Dollar Apps Killing Traditional Gaming?

donniebaseball23 writes "There can be no denying that the rise of smartphones and tablets has had a major impact on the gaming business. The prevalence of free and 99-cent apps has changed consumers' perception of value. Mike Capps, president of Gears of War developer Epic Games, said, 'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps. How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it? They're used to 99 cents. As I said, it's an uncertain time in the industry. But it's an exciting time for whoever picks the right path and wins.'"

Comments

Profit dollars are what matters.

[symbolset]

The installed base for iOS is over what, 60 million units? And Android is like, 40 million. So if you develop a game that costs a million bucks to develop and sell it for ten bucks, you have to get 0.13 percent of the users to buy it to break even. And if it's a 99 cent thing you and your mom cooked up in a few weeks during summer break that's cute and catches on, you may never work in a real job ever in your life - before you're even out of middle school.

An interesting game. It sounds like the only way to lose is not to play.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Hultis]

Oblig. Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-02-12/

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[AliasMarlowe]

An interesting game. It sounds like the only way to lose is not to play.

Many will lose simply because the number of popular game apps will be a tiny fraction of the number developed and marketed. The losers will include quite a few who invest time/effort/money in developing a game that gets bought by essentially nobody.

Right now, these mini-games have novelty value, but that might wear off, and the potential rewards for success will shrink if the punters don't play.

Of course, I'm not really in the "gamer" demographic. The last game I bought for a PC was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, maybe 20 years ago, for about $40. Since then I've bought precisely three PlayStation games for the kids, costing a total of about $150. The number of app-style games I've purchased for our smartphones is exactly zero, and unlikely to change.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Lumpy]

If your game costs $1,000,000 to devlop for a phone or portable device, then stop right there, close up shop and go home. You are doing it wrong and will only produce crap.

Yes it's neat that you paid a world crafter to spend 8 hours a day for 6 months to place every pieces of junk in your world, ala: fallout 3 and some gamers might notice and appreciate that, but 90% will never notice and dont care. So stop paying a "artist" low 6 figures to do grunt work and hire a student at low 5 figures to do it instead.

Honestly, hiring rock star programmers and artists on a $1.00 iOS game is utterly stupid. And only a complete moron would do such a thing.

Games like angry birds, coded up in a month, art done in 3 months by a medicore artist. ALL DONE and even at dumb silicon valley pay rates you are still under $100,000 and they made that back in the first week of sales.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Eponymous Coward]

hiring rock star programmers and artists on a $1.00 iOS game is utterly stupid

It's not that expensive although the cost is rising quickly. There's a significant number of rock star programmers out there who want to write for their phone and are willing to take a pay cut to do so. Try hiring for a console game right now. That's become even more expensive because so many developers no longer want to write for consoles or work on a multi-million dollar title. The stress involved in doing so can be substantial.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Purity Of Essence]

Here's some simple math for you to illustrate the reality of the app marketplace. By Apple's own claims it has (A) generated $2,000,000,000 in revenue for developers, and (B) hosts 350,000 apps in its store. A / B = $5714.29 per app on average, the vast majority making significantly less than that. That's no way to make a living. The winning strategy seems to be to make lots of garbage quickly and hope something sticks. Any other strategy is akin to to winning the lottery.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I'd never buy one of those Uno cars, they are made of cardboard and just don't last.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[PFI_Optix]

Parker Brothers' "Aggravation" is a family tradition. Simple mechanics + a small degree of strategy, so it is accessible to young players and fun for adults as well.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad I got out of entertainment, gaming and film. The solution these days is we all have to work cheaper. Even though it's a very high skilled profession and can take 5 or 10 years just to learn the basics we're seeing the entire industry change overnight into a low pay profession. I was actually making 50% more in the 80s with even adjusting for inflation. Over the last 20 years virtually everyone I know left the film industry and I'm seeing a similar trend in gaming. It's a massive talent drain and what we'll be left with is a few high paid positions and the rest will be the ones willing to work for dirt. It may in fact turn into a "student" profession since once you move out of your parent's basement you couldn't aford to work in gaming. It's sad that people just trying to make a living are seen as being greedy. The ones making six figures are rare and the bulk live paycheck to paycheck. I lived that cycle for a lot of years where I'd build up a little cash during a job but I'd spend it all surviving until the next job came along. I finally had to give up and find another profession since things were getting worse and not better. Just how many talented people will go into gaming if they know the best they can hope for is a low paying job that will last for maybe ten years? If there's no future and the present sucks the truly talented will find something else to do.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Purity Of Essence]

There's no math error. Your conjecture is way off. Apps made by a very, very, very slim minority of developers make a profit.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[pushing-robot]

A third of the apps are free, so figure an average of $8600/paid app. Free apps tend to be subsidized with ads, &c., which aren't included in the $2B figure.

Then take out the shovelware, the apps that got thrown together in a week or less by throwing a few appkit controls together, making a glorified web page, and/or duplicating the same app 50 times with slightly different content. Not many people buy these apps, but they take so little time to produce that developers can earn a decent living on them. I'd say these account for at least half the App Store; some would guess closer to 90%.

Then take out the apps that are too specific to really catch on; even if they were well written, there just aren't that many people who need to diagnose a token ring network in Esperanto or reproduce the call of Cerorhinca monocerata. Often these apps were written to benefit a specific party (probably the developer) and later polished up and stuck in the App Store to try and make a bit of extra cash.

And now you're left with the small percentage of apps that are well designed and appeal to a broad audience, and a large percentage of that $2B revenue figure. Granted, not everything will be a hit, but that's true of every industry. And with the market growing tremendously every year you'd be crazy not to get your feet wet.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Sectoid_Dev]

Angry Birds was coded up in a month? Are you on crack?

No, that's delusion typical of arrogance common in programmers. I'm surprised he said a month.

"Surely the trajectory function of the game would only take an hour to write and this rest is just graphics and levels, right?
Of course there are the collision detectors and physics, but there are libraries for that, so make that two hours."

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, whenever you try to get rid of it you end up with a garage full of other cars.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Americano]

Games like angry birds, coded up in a month, art done in 3 months by a medicore artist.

"I don't really have any understanding of the work that goes into something like that, so it must be easy, and take no time at all!"

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Oligonicella]

But, I don't like Candy Land.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Maxo-Texas]

What I can't find is a nice iphone scaled real time strategy like total annihilation or warcraft.

I did angry birds and I got my dollar worth but I won't be doing it the rest of my life. Same for physics free. There was a nice star fleet battles type space combat simulator, "empire" but it is a bit heavy just to get started.

I'd like something like the old star trek game where you went from sector to sector -- it was fairly light compared with today's games.

Or something like tradewars.
The learning curve needs to be shallow.

Start with a ship, a cargo, one weapon with a simple "fire" button for when you see you are in range, some wimpy shields which you can rotate like a dial to rebalance against incoming fire.

Then as you buy things, you get a little bit of rules around each upgrade at a time-- not a 27 page manual just to start playing.

Likewise, for a RTS game, I'd like something very much like "Empire" more than "Civilization". But which scales up over time with more units. It wouldn't have to be a full on total annihilation-- that would be too much.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[DurendalMac]

Angry Birds was whipped up quickly because it's was horridly ripped off from "Crush the Castle", a game which was on the internet in Flash form nine months previous. AB is virtually CtC reskinned.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[bertoelcon]

Pfft "Bejeweled", I keep an old Nokia around to play some "Snake".

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[slapout]

I really don't understand why "Settlers of Catan" hasn't caught on more in the U.S.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[ArhcAngel]

Funny, I got out of programming because of the PHB always coming in and telling us we needed to implement functionality xyz by next week because our competitor just released an upgrade with xyz function.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[CastrTroy]

The last sentence sums it up perfectly. I'm sure you could find lots of people who wanted to program console games. But you won't entice them by shoving them in a cubicle for 16 hours a day, for (relatively) little pay, and with no control over what's going on with the project. Entice people with nice offices, nice equipment, good salaries, realistic deadlines, and good hours, and you'll probably have no trouble getting developers to work for you.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[arb phd slp]

I really don't understand why "Settlers of Catan" hasn't caught on more in the U.S.

What does "caught on" look like? Every tabletop gamer I know has a copy. Settlers of Catan is as hot a game as you're going to find in the U.S. The ceiling on Settlers of Catan is that most people don't play board games.

There are a lot of non-gamers who own a Monopoly, but they don't play it much. With the right marketing push, you might be able to get some of those people to buy a Settlers and stick it in the closet unused with their similarly-unused Monopoly board, but for the fact that it costs almost $40. Milton Bradley/Parker Bros. games can be had for under $20.

This really is the same issue with $1 phone games vs. $50 DS and PSP games. Lots of casuals who have low demands, but high numbers vs. the few connoisseurs who will pay for something they actually use and enjoy with more intensity.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[ArhcAngel]

Actually they're both ripoffs. There have been games like this for ages. The physics are pretty much the same but the story or premiss is what makes it interesting to different demographics. Throwing rocks at castle walls with knights inside appeals to a certain niche. Flinging colorful ANGRY birds headlong into evil egg stealing pigs to save their offspring draws a wider audience because they now know WHY they are trying to defeat the bad guys and that gives them a sense of accomplishment when they succeed. At least...that's what I heard...

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[slapout]

I just wrote a simple Android app. It took me about 4 months in my spare time. A company with people working on things full time could of course do things faster, but I'm pretty sure Angry Birds took more than a month to write. It probably took at least a month of testing. And I don't think the art in AB is mediocre.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[RavenLrD20k]

Don't know about Nationally, but it's not in my local Wal-Mart. It's not heavily advertised here. It MIGHT be in one of the 3 local comic book shops, all of which I only stumbled across by looking in various shopping centers to see what kind of stores are around. So the only reliable venue to get it is online. Unfortunately board games are just not ever the first thing I think of looking up on Amazon. I have more friends that are the same way. The only way for any of the "Settlers..." games to catch on is for the companies to start getting the name out there in more than just specialty shops. They need the games set up next to the Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley drivel.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Eponymous Coward]

Entice people with nice offices, nice equipment, good salaries, realistic deadlines, and good hours, and you'll probably have no trouble getting developers to work for you.

I don't know about that. The console vs app model are so fundamentally different. A console game gets pressed to disk and that's it! Release early and often can't work on a console. Even the online marketplaces on the consoles are far too heavy and slow. The console business model is just old fashioned.

What the console makers need to do is loosen their grip. While I doubt you will ever see them go as far as Google has and allow alternative marketplaces, they could at least try to be as open as Apple is.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[slapout]

I hadn't heard of it until Scott Hanselman mentioned it on his podcast. And then I had trouble finding a copy -- Walmart didn't have it, Toys-R-Us (who have the largest board game selection locally) didn't have it. I finally found a copy at a store that sets up in the mall every Christmas to sell games.

And no one I mention it to has heard of it. I've gotten several people interested in it just by telling them about it. But it's hard when they can't go to a familiar store and buy a copy. Which is ashamed because it's a great game were you can use several different strategies to win unlike most US board games.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[fractoid]

An interesting game. It sounds like the only way to lose is not to play.

You're completely missing the point of that movie, which was that the nerdy guy was there on the internet and there was a hot chick with him.

Other than that though, I can see why you'd say that, but looking at the numbers...
2010: I'm going to write a runaway hit $0.99 app
2005: I'm going to be very very Web2.0
2000: I'm going to be a pro skateboarder
1997: I'm going to be a pro web developer
1995: I'm going to be a pro surfer
1990: I'm going to be a pro basketball player
1985: I'm going to rollerblade and have crazy hair

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Gilmoure]

My Mom refuses to learn anything since Fortran.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Gilmoure]

Yup, last game I bought myself was Sid Meirer's Alpha Centaur, back in '02. Now, I have picked up Spore and Baldur's Gate for child but since she got iPod Touch, she hasn't really done much gaming on her laptop.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Gilmoure]

Am still waiting for SMAC/X to be ported to iPad. 9" screen would be about right for a game that only runs in 800x600 on my current desktop system.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[cforciea]

Or, you know, they could just use a freely licensed physics library (Box2d) to do a majority of the hard stuff and give no credit for it. Some of us do recognize the amount of work it takes to make a game using somebody else's engine to rip off somebody else's relatively simple flash game idea, and have figured out that it wasn't very much. A month actually seems like a gross overestimate on the amount of time it took to do the programming.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[cforciea]

Sure, it took more than a month to write overall, but since a substantial portion of that work was done Erin Catto of Box2d, it probably didn't take Rovio a month to write.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[mini me]

Games like angry birds, coded up in a month, art done in 3 months by a medicore artist. ALL DONE and even at dumb silicon valley pay rates you are still under $100,000

Not quite. According to the CEO, the first version of Angry Birds was estimated to have cost $128,000 US and they have spent hundreds of thousands more since.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Americano]

Yeah, I wish we lived in a world where writing code was the only thing required to actually ship a product, and that code always worked the first time it was written, and that it was also possible to write code that required no testing and no maintenance, too! That would be totally awesome!!

In the real world, you are suggesting that four 40-hour weeks (160 man-hours) are all it would take to create Angry Birds from scratch, and you call that a "gross over-estimate," meaning what - that you really think it could be done in 2 weeks / 80 hours?

For any software engineers reading this, who can't seem to understand why your projects get cancelled due to cost overruns, delivery problems, or simply failing miserably because you couldn't get all the features put in... here's your answer as to why.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[gknoy]

As a prospective app buyer, how do you filter out the crapware from the good stuff without wasting your money experimenting? The very fact that the shovelware apps ARE successful means that somoene's buying them instead of the Good Apps, which makes me think it's hard to tell one from the other.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[cforciea]

That's funny, I thought I replied to a comment that quoted

coded up in a month

As its point of contention, and not one that claimed that all of the workload for the game in its entirety was less than 160 hours. Art assets do take time, as does level design.

My point was that the code itself (and the mechanic design portion of the ripoff of a game) would not be hard, and it is specifically because Angry birds was nowhere near written "from scratch". They got to leverage a physics system that controls almost all of the moving portions of the game and APIs to ease all of the rest.

For the record, I am a programmer, so I doubt I'm the guy usually pushing for unreasonable timetables on software releases.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[DurendalMac]

Games like this have been around for a while, sure, but seriously, take a look at both. AB is almost literally CtC on a touchscreen with different graphics. It's virtually the same thing. It's one thing to use the idea of flinging crap in a parabola. It's quite another to take someone else's implementation of that idea and use it verbatim.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[node 3]

The installed base for iOS is over what, 60 million units?

Over 200 million units by the time Summer starts.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[Nyder]

..Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe...

That game rocks.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[sg_oneill]

Yep. A e-buddy of mine developed "geared" while either in high school or college and I remember him telling me on IRC the sales figures. I pretty much said "Kid, get an accountant f****ing NOW, and get a lawyer. You are now a rich man, but if you dont get GOOD advice you'll get nothing out of it". The game was a tiny thing, move gears into the right place to sync and win. But it hit that magic spot of simple likeability and he ended up a millionaire (or damn close to it).

Meanwhile there are a tonne of amazing little 3D games that dont hit the top 100 and make a few thousand dollars.

I'm not begrudging my mate. I'm proud of him. But its a damn strange and unbalanced market and success dont have shit all to do with money put into it, but other more esoteric criteria.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[ArhcAngel]

And yet I played CtC and was bored within minutes but I still pick up AB and play from time to time and it is just as enjoyable as the first time I played. Your post kinda reminds me of Joe Rogan's rants about how Carlos Mencia steals his materiel. As if that doesn't happen in stand up ALL the time. I saw a video of a performance of a joke Mencia allegedly stole. The comedian was monotonic and I could barely understand what he was saying. Then I watched Mencia's rendition of the same joke and I laughed my ass off. Delivery matters and to me AB delivers better than CtC and millions of people seem to agree.

Re:Profit dollars are what matters.

[bami]

Actually, producing a angry birds clone in modern languages like objective C/C#/java is pretty possible if you have the grunt of the work (physics engine) already available, and are enthusiastic about the project. I mean I hit my keyboard for about 3 hours in visual studio and got the basics for a x-wing type 3D fighter using a gyro for controls. Pretty much everything you need is already present in the libraries, you just need to connect it together.

You don't

[91degrees]

You sell a $5 app and hope you make 12 times the sales. Or that other costs are sufficiently lower to justify the reduced income per unit

Re:You don't

[RingDev]

Or you sell a free game with $1 episodic content.

-Rick

Re:You don't

[PopeRatzo]

What's happening now, on iOS and other platforms, is you give away the FPS but charge for the bullets.

It's pretty insulting when you think about it, but then I'd say that about half of all consumer products are pretty insulting to the consumer, if the consumer took the time and had the resources to think about it.

Re:You don't

[Lumpy]

Yup, too bad nobody makes any money off of linux. Glad we have billionaires like Linus Travolds who secretly pumps money into the project.

Re:You don't

[Noughmad]

if the consumer took the time and had the resources to think

We'd be living in a much better world.

Re:You don't

[bolthole]

That's right. they DONT make money "off of linux". They make money from stuff they do on top of it. Virtual no-one makes money directly from linux itself. Even Linux, got his money from people who paid him to work on linux, because of stuff there were doing **on top of it**. Not because they got direct revenue from creating the linux code and selling that without anything else.

"Exciting Times?"

[headkase]

That makes me think of an ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

You shouldn't have to

[Draaglom]

Your $60 game should be incomparable to a $1 game, in terms of both gameplay and technology. If it's not, you are Doing It Wrong.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[Ganthor]

Yeah Absolutely. it should be .... ummm 60 times better perhaps? - and no, 59 times better in technology and same game-play isn't going to count.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[MachineShedFred]

Exactly.

I didn't even think twice about buying Portal 2 earlier this week, and it was worth every penny.

This is like the movie industry being worried about television - they are two different products, loosely related to each other.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[martijnd]

I did think twice.

So I downloaded the portal I demo (free), and then bought Portal I (full). Cost me Euro 8 and I am enjoying it.

I don't have to think very much things priced under Euro 10 -- but something like Portal II at Euro 50 ... that gives me pause.

I can afford it, but why waste the money?

I most likely wait for another 1-2 years and then buy it at a discount.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[Danieljury3]

Obligitory XKCD

Re:You shouldn't have to

[_0xd0ad]

Your $60 game should be incomparable to a $1 game, in terms of both gameplay and technology. If it's not, you are Doing It Wrong.

I think that's what they meant when they said "a $60 game that's really worth it".

Re:You shouldn't have to

[Svartalf]

Indeed. If you're worried about trying to convince people that your $60 title is "worth it" against the $1 backdrop- you''re Doing It Wrong. If you can't people sigining off on the price, it's OVERPRICED out of the gate- and it matters little what the "why" it is happens to be. Either make it really worth the money in question or lower your costs, etc. so it can be worth $30 or something comparably cheaper. You're not going to get that rapacious rate out of most people for much longer. They can't afford it, for starters.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[Svartalf]

Heh... They're a fine one to be commenting on that subject. All I need do is point to Unreal Tournament III... After that, any $60 title from them is a hard sell.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[LWATCDR]

I can't imagine any game being worth $60 at all. They all tend to come down in price after a few months and then you know what is crap and what is gold. Plus on the console Used games rock. I do very rarely buy new games but it really is rare. That is just me but I can not speak for other peoples proprieties.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[dwightk]

I've never played a $60 game that's really worth it (to me). I've played a few that might have cost that much at launch, but that just means I won't be buying it new. $20 seems like "that game is awesome, I think I'll buy it" territory, Call it $30 with inflation.

I'm glad rich kids support my gaming habit by paying $60 though. That's much better than the current trend of DLC games.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[_0xd0ad]

All I need do is point to Unreal Tournament III... After that, any $60 title from them is a hard sell.

I'm not saying it's worth $60, but I'd definitely say it's totally incomparable to a $1 game, which was all Draaglom was suggesting.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[mcvos]

The problem is that most $60 games aren't really worth that much. Publishers are just clinging to an inflated price point and hope that everybody will believe them when they say that's a normal price for an average game. It's not. It's a fair price for a really big, awesome game. But every third-rate shooter costs the same nowadays.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[jitterman]

I do agree with you - I usually wait until a title's "cache" has dimmed a bit. My only fear (as predominantly a PC gamer) is that I'm truly contributing to a gradual decline in interest in the platform. I would say piracy was the #1 factor, but all platforms suffer from that.

There are enough titles out there, and I have little enough time, that I don't have to get the new games when they're new. I just hope that doesn't mean that one day all of the games will be old games.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[hairyfeet]

XKCD can joke about it but I do it as well, and the simple fact is you can do that and have an awesome time playing great games for cheap because the market is saturated and unlike the mobile phone I don't have to have model X to play game Y.

Between Amazon and Steam I don't think I've paid more than $19.99 for a game in years and have more that I could EVER finish, there is simply so much out there. I like shooters, RTS, sandbox, and RPG, and frankly even if I stuck to a single genre I'd have to play 24/7/365 for a couple of years just to go through all the decent games released in the last 10 years. And lets be honest: Since 2003 the graphics for most AAA games have been so good they still look kick ass today. I still have customers walk into the shop and go "ohhhh..whats that?" when I'm playing "Brothers In Arms: The Hell's Highway" even though that came out in like 2004 or something (and I got it and GRAW for $9 for the two of them on Amazon) and once you're in the game you're too busy dodging bullets to watch bling bling anyway!

So while I agree that new releases are probably way too damned high, that's one of the things I like about PC gaming, in that I have tons of choices besides whatever came out this month. Hell I just finished up a nice multimedia PC that plays most games on med high or better and it cost the guy just a hair over $500, including Win 7 HP and paying me. You can get an HD4850 for like $60 if you look around, AMD quads and RAM is cheap, and between the sales on Steam and the huge amount of sub $10 games on Amazon I frankly already have something like a half a dozen games on my hard drive I haven't even had time to fire up yet.

So if they are really worried about popcap style games then they are doing it wrong. Take a lesson from steam who made something like 1100% more off of L4D at the cheap price than they did off of release. Sell it cheap and let the long tail of PC gaming keep the money rolling in. You can also add more money later with DLC if you aren't dicks about it. It has never been a better time to be a PC gamer and I'd argue if some places are hurting its because they got into ePeen back of the box graphics battles with competitors instead of listening to customers. I've talked to many who are just like me and happy to pay for a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics as long as it is fun and affordable.

But at $60? It would have to be the second coming and even then I'd probably pass. There are simply too many other affordable options, where I could get 6 or even 7 good games for the same amount of money.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[deblau]

I bought Portal 2 as soon as it was available for pre-order, and I'll tell you why: to support developers and artists who put out a superior product. If you wait a few years to buy the product, the creators have no feedback that their product is a big hit at the critical moment when their team is still assembled and could be devoted to working on a sequel.

Portal is a bit of a special case, as I'm sure many people got it through the Orange Box that they bought for other reasons. However, my point still stands: if you like a game, buy it sooner rather than later. The huge, and more importantly immediate success of Portal caused Valve to build out their team and start work right away on Portal 2.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[tlhIngan]

I didn't even think twice about buying Portal 2 earlier this week, and it was worth every penny.

This is like the movie industry being worried about television - they are two different products, loosely related to each other

I'm thinking over Portal 2 for many reasons.

First, it's $50. (Sorry, not buying PS3 version because none of my PS3s can play it). Orange Box was $50, and Portal separately was $20. Ignoring the sales, I don't think I can justify such an increase in price. Especially how Portal 1 would go on sale and was even free for a stretch. (And Steam runs sales so often, there's very little reason to not wait for one if you don't have to have it release day)

Second, the only reason I'm thinking about is is a coupon I got that gives me $20 off 2 new games. It beats Steam's $5 off if I can find another game I want. If not, I'll live.

Third, apparently some early comments was Portal 2 was a port from consoles, including such things as "Please don't turn off your console" messages.

Will I get it? Eventually. I'm just deciding if I want it now.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[darkwing_bmf]

I agree, sort of. Portal 2 costs $50. If you pre-ordered it was $45. If you pre-ordered with a friend it was $40.

I buy a new release high price game very rarely and Portal 2 was one I wanted to play enough, and show appreciation for Portal 1, that it was one of those rare games for me. But for the other 90% of my gaming needs, living more than a year in the gaming past has saved me a ton of money. More accurately, I spend about the same amount (probably more) but get many more games to play. The patience game pays off.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[CastrTroy]

There's another problem here though. Sure the $60 game might be worth it, and might actually provide 60 times more value than the $1. However, are you prepared to devote the time to the $60 game that would make it worth it? I have 3 or 4 $60 games that I haven't bothered to complete, because I just don't have the time for that right now (3 kids). I would probably be better off just buying $15 games, instead of $60 games, and actually having time to enjoy the whole game, and getting everything I pay for, instead of having a bunch of half finished games lying around. I'm not that big on $1 games, but I am a big fan of some of the $5-$15 games I see on WiiWare that are really well done. I think the problem is, is that most of the people who have the time for $60 games are teenagers and university kids, who likely don't have all that much money to spend on $60 games. When all the games were $60, then you'd get a bunch of adults buying the game too, but many of them would probably never finish the game. Now that the adults of $15,$5, and $1 options, you'll see a lot less people buying a $60 game that they never intend to finish.

Re:You shouldn't have to

[bolthole]

Sure, they're completely unrelated. Which is why I never go to "movies" any more: i use my "tv" to watch the DVD. "movie companies" have lost almost all their "revenue stream" from me, as a direct result of high resolution large screen tv. Perhaps you meant "broadcast tv". or cable. But even there, I find a lot of "made for tv" products to be vastly more compelling than most movies. And hey, they're **free**. The movie companies *should* be worried about television; there's no way they can compete in the long run

Re:You shouldn't have to

[Draaglom]

Agreed, actually - I've always followed the advice of Guybrush Threepwood in the Secret of Monkey Island:

"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."

Most are crap

[Rik Sweeney]

That depends, on the iPhone a lot of $1 games are made free for 24 hours. It only takes 5 minutes of playing to realise that most of them fall into one of these categories:

• Run left to right, tap to jump
• Tap the screen to shoot the monsters walking from left to right
• Farmville clone
• Angry Birds clone

Most of these get deleted after 5 minutes (and in the case of the first item, within 30 seconds). Games like Street Fighter IV are completely unplayable on a touchscreen. I don't think Epic really has anything to worry about.

Re:Most are crap

[Antimatter3009]

Yes, but it's not about quality. Everyone knows that 90% of any given app store is crap whether it's paid or free, games or other. The point is that there exist a good number of games for less than $5 that will entertain for several hours. They might not be deep or graphically impressive or anything else, but that doesn't matter to most people so long as they're fun. If I can get 10 hours of fun out of a $2 game, how do you justify $60 for 6-8 hours of fun? Even with deeper gameplay and super high production values the bottom line is the amount of entertainment you get out of it, and $60 games don't often justify their price in that department.

Re:Most are crap

[AJH16]

I think that the quality of the entertainment is a measure too though. I may be able to kill a couple hours with a stupid $1 app store game, but it isn't something I'll look forward to or remember or probably ever want to come back and play again. It's just something to kill time that I would otherwise be bored. Major game titles on the other hand, I look forward to for months (on some titles), truly enjoy playing and would actively take time to play and will likely come back and play multiple times in the future.

The movie to tv comparison was a really good one, but I'd compare it to a well written, well produced blockbuster film vs a cheap television soap opera. Sure if you have time to kill and nothing better to do, the soap may entertain to pass the time, but it's not exactly quality entertainment and really is not comparable in the slightest.

Re:Most are crap

[dancingmad]

I think there are few, if no, great native iOS games. Angry Birds may be the exception (I don't like it much, but people seem to love it). Of the good games on iOS they mostly seem to be ports that fall into two categories. First, ports that work exceedingly well with touch controls. I'd throw Plants vs. Zombies in this category, maybe with Game Dev Story, and the Castlevania Puzzle game. The second category are games that don't work well with touch controls, but aren't too hobbled by them either. The port of Final Fantasy 3 falls into this category I would say, as do most good RPGs.

Re:Most are crap

[CastrTroy]

This!!! I was talking with a co-worker about this very same idea. He buys junky crap all the time from Chinese websites. Once in a while he gets scammed, and many times he has to spend significant amounts of time going back and forth with the seller. Sure the item eventually gets delivered, or he eventually gets a refund, but it's a significant time waste. He says "I'm on the internet anyway, what does it matter if I have to spend the time sending off emails, or checking the order status of the things I've been waiting months for". And to that I said "I'm watching TV, what does it matter if I'm watching a the Young and the Restless". Sure you could be playing a crappy title, and technically are still playing video games. But if you're going to sit down for an hour to play a game, you might as well play something really good, otherwise you might as well be playing E.T. on the Atari.

Daft

[symes]

Isn't this the same as asking whether short scruffy videos on You Tube are going to usurp Blockbuster films? I think the only threat would be if smart phone games could be developed so that the game arena was the real world and the phone was some mission interface. That would be neat - best it isn't a FPS though...

Re:Daft

[PopeRatzo]

I think the only threat would be if smart phone games could be developed so that the game arena was the real world and the phone was some mission interface. That would be neat - best it isn't a FPS though...

Too late. It's already happening on the West Side of Chicago. The saddest part is the real world FPS going on there is most popular with a demographic that skews to the 11-17 year-old range. By 18, there's a good chance you're in jail or dead.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a good game and it will sell itself. Don't spend most of the funds on marketing.
-Ex beta tester.

Re:So

[PopeRatzo]

Make a good game and it will sell itself. Don't spend most of the funds on marketing.

That was the first thing I thought of, too.

How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

Make sure it's as good as Half-Life 2.

Re:So

[91degrees]

It might happen. But generally a studio knows when it has a good game. Halo 3 wasn't too bad but MS still felt the need to spend $55 million or so promoting it.

Re:So

[ThirdPrize]

I have written a iOS game called MatchuM. Its a Mah Jong solitaire game without all the "oriental baggage" you get in those games. It is on the app store but hardly anyone knows its there. It doesn't matter how good your game is, once it has fallen off the "new releases" screen in iTunes then what do you do? How do you let people know its there? The "freeappaday" people want £2.5K to advertise it, but thats probably more then I have spent on hardware in the last 20 years, so thats a no go.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/matchum/id379622306

Re:So

[AndrewNeo]

Yeah, I was going to say that Valve doesn't really need to market their games.. they'll sell themselves.

Re:So

[Skidborg]

Though you do need to spend at least some of the funds on marketing, it's just that nobody knows where the actual balance is. Mostly because marketers are highly skilled at selling people on the importance of marketing.

Re:So

[can.you.feel.my.808]

Make a good game and it will sell itself. Don't spend most of the funds on marketing. -Ex beta tester.

This is the same erroneous assumption that causes many managers to resist marketing efforts so strongly even when marketing has been shown to be essential for achieving maximum potential sales. It's true that the marketing effort starts with a good product with preferably unique, value-laden features or benefits, and a poor product ultimately has a much higher likelihood of failure. However to just discount marketing completely is naive. In point of fact designing an excellent product is actually a part of the overall marketing strategy. The problem Epic and other console game developers face IS essentially a marketing problem. It all comes down to the quote given by Mr. Capps: "How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it? They're used to 99 cents" The key is to identify the value that the professionally developed, full featured console game provides above and beyond that of the 99 cent smartphone app games and effectively communicate this value to customers in order to induce them to buy the game. Without more extensive marketing tactics, there is no way to tell consumers why your game has more value than, ie why they should pay a higher price than, a smart-phone based game

Re:So

[darkwing_bmf]

This is BS. Valve does more marketing than any other gaming company I can think of via their steam service.

Re:So

[gknoy]

This is true, but since I only open Steam to play specific games, and often leave it open while I sleep my computer, I rarely see the ads. So, I find out after the fact about things like "Left4Dead was on sale last week, we made bank! Sorry, not this week ..." too late.

Re:So

[PopeRatzo]

Naw, man. Don't leave that crap running in the background. When you're done playing and need to get something done, shut Steam down. Then, when you go to start it again, you find out what's cheap.

Or, every once in a while you can just go look at the store to see what's selling for under $10. For example, I just got GTA IV Ballad of Gay Tony and I think it was $4.99 or something. It's not going to change the world, but it's a fun way to burn up a few hours. But generally, I don't need Steam taking up resources running in the background.

99c games suck

[bjourne]

Of the phone games I've bought that cost maybe 1€ or 5€, most of them have been pretty bad. Either the game is so easy to beat that it only lasts a few hours, or it is so boring that you won't play it. For example, the chess game I bought for 5€ was so simple to beat even at the highest difficulty level that there was no point in it. So for me the $60 console games still provide a lot of value because they provide many more times entertainment than the cheap phone games.

Re:99c games suck

[Eponymous Coward]

But for every person like you, there are lots like me who only want to play Angry Birds for a few minutes a couple of times a week. Honestly, I've spent more on phone games in the past year than I have on PC or console (PS3 and Wii) titles and frankly I've been disappointed with purchases on all the platforms. The difference is that when I buy a crappy phone game, I'm only out a few dollars. When I buy a crappy PS3 game (like I did twice last year - GT5 and ModNation Racers), I'm out $60 each time.

Re:99c games suck

[Nemyst]

Except those people you speak of would NOT have bought a 60$ game either way. They just wouldn't have gamed at all previously.

Re:99c games suck

[Eponymous Coward]

That's an interesting point. If these cheap games are mostly being sold to new gamers, then this doesn't affect the people who make big, expensive games. They just have a relatively smaller slice of a bigger pie and usually that's a good thing.

I'm not sure that's true though. I'm one of the people I was talking about. I mostly want to play a quick game a few times per week. I do however have a Wii and a PS3 and would play them more often if games were less expensive. My second most used video game machine is my PC and that's mostly because of steam sales. It turns out that the cheaper games are, the more money big publishers get from me.

Re:99c games suck

[benhattman]

Might just be me, but if the only console games you are buying are racing games, it kind of explains why you're unsatisfied. Unless you're 13, that is. Because once you're an adult driving stops being fun and it starts being called commuting.

Apples, meet Oranges

[FatAlb3rt]

I don't expect to get multi-player FPS HD blah blah blah on a 4" screen. I expect to get a little doo-dad game limited to what I can do with a touch screen, a couple buttons, and accelerometer input. Something to occupy a few minutes at a time here and there.

How is this news

[atari2600a]

We already had this same article with NOA CEO Reggie Fils-Aime bitching about the same thing despite the fact that they're absorbing the same behavior with the Shop Channel, which BTW, makes buying World of Goo easy & cheaper (on both ends) instead of driving to an archaic dying store to get a hardcopy for 2-5x the price. Random Rant: I think Sony has something here w/ the PSP phone. I think Nintendo should develop an android handset of their own, but with a patented APU so it'd still technically be their platform, & they can still be archaic if they want & keep a DS slot on it if they can't spare the 200MiB/Game.

There were few $60 games to begin with.

[unity100]

Really. Most of what you game dev studios/industry was producing, was CRAP. $60 was the perception of the 'price point' that the marketing types came up with - "hey, what is the maximum people in america will pay for a game ?" turned out, that perception was wrong.

you were rehashing the same crap over and over and pushing it to masses with marketing. just like movies. trailers, marketing hype, ads, showing only the best few parts you added to the game, whereas the rest was rehash of the previous version or other games. taking no risks to please shareholders. a few cents per share more for every shareholder, more important than satisfaction of your customer.

that was why there was rampant piracy.

thank mobile apps. this '$60 blockbuster' bullshit will end.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[JamesP]

Well, EA is the monster it is for a reason.

People keep buying Fifa Y+1, Madden Y+1, NHL Y+1, etc, etc, etc, every year. For $60

While (semi-)independent game developers struggle.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[unity100]

of course. ea is the foremost monster that 'industrialized' gaming and deteriorated it into a milking operation for shareholders.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[Lumpy]

They claim those games are expensive because of the rights fees.

Guess what, the same game without the NFL branding and fake teams and names on generic faces IS JUST AS FUN. you dont have to pay a bunch of prima donna babies for the right to their "branding".

If the game is a great football simulation, real gamers will buy it.

I personally dont know, those games have a -100 interest to me. IF I can run up and punch an opposing team player for grandstanding, or pick off a spectator's head in the stands with the football, then it's boring.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[JamesP]

Yeah, they're not expensive because of licensing, 'sports games' are on average the same price as 'non-license' games.

But of course, if EA sold "NFL 2012" and "Generic Football 2012" being $5 cheaper, same engine but with no real names, NFL would probably still outsell by a large margin.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[dcollins]

Nice in theory but totally invalidated by actual activity in the industry. I once worked at a small company that made a licensed sports game for a few years: company made big bucks. Then the license expired and EA bought it up. Company I'd been at tried to sell the exact same game (with improvements) unlicensed. After a few years it was out-of-business.

Right now, I couldn't name a single unlicensed sports game of any success level at all. (I've been out of the industry for some years, so my knowledge base is admittedly low.) Licensing has been proven to be almost everything in that industry. People don't care about "football" in the abstract, they care about their particular home team and its players.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[hal2814]

No, it's not the same. Sports games are simulators. When people play flight simulators, they generally want the planes to be based on real planes. When people play racing games, they generally want them to be based on real cars. When people play Guitar Hero, they want to play songs they've at least heard of. When people play sports games, they want the teams to be based on real teams. A fun game engine is a must-have for a simulator, but filling that world with familiar objects is also important.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[Hatta]

If the game is a great football simulation, real gamers will buy it.

They're not interested in real gamers. There's a lot more meathead jocks out there then there are real gamers. It's a lot easier to separate them from their money too.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[hairyfeet]

That is because sports nuts are just as fanatical as any religious loonie, that's why. I know a guy that has a standing order at the Gamestop near his house so that any NASCAR and Madden games for his systems (PSP and PS3) are delivered to his house on release day, period. He doesn't care how much it costs, he doesn't care if the game is the exact same as last year (in fact he would probably prefer the same game just with a little extra gloss as it means he doesn't have to learn new controls) ALL he cares about is he has the latest rosters, period. He even changes the rosters during the year to reflect those out by injury or traded.

So yeah, I'd say judging games by whether or not Madden guys buy is like judging the general pop on what a religious far right fundamentalist would do. They are really not anything like the average mainstream gamer, as most gamers simply don't have that kind of slavish devotion like they do to their favorite sport.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[unity100]

it isnt. free market mechanic should have acted to reduce demand for games through consumer choice, and therefore cause the competitors to reduce prices too. it didnt happen. because, all of the competitors employ same marketing types, and those marketing types look at each other and decide as such. profit maximization for you.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[unity100]

even rpg strategy and sims are rehashes.

Re:There were few $60 games to begin with.

[Darinbob]

That's the new game price point for players who absolutely must have the game today to play with their friends and/or look cool. It's too much for me though, and I suspect it's too much for the average consumer. Thus the games typically drop in price after a few months (well, retail games anyway as opposed to online purchases which tend to be more expensive despite the cheaper production/distribution costs). Some of my favorite games came out of bargain bins.

I also tend to want to know about a game before I buy it. So I need to wait until some reviews come out, and real reviews not fluff pieces by your typical gaming site. I don't care if the fans like it, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll like it.

The same works with movies. Why pay $10-12 to see a movie as soon as it's in theaters where you have the hassle of dealing with crowds and screaming kids? Wait until a weekend matinee price a couple weeks later. Or wait until it's on pay-per-view or on-demand, or wait until it's on netflix, or wait until it's broadcast.

Perception of value

[mrjb]

Our perception of value is distorted anyway. Example- It takes about 100 days to raise a chicken to the point where it's slaughtered, plucked, driven to your supermarket and refrigerated. It'll cost 5 GBP. At that price, 5p/day per chicken, someone manages to feed the chicken, clean after it, vaccinate it, transport it, keep it cold and apparently still make a profit on it. But don't expect to be getting premium stuff at that price.

Re:Perception of value

[Joehonkie]

If you are spending a full workday per chicken to raise chickens, you probably aren't a very good farmer.

Re:Perception of value

[Comboman]

Farmville says I am.

Re:Perception of value

[Overzeetop]

*golf clap*

Re:Perception of value

[jrcoyle]

At least in America, it's far worse than that. The people who raise the chickens for market make about 5c / pound. The rest is profit for the meat company and the market http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_serfs_of_arkansas

No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[RobotRunAmok]

The Multi-Player experience is what provides the gaming console experience with value and makes it "sticky." A player buys the latest $60 game because the people he hangs with online -- his guild, his clan, platoon, his whatever -- are buying it and want to "move on" to the next shared experience. It's a proposition that works for the developer, the online service, and the player.

But the solo-only game? I have not purchased a solo-only game at full price, within the first months of its launch, since the debut of the original Xbox. It'll be less than half-price within a year if it reviews well, and under $15 and bundled with a second game if it does not. I can wait. Not being in high school and needing to brag that I "beat" a game in a weekend, there is zero value to me in owning a solo game when it first comes out.

Add to this the idle-time-wasters of inexpensive and addictive arcade games like Angry Birds, Plants versus Zombies, etc., I mean... geez... there's still only 24 hours in a day, last time I checked...

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[DreadPiratePizz]

Developers just aren't in general focusing on providing a challenging single player experience that one needs to keep playing to master. I mean, look at a game like Super Meat Boy. Single player, but there's no way you'll explore everything it has to offer even in 20 hours. Maybe more. I continually spend a great deal of money to import Cave shooters from Japan. These games can easily be beaten in 30 minutes on free play. The appeal, is that to actually get good enough to 1CC them and get a good score, take months and months of practice. What's killing the single player games market in my eyes is the focus of single player on storytelling. Instead of being about getting good enough at the game to conquer all the challenges it has to offer, developers are treating the single player mode as merely a way to tell their story, and so design the campaigns to be easy to beat (so their story can be told). It's been a very long time since a major release has actually been challenging to finish the single player portion of. The appeal of multiplayer is obviously that you can get better and better since you're playing actual humans. You used to have to get better and better to beat the single player portion of many games, but this is no longer the case, and in many cases 100%ing can be accomplished even by beginners. That's why it's dying.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Xian97]

My feelings are the exact opposite. I prefer the single player experience, whether it be on the PC or Consoles. I am looking forward to games like The Witcher 2, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, and other single player games. I have zero interest in multiplayer; when I get home from a hard day's work after dealing with difficult people the last thing I want to do is to have more social interaction. The games I play are usually 40 hours or more in length, that's pretty cheap entertainment and well worth the $60 price tag.

I find very little of the $1 games that can hold my interest for very long at all, where many PC and Console games I have played for hours on end.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[RobotRunAmok]

It still boggles my mind that so many game developers pay so much attention to "story." It is like the producer of an opera worrying himself over whether his cast looks athletic enough.

Now, I'm sure there may be some people who refuse to buy an opera ticket because the performers aren't good-looking, just as I'm sure there may be some game players who fret over whether their new game will have a good "plot," but it is madness for the producers of either form of entertainment to be concerned about these confused consumers, just as it would be wrong for lipstick manufacturers to spend time and money making their product stick on a pig.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[geekmux]

The Multi-Player experience is what provides the gaming console experience with value and makes it "sticky." A player buys the latest $60 game because the people he hangs with online -- his guild, his clan, platoon, his whatever -- are buying it and want to "move on" to the next shared experience. It's a proposition that works for the developer, the online service, and the player.

If we want to compare and justify the pricing models here, then perhaps you should be a bit more realistic as to the true cost of the average multi-player game, because the cost usually doesn't stop at the store where you just paid $60 for the game.

How much does it cost you per month to enable your online mult-player experience? How long did you play your last REALLY good multi-player game? A year? Maybe even two years? Much like a cell phone, that $60 game just turned into a $300+ game.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Gaygirlie]

Only multiplayer games worth 60? Well, this just shows that not everyone likes the same things. I would DEFINITELY be more likely to buy a $60 single-player game if it featured a good story than a $30 multiplayer game with no story. Multiplayer games are boring, they're all the same sh*t with just different colors, and I have absolutely no effing interest whatsoever to be playing with a bunch of retarded monkeys from the other side of the world.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Gaygirlie]

I am looking forward to games like The Witcher 2, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, and other single player games.

You ain't alone there, mate! :) Witcher 2 is coming out soon, and Skyrim ain't coming out soon enough! :D I just really hope it's better than Oblivion. I still think Morrowind was far superior to Oblivion in every single thing except graphics, and graphics alone ain't enough to make a game good. I think I played Morrowind for half a year, just exploring everything, collecting myself a library of all the books in the game in my Telvanni mushroom castle.. Good times.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[dwightk]

Yeah, same here, the only multi-player games I've enjoyed haven't been very massive, just playing with friends against a computer in Starcraft or whatnot.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[RobotRunAmok]

All gamers eventually grow older, will they develop discerning tastes?

They sure will. As gamers grow older, they will realize that deeper, better stories are to be found in media other than video games, and that if things like plot, dialogue and characterization are what they crave, they'll need to pick up a book.

They'll always be the videogamer who will justify his jones by noting Patrick Stewart's or Clive Barker's or Orson Scott Card's participation in one videogame project or another, and of course the developers will pander to that, but let's not get carried away here.

This is not to say that videogames are not art. They are very much art. They are their own art. Perhaps as the industry matures and becomes more self-assured, games can become more game-like and stop trying to pretend they're (really, really cheesy) fantasy/sf novels.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Hatta]

No multi-player game is worth anything to me. If I want to play multiplayer, I'll just play OpenArena. I'll happily play $60 for an 80hour or greater RPG though.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Kelbear]

The service identified in the summary allows people to blow through those solo-only games at less than $15, and within weeks of the game launch.

I like the short and compact experiences of modern single-player campaigns. Multiplayer offers me much less value because once I play a few matches, I know what to expect, and future matches won't offer any new experiences to warrant my time. For the most part, multiplayer games aren't offering any new experiences even in the first match since they play so similar to earlier games. The general public is intensely predictable, and clan battle is a massive time sink that precludes enjoyment of other games. Multiplayer is in my past and won't ever become a primary selling point for me in the future (with the exception of party-games when I have guests).

The "shared" experience I enjoy is a memorable campaign that I can play on my own time, then discuss and look back upon in gaming forums. The more they condense and polish the singleplayer, the happier I am, because I can get the full enjoyment with a higher turnover rate, and a higher savings rate through Gamefly.

Unfortunately, quality single player campaigns become less profitable as Gamefly and used game sales become more profitable. So I suspect used game unlock fees to be an inevitable part of gaming's future.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Yunzil]

The Multi-Player experience is what provides the gaming console experience with value and makes it "sticky."

Funny, it's just the opposite for me. I don't give a toss about multi-player. I much prefer games with a good single-player experience.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[Yunzil]

It still boggles my mind that so many game developers pay so much attention to "story."

It still boggles my mind that so many don't.

It is like the producer of an opera worrying himself over whether his cast looks athletic enough.

Let me guess: you keep paying to see films like "Date Movie" or whatever Uwe Boll shits out because who cares about "story", right?

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[k8to]

Story is very important for player involvement in a large variety of game styles.

Not all, and it affects some players more than others.

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[gknoy]

What he means is:

Portal would be fun if it had much less story. As it is, the story and humor is brilliant, but not as plot-heavy as something like Half Life or even Call of Duty. Still fun.
Meat Boy or Pac Man have almost zero story, and focus on gameplay.
Minecraft has no story.
Street Fighter has nearly no story.
Bulletstorm has nearly no story, and is intentionally about mastering the combo mechanics.

These things often have SOME story, but in reality the gameplay is not about plot exposition but about mastering the mechanics.

Deus Ex, Assassin's Creed, and other games DO have a story, and we love that too, but only because they have solid gameplay elements too (IMO). However, some games have tons of story and crappy gameplay, and thus no one wants to actually play them, or regret

Re:No *SOLO* Game is Worth $60

[SpanglerIsAGod]

What he means is:

Portal would be fun if it had much less story. As it is, the story and humor is brilliant, but not as plot-heavy as something like Half Life or even Call of Duty. Still fun. Meat Boy or Pac Man have almost zero story, and focus on gameplay. Minecraft has no story. Street Fighter has nearly no story. Bulletstorm has nearly no story, and is intentionally about mastering the combo mechanics.

These things often have SOME story, but in reality the gameplay is not about plot exposition but about mastering the mechanics.

That is part of why I don't play those games, except for Street Fighter. When there isn't a reason to keep playing, ie plot development, I don't keep playing. I get your point there are some games that are just fun without any story, but for me that is the minority.

Dollar apps... really?

[scdeimos]

Mike Capps, president of Gears of War developer Epic Games, said, 'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps.

I thought if there was anything killing you it was piracy. That's what you guys have been sprooking about for years on end, anyway.

Re:Dollar apps... really?

[MachineShedFred]

And, strangely, the rate of piracy is often correlated to the number of digits on the price.

Re:Dollar apps... really?

[thetoadwarrior]

Epic complained about piracy then used game sales and now $1.00 apps. Basically their problem is everything except their lack of innovation and complete reliance on making the same game in a prettier package every year and charging a high price.

Re:Dollar apps... really?

[Luckyo]

Not really, there have been claims of sub-10$ games having up to 90%+ piracy on android (essentially tracking amount of automated log-in attempts from copy of a game without a proper key on some server they used from a game or two).

They still sell enough though, and how many of these are actually "I want to try it before I buy it" is a question thrown in the air. But piracy (or more correctly copyright infringement) isn't going to just vanish because price goes down.

Re:Dollar apps... really?

[Svartalf]

Actually, it will. Which titles have less piracy in the app store situation that you brought up? Those priced $1-4. For a mobile phone and a casual game...that's the price point people will pay without thinking twice for it. $10 for a phone app's pricey, based on the pricing I've seen for apps. I know I definitely won't consider most of them worth that price point- and I'm sure as heck going to want a better than basic demo evaluation before buying it. Now, for PC and many Console titles... $10-20 seems to be the breakover point for things there. Past that, most of the games aren't worth more than this- this includes the titles Epic's whining about, even if that's just merely my opinion on the subject. Yes, you are still going to encounter piracy- but as a developer that's seen his stuff pirated and on a different set of deals, earn the money he was supposed to have gotten with the first title on the other two, I can tell you that there IS something to the line of thought there.

Re:Dollar apps... really?

[Luckyo]

"That's the people like me will pay without thinking twice about it".

Please don't generalise, it makes you look rather foolish, especially when making a point this broad.

Think of modern music. Did copyright infringement get reduced when itunes and such came along? Yes.

Did it go down any further when spotify came? Yes.

Did it vanish? No, it's not even marginal, it's still in very meaningful numbers. And that's the point that people who think like you, who think that "it's okay for me so it's okay for everyone" will keep missing.

Fundamental misunderstanding

[senorpoco]

What it is killing is the pricing of games with an 8hours single player mode at $60. There are two choices, either make games which are worth the price or reduce the price.

Maybe you need to sell your $60 game for $10

[Liambp]

I am a long time PC Gamer and currently in state of intoxication over the amount of gaming goodness I can get on the platform these days for buttons. I can get so much high quality gaming for $5 and $10 that Angry Birds for a dollar seems like the rip off to me.

Perhaps it is impossible to cover the cost of a traditional AAA game by selling it at such a low price but the market is moving on towards dramatically lower prices whether the publishers like it or not. Maybe increased sales will help compensate for lower prices. Digital distribution surely saves some cash as well.

A $60 game that's really worth it.

[mwvdlee]

How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

Perhaps it isn't worth $60.
If a $1 game provides me with about 1 week of entertainment, a $60 game should provide me with 60 weeks of entertainment.
There aren't many games that can do that, and there are even less that give me the convidence to pay for those 60 weeks up front.
I fear TFA calculates "worth" as "the amount of money we had to spend to make it". There used to be a day when games could be fun without gigabytes of graphics and sound. That day has never really gone, it's just been obscured by an increasing focus by developers on adding stuff that isn't part of the actual game.
If I bake a cake and package it in a golden, diamond encrusted box designed by some guy that changed his first and last name into a single, unpronouncable word, the cake hasn't increased in value at all. Sure, it looks much nicer with all the shiny bits, but it can't compensate for the fact that I can't bake a decent cake.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[MachineShedFred]

In fact, I find a game to be more worth it when there is LESS cutscene crap. I want to interact with something when I'm playing a game - if I want to watch some rendered 3D stuff, I'll go down to the local theater.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[the_brobdingnagian]

Ah! The economics of fun!
If a free game can entertain me for 10 minutes, how long should a $0.99 game entertain me?

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[drinkypoo]

More to the point, if people won't pay $60, then it's provably not worth $60, since nothing is worth more than what someone will pay for it by definition. They are not basing the worth on the cost to produce, but on nothing at all. We already know what the only valid basis is, he's just making shit up.

Further, this isn't even about baking a cake someone would want to eat. It's baking a cake compelling enough to spend $60. When you spend hundreds or even thousands on a wedding cake you're paying for an experience, mostly having a close-enough-to-perfect-looking cake on the table on time. When I spend $60 I'm paying for an experience, the feeling that I got sixty bucks worth. It's based on my feelings, and not those of the developers, however wishful their thinking might be.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[Idarubicin]

If a $1 game provides me with about 1 week of entertainment, a $60 game should provide me with 60 weeks of entertainment.

If I can buy a $15,000 car that drives 100 mph, why can't the $60,000 car hit 400 mph?

If I don't mind a five-minute commute in my $1,000 used clunker, I should be just as happy with a five-hour drive to work in the $60,000 Lexus, right?

A $200 bottle of wine probably isn't twice as "good" as a $100 bottle of wine (though a $10 bottle probably is twice as good as a $5 bottle).

My $1000 camera doesn't do five times as much as a $200 point and shoot, and it definitely doesn't do twice as much as a $500 camera. I've got it for the small but perceptible improvement in image quality, plus the ten percent (or so) of photographs that would be impossible with the cheaper cameras.

The price of luxury, leisure, and entertainment goods does not necessarily correlate linearly with simple measures.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[mwvdlee]

If you can find sufficient free games to entertain you for all the time you wish to spend on it, you'd never need to buy a $0.99 game.
Also; time is free only if your time is worthless.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[BrentWM]

The cake is a lie!

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[mwvdlee]

If I can buy a $15,000 car that drives 100 mph, why can't the $60,000 car hit 400 mph?

1. It can't, but it should if they were planning to sell it based on top speed alone.
2. A $60,000 car offers more than just top speed. Like acceleration, luxury, chick-magnetism, penis-compensation. One might value one of those qualities too. If you consider a game with 2GB of graphics more fun than a game with 1GB of graphics, then by all means pay more for the extra GB.

If I don't mind a five-minute commute in my $1,000 used clunker, I should be just as happy with a five-hour drive to work in the $60,000 Lexus, right?

If longer commutes are worth more money to you, then yes.
Most people prefer shorter commutes.
etc...

The price of luxury, leisure, and entertainment goods does not necessarily correlate linearly with simple measures.

No. But it does correlate to the sum of all qualities combined.

I understand you either didn't read anything beyond the first two lines of my reply as I doubt you're trying to be a troll, so please go back and read and interpret the comment in it's entirety.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[Idarubicin]

I understand you either didn't read anything beyond the first two lines of my reply as I doubt you're trying to be a troll, so please go back and read and interpret the comment in it's entirety.

I understand that you don't try to be an unpleasant person, and that you just didn't understand either the point that I was making or the concept of satire.

Your first post implied that the measure of a game's value and quality (and hence price) should be solely judged by the length of time that you would want to spend playing it.

Your most recent post actually makes essentially the same point that mine does, whether you realize it or not. While the marginal improvement in "quality" - however one chooses to define it - generally decreases with each increment in price (there's a diminishing returns principle at work here), there are still people who will pay $60,000 for an automobile that does little more than a $10,000 automobile. The qualitative improvement in user experience is, to them, worth the price premium.

There are certain types of games that just won't be made for $1. Consider high-complexity games like Civilization, where extensive pre-release testing (and, potentially, post-release patching...) is required to create an acceptable AI and balance the units. Or think about games like SimCity, where the artwork is an essential part of the value and a lack of interface polish would be crippling. Some people like games that share the look, feel, and sound of their favorite television shows or movies; it's not my cup of tea, but I can understand those people being willing to pay a premium for that experience. Should we just load up a basket at the bookstore and pay by the pound at the checkout? Or are some hours spent reading better - dare I say worth more - than others?

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[tepples]

Tastefully executed cut scenes give some sort of meaning to all the killing that your character is doing, so that the character's motivation can motivate the player to keep playing the game.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[acohen1]

Exactly. My time is a lot more limited than my gaming budget. I'd rather play a well produced title like Mass Effect 2 for $60 than Angry Birds for $0.99 even though theres no way I'm getting 60x the playtime out of ME2. I have no interest in playing time-waster iOS apps when I'm at home, and I hardly ever play them on the go because I have to worry about running out of battery on my phone, and I have dedicated portable gaming devices that provide a much better experience even for short playtimes.

Re:A $60 game that's really worth it.

[benhattman]

If I bake a cake and package it in a golden, diamond encrusted box designed by some guy that changed his first and last name into a single, unpronouncable word, the cake hasn't increased in value at all. Sure, it looks much nicer with all the shiny bits, but it can't compensate for the fact that I can't bake a decent cake.

You obviously are unfamiliar with how luxury items actually perform in the real world.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/07/28/luxury-cars-breakdowns_cx_dl_0731reliable.html

Adapt or Die

[JohnRoss1968]

Dollar games are not killing anything. Things change. Period. Adapt or die. Its called the free market.

Provide the right games!

[Richard_at_work]

One game I have been desperately looking for on both Android and IOS, and failing to find a suitable version of, is Baldurs Gate - put that on the mobile scene and I would be more than willing to pay more than a few bucks for it. But it doesn't exist, and nothing is rising to replace it, so I dont spend my money.

Re:Provide the right games!

[Jaysyn]

I've heard that GemRB will run on Android. May want to look into that.

Re:Provide the right games!

[Antimatter3009]

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.sourceforge.gemrb&feature=search_result

I've been playing the GOG version of PS:T on this for a few days and it's working surprisingly well. Only thing to note is that, with the GOG version at least, you have to set all the CD paths in the cfg file to './data'.

Re:"Traditional Gaming"?

[blahplusplus]

Traditional VIDEOGAMING would be a better word but people who use 'traditional gaming' are speaking about video gaming specifically given the context.

20 dollar games suck.

[leuk_he]

I bought some 30eruo games for the wii. They seem perfectly targeted for my children. However the gameplay sucks so much that they are often not played again after a first time, or only once or twice. It just seems win windows port where you have to point at the screen to emulate the mouse movement.

There is not always a correlation between price and quality. A lot of those "low-prices" 30 euro games were 60-70 dollar at release.

Te solution is to read review and recommencements, and not the specifications of the games. Same goes for appstore games.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Qubit]

How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

Has there ever really been such a thing?

Global Thermonuclear War. Best $60 I ever spent.

Well, except for that one time in Vegas...

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[Lumpy]

dude the epic game does not exist anymore. The game that took you a month or more playing it nightly will never exist again.

Dragon Age II: short as hell unless you shell out more and more for DLC.

The LAST epic long game was Blue Dragon. right now game companies are more interested in short crap. Hell I finished Halo:reach on hard in 3 days... That's a freaking mini-game. Gears of war II was 2/3 the length of Gears of war I and I have low hopes for III.

and who in the hell wants to play an epic 5 month long 3 hours a day game on a portable device? There is a reason you dont have WoW on ios and android....

Wrong again industry

[BigSlowTarget]

Hello? Portal 2

There you go. You sold it for more than a buck. The truth is that a dollar game should not be a direct substitute for a $60 game and if it is you're making it wrong. This is true almost everywhere - you can rent a movie for your family for $1 or go to the movies for $50 (or a football game for hundreds). You can buy $2 flip-flops or $400 designer footwear. You can get $0.50 ramen or $30 steak, Two buck chuck or a $100 bottle of wine.

The gaming industry has always been volatile and unpredictable and if this guy is just figuring that out he's forgotten a lot of history.

Casual Gamers

[Bigbutt]

There was a report here a few months back or so that linked to a game company's discovery that quite a few people only played a $60 game for a few hours and many never completed it before moving on to the next game. These are the folks that are being lost. Instead of spending $60 on a game they don't complete, they spend a buck or a few bucks on a game for their phone. It lets them play a little when waiting or idle without having to go to their computer, power it up and go back in.

I was a pretty heavy gamer back when Doom, Command and Conquer, Red Alert and StarCraft were popular. As multi-player became more popular, I found I didn't have the time to invest in trying to beat some twitchy 15 year old who had nothing better to do all day. I still get the newer games like StarCraft II and even play them, but I haven't finished it yet. I'll get the other two when they come out as well and may finish it they, or not.

I also have several "games" on my iPad and iPhone ranging from Angry Birds (it's really a puzzle solving game), Popper, and Pocket God to Small World, Rage, and Red Alert with several others in between. They're fine when I'm sitting here at work at lunch or in the car with my wife going somewhere.

The game companies have less of my money because I'm not interested in sports or super realistic multi-player gaming (battlefield 2 or crysis for instance). I like the games like Castle Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake, Command and Conquer, Red Alert (the original one more than the newer ones), Carmageddon, and StarCraft. Heck, I'd be excited to get many of the games I played back then simply updated to work on the current tech.

[John]

Re:Casual Gamers

[Sectoid_Dev]

They're fine when I'm sitting here at work at lunch or in the car with my wife going somewhere.

AH-HAH!!

    The reason I even got a smart phone was to play games while waiting in the car while the wife shopped. Better sitting there than holding merchandise while trying to answer her unanswerable questions.

Re:Casual Gamers

[Bigbutt]

:) I really enjoy the iPad because I can sit outside on the benches while my wife goes in to shop with her daughter. I can read books (I don't have a glare problem) or PDFs, play games, or even, if there's wifi, surf the 'net.

[John]

Re:Casual Gamers

[mcvos]

Better sitting there than holding merchandise while trying to answer her unanswerable questions.

Of course they are answerable. "It's not the dress."

(That's not entirely true; sometimes it is the dress. My wife recently tried a dress that emphasized all the wrong points. She was rather disappointed that I shot it down, but I was entirely correct.)

Re:Casual Gamers

[SierraQ]

This is more evidence of a key issue that is affecting society lately: short attention span. It is true that some--like me--don't have time to play two hours sessions of the mega games anymore so I pick up Angry Birds for a few minutes at a time. Works for me, but I find myself missing the long games. I suggest that the majority of consumers these days find that the mega games fail to hold their attention. If I am selling games, better to make 60 short games for $1 each that you pop like candy rather than 1 long game for $60 that you have to invest in and commit to.

Quality doesn't matter when you have a short attention span.

Re:Casual Gamers

[Rich0]

As multi-player became more popular, I found I didn't have the time to invest in trying to beat some twitchy 15 year old who had nothing better to do all day.

Unfortunately, I think those twitchy 15 year olds are basically the main market for console games these days, and many PC games are just ports of the console games.

My step-son just can't get enough of the various COD titles. He never plays the campaigns at all - just multiplayer. I'm just amazed that he basically spends a considerable chunk of his christmas money/etc to finance the online membership required to just keep playing the game, and the rare new title. I do remember playing Unreal Tournament a little back in the day and honestly I don't see the new titles offering anything new - if anything they are more limited but with better graphics. However, as long as you shell out the cash they do make it very easy to play, and I think that is the market (what kid wants to understand TCP/IP when they could be blowing up friends?).

I've pretty-much moved away from FPS of any kind. In fact, I'm not even super-keen on the Bethesda titles for this reason (though I do play them a little). I prefer RPGs that require less finger twitching and which don't get my blood pressure up to 160. Anything that can't be saved and quitted at any moment is a bad in my book as well - I don't like putting real life on hold to get to a save point. Neverwinter Nights is about my limit as far as action goes.

Give me a good RPG/Simulation style game anytime. Unfortunately they are few and far between these days.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Zingledot]

Depends how you set your standards. I could say $30, as was the cost of games 'back in the day', but am I even keeping up with inflation? Candy bars can't cost a nickel FOREVER.

Monetarily, I tend to have two different rulers: World of Warcraft and movie theater tickets.

Games that go on forever and involve constant content development/support measure against 15$/month for what they offer.

Games that are one-time experiences with the visceral feel of current technology measure against movies

If a movie is 1.5 hours, with the ticket costing 8.50 is 5.6$ per hour. Some movies are 3 hours.

If a game is 10 hours at $60, that is 6$ per hour for entertainment. Some games are 40 hours.

So, how much is it worth to you?

assbackwards

[garutnivore]

'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps. How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it? They're used to 99 cents

And again, the fat cats in the industry are looking at things backwards. Once the costs are calculated, they figure each copy of the game should go for $60. There may be good reasons for this figure, since they have to recoup their costs. In their head, they think that this $60 figure they discovered is a natural fact, like weight, for instance, is a natural fact. If you take a bunch of apples and put them on a scale, you'll get a certain weight. Give the same bunch of apples to someone else and they'll get the same weight. (Those who would like to quibble can go jump off a cliff a this point.) You can repeat the experiment with 10, 100, 1000 people and maybe after discovering that their scale needs recalibrating, they'll agree on the weight.

The $60 figure is not like this. It is not a natural fact. It is an opinion that the game holds such value to potential buyers that they'll willingly give up $60 for it. And then if you ask 10, 100, 1000 people about how much they value the game, they'll give very different answers. It may very well be that no one agrees that the value of the game is such that it is worth $60. Now, if it so happens that there are games which are sold for $1 which provide what people seek in a game, why should they be willing to pay $60?

So the fat cats say "$60", the market says "no way!" but because the fat cats think their opinion is a natural fact, they then assume that there is something terribly wrong with the world. They do not ever consider that their opinion that their $60 game is "really worth $60" could be mistaken because they think the $60 figure is a natural fact rather than an opinion.

(Other entertainment media also think like this. CD sales declining? It is not because we do not deliver the value people want. It is because something external (e.g. piracy) is interfering with the order of nature.)

Re:assbackwards

[kannibal_klown]

You make it sound like they decided one day that $60 was a natural fact.

I imagine there was some math behind it, along with some research and surveys, with them determining the optimal price was around $60.

They probably constructed a graph stating how much are customers willing to pay for a video game. And I'm sure they revisit the price every few years to see if the market's changed.

Games are getting to be quite expensive: voice talent, cut scenes (FMV or CGI), more complex programming, advertising, etc. They advertise games on TV now, they didn't do that back in the day.

Part of it is our fault, because we just accept that games cost $60 (or whatever).

Re:assbackwards

[garutnivore]

You missed this bit: "There may be good reasons for this figure, since they have to recoup their costs."

All the graphs, charts, calculations are "good reasons." I did not say they were just pulling numbers out of thin air. Their opinion is an informed one but it is still an opinion. Even with all the good reasons, they have to realize that there is difference in kind between their assessment that the game should cost $60 and the assessment of a natural quality. But they don't. They think that their $60 assessment is on part with finding that a bunch of apples weighs 10kg. For the industry, their $60 assessment should elicit the same agreement from other folks as the assessment that a bunch of apples weighs 10kg. When they find that folks do not agree with them, it is as puzzling to them as finding that people claim their 10kg bunch of apples weights 1kg or 3kg.

(Postmodernists like to claim that there is no difference between opinions and facts. So for them measuring the bunch of apples to be 10kg is just as much opinion as saying the game is worth $60. And saying "seeing this movie cost me $12" or "the running time of this movie was 93 minutes" is just as much opinion as saying "this movie sucked!" Then again, for postmodernists, gravity is also opinion, that the moon is not made of cheese is also opinion, that lightning is not caused by gremlins is also opinion, etc.)

You say:

Part of it is our fault, because we just accept that games cost $60 (or whatever).

The industry lamenting that people are not going to pay $60 when there are games available for $1 (or 99 cents) is proof that a good deal of people are no longer accepting the $60 figure. If I can derive the same enjoyment from buying a $1 game than I can get from buying a $60 game, why on earth should I pay $60? Probably the $60 game has "better" graphics but better graphics does not mean greater enjoyment. When a lot of people perform this reasoning and consequently stop buying $60 games, those who think that $60 is the way things ought to be --- that it is the natural order of things --- are completely confused.

You're ignoring the real issues

[i_ate_god]

99 cent games aren't changing consumer's perception of value. Your intolerant, draconian treatment of your customers are changing their perception of your value.

Premium downloadable content? What the hell is that? I once bought two 3.25" disks full of Doom2 WADs because it was convenient to do so versus downloading them off of ftp.cdrom.org, not because Doom2 was defective by design unless I pay even more for "premium content".

But then, isn't that a problem with the rise of consoles? Not exactly a great place to start for a user mod community.

But at the same time, what the hell is this article going on about? The gaming industry is a huge beast now. Some gaming titles are making more money on opening weekend than movies do. So congratulations, you have managed to trick the consumer into accepting your asinine treatment of them. So I guess...

well

whatever

Re:You're ignoring the real issues

[Svartalf]

No kidding about the user mod community. Met a gent in the extended stay that was disappointed about my playing Oblivion on the PS3- because he was part of the modder community for that game engine. If it weren't for the fact that it's not on Linux (Don't tell me about WINE, guys... I port games...unless I got it as a gift, it's largely going to get played on WINE...) I'd be playing it on my much more powerful machines I have. Oftentimes, it's not the game itself that's important- it's the ability to allow people to come up with new game concepts and stories using the engine that sells the game (Though not for $60...geez...)

Re:You're ignoring the real issues

[hoppo]

Game makers could be as intolerant and draconian as they wanted if their games were better. And there's the rub. Creativity has been usurped by the quest for margins. Take a popular game, add new backgrounds while keeping all the objectives, levels, missions, or whatever following the exact same script, and call it a sequel. Games are being released with hardly a line of new code being written. They want to sell Wal-Mart clothes at Barney's prices.

This is just proof that capitalism works. If you intentionally devalue your own product, yet still demand a premium price, you're not going to sell anything. You can't set prices in a market. Well... unless you hold a monopoly over a true necessity, and a game producer fulfills neither.

It's quite simple. Start making $60 games again, and you will be able to sell $60 games.

Re:Look at Steam

[c0mpliant]

I was going to mention Steam as the perfect example. This Christmas I bought at least 15 games, 10 of which I still haven't played but I bought because I know I will play it eventually. Very few games are actually worth €60 and so I usually wait for the price to come down before paying out that much money for the game. Steam's model of sales has made me buy games which I also would never have bought had it not been for the steam sale. Especially Indy games. Ive spent at least €60 in total on Indy games which I wouldn't have before mainly because they're usually too expensive for what I'm getting, or because they're fairly unknown and/or awkard to download or install. The Space Shuttle Simulator was a perfect example of a poorly thought digital distribution, I could only install the game on 1 machine. Now that I've installed Windows 7 I can't play the game anymore and I'd never buy from that company again, but if they released it on steam I would

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[somersault]

I was playing Red Dead Redemption for a month or two and was still only about halfway through the story.. if you buy the right type of open world/sandbox style games you can get a lot of value out of them. Oblivion is another good example, and Skyrim will be out soon. I love the type of game where it's enjoyable to just explore the world rather than always pounding away at a linear plot.

Stupid

[Digital Vomit]

"The prevalence of free and 99-cent apps has changed consumers' perception of value"

No it hasn't.

'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps. How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it? They're used to 99 cents.

And you're president of Epic Games? I think the reason your company is being "killed in the traditional gaming business" just became obvious...

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Luckyo]

Starcraft 2, hands down. I don't even play traditional multiplayer, and I'm not into single player beyond single play through, but fan made custom maps are absolutely wonderful.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[delinear]

Then again, back in the days when games were half the price, the market was a few geeks and the industry wasn't churning over billions per annum. Seems to me economies of scale, even taking into account higher production costs, should mean game prices comparable to what they were, way back when. Having said that, I'm at the point where I don't worry so much about the cost of games, but it's hardly surprising that the average gamer's age is mid thirties, that's probably the sweet point where you're young enough to have bought into gaming in the early days but old enough that you can lay down a reasonable chunk of change per game without too much pain.

of course Epic doesn't like it

[thetoadwarrior]

Epic's games lack decent scripts and stories. They're all a bit samey and lacking any real variety or innovation. They rely on making games prettier than their last ones which is expensive. They can't compete against cheaper games but the thing is no one was ever really happy to pay $60 for a game especially when it's yet another sequel with another hulking space guy spouting cheesy rubbish.

Re:Look at Steam

[Ice Tiger]

Steam have it sussed, lower the unit price and sell more games and the lower the price then less piracy too.

As the distribution costs are next to nothing as opposed to physical media distribution then profits go up as the number of units goes up despite having to have a larger amount of sales to generate that profit.

Maybe that $60 game needs to be sold for $20 or even $10 at launch?

There has been many a game I've bought for under £10 on Steam even if it has not been a core game genre I like just to try out and if I get a few days out of it then am happy. Have it at £45 and I'll never buy it unless I'm pretty sure I'll really like it.

Re:You don't - thumbs up!

[Xenious]

The days of overpriced crap console games at a fixed 60$/hit are coming to an end. Time to look for gameplay and quality but steamline cost. No more "ages of war 2, 3, 4, 5 etc" as an easy revenue stream. Eventually the apps will whittle down as well just like podcasts did. The proverbial wheat from the chaff separation and we end up with lower cost higher quality gaming options.

Re:Not the first time we've heard this...

[delinear]

I guess Nintendo compete more in this market space - games that rely on gameplay, not graphics, to sell - but even so, they should be able to compete with a $1 game given the much higher production costs. And besides, all the major consoles (and the PC, via Steam) have a platform for delivering cheap games, if Epic can't outsell a $1 game on price, why don't they just sell their game for $1? Either $1 games are profitable or they're not, if they're not then stop worrying about them, they'll die out once the companies behind them realise they can't make money.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[arcsimm]

To add another data open-world datapoint, I've got 90 hours in Just Cause 2 and 60 in New Vegas. As for Oblivion, well, I think since 2006 I've done a complete playthrough about once per year. One of these days I may even finish the Fighter's Guild quests and play through Shivering Isles!

Games aren't WORTH $60!!

[erroneus]

Games are worth about $30 tops. These game makers need to adjust to reality. They have been over-charging for entertainment for too long and just like Microsoft, are having a difficult time adjusting when the market changes.

So yes, tiny tablets (phones) and larger tablets are making changes in the software industry. Compete, change or get out of the way. And certainly stop complaining about market forces which you once commanded being taken away from you.

Re:Games aren't WORTH $60!!

[Zingledot]

Why not? Because you didn't pay that much in the past?

"Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders."

Re:Games aren't WORTH $60!!

[Zingledot]

In other words, "Get off my lawn with your $60 games"?

Not the real question

[Jimpqfly]

"How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?"
The real question is :
"Is a $60 game ever worth it ?"
Prices have always been too high, from Nintendo NES cardridge to the last XBox game. That's also why you find piracy.
We want some $20 to $30 Games.

Re:You don't - thumbs up!

[91degrees]

Sounds reasonable. Although you can understand why the established players are concerned.

So everyone who bought a PS3 and an XBOX

[PinchDuck]

Now refuses to buy a game that costs more than $1.00?
I don't believe it. Cheap apps have expanded the market to people that wouldn't buy a console. If you're having a hard time selling console games, don't blame the casual gamer who wants to spend 15 minutes on the subway playing a game. Blame the glut of "me, too" games at the high end.

Re:So everyone who bought a PS3 and an XBOX

[Wiarumas]

Not $1, but definitely not spending more than $29.99. I opt to buy used games than new. I haven't bought a new $59.99 game in about 5 years now. All it takes patience - I'll probalby be enjoying Dragon Age II in 2013, but what is the benefit of playing it now and paying 30 dollars more? With that said, I never hesitate to buy a good game on my iPhone: World of Goo, Plants vs Zombies, Secret of Mana, etc.

Re:So everyone who bought a PS3 and an XBOX

[hoppo]

I'll still buy a handful of $50-60 games. I'm a huge college football fan, so whenever NCAA 20** comes out, I buy it the day of release. The camaraderie with other fans in the first few months of the game's release does add some intrinsic value to the product, even if it is a copy-and-paste from the previous year most times.

With me, it's about the individual game. I'll pay the early adopter premium on a sports game, because time and age are factors in the value I derive from it. However, when it comes to yet another shooter or action game, that is a ripoff or sequel, I'll just wait it out until it hits the discount phase.

Uncertain times my ass...Quit bitching.

[geekmux]

"...it's an uncertain time in the industry. But it's an exciting time for whoever picks the right path and wins.'"

Sheesh. I really get sick and tired of hearing "who is me!" from the gaming industry as they continue to turn record profits.

Bottom line is there is enough demand out there to satisfy damn near every single major player in this industry. If you can't thrive in this world where reality is so bad and stressful that mind-altering legal and illegal drug use is at an all-time high and people are literally craving that alternate reality to escape to every day, then either your product really sucks ass or you're doing it wrong and not paying attention to the several players in the industry who are doing it right. Everyone can win here, just ask Charlie Sheen.

Tradition

[Myopic]

Traditional gaming? You mean, like cards and chess and parcheesi?

Let me know

[Fnord666]

How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

I have no idea. Let me know when they create one.

Go back to basics!

[ThePhilips]

'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps. How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

I have seen lots and lots of $.99 games which were worth more than that. And I have seen really really few $60 games which were worth the $60. And they were worth the $60 not because they had loads of content, but because I really enjoyed playing them.

And that's the core of the pricing problem IMO: pumping more content into a basically $10-20 game doesn't make it a $60 game. The wasted $40-50 bucks are just that: wasted.

I wish the game developers went back to basics and started making simpler games appealing to the gaming essentials. I personally miss a shooter which is really a shooter and not also a racing/diving/flying/swimming simulator at the same time.

No sympathy for Epic

[NoSleepDemon]

I feel compelled to write this because I recently played the diabolical port of Bullet Storm on PC. I have absolutely no sympathy for Epic, nor for any other studio that shovels millions of dollars into a 10 hour title and can't even be bothered to support 4:3 aspect ratios. I remember when Epic actually released games with any sort of longevity - Like Unreal Tournament. Now they, like many other 'AAA' developers ship bloated, 'HD' (nonetheless held back by aging console hardware), soulless games that focus more on treating the player like, frankly, a fucking idiot without any free will than a thinking, feeling human being. Unsurprisingly, $60 IS too much to charge for a title and hopefully consumers will vote with their wallets. Perhaps soon we'll get back to having games with well thought out and engaging stories, instead of gratuitous crotch shots and a script that seems to revolve almost exclusively around killing dicks (no matter how funny that occasionally is). In recent years I've had more fun playing 'low-key' titles like Pixel Junk Shooter, Scott Pilgrim and Amnesia than any major title shipped by a big developer.

incorrect

[Ephemeriis]

'If there's anything that's killing us [in the traditional games business] it's dollar apps. How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it? They're used to 99 cents. As I said, it's an uncertain time in the industry. But it's an exciting time for whoever picks the right path and wins.'

I've got a Droid, but I'm not a big mobile gamer. I'm used to spending $50 on a video game for my PC, or Nintendo, or whatever.

And what's killing you [in the traditional games business] is that your games are not really worth it.

Used to be that I'd buy a game for $50 and get 20+ hours of gameplay - not counting multiplayer. And I'm not talking about an RPG either... RPG's would be a good 60+ hours of gameplay.

I remember playing the first Unreal, or Quake, or Marathon, or Half-Life - and they all took me over a week of late nights to finish.

And then you'd have multiple hours of multiplayer on top of that... Usually with some terrific mods bolted on... And then some mods for the single player... Often the modding community would double or even triple the gameplay you got from your original purchase...

Now you shell out $60 for a game and get 5-10 hours of gameplay, plus the multiplayer. Then they'll start releasing more single player content, and multiplayer map packs, and skins, and whatever else as DLC. And the game will be designed around consoles, so there'll be very limited support for modding.

$50 for 20-80 hours of gameplay... Compared to $60 for 5-20 hours of gameplay...

Is it any wonder you're having a hard time selling your games?

Re:incorrect

[JSBiff]

It's kind of funny. When I first started playing video and computer games as a kid in the 80's, arguably a lot of the content for Nintendo and PC was not worth the 40-60 that they were charging. The games were, overall, smaller, less technologically advanced, there were less art assets, and simpler art assets, smaller levels, etc.

For many years, the 'value' you get for your $40-60 increased every year as the technology improved - prices stayed about the same, but the games got bigger, with more content, etc.

But now we do somewhat seem to be on a downswing, where some developers are delivering *less* value per dollar.

There are a few counter-examples where players are still getting a lot of value for their money, but it does seem to be a trend to give gamers less for their dollar.

Re:incorrect

[Ephemeriis]

It's kind of funny. When I first started playing video and computer games as a kid in the 80's, arguably a lot of the content for Nintendo and PC was not worth the 40-60 that they were charging. The games were, overall, smaller, less technologically advanced, there were less art assets, and simpler art assets, smaller levels, etc.

To a large degree, that was a limitation of the hardware.

You just weren't going to put full-motion video, speech, high-poly models, and whatever else on an NES. Just wasn't going to happen. The cartridge only had a few MB of storage. The machine only had a few K of RAM. It could only handle a few colors. Those were just limitations of the hardware.

But, at the time, that was still pretty impressive. Metroid, with its chunky graphics and crappy color palette and simplistic gameplay was, arguably, just as awesome and groundbreaking for its time as Portal was more recently.

And we didn't really expect storylines and narratives at the time, either. Repetitive gameplay was the name of the game. Something like Contra or Super Mario Brothers was long not because there was an epic storyline with dialogue and character development... But because they were brutally hard and unforgiving. One wrong step and you were dead. A couple deaths and you were starting over from scratch.

To a certain degree, the nature of the beast has changed. It's far faster/cheaper/easier to throw together some repetitive 8-bit gameplay than it is to develop an engaging narrative with realistic characters and beautiful visuals. To a certain degree, it makes sense that as the cost of producing a video game goes up, we're either going to pay more or get less. I understand that.

But I'm not really buying a video game because I want to look at pretty graphics or experience an epic storyline or whatever... I can go to an art gallery if I just want visuals, I can read a book if I just want storyline... What I'm looking for in a game is an entertaining diversion. A way to waste some time and have fun doing it. And that doesn't necessarily require top-of-the-line graphics, or an epic storyline, or whatever. You don't have to spend tons of money on absolutely every asset in the game.

Looking at something like Dragon Age, for example... Do you really need to hire voice actors for absolutely every bit of dialogue in the game? Does every single NPC need to have a distinct voice and vocabulary? Could you maybe get away with just popping up a chat bubble and some text for the random babble around town? Or just leave out some of that random babble entirely?

For that matter, why not keep cashing in on the assets you already have? NeverWinter Nights had a fantastic game engine that BioWare used to turn out three very solid games as well as several "premium" modules. The modding community turned out some absolutely epic stuff. I played that game for, literally, years. I certainly got my money's worth. And each module or expansion cost BioWare less to make, because the assets were already there.

It seems like developers keep trying to re-invent the wheel... And trying to be absolutely top-of-the-line in pretty much all respects... And somewhere along the line they forget that people are paying them money to be entertained for a few hours... And you wind up with a very shiny product that's over with (because it isn't fun after a couple hours, or you've run out of gameplay, or whatever) far too quickly. And then people feel like they wasted their money.

Re:incorrect

[KermodeBear]

Often the modding community would double or even triple the gameplay you got from your original purchase...

I bought the original Half-Life not long after it was released. Five years later I was still playing it because of the modding community. TFC, CS, Natural Selection... Then all of the smaller, lesser-known mods on top of that.

Making a game open and friendly to modding is a very easy and free way for any company to add lots of value to their product. If the original product is good enough to attract a lot of attention, then you just sit back and let the rest of the world do the rest. Sales will increase, too. I know a lot of people that bought a copy of Half-Life just to play the CounterStrike mod.

Re:incorrect

[Ephemeriis]

I know a lot of people that bought a copy of Half-Life just to play the CounterStrike mod.

Yup. Hell, CounterStrike was popular enough that they released it as a boxed game itself.

And Portal started out as a mod too.

The problem is that games these days are generally designed for consoles first, and then ported to the PC. And consoles aren't real good platforms for writing mods, so making your game open and friendly to modding isn't a priority.

And then there's the appeal of DLC... Instead of letting folks make their own mods, you lock your game down and make people pay you for mods...

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[somersault]

I have Just Cause 2 as well, and it's fun as hell to just explore and drive/parasail around, though I find the combat quite repetitive. Likewise with Red Faction: Guerilla. They're both fun for a blast every now and then, but they don't have the same variety and atmosphere that makes me love Red Dead Redemption. Unfortunately I lost most of my save games when my last PS3 died, and I can't face starting many of them again yet.. I restarted Red Faction: Guerilla last week though, and it seems they've improved some stuff via patches, like the map screen doesn't take forever to open now..

Authors Say The Same

[SplicerNYC]

How can I sell my e-book for 5.99 when someone is selling their's for .99? Maybe quality trumps price in certain cases. Maybe some people just like cheap and weren't going to pay more than .99 for a book or game.

Only As Much As $60 Software Is Killing Gaming

[EXTomar]

Some pieces of software should cost $0.99 and some should cost $59.99. Suggesting either is killing gaming is silly. If anything price structures on many platforms are too rigid where the platform vendors can't handle a game because its the best price is neither $0.99 or $59.99.

if you cut out the big box store price can be $40

[Joe The Dragon]

if you cut out the big box store price can be $40 and you just need to pay the hosting fees + CC fees.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[maxwell demon]

Global Thermonuclear War. Best $60 I ever spent.

You've paid $60 for a game where the only winning move is not to play?

I'm really getting sick of this arguement.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

I buy a $1 game to amuse me during lulls at work.
I buy a $60 game to amuse me at home/weekends during my free time.

I am NEVER going to replace one with the other.

Is it not obvious?

[Bert64]

The simple fact of the matter is, that most people are not serious hardcore gamers, and/or don't have enough free time to devote to such levels of gaming...

As a result, very few if any games are worth $60 to most people... Now when there was no other choice, it didn't seem so unreasonable to buy a full priced game to only play once or twice, but now we finally have an alternative which is not illegal.

For me, and many other people i know, most games will only provide a couple of hours of entertainment at best. Sure there are rare exceptions, but in most cases i simply cannot justify paying anything like $60 when something for $1 would also provide me an hour or two of entertainment.

Plus there is the added convenience of a phone, most of the time when i find myself bored with nothing else to do i'm away from home... So in many ways, the $1 app actually provides greater value to me.

There is also the fact that game prices have just kept on going up, while quality has often come down... You get far too many games which are just fancy looking graphics combined with poor gameplay, games which are only trivial updates to existing games and games which are difficult to play because of draconian drm. Sure there is the occasional gem, but they're hard to find in the sea of crap.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[kilfarsnar]

dude the epic game does not exist anymore. The game that took you a month or more playing it nightly will never exist again.

I'm not sure it's that stark. What about Diablo III?

Maybe the $0.99 games are targeting new base

[Agent0013]

Maybe you are not losing someone from buying your $60 game. That person might not have been a gamer before the phone or tablet and the $0.99 games. Since the Wii came out there have been whole new groups of people playing games that were never targeted with the previous game systems and expesive games.

How do you do it?

[guruevi]

You don't. First of all dollar apps are not a big threat to the big $60 games. What is threatening those big $60 games is the $60 + paid DLC. If I pay $60 it should be all-included with free DLC like StarCraft 2. Portal 2 is a bad example of that as well - a full priced game ($50) but every little outfit I want costs $1-5 and the game isn't all that big and very linear. The rest like Dead Space is again linear and just another zombie shooter. It has some cute concepts in it but it's not worth my money. Then the rest doesn't want me to resell their discs so they'll charge somebody another $10-15 just to unlock the game which is a big no-no to me, I won't buy something if those are the conditions.

Indie developers like FrozenByte develop some very good quality (graphics, engine etc.) games on a budget and charge $10-20 for it and make a profit. Buy the Humble Indie Bundle and get Trine, ShadowGrounds, ShadowGrounds Survivor, the sound track to those games, the source code and art to a canned game and they promise they'll give you one of their upcoming games as well. Choose what you want to pay and download it without DRM for Windows, Mac AND Linux and link it to your Steam account if you want. I paid $50 for the bundle even though I really don't care that much for ShadowGrounds but Trine is definitely worth it.

Another good game is MineCraft, no DRM, 'bad' graphics but fun gameplay. It's a mix of WoW, LEGO, SimCity and the like. EUR 15 right now in beta or EUR 20 when it's released. Those are the games that those big companies are fighting against and they'll have to either adapt or go extinct.

The new Arcade.

[jellomizer]

Those dollar apps are really filling the void that the decline in arcades. Where you have games designed to kill a few hours of your time, without really feeling ripped off, if you don't like the game. It is kinda of a funny turn of events. The Arcade was more popular then game consoles because they did better graphics and had more cooler stuff. Then the consoles got better then the Arcade systems. But because they are expensive to have games were a good gamer could complete in a few days. There is interests into the Lower Quality cheap games that are on their phone. As they offer people fun without a huge investment.

Start a band

[oliverthered]

Start a band, go on tour, hand out things with odd stuff on them, sell / give away DVDs/CDs T-shirts

Sad but no pity

[grapeape]

I will admit I buy more $1 apps than traditional games now. My gaming time has been scarce for years, but back before the app store I would shell out $60 for a game and half of them would get played for an hour or less. Now I actually play more just because of the convenience, yes most of the games are more casual but are a entertaining enough experience that I just dont miss console gaming anymore, in fact I sold off both my 360 and PS3 a few months back. That said I dont mind paying for good games, I paid $10 for dead space and regularly buy $5 plus apps if they are interesting and reviews are decent. Im more of an old school gamer anyway, most of the time I would rather play a shooter like dondonpachi than CoD. For my kids gaming on an ipod or ipad was a no brainer...my son doesn't care if its Mario Cart or Kart Racer Rush he just likes the racing, I can spend $30 for him to do that on a DS or $1 to have the same type of game with motion sensing on the ipod. For my daughters games like Cake Mania and Plants vs Zombies are the types they were into to start with, I can pay $19 for a CD copy for a computer or $5 for the same game on the app store...its not even something I have to think about.

I do think that predictions of death for gaming on the pc and consoles are both exaggerated and premature, however I do think there will be a big drop in impulse purchasing of games for those platforms. I will still always choose a game like Bioshock or Fallout on the PC but my usual habit is changing, as a result there are far less games on my shelf I have "still have to get around to", games I buy now are ones I actually want to play now.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[damnbunni]

Game prices ARE comparable to what they were 'back when'.

Adjusted for inflation, Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 was a $66 game. Centauri Alliance for the C-64 was $60.

And even if you don't adjust for inflation, some Super Nintendo titles were over $70.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[dwightk]

I was playing Red Dead Redemption for a month or two and was still only about halfway through the story.

2months? What were you averaging, 7 minutes a day? I'd guess that story was about 30hrs at moderate play-speed. Oh, unless you really like bad poker simulations.

Cost of distribution?

[jasenj1]

DNRTFA.
How much does it cost for packaging, shipping, retail store space, etc. for a $60 game? There's a lot of middle-men involved with manufacturing a product and shipping it to a brick and mortar store.

Contrast that with an App Store game. You set up a web site with all your documentation and marketing info. Apple or Google or Amazon take a straight cut of the retail price and provide all the distribution and payment infrastructure. It costs very little to host & sell 1000 units vs 10000 units.

And then you get into working the number of units sold formula. How many people will buy your game for $1, $5, $10? Will the number of units sold offset the lower price? Because in the digital world, once you make one copy, you can make a million at almost no additional cost (which is not true of DVDs or any other physical delivery medium). So cost to sell a million at $1 is the same as selling 100,000 at $10.

Take out the physical delivery medium and the cost-to-profit structure takes on a whole new shape.

- Jasen.

Re:Cost of distribution?

[hoppo]

In large quantities, the per-unit cost of end-to-end delivery (from manufacture to store) is pretty negligible anymore. It's only an educated guess, but the total costs borne by all parties is most likely under $5, and may even be $1 or less.

Manufacturing costs practically nothing per unit these days. Think about it -- you and I can buy writable DVDs at retail for 20-30 cents apiece in small quantities. What do you think a manufacturer pays for them? So you're talking pennies per item to make it. Shipping has become so consolidated anymore that that is also a minimal marginal cost -- there's not a truck that is just full of Super Shootemup 2 packages. Rather, there is a truck that is full of many games from many providers. And the manufacturer only needs to get it as far as the retailers' distribution centers, at which point the retailer picks up the tab. And those costs are marginalized as well. Again, it's not like Best Buy's truck is only carrying a few copies of the game and nothing else. The small number of people involved adds maybe a few more pennies per unit. Aside from opportunity cost, such as "Best Buy can't ship these DVDs to its store because there are too many of these $60 games on the truck," unit cost is probably a lesser factor when considering profit margin.

The issue is they want to maintain the high gross margins they enjoy. But reality is dictating something different.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[dwightk]

To add another data open-world datapoint, I've got 90 hours in Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 was pretty good, the story was still laughably short. I really expected the end to be Act 1 of 10 (ok, at least 3). The sandbox missions really start to feel like grinding after a while: "Oh this is the radio tower there will be X guys, Y things to blow up, and a first aid kit right over there."

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Zingledot]

Exactly.

This whole "I would never buy a game over $40 getoffmylawn" mentality is not logical.

At some point, you can't take the trolley downtown AND buy an ice cream cone for a quarter. But, you're also making more money, so who cares?

Nah

[kelemvor4]

Mr. Capps missed a major point, probably because he's part of the problem. PC game developers haven't made any significant progress in several years. PC Games today are portable to consoles, and are therefore "stuck" having to support old hardware like you'd find in a PS3 or XBOX 360 or PC from 2008.

Small devices like phones are improving in capability rapidly, while games for other platforms have stagnated for several years. On the small device market games are inexpensive.

If he wants customers to be willing to pay 60 times the price of a smartphone game, he needs to provide something better than the smartphone game does.

I don't see it happening from any existing game shop anytime soon, they all love making the easy money with console ports. It'll take a few nerds to create a new company that does something amazing to move the game industry forward at this point.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[_0xd0ad]

You can't just adjust for inflation like that. Prices have fallen drastically with advances in computing technology.

The Commodore 64 cost $595, which is around $1350 if you adjust for inflation. The XBox 360 costs about $300. And even if you don't adjust for inflation, the C64 still cost more.

The consoles are cheaper, so why aren't the games?

Never has been worth it..

[Roogna]

I can count the number of games that were worth $60 on one hand... heck, even at $40 they were pushing it on the vast majority of published titles.
Whereas a $1 game needs to be approximately as entertaining as a cup of coffee to be worth it...

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[somersault]

I did play a lot of poker :) Nice and relaxing. The sound effects in the game are excellent. I actually thought it was raining outside one time, then realised it was just the game (surround sound on a decent home cinema system).

My brother had the story finished in a week or so, I was pretty shocked. I rarely did the story missions, hadn't even unlocked the third part of the map yet. I enjoyed playing the mini games, hunting, looking for the lost treasures, finding good horses and so on.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Zingledot]

Two things:

I would argue that the price for hardware changes more with production cost than the price of software. One is mostly labor, the other is mostly production.

I don't think it was common practice to sell the console at a loss back then. Modern consoles are sold well under cost to reduce the price of admission, and they expect to make it up in game licensing.

pirate hypocrisy?

[goombah99]

Were are the usual voices that argue piracy is okay because games want to be free. And they argue that piracy does not hinder game development. But now that games are cheaper it looks like it may be killing the big-tim gaming market. Defend thyself hypocrites!

On another note, it may be that we simply have more small games with more people earning more money in total. it may be an expansion in gaming. But it may come at a loss of the concentration of capital that enabled the "big time" games of high polish. i.e rabbits farting versus CGI masterworks.

Re:pirate hypocrisy?

[geekoid]

"Were are the usual voices that argue piracy is okay because games want to be free"
No one says that.

" And they argue that piracy does not hinder game development."
It doesn't.
As it turns out, most people will pay for a game if they can, and those that don't wouldn't have done so anyways.
There is also a side benefit that piracy seems to help sales.
The good studies that have been done point that out pretty clearly.

However, this has nothing to do with piracy.

It's about a new cheap to create entertaining games that cost a buck. Will that impact big game? probably; unless the people who play the dollar games are a different set of people then those who buy big dollar games.

In short: Is bejeweled actually competing with Portal 2, Left For Dead, etc..?

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[dwightk]

Yeah Red Dead Redemption was pretty good with the sandbox. If its map were as large as Just Cause's it would make the game better/longer. I liked exploring

bam cougar attack!

The wolf packs got a little old though.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[damnbunni]

Because the price of the console is largely in the parts and manufacturing.

The price of the game is largely labor.

Re:I don't care

[Eponymous Coward]

Because resources available to dedicate towards producing games are limited.

Late last year, Sony suspended work on the PS4 and moved the entire team to work on their mobile (Android) games. If that turns out to be more profitable than the console business, then the console business is going to get starved for resources.

Look at the sales numbers. Worldwide, console games are something like a $40 billion business. Late last year mobile gaming (of which Android and iOS are the largest part) passed that number. Can you guess which market is stagnant and which is growing like crazy right now? The console market is still huge, but if the publishers have to start charging $30 instead of $60 per game, they are going to revolt even if they make more money. Nobody likes it when their market is disrupted.

Easy answer

[stealth_finger]

"How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?"

By making it worth $60. Stop scrimping on story for over the top gore, stop tacking on useless mp modes no ones is going to be playing after 6 months. To be fair gears 3 will probably sell cod like figures regardless, but from what I hear bulletstorm was kinda short, although I just got shadow complex on the xbla sale and thats well worth the money I paid, Who says all the games have to be $60 anyway?

I use the 1$ games.....

[babywhiz]

While I'm waiting for the raid to fill, or during breaks. No way a 1$ game is gonna replace my WoW. However, the whole 'Faceville gaming' stuff will eventually end. Big Fish is shutting down one of it's Faceville games....which saddens me too, I had built up over 1Mil g and had spent a good $40 on playfunds...just for the game to disappear. As this happens to more people, the more they will stop getting hooked or spending money on them. 1$ apps are no different. Blip in the pan, and then it will be back to console/pc gaming.....where at least you know you can still play the game even after they quit selling and developing for it. (I will mourn the loss when Blizzard does decide to shut down WoW....but man, I have a ton of frapps and screenshots to make up for it...)

Re:You don't - thumbs up!

[Sectoid_Dev]

I don't mind paying $60 for a game if after playing it for two hours, I'm not thinking, "Well this is disappointing."
And that's very few games over the past 10 years.

Mostly, I wait a month or two, read the reviews and perhaps wait for the reduced price bundle that includes an expansion pack.

Sorry, I've been playing my Free games...

[gosand]

If I get the gaming itch, I either fire up old games (still fun - like Unreal Tournament) or find updated new ones or ones I haven't played. Like Frogatto, World of Padman...Or more recently SuperTuxKart, or Red Eclipse. A while back I tried to play HL2 demo via Steam, but it keeps screwing up on my machine (Linux). So why would I buy it? Oh well, so I can't play it. I learned a long time ago that needing to play the latest and greatest, or anything in general - is kind of sad. I've played a few wii games, but don't think they're worth spending hundreds of dollars on it. I had heard so much about Grand Theft Auto, and tried to play it at a friend's once... wow. What a piece of crap. My view of society plummeted - not because I'm on some moral high-horse about what's "acceptable" but because that game was dumb and boring. I can't believe that it was popular, let along spawned sequels.

I realize my rant will probably kill any chance of someone reading this and agreeing with me, as most people seem to be gamers and are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on multiple gaming systems. Having said that, I don't think you can compare your phone games to console/pc games. That's like saying why would someone buy a car if they can get a Razor scooter for $20 off of craigslist.

Re:Sorry, I've been playing my Free games...

[KermodeBear]

I tried to play HL2 demo via Steam, but it keeps screwing up on my machine (Linux)

I hope you're not surprised by this. Next time please try it on the platform it was designed for.

I agree with you on the point of consoles though (far too expensive just for the machine), and also that of old, but good, games. I don't buy a lot of games but the ones I do buy are played to death. An active modding community really helps longevity and adds value, too. I bought the original Half-Life, enjoyed the long single player experience, and then spent the next four, five, six(?) years playing some of the incredible 3rd party mods that were released. Talk about value!

Re:Sorry, I've been playing my Free games...

[gosand]

Not surprised, just a little disappointed. I don't HAVE the platform it was designed for.. so I was using WINE. So technically I sort of have the platform.

I agree with you on Half-Life... I played it for years with the same way you did, I loved the single-player mode, and played lots of mods. I just finally upgraded my video card to one that would play HL2, and was looking forward to the same experience.

For this bitching about game prices

[DreamTimeFoo']

Cheap crappy imitations of game ideas done years ago are somehow the savior of a just order of the game industry where quality would flow in proportion to dollar spent.

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_value_for_money/

"But even if one tried to disentangle the subject of a game's price from the main body of a review, perhaps placing it under a separate "value for money" heading, that effort would still end in failure. For how could a modern action game ever compete in the "value for money" stakes with something like a chess game -- or Sid Meier's Civilization? And what would be the point of us pitting them against each other anyway? Is an hour-long game of basketball more worthwhile than a one-minute long skydive, simply because it lasts longer? Would you like some apples with your oranges, sir? Have you ever had an orgasm? But even if we restrict ourselves to comparing "values for money" in the context of individual genres, we'll still end up praising inferior games and trashing superior ones; we'd still end up talking nonsense, and compelling designers to pad their games with shit in order to make them seem like "better deals" to the poor and the feebleminded. I never tire of bringing up the example of Tomonobu Itagaki, who, in an interview regarding Ninja Gaiden long before its release, stated that if it was up to him he'd have made the game two hours long instead of twenty. Can you even begin to imagine the possibilities of such a design choice? (meaning a two-hour game made with the budget of a twenty-hour one). I certainly can, and no doubt Itagaki, yet half a decade later and still no one has dared explore them!" ...

"It is at that point that the issue of "value for money" disappears to be replaced by that of "value for time", even for the feebleminded (for the intelligent person it had always been thus), for when all games cost nothing the only question left to ask is whether any of them are worth anything. This is the timeless, the eternal question -- it is the only question worth answering"

Doesn't get rid of all overheads

[tepples]

digital distribution is cheap, no packaging, etc

Unless the only broadband provider in your area imposes such a low daily or monthly cap that you could get the game from Amazon with Super Saver Shipping before your download finishes. Or are you referring to the fact that games offered for paid download have a much smaller average footprint in gigabytes than games offered on disc?

you can get rid of the middleman - in this case publisher - for digital distribution.

I agree that the overheads tend to be less for paid download than for retail sale of a copy, but they're not reduced to zero. A developer going all digital still doesn't get rid of the hardware maker's overhead (on consoles and iDevices), Valve's overhead (on PCs), the overhead implicit in end users' possibility of ISP overage fees incurred as a result of the download, or (for the smallest developers) the organizational overhead involved in working from and commuting to a dedicated secure office as opposed to a home/cloud-based business.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[teg]

Dragon Age II: short as hell unless you shell out more and more for DLC.

About 50-60 hours if you play it through once? Dragon Age II certainly has a couple of issues (e.g. an incredible amount of reuse, combat system much worse than DA I) , but it's certainly long enough that you shouldn't feel ripped off... I don't even think there is that much DLC yet; just one extra party member.

I have little sympathy

[sirwired]

These folks are in the same boat as professional photographers that endlessly bitch and moan about "amateurs" selling stock photos for ten bucks that they would have charged thousands for, or journalists that are seeing their profession decimated by free news sources. I don't own pro photographers, journalists, game designers, etc. a living. Yeah, it sucks they are going to lose their jobs and/or make less money, but that's how progress works.

Elaborate games are an art form all their own, and one that is quite different from $1 games. But if it turns out the market for those $60 games is perfectly satisfied with the entertainment they get from the cheap ones, then the market for expensive games will die. Is this something that needs "fixing"? I'd say no.

Obv Solution: Make better games.

[Kintanon]

I've gotten more entertainment out of Master of Orion II than any other game I've purchased. Close behind is Diablo II. Neither of those games have INSANE graphics (MOO2 for sure doesn't) but both have a lot of replayable fun. I think I paid 29$ for each of them, and I've purchased them both more than once because I lost the discs and boxes and whatnot and just bought them again.

If someone released MOO2 for my iPhone for 5$ I would buy it in a heartbeat.

If someone released the old Monkey Island games on the iPhone for 5$ apiece there would be a good chance I would buy those too. To me the best market for games on the mobile devices is old school games. You could re-release a bunch of nintendo, super nintendo, or playstation 1 game on a smartphone and make bank. Final Fantasy 3 on my iPhone? Hell yeah.

First step

[Jiro]

There's an old joke about how to make rabbit stew--the first step is to catch the rabbit.

The first step towards convincing people that the $60 game is worth it is to actually make the $60 game be worth it.

Cost per entertainment unit

[whereiswaldo]

Look at the cost per "entertainment unit". If you get a very entertaining app for a dollar or maybe 5 dollars your return on investment is very high compared to a great game for sixty dollars. You can't go and say "well the expensive game has lots more technology and bells and whistles and depth" if those things don't add to the entertainment factor.

If dollar games are killing traditional gaming, then so is YouTube. I almost never buy a game these days without researching it on YouTube first. Gone are the days where I get severely ripped off from crummy games that would've been obvious had I seen some gameplay before buying.

What do you mean by enable?

[tepples]

How much does it cost you per month to enable your online mult-player experience? [Over two years,] that $60 game just turned into a $300+ game.

What all do you mean by "enable", unless you're referring to MMOs? Do you mean switching from dial-up to a high-speed Internet plan? Most people did that long ago to watch YouTube.

Re:What do you mean by enable?

[geekmux]

How much does it cost you per month to enable your online mult-player experience? [Over two years,] that $60 game just turned into a $300+ game.

What all do you mean by "enable", unless you're referring to MMOs? Do you mean switching from dial-up to a high-speed Internet plan? Most people did that long ago to watch YouTube.

I am in fact referring more to MMO's and services like XBox live and other subscription-based enablers that allow you to maximize (or even play as intended) multi-player games. It's just a cost that is easily overlooked when considering the total cost of a game. Other factors such as necessary video card or memory upgrades (PC), or storage or controller upgrades (console) tend to be overlooked as well.

Re:What do you mean by enable?

[gknoy]

World of Warcraft costs me $14/month or so, with a $60 expansion every couple of years, so let's amortize that and say that I pay ~$16/month, or about $200/year.

Similar to eating fast food three times in a month, or once if I buy for the rest of the family too.
Less than ordering pizza once a month.
Less than seeing a movie with my wife, less than seeing two by myself.
Equal to buying three and a half full-price games in a year.

For that price, I get more entertainment than Netflix, and don't generally feel tempted to buy (and regret) as many big name games.

So yes, playing WoW costs a bunch. Over six years, quite a bit. Then look at how much you spend on burgers or pizza in a year, and reconsider.

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[somersault]

Yeah the cougars freaked me out a couple of times, and killed my damn horse (I was going for the Cougar knife kill reward).

Wolf packs were annoying in certain areas, but it was fun killing 3 at a time in Dead Eye mode, or IIRC killing some and watching their buddies run away :)

Free/99 vs. Production Games + a similar question

[cdpage]

Value.
These cheep games are great, for 5 - 10 min at a time. They have no story. No intrigue. No production value.

Compare Agree Birds to Mass Effect.

AB = Fun no brainer game that keeps you coming back for more... but really its the same thing over and over.

ME = A Story, a movie, voice actors, interaction, PLOT...

A similar question might be

Why aren't Production Games Killing Movies?

At 5 times the cost of going to a movie by yourself, (or renting a movie), that is 1.5 – 3hrs you can buy a game and get 1 - 3hrs of cinematic scenes + 50 – 100hrs of play.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Qubit]

Global Thermonuclear War. Best $60 I ever spent.

You've paid $60 for a game where the only winning move is not to play?

There are some games where you don't want anyone to "win," at least not in a winner/loser sense. You just want the game to keep on going and going. :-)

Oh, Ally Sheedy...

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Kelbear]

Even a top-flight game like Super Mario Bros wasn't developed by a team of hundreds, in 5 countries, fully voiced and mo-capped, and translated into multiple languages.

I meant, the costs involved to produce a 2-d 8-bit platformer just doesn't compare to a hand-drawn 3-d high-res open world game.

If people want blockbuster AAA games, they'll need to pay a premium to get it. If they are really ok with reduced production values, they should be buying games with reduced production values to show publishers that they should be making more of those kinds of games, and perhaps then there will be room in the market for sub-$60.

As it stands, pricing your own game below $60 is telling the world that it's just not as good as the games that ARE priced at $60. Whether or not that's actually the case, the price sends a signal to the consumer. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) )

In addition, with the median age of gamers being in the mid-20s. There's a greater amount of consumers with more money than time when it comes to video games. Most gamers are no longer kids plugging away at a Nintendo every day after school. Most gamers just slip in an hour or 2 so after work, and many play much less than that. That also means that a lot of gamers never reach the end of long games. Whether or not you want to blame the gamer for that, that's the situation, and the developers take that reality into account when deciding whether they should pad out the game length with repetition and grinding (because they don't have the budget to extend it with unique content), or just polish a shorter game that can be finished by more players.

Portal 2

[Beardydog]

Why does it have to cost 60 dollars, for starters? I've got plenty of 1-10 dollar games on my iPad, but I just bought Portal 2 for 40-something dollars because Portal was amazing, and Valve consistently does a bang-up job. He's right that I would absolutely never pay $60 for a Gears of War, because Gears of War is tedious, rehashed, thinly plotted, trendily desaturated garbage, and when I borrowed it, I couldn't even be bothered to play a quarter of it.

I'll probably buy L.A. Noir for 60 dollars, because Rockstar generally does a great job, provides great depth and breadth in their free roaming games. I bought New Vegas for those same reasons, and I'll probably get the next DLC for it.

I don't plan on buying any games that promise "realistic modern combat", no matter which part of the planet they're set on. I don't plan to buy a racing game that computes my coefficient of friction to two more decimal places than the previous version. I don't plan to buy a game based on a movie based on a cartoon that I liked when I was ten.

How do you sell someone a $60 dollar app that's worth it? Put some actual work into the conceptual side, instead of trying to be a billion dollar game-factory that cranks out sequels to the latest incrementally improved rehashes of Marathon. Create some IP that isn't deliberately targeted at the lowest common denominator. Yeah, I know Gears of War has broad appeal, but it's broad and shallow. There's nothing wrong with broad and shallow, but if that's what you're after, you're going to have to launch at 20-30 bucks, and learn to love the shelves by the checkout lane. There's no shame in it, especially if that's the quality of effort you're putting in the begin with.

Gears of Fucking War.

Shut the fuck up.

Price over time

[darkwing_bmf]

Games are worth whatever people will pay for them. So, no game *to you* might be worth more than $20 but for many people there are lots of games worth more than $20. The way companies can (and do) sell to as many people as possible for about what they are willing to pay goes something like this: Gamers who think the game is worth a lot get to play it first (and pay more), those in the middle get to play it a year later for about half the price and people who've never heard of it will get two years later when it goes into one of the steam value packs for $5 or less. The time periods may change but the basic concept is the same. Start out at a relatively high price and decrease the price over time. It's a pretty good system for everyone involved. If you want to play first and are willing to spend the money you can. If you want to save money just wait (you'll also save on computer hardware if you take this route).

Re:$1 isn't what they should worry about

[dwightk]

one time I saw two of the random encounters where the person is being chased by wolves overlap, in addition to it being wolf country, so there were at least two other packs in the area. It was pretty wild.

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[snowraver1]

For me, Warcraft III was worth 60 (even though it was actually less).

I had over 2500 games on a single account. That works out to 2.4 cents per game. A great deal!

Re:How do you sell someone a $60 game...

[Kemanorel]

I don't think Nintendo has ever sold their consoles at a loss. I'm 98% sure of that for the Wii, GameCube, and all versions of the DS.

Source: Slashot, 2006

Quality variance, and pricing points

[k8to]

Most games are bad. Most gamers have certain things they don't like about some games. The end result is buying games reandomly often results in a sub-par experience.

Buying 1 dollar games randomly and getting sub-par experiences sometimes is not so bad.

Buying 60 dollar games randomly and getting sub-par experiences sucks.

The blockbuster games are full of problems, just like the one dollar games. They offer some kinds of experiences the one dollar games don't, but the risk is so much higher to the buyer, that I can't see both of these continuing in their current form.

Either (many? most? of) the dollar app makers are going to come to the conclusion that their model is not really profitable, or the 60 dollar game makers are going to be forced to lower their price point. That is, the ones who don't have a gold plated reputation for always kicking out winners.

Starcraft 2 was $60....

[kurokaze]

and I'm be damned if I said that I don't feel it was worth every penny. And that's also 1/3rd of what most of us would consider the complete game!!!

I foresee myself buying the second and third one too!

Personally, I'm really sick (literally - I get of physically sick) of yet another FPS. The last one I played and enjoyed was unreal tournament. Come up with some other types of games and we'll talk!

Release games with substance and people will pay.

[splitreason]

The problem is that most people today are casual gamers. Hardcore gamers will pay that 60$ per game if it scores high in the reviews and has some depth and decent content. The problem with 60$ games these days is they all follow a cookie cutter design and nothing really new and unique is being released. Because of this, people are looking for cheap entertainment and there are plenty of 99 cent apps that will satisfy.

How do you sell someone a $60 game ?

[Stellian]

How do you sell someone a $60 game that's really worth it?

You don't. But instead of a market of 10 million wiiboxstation3, you have a market of 600 million mobile devices, so you can keep the exact same creative level, profit and overall game experience by selling it for $1.

In fact the $60 has nothing to do with the actual effort of making the game, and it's all about maximizing revenue on an item that has a marginal cost of $0 for each extra unit produced. So the $60 is the "sweet spot" that maximizes the profit (or minimizes loss) for that particular game, given that the production costs are already sunken.

The fact that the market drove the price down to $1 means that there's much higher competition, spurred by the low entry barrier in the mobile market (less resources, less detail, less graphic effort, less or no 3d modeling etc.)

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[gknoy]

Licensed as in, "EA NFL SIM", or "MADDEN 2012: NFL Apocalyse", or "NBA Superheroes 2011". As in, you pay large money to a well recognized brand to use their name plastered on your game.

NFL.
NBA.
Major League Baseball.
NASCAR.
Star Wars.

There's a niche of gamer who says, "I want to play a football game. Clearly, the one that is allowed to use the Real Names and Teams will give me the most realistic fantasy football ever!", and will overlook (somewhat) things like the playability tweaks in order to have something good to play with their (drinking?) buddies. Similarly, when Aunt Mabel wants to buy Timmy a football game for his PS3 or XBox, she'll have heard of NFL or NASCAR, but will (usually) not have heard of Mario Kart or Blood Bowl, and so the name on the license nets them sales that the gameplay and polish alone would not.

What's really killing Epic

[aztektum]

It feels like every couple months someone at Epic is all "X is killing us!" Maybe they'd make more money selling games if they sold more than mediocre shooter games.

It's like if Ford only made cars and complained that the car *AND* truck makers are selling more product.

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[dcollins]

It means brand licensing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_licensing). It's a major, established, and well-defined part of many industries, including video games. The place where I worked had a full-time employee devoted solely to brand licensing. Examples such as Street Fighter, Super Smash Brothers, and Mario Kart would not count -- they are not marks licensed from an outside, real-world brand.

http://www.sportsmedia.net/MediaKit/Collegiate_Licensing/collegiate_licensing.htm
http://theodmgroup.com/2011/01/11/sports-licensing-seminar-a-whole-new-game/
http://www.buzzaboutgames.com/lack-sports-game-market-competition-quality-consumers/sports/

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[scot4875]

This is not a difficult thing to figure out in the context of the discussion.

Licensed: adj. 1) permitted to legally use the names, logos, likenesses, etc of the teams and players in the (NFL, NBA, MLB, FIFA, WNBA, UFC, WWE, etc)

Unlicensed: adj. 1) not licensed. i.e. the game developers have to make up their own names, logos, players, etc.

Why be deliberately dense and attempt to obfuscate a non-point?

--Jeremy

Amortizing the allegedly hidden cost

[tepples]

If by a controller upgrade you mean buying controllers 2, 3, and 4 for a game console or gaming/home theater PC, this expense can ideally be amortized over multiple games for the platform. In fact, it's even easier because HTPCs and Xbox 360 consoles can use the same controllers. If by a controller upgrade you mean instruments for a music game such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or DDR, those costs are certainly not hidden because the game is often sold bundled with an instrument.

As for PC video cards, look for games that share an engine with a game ported to Mac OS X. These will run usefully on a 3-year-old video card because they also have to run usefully on the integrated NVIDIA GPU in a Mac mini, MacBook, or iMac.

As for Xbox Live Gold, play the PC version instead if you can. When it comes to multiplayer, the big advantage of a console is that more games support local multiplayer on Xbox 360 than on PC because publishers think there aren't enough HTPC owners to make a market. Besides, even for 360 exclusives, Xbox Live Gold is still one price no matter how many games you play (apart from MMOs).

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[tepples]

I'm having trouble finding sales figures for NASCAR games such as NASCAR Kart Racing, but Wikipedia says Mario Kart Wii sold 26.5 million copies without using a brand licensed from a third party.

Nintendo habitually bucks trends

[tepples]

Why be deliberately dense and attempt to obfuscate a non-point?

Because Nintendo habitually bucks trends. How many licensed motor racing games have Mario Kart games outsold?

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[dcollins]

Mario Kart doesn't get categorized as a "Sports" game (see IGN review, "Genre: Racing Action" -- http://wii.ign.com/articles/868/868012p1.html). Admittedly, I'm thinking more of a simulation video game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_video_game). This is in reference to great-great-grandparent post's idea of "the same game without the NFL branding and fake teams and names". I mean, I'm just saying I've actually seen that get played out and end a company I worked at.

Re:What's a sports game, and what's licensed?

[JamesP]

Do you think people would buy 'Generic Kart Game' as opposed to 'Mario Kart'?

There's the brand, right there.

It probably wouldn't be as popular as if it didn't start within the Mario franchise.

Licensed doesn't matter. Brand does.

[tepples]

Do you think people would buy 'Generic Kart Game' as opposed to 'Mario Kart'?

There's the brand, right there.

Which illustrates my point: The discussion is not over whether it's "licensed" but whether it's a "brand". Why can't companies other than EA develop and publish a video game about a fictional sport league based on one of their own brands?

Re:Licensed doesn't matter. Brand does.

[JamesP]

They probably can, but they would have to develop (or carefully choose) a brand first

Something like that was done with 'Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball'

So I don't doubt EA could pull something like "The Sims goes Curling" even though they have money for the licenses.

And herein lies the problem, those that could use a brand instead of licensing probably don't have a strong brand.