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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.'"
Like many other products, if games don't sell at $60, the price drops. If they thought people would be willing to buy games for $50 but not $60, games would be $50.
No. When games don't sell because the price is too high (or because the game is mediocre), the game developers and publishers blame illegal copying rather than adjusting the price. So the message sent to them by the market isn't being heard - they are too busy worrying about why they aren't getting the price they feel entitled to.
I stopped buying new games when they hit $40. If I buy them at all, I wait until the price drops enough to land the game in the clearance bin, or until a pre-owned copy turns up (don't download them either, to nip that criticism in the bud. I just don't buy and don't play). I would buy a lot more games new at retail if the prices were half of what they are now (and DVDs, and books, and comics). I can't believe I'm in the minority.
No, new games cost 39.99 unless you are an idiot who bought an artificially limited platform, then you pay 59.99. The extra 20 dollars or euroes is a surchage for you accepting to get screwed.