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Why Games Cost $60
eldavojohn writes "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price — but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99, as did the makers of Batman Arkham Asylum? After all, those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop, and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience.'"
No. No. Horseshit.
Everyone says this. It's bullshit.
ANY GAME for the mainstream consoles (fuck your Jaguar, 3D0, whatever bullshit) was $50.
If you paid more you were an idiot.
Just read the ads in the Sunday paper.
Some store invariably advertises the game you want at $50.
Price match at local store of choice.
It's no wonder these same people accept the $60 (+$DLC, +$Subscription, +$Collector's Edition) price. They didn't give a shit back then and are all too happy to continue not giving a shit today. But now, they love to chime in and say "I paid $80 for Chrono Trigger!" when they could have had it for $50 at Toys R Us.
Development costs rise, sure.
But the video game market as a whole has grown too. A lot.
$60 is bullshit for 99% of games, yet publishers people wonder why 99% of games don't turn a profit.
Games need to be priced individually, according to worth. If the average retard thinks your $40 game is shittier than the $60 copy of Madden 2010 because of the price, then fire your marketing team.