for it online it was more expensive than at launch. /Now someone will post an inexpensive link
Let's also not forget inflation. Let's compare today's games to the games of the 80s and 90s.
A top-priced game costs $60 today. But then consider the budget that goes into making the massive 3D graphics, including modern rendering and lighting techniques, R+D, possible budget for voice actors (and unlike the 90s, they can't just rely on local talent, some of these games require big names), etc. All that budget is being used on games that cost $60, surely, but adjusting for inflation, a game that costs $60 in 2009 would equal half-price in 1989.
Let's stick with 1989. Back then, new games for the NES typically went for $50. Then, consider that proportionally, game budgets were much, much smaller - even when you adjust for inflation - and then affix 2009 inflation to 1989 prices; that $50 game cost about $85 when adjusted (calculated here: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl).
Plus, once you get into subjective arguments, you can argue that the quality of games today has gone way, way up; yes, there's a lot of crap out there, and like some of you, I haven't fully evolved from my 80s self and aren't very good at 3D action/platformer games, or FPS titles. Taken on the whole, the average game today is much, much better than the average game of the 80s was; the crap is still crap, but the ratio is much better today than back then.
It can be argued that the American per capita income hasn't adjusted properly with inflation - that's an argument to itself - but I think that the main point stands: we're getting more games today than twenty years ago, we're getting better games, we're getting them comparatively cheaper than we did in the 80s, and companies are making less money than they did in the long run (on average).
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
<Valve> Stop pirating biatches!
<Gamers> Too expensive bro!
<Valve> Nay! You want it free motherfucking sons of your motherfucking planes!
<Gamers> I'm telling U...
<Valve> You know what? Eat shit!
* Valve drop prices 50% nigga
<Gamers> Gladly
* Gamers 3000% sales increase
<slashdot> pwnd
<Valve> wtf!
<Valve> i maen
<Valve> WOOT!
<Gamers> facepalm.jpg
But... the future refused to change.
.
The newer Xbox LIVE Commmunity Games service has a whole lot of great games available very cheaply. I personally spent 11 months developing Snake360, which has 300 levels, several multiplayer modes, online scoreboards, and just about every feature you could ever ask for from a snake game. At $5, it's hard to find a better value. Not to say that it's the best; many of the Community Games are insanely addictive and are half that price.
Basically it comes down to this.
If windows would cost the same a video games,
the people would actually buy it.
If video games would cost the same as music cd's, the people would actually buy them,
If music cd's would cost the same as a magazine,
the people would actually buy them.
i will gladly pay $100 for starcraft 2. i know there will be 3 parts. i'll pay that amount for each part.
the thing is... that's the only game i'll be willing to do that to. anything else should be lower.
If you price is at $99, some people will buy it. But if it's free, most won't even look at it. Unless the whole industry gets behind it, because people are so used to games around $40 and up (and $60 and up for heavy hitters), if you release a game at a 'bargain' price, people will first think, "what's wrong with this game?" rather than "woot! great price!" And expecting such reaction, why would they be willing to lower the cost? But it also means we don't need whole industry to back this 'lower the game price' campaign. We need one good title. A heavy hitter like GTA series or 'the next game' everyone is waiting for (Duke Nukem Forever?). If games like that were $30 or so, the whole industry might notice. But then, these games are produced by gigantic publishers so perhaps it'd be a catch-22. As an aside, wasn't there a band that sold it's music online for whatever-price-you-pay scheme? How did that turn out?
I, for one, acquired a copy of Left 4 Dead for less than retail and not through official retail channels...*coughthanksTPBcough*, however I noticed the recent sale and even though I already have a copy I was highly tempted to purchase a legitimate copy. I'm a little broke as hell due to a recent bout of unemployment, but otherwise I'd have bought it.
So in my case, under normal economic circumstances, lower prices turn a download into a sale.
ironic, isn't it?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
One thing about video game pricing that I don't think people realize is that a lot of companies still look at the market as "selling video games to kids."
We make the argument "Oh, but most video games are sold to adults" whenever Rockstar comes out with a new game, but the creative types and the accounting types in the same company don't read from the same script.
A $60 game isn't that odd - I remember Zelda II priced at $60 when I was a kid (we eventually bought it when the price came down to a more reasonable "$45" - and that was in 1988 dollars - so about $77.92 with inflation.
Still, there's a profound difference between 1988 and 2009. First of all, I was 10 years old at the time. Now I'm 29.
In 1988, the primary purchasers of video games were parents buying the games for their kids. In 2009, the primary purchasers of video games are the kids, now adults, who grew up on video games.
This means:
A) Adults have reasonable expectations of what they want out of video games, and can view video games more critically and come to a more appropriate approximation of their value to them. The parents who purchased the games in 1988 did not have reasonable expectations of what the value of a video game was, they just knew that spending $45 would make their kid happy and in some cases, keep them occupied, for some time... Children may have known what the value of a video game was (or more accurately, would have known a good video game from a bad one) but didn't understand the value of "$45" and so couldn't make a good comparison.
B) Adults today DO know the value of video games AND the value of money, but the $60 price point seems to be priced for parents who still know neither, when the people in the market are either fully grown adults without kids, or fully grown adults with kids who grew up playing video games.
There's other factors, such as the "price the retail PC game like the console game because we don't want to undercut the console game market, and price the digital download like the retail game because we don't want to undercut the retail game market."
Mostly, though, it's that marketing really doesn't understand the PC gaming market.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
That's why we play free games that IMO blow all current-gen game out of the water with gameplay mechanics and movement ability - Tribes 2 for instance.
It runs great on old equipment, is still being updated (with a new huge update coming this week), and only costs $20!
I really want to buy L4D but I can't afford it. When I heard it was half price, I jumped to buy it but missed it because I had to hear about it a day late on The Consumerist. I don't log into Steam everyday, but I would have bought the game for half price.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
When 2K games released NFL 2K5 or 6 or something for $20 BRAND NEW on the day of release it came damn close to outselling Madden (I'm sure most people here understand what a coup that would have been). It scared EA so much that the very same year it pressured the NFL and ESPN to give exclusive licensing just to make sure they weren't forced to reduce their prices in the future. This experiment was run three or four years ago and succeeded mightily.
So why hasn't World of Goo been a blockbuster hit? Low system requirements, a rating of over 90, a budget price tag, and no DRM?
By far the most popular PC game right now is still World of Warcraft, which runs comfortably on machines without fancy "3D" graphic accelerators Left 4 Dead (mentioned) will also run just fine on a 5 year old machine + a $70 graphics card (GeForce 9500, less than 1/2 the cost of a Wii).
Maybe people just want to play games in the their living room and not their computer room? (If anyone can find a comparison of WoG sales on Wii vs PC, it might be very interesting -- but also might just tell of how much piracy there is on PC)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
So I'm in Best Buy last week and I decided to browse the PC game isle for something that would run on my Linux system. I see Enemy Territory Quake Wars (ETQW) (released Oct 07) and the price is $49.99 Ouch.. I browsed a bit more and see a special edition version of the same game for $29.99 so I bought it. Grabbed the Linux installer from the net and started playing the game.. So far so good !!
I stop in MicroCenter over the weekend and see ETQW for $4.99. I immediately bitched and moaned, was really glad i hadn't done the impulse buy of the $50.00 version. I then bought 4 more copies from Microcenter for my friends and nephews so we can all get online and play together.. so my total investment now is $50.00 / 5 games $10.00 per copy.
I imagine I could have looked for a key gen on the net and installed from my disc onto their machines, but For $5.00 why not make em all legit ? I should know better than to even look in BB for anything PC related.. it was an impulse decision because I hadn't bought a new PC game for a while. I too am gun-shy of dropping $60.00 on a game that bites..
The last game I pre-ordered (savage2) had the minimum system specs change before release and the game wouldn't run on my hardware. They now give that game away for free, and it still won't run on my machine. That game was release around the same time as ETQW
Who would have thought a game couldn't step down and run on a geforce 6800 ? yes the card is old, but it's the fastest one I can get for an AGP slot, a video card upgrade means a full system upgrade at this point. Since the PC runs so well I haven't been able to justify the expense to myself.
far...out
Frequency (published by Sony; the online client came bundled with my slim PS2) and DDR Supernova (published by Konami) were -103 from the day I bought them.
You are presented with 2 solutions:
1) Wait until tomorrow and enjoy a game.
2) Return the game, file a complaint with the federal government about the injustice they've caused you, and then complain about how horrible the DRM is.
Last I checked, there's still genocide in Darfur. Let's save option #2 for that.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If you're going to play the dev cost inflation card, you also have to look at market saturation and the prevalence of engine licensing. You will find a much higher percentage growth in the number of households that have one or more gaming consoles/PCs today than twenty years ago on the NES.
I remember new SNES games costing about forty bucks maximum.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Once you found another elevator on the engineering level after getting off the first medical level, you could happily poke around several levels, and there were never any real boss fights. In fact, one of the bugs fixed in the CD version was that you could go up to the flight deck's maintenance tunnels and find a slaughtered resistance group(with SHODAN confusingly taunting you along the way); once you destroyed the mining laser, you suddenly received an email from the group's leader!
--
Yes.
And cost as much too. I attend both F/X and game-development talks at the annual SIGGRAPH meeting. There is a convergence in the breadth and kinds of employees working at each. Game companies now hire artistic directors and script writers.
I reviewed my PlayStation store purchases for the last 16 months just recently, total spend in the range of $100, one title for $40, two or three for $10, and a bunch or little stuff under $10. I have not yet bought a non-download title for the PS3 - in fact, the last retail game I purchased was Warcraft III for the PC.
Maybe I'm not their target market since I don't spend much on games overall... maybe they shouldn't have sold a home media center for less than production cost...
Wii Ware - No, Not really
Actual hard copies - yes and no (depends on the title)
Wii Virtual Console - Yes!!!They made there money already!!!!!!!!
I've learned to buy Konami games as soon as the first price drop, because they always seem to manufacture too few copies to meet eventual demand and fail to reissue even their highest rated games.
(I have both We Love Katamari and Rez.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I agree that the cost for "new" games is too much. What to do? Just wait the 6 months to a year for them to drop down to the $20 price point. If its game I love, maybe I'll pony up the extra cash in advance, but frankly most games don't fall into that category. At $20 if it sucks, I don't care too much. Frankly I have more important things to worry about than gaming, so if I "deny myself" for a bit, its usually for the better anyway.
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
Free market and stuff.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I bought PixelJunk Eden and Echochrome because Sony had them for $5 in a sale in November. That's a reasonable price for a rental.
The downloadable games for $30? No way. I bought the disc version of Burnout Paradise, so I can always resell it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Unless someone buys them out and doesn't care about their 'promises'? They didn't make them.
They charged a nickle, got some customers.
They lower the price to 3 cents, and got 7 times more customers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you play through each co-op campaign only once, you'll see 4-5 hours of play. This game has a lot of replay value if you have friends that you enjoy to play games with. There are the achievements, different difficulties for people that enjoy a challenge, and versus mode. They only thing that stopped me from picking up L4D on release was Wrath of the Lich King.
If you were to graph the price on the X axis and the profits on the Y axis, it creates an inverted parabola. If you charge too little, you get a lot of sales but you earn less money. If you charge too much, you lose so many sales that you eventually lose out on profit. What TFA is saying is that games have overshot the peak of the parabola, and he's hinting that it's by something like 3x.
This completely agrees with what I think is happening. In my experience, there are only a few games I'd be willing to pay $50 for, maybe a dozen in the past 3 years. With my siblings, they'll buy maybe one in that time period. With my parents, they're old fashioned and wouldn't pay that for any game. If you were to lower that to $20, it would at least quadruple my buying, my siblings would at least reach the level I was at, and my parents would be willing to buy a few a year if they were able to try them out first.
There would also be the side effect of reducing the used game market to nearly nothing. The reason that the used game market exists is because the games are too expensive in the first place. The trade in value for a used game would go down so far that if there's even the remote possibility of playing the game again, I'd keep it around. I'd use it as a gift before trading it in. Whereas right now, I'll trade in a game if I don't believe there's replay value.
While I am usually the guy who buys games after a few months, the one exception is games with strong multiplayer. I just can't stand coming in and getting murdered for being a newbie who is unfarmiliar with the controls or maps. Getting smoked for hours on end is not fun.
They do cost too much. Video games will cost you your social life, your sleep, as a result your health, and potentially your marriage or your job. That's assuming that you're married.
I used to work for retail store that sold new and used games along side each other. Customers had a very strong preference for hunting a bargain amongst the used games. We also had alot of new titles coming back after 2-3 weeks for cash or trade-in (the barcodes would still scan...) that had obviously been played out, ripped to ISO and user was looking to recoup some of their hard earned dosh.
... since I haven't worked there in 6 years I will say that, but will say no more.
Console has the myth of being cheap. Initial entry for the hardware seems easier than a PC, but once you've accessorised and got a stack of games you've got your budget for a pc.
There was remarkable interest in very old classic games from 5-10 years old and more.
Long after I left the store came under bullying tactics regarding it's sale of used games... we were asked to send off trade-ins (like to be destroyed therefore removed from the market) and were pressured into stopping buying used games
A reasonable gaming experience on the pc, at least to the level of graphical experience you get on a PS3/360 is actually rather cheap. Infact a PS3's GPU is less powerful than a cheap 9600 GT / 8800 GT graphics card.
(ok, I do conceed console games are much more optimized for the hardware and have no significant operating system and software driver overhead)
At the end of the day you don't even need a $200+ graphics card to play most games, especially if you are turning off AA and AF (Which still isn't worth the performance hit).
The PC hardware prOn websites are very deep in the pockets of vendors, if you hadn't guessed that from the way they tout $300 and $400 graphics cards as if they are absolutely essiental equipment. You only need to reduce a little detail to get many games running on cheaper or older grpahics cards. Often the reduction doesn't retract much from the game experience.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The average Mom or Dad works about 5 to 10 hours to make 50 bucks TAKEHOME pay. The average kid wants about 2 to 10 new games every month. Do the math. Game makers look at the wealthier end of the demographics, and price their entertainment accordingly. They need to look at the REST of America. Hell, look at the REST OF THE WORLD!! And, they wonder why games are pirated? Childish amusements shouldn't cost a parent a major fraction of their take home pay. (as an aside, few games are original today - they just keep upping the video overhead, and making minor changes to games that are twenty years old)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The reason game prices haven't adjusted for inflation is basically this: they haven't needed to, the audience is far wider now, with newer consumers entering at a rate that eclipses those leaving the market. In this way, the game companies aren't charging less by keeping prices between 50 and 60 dollars, but actually charging more.
The problem is they aren't keeping up with the economies of scale. Nintendo could have destroyed this generation of consoles more thoroughly than they already have if they had just made their online store not suck so much.
Why, for example do they even charge for a game like Pokemon Ranch? Subsidise it and give it away free to promote the new Pokemon Platinum release (if you don't know why this is a good idea you don't know how the DS and Wii Pokemon games interact). Why do old games cost 10 dollars or more on their online store? Sell them for 2 dollars. Most people only want the nostalgia that 2 hours of play on Kid Icarus will bring, they've probably lost the agility and timing that made them good enough to want to spend enough time to really take away from their time to play new titles AND they would buy the old titles much more frequently. Also, there's no original content on their online store, comparatively. Where is their Braid? Where is their Geometry Wars? And where is a good store UI?
Getting away from Nintendo, the Live online store has essentially proven that people are willing to pay a low cost in droves to be entertained for 5+ hours. I mean real entertainment, not crap filler games.
Impulse buys have been shown to be just under 20 dollars by multiple studies for years (look it up yourself, I'm lazy, I admit). Taking my wife and child to the movies, even economy time with no snacks, is over 20 bucks now. I don't need much entertainment for 20 bucks, but I can justify the cost to myself, my small allowance that I give myself, and my family. 60 bucks is another matter if it's not a birthday or other event. Many people do wait for Gold Box PC editions (with expansions) to be on sale for 20 bucks or a used copy at a Game Stop of some console game that they want before buying, but they're missing out on the social impact of being involved in the new and often vibrant community some titles generate. Sadly much of this will be short lived, but that doesn't make it less enjoyable while it's there. Wait to buy and you miss this, if publishers made new games cost the level of impulse buys they would drive sales through the rough, as all the benefits of a new game community suddenly become available to any impulse buyer.
I think a problem that everyone knows is paying 50 - 60 for a game that's under 10 hours, and that is ultimately an inferior product, is a ripoff...
its like going to the movies and paying the same price for both my bloody valentine 3D, and taken
Despite what production costs may have gone into it if the product is bad its still not profitable for the player to shell out 50 for junk.
That's one thing I'm going to miss here soon as I translocate my family from CA to PA. Fry's often runs specials on newly released games, sometimes as much as $5-$10 off regular retail. Or, they'll offer the deluxe version of the game at the standard version's price. I find myself more inclined to go for a newer title even if it's available for just below retail. I mean, duh, who wouldn't be?
There is simply too much glass..
Especially console games. I used to be a minor game addict in the CS days and before and recently got back into gaming with a PS3 instead of a high end computer (for those of you looking at the same choices, this was a mistake. get a big screen and a high-end, upgradeable PC).
I must say, that games have gotten worse, and more expensive. With the 360 and PS3, all I have seen in gain is graphics (which don't compare to high-end PCs). Instead of a player having a bar that shows how tired he is or how shiny his skin has gotten from sweat, we have "Ohhh look we can see the camera flashes off a bead of sweat." Everything else has mostly stayed the same or gotten worse.
From a tech standpoint (engine perf, features, mod capability...), I think the curve has stayed about average.
BUT the PRICING... has gone up. Now, games cost $50-$80 on a console! Marketing seems to have done nothing but add to the end price. It says nothing about the actual game. You need to wait 3-6 months to see the resale prices which actually reflect the value of the game. By then the marketing has died off and the reviews are from real gamers who say more than "EA is a great company so this game is great."
All 5 of my multiplatform games have crashed one time or another. It is HORRIBLE for a console game that costs ~$60 to CRASH!!! A PC game crashing is understandable, but a console game? Game makers should be ashamed of themselves for some of the garbage that comes out. Quality control is obviously what they moved to marketing.
The price drop worked for Left4Dead because they were cheaper than their competition. They got money that would otherwise have gone to other games. It's a fallacy to think that lower prices on games results in THAT much more money spent on games by consumers.
It ended up being a full year before I was able to pick-up the game on the shelves.
That's funny because the Wii Fit hasn't even been out for a year in the US.
I personally would spend less money on games if they all cost 1/2 as much. I could get 50% more games than I do now for 75% as much money spent.
Have you ever tried to play a 2-year old game online? You get one of two results:
1) No one is playing, so you can't find a game or
2) People are still playing, but have been playing it for 2 years and are so far out of your skill range it's completely unfun
Interesting, I never thought of "fitting in" as a fundamental human right.
By saying that information needs to be free for cultural unity, you promote a society of mediocrity. People won't invest in making something better, or different, because there's no way to make that investment back. Instead of companies innovating to make products to compete, they'll just cheaply copy the designs of the market leader.
Look at the crappy television monoculture, with execs making copy cats of any hit show. Now think how much worse it would be if instead of just copying ideas, they could just rebroadcast the same exact show at no cost. American Idol on every single station so that you won't need to feel left out.
While intellectual property laws lock down access, they also promote innovative alternatives. When it's too expensive to compete for mainstream customers, you get alternatives created to capture parts of the market that are ignored.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I'm kind of surprised that Left 4 Dead is noted, because that really is the perfect example. When the demo came out, I gave it a shot. I liked the game, it was pretty enjoyable (I'd give it a 6/10), but I didn't $50 like it. When friends asked me about it, I gave them the same response. I said that I wouldn't buy it unless it came out for a reasonable price. Alas, this last weekend, when they dropped it to $25, I snatched it right up.
GTA 4 was widely estimated to have a budget of $100 million.
Not surprising, really, since you are competing for talent and producing your product in much the same way.
I hate to be a killjoy on the whole, "We want are gamez as cheap as can be!" thread, but I don't actually think that paying $40-$50 for 60+ hours of entertainment is really asking too much. If an hour-long CD is $10 (on iTunes), and a feature length DVD movie is $20, why should 60 hours of gaming be priced so much less per/hour?
One could argue that games have less replay value... but I don't think they have much less than movies, which MOST (not all) people will only watch 3-4 times. Even music CDs... I'm a total music junkie, and I've worn out Tapes and CDs before... but only once in a while will a CD come along that I'll listen through more than 15 times in a year, and I know I'm on the high end of the spectrum.
The Hours of Entertainment per dollar is extremely high. Seeing that most games, nowdays, are within 30-80 hours, that's around $1/hour... a tenth that of Music and Movies. Do I believe that entertainment should be priced per quantity, as in price/hour? No. But if you consider that one gets about the same amount of enjoyment, and the same amount of creativity is put into a game for a certain length of time as a music CD or movie DVD, then asking for anything more than 1000% the price/hour just strikes me as whining.
However, does that mean that studios won't make more money if they drop prices? No it doesn't. It might make great sense from an ecconomic standpoint, but from an ethical standpoint, they're not ripping us off in the slightest.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Video games are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them. I don't buy games if the price is too high for what I'm getting, and Valve is saying that's true for others as well. When the game is worth the price, then people will buy. And the game usually doesn't improve after release (other than minor bug fixes), so the only thing to do is lower the price to get more sales. People tend to prefer newer games, so publishers will miss their window to sell if they don't lower the price before newer cooler games come out. The value of a game to me usually depends how long I expect to play it. If I expect it won't keep my attention long, then I won't be willing to pay much for it. For me, included DRM affects the value as well.
If you look at price per hours of enjoyment, they are cheap.
On the other hand, As a dad we still own a PS2, due to the fact there are plenty of kid friendly titles for $20 and less.
Kids destroy DVD's fast, usually a couple months tops, one went down in a single day. If not destroyed, they tend to either get bored with them, or mostly finish the game, and ask for another.
The $60 price point has really turned me off from gaming. Alone the $60 game might not be a killer. But combined with the game industry's obsession with pleasing hard-core gamers you have a recipe for me walking away from gaming. Why would I pay $60 for a game that requires me to unlock most of the content? Or for a game that requires lots of trial-and-error? Or for a game that was released unfinished with showstopping bugs? I'd rather stick with $10 downloads.
I'm amazed there isn't more discussion here about how SEGA demonstrated this in 2005 with their release of ESPN NFL 2k5 at a $20 price point compared to EA Madden 2005's $50 price point. Not only did SEGA force EA to slash their prices by eating their sales numbers they did so while producing a well done competitive game.
Of course they did such a good job that EA went and signed an exclusive contract with the NFL and the Players worth more than $300 million before the next season.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Why is Gabe Newell talking about "sales" of games, when with Steam, Valve doesn't sell games any more. It only rents them.
at least where I live - in Poland. A new major PC release is $20-30 and that is a price I can accept, while all the console games cost $80-100, which results that in Poland PC gaming is still way ahead of the consoles. And PS3 doesn't sell well because pirate copies are not an option.
This is a great example what an improperly set price does to the market.
The downside of consoles is that the games are 30-40% more expensive than on the PC side.
But the upside is that you don't need to buy multiple copies because console games are more likely to support split screen. So of 135% of the 1-player PC price for one copy of a console game, or 200% for a separate copy of a PC game for each player, which is more affordable? The comparison gets even more lopsided when players have their friends over to visit.
Movies are a luxury whereas pills are a necessity
Since when is tadalafil a necessity? Or the latest generation of proton-pump-inhibiting heartburn drugs, when there are perfectly good generic acid controllers such as famotidine?
Forget "can be completed". Tell me how much time it would take for me to see 100% of the content. That's the length of a game.
In that case, Animal Crossing is longer than anything but an MMORPG, because it takes literally 365*24 = 8,760 hours to see everything (counting time that the system is powered off, of course), and that's if you have the strategy guide to tell you exactly what to do on each holiday.
You might find this useful - it scrapes Amazon to find five-star games from previous years with low prices. PC, 360, ps3, wii, etc. Check it out!
http://tendollargamer.com/
When I was growing up MSRP on most 8-bit Nintendo games was $65. I remember saving my allowance for Super Mario 3.
My XBox 360 games are $54-$59 for something BRAND NEW. Platinum hits are sometimes $30, as are year-old sports games (competing with the used market, I guess).
That $65 in 1990 dollars would be $101.90 in 2007, according to westegg.com/inflation
But the summary, some comments, and much bitching I hear on the 'tubes is that video games have gotten so expensive "these days."
Fine, argue that they shouldn't cost $60. Or maybe it was okay back then, but prices should have dropped. But don't pretend like they've gone UP.
That explains why they increased prices in Europe by some 30% recently then. Oh wait..
I contacted support about it and they didn't respond. But with games on Steam now priced 30-40% above retail, they won't see any business from me anymore. Which is a pity, because I don't really fancy going to the store and getting some SecuROM infested version either.
Far more people are buying these games. Back when say, Lightspeed came out, I'm sure hardly anyone got it. Compare that today when any joe blow can wander into basically any store (Even menards) and buy a friggen game. Discuss!
Did the world just turn over and forget about shareware? I remember far too many games that were shareware that were too irresistable to not buy. Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Tyrian, Worms!
Its like a demo but better. And buying that game gave you freedom to do whatever you wanted, including copy it and play it on a lan, basically getting everyone hooked on it and them wanting their own copy too.
In reality how often do you play split screens anyway
I'd say every other weekend when my cousins visit. We play falling block games (Dr. Mario, Pokemon Puzzle League, and Tetramino), which fit nicely on a split screen because they're naturally portrait. We also play a lot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which (like the Bomberman series) doesn't need to split the screen because it can show the whole arena in one view that fills all 32 inches of my Vizio TV.
companies don't care about products, only profit. so like the housing market they artificially rise their prices.
I'm not a business grad, but to me this seems so obvious. I have been constantly amazed that companies don't get this. If I see a game for 50 pouds i'll baulk at buying, but at 25 I'll snap it up.
It's the same with Xbox Life/PSN why price so high? A small budget game priced at 10 pounds is too much, but at 4.99 it's insta-buy! I would have gotten at least 3 games by now in the last 2 months if they were at that price point instead they have made nothing from me.
Why do they not get the simple idea that if you charge less you make more money? The answer is simple; greed blinds them.
Yes. At least for me. I don't buy new games and rely on "bargain priced" old titles from ebay. Last game I pre-ordered as soon as they announced it is Falcon 4.0 Allied Force in 2005, about 29$. Still remember when new titles hit 50$ mark, maybe a year ago? But even before that I have begun to play much less games, and maybe out of the game market by now. Only play casual small games.
In New Zealand, A-list games cost at minimum $90. Some console titles go up to $130-150 (to put that in context, that's about 50-100% of the average student's weekly income). Games also tend to take longer to come out here; often few months or more. Retail chains such as EB games and the like don't seem to put much effort into keeping stock levels of the latest games (or popular games).
The result is a huge reliance on BitTorrent for most gamers.
I'd imagine if prices were significantly cut here, not only would profits include but games would increase in mainstream popularity as they enter the realm of affordable entertainment. They can't blame the exchange rate for everything; Steam is miles cheaper than anywhere else here despite the US$1.00 = NZ$0.51 rate.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
My local gamestop still has Asherons Call 2 and Tabula Rasa on the shelves, both of which are now dead. Even telling the store manager this he said someone will still buy it then its not their problem. gotta love those gamestop guys.
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
If you don't like it, move somewhere that sells the games cheaper. (not that I'm recommending this as a reason to move)
I'm in China. When you do eventually find a game store here, you're almost certainly buying pirated games, but they cost around $0.20 (5RMB) - buying a bowl of noodles (or a big mac) is more expensive.
its true, when steam dropped the prices it was too good for me to pass up. i bought:)