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.

Comments

Re:Hiopcrits?

[dalmiroy2k]

Everything in Europe is expensive due to their overrated Euro.
Not a coincidence that now with the economic crisis several countries in the EU are considering the devaluation of the Euro or getting their own currency back.

Re:Yes

[GweeDo]

"For Sat: The Sixth Sense"

Thanks jerk...

A brief of the exchanges so far

[Requiem18th]

<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