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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.
I do get your point, but when the dollar was ridiculously weak (peaked at almost $2 to £1) games in American retail stores were "cheaper" in real terms than games in British retail stores. No-one makes an issue of that because each country has it's own economy, it's own taxes, it's own business models etc.
If you had an online game store would you think it was a good idea to sell a game to someone in a third-world country for $60? Hell no, because $60 might be a month's wages or more due to massive economic differences between two countries. You'll sell it in local currency at a price people can afford.
The complaining about this change would seem to stem from the fact that European (and at one point British) customers used to be able to save a crapload of money by buying games in dollars, and now they're forced to pay prices more realistic for their own countries. Greed, plain and simple.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
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.