Can $60 Games Survive?

donniebaseball23 writes "Game budgets continue to rise with each successive console generation, and with the Wii U launching later this year, the industry is on the cusp of yet another costly transition. Publishers have been regularly charging $60 for games this generation, but that model simply cannot survive, Nexon America CEO Daniel Kim said in an interview. 'I think at some point the console makers have to make a decision about how closed or open they're going to be to the different models that are going to be emerging,' Kim remarked. 'Today it's free-to-play, and I'm convinced that that one is going to continue to flourish and expand into other genres and other categories, but there may be something else completely and entirely different that comes out that again changes the industry.' He cautioned, 'If your mind is just set on keeping the current model of buy a game for $60, play for 40 hours, buy another game for $60, play for 40 hours, that model I think is eventually going to change. It's going to have to change.'"

Comments

HotS

[lawpoop]

I don't care, I'm still buying Heart of the Swarm when it comes out...!

Re:HotS

[Freddybear]

Me too, and Diablo III as well. I expect both of those $60 titles will be good for a lot more than 40 hours of play.

Re:HotS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care either, because I'm just going to pirate if I they keep doing this sort of thing. Video Game companies make massive profits. I really doubt that they need to raise the price again, but whatever.

If people like you didnt pirate then maybe they wouldn't.

I know each instance of piracy does not equal a lost sale. I know all of that. What you may not know is that even if no sale was going to happen, just knowing that somebody RIPPED YOU OFF and won't pay for your hard work, well there may be less-than-rational reasons of outrage for wanting to get what you can from those who have disposable income and are willing to pay. Feeling like it is owed to you and all of that becuase making a modern game really is a lot of hard work and they are only getting more complex.

Like I said, less than rational. It is not economics it is more like psychology. You ever see that damned entitlement mentality from a lazy person who does not work very hard? They think the world owes them something cause they breathe or whatever. Lots of Baby Boomers are like that. Ok. Now imagine somebody who really does work hard who feels the same way. See how much more justified they feel?

Re:HotS

[phantomfive]

And I'd pay an extra $10 if they added LAN support back.

Re:HotS

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, between the two of you...

"I think this should cost less cuz the game corporashuns make TEH HUGE PROFITZ" is not a valid reason to just take what you want. You're just a cheap asshole with busted-ass, tired old excuses. You are not entitled to anything, and this attitude isn't going to help you elsewhere (unless you're going into banking).

And companies don't make the prices what they are because they're really, really angry. They charge what they think they can on an estimated curve, using well-considered data about what the market will bear for similar games, on that platform.

Get your heads out of your asses.

Re:HotS

[Culture20]

knowing that somebody RIPPED YOU OFF

Microsoft ripped me off with Mechwarrior 4 and its "I don't like your CDROM drives" DRM. Since the package was open, I was SOL at CompUSA. I stopped buying new PC games then, and have been playing only console or old PC games. And CompUSA went out of business; good riddance.

Re:HotS

[poetmatt]

Time isn't value, and never was correlated. That's part of the issue here. The result of "more time = good" is that game producers were making elaborate timesinks which was basically idiotic.

Re:HotS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing what JoeMerchant meant. He is spending lots of time /using/ the game. Not single player, not digging through expanded bloat of 'lets add more to make it longer'. No, he's probably playing multi-player, or replaying the campaign on harder difficulties, or using the map editor to create his own content. That is the value, continued use, not 'more time spent'. There is a difference.

Re:HotS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as you believe pirates aren't entitled to anything, pirates don't feel developers are entitled to anything, either. Or at least they're not entitled to that much money, or money from themselves.

Think about that stalemate for a second and make a rational decision based on the fact that despite incredibly ridiculous attempts to curtail piracy that have gone beyond the point of alienating regular customers, piracy still exists, and will exist forever. Rational decisions include no longer selling anything/quitting the industry, lowering prices, ignoring the issue, or offering a cut down product for free (or a lower price). Rational decisions don't include "PIRATES ARE ASSHOLES, SO I WILL POST ABOUT THEM AND FIX THE PROBLEM".

Get your head out of your ass and you might just realize that emotional reactions are the problem and since the pirates don't give a damn one way or the other (hell, some of them are laughing at you right now, and will continue to laugh at you when you reply with "GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU SELFISH BASTARD"), the emotion isn't going to affect them. And clearly, neither are fines (considering it still happens after individuals are fined multiple times the GDP of many countries) nor jail time (considering 5 years of jail time is what VHS tapes always threatened).

You may keep fighting it tooth and nail, but you will mostly lose. Yes, you'll win a case against a 12 year old here, and an 80 year old grandma there, but in the end those people are broke, you won't get any money from them, and if they end up in jail, YOU'RE going to look like the bad guy.

Re:HotS

[Sitnalta]

I can see that side of the argument. However, movies cost about the same or more to make, and a blu-ray doesn't go for more than $30 USD.

Personally I never pay more than that for games. Unless it's Portal or Half Life, otherwise I wait for the sales.

Re:HotS

[infurnus]

knowing that somebody RIPPED YOU OFF

Microsoft ripped me off with Mechwarrior 4 and its "I don't like your CDROM drives" DRM. Since the package was open, I was SOL at CompUSA. I stopped buying new PC games then, and have been playing only console or old PC games. And CompUSA went out of business; good riddance.

If it makes you feel any better, Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries was re-released for free!

Re:HotS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's the developers who are acting entitled, because they're always taking money from people's bank accounts without consent and then shipping them a game regardless of whether or not the person actually wanted the game.

Your argument that each side has a valid claim against the other for feeling "entitled" is completely asinine. On one side, you have a party offering a product for exchange. If the second party doesn't agree with the terms of the exchange (either it's too expensive, or the game sucks, or whatever), then fine, you don't have to purchase it. There is no sense of entitlement there; they're making an offer, but you don't have to take it. The developer isn't entitled to anything because you don't have to buy the game. But on the other side, you have a party who just takes the product, regardless of whether or not they fulfilled the terms of the exchange. They just take it, as if they're entitled.

I honestly don't care about piracy, it doesn't bother me one bit... but what does bother me is when people try to rationalize their behavior by turning it around and making the developer/publisher/owner out to be the bad guy, and justify their behavior as if they're some sort of digital Robin Hood instead of just a greedy asshole who wants shit without paying for it. If a person wants to pirate any kind of intellectual property, fine... whatever... but at least fess up to it; don't rationalize it or try to justify it. If you don't give a shit about the people who make a living by creating the content you enjoy, or the companies who employ those people, or the industry that supports those companies... okay, that's your choice. Go ahead and keep on doing what you're doing. But don't expect me to have any sympathy for your position. Don't spin it around and try to portray yourself as the hero (I'm not directing this last comment at you specifically, just people in general who try to justify or rationalize piracy).

Re:HotS

[Benaiah]

$60 games? Lol maybe back in 1988 we had $60 games. I live in Australia where new release games cost $110 on the shelf, and at the moment our Dollar is worth more then yours so.... Imagine paying about $120 for new release games and you will know how we feel..
I would definitely pay $60 for a game. And i do have HOTS on pre order.

Re:HotS

[s0nicfreak]

they're always taking money from people's bank accounts without consent and then shipping them a game regardless of whether or not the person actually wanted the game

While they don't do that, what a lot of them do is make it impossible for a person to figure out if they actually want the game without buying it non-refundably. You can't find out if the game is worth its price, sucks, etc. without playing it. And often the only way to play it without handing over your money is to pirate.

While I don't feel I am entitled to games for free, I feel I am entitled to make informed decisions about where my money goes, and to purchase a game if - and only if - I feel it is worth my money. A developer is not entitled to my money because they released pretty videos to the internet, or because their company (which may or may not mean the same people worked on this game) has released a good game in the past.

Re:HotS

[hairyfeet]

Oh please! Has everyone including you forgotten that when valve as an experiment lowered the price of L4D to $2 their PROFITS on that game went up by 1700%? Geez someone need to wrap old Henry Ford in wire as the revolutions he is turning in his grave could power half the country!

Sadly the only ones that seem to get old style capitalism anymore is Valve and just look at 'em, old gabe can jump in a swimming pool full of money like Scrooge mcDuck, why? because the way you make money in a TRUE capitalist sense, instead of using the government to be your pitbull (as with all the nasty laws and DRM) is to sell it cheap and crank the things out like hotcakes. Well thanks to digital distribution and DVDs your cost per unit is so teeny tiny its practically non existent, so what do they do? do they lower the prices and then make MASSIVE profits when they are able to create franchises and tie ins and DLC and a bazillion other ways to make even MORE profits off those new customers? nope they go "Gee, how badly can we assrape our customers before they squeal like a piggy? charge 10% above that" and you have what you have now.

Piracy is the TRUE free markets answer to assraping prices and screwing over the consumer. You lower those prices and guess what? Not only can you practically wipe out piracy but you can then monetize those new customers even more with cool DLC, t-shirts and memorabilia, upselling them other products in your line, a smart businessman instead of a greedy one would know this, but sadly it isn't even limited to gaming this stupidity. Did you know in the late summer of 09 I saw Windows piracy practically disappear overnight? Did MSFT come up with some new DRM? Nope they were selling Win 7 HP for $50 which caused guys that had probably never bought a copy of Windows in their life to buy. Almost to the minute that MSFT removed the $50 win 7 HP and $100 triple packs suddenly the local Craigslist was filled with $100 PCs with $300 copies of Windows Ultimate.

In the end you can be a smart business like Valve, realize that while you can't stop piracy that doesn't mean you can't convert large numbers of them into paying customers. Hell I've probably blown $300 myself on steam in the last 6 months, even though I could pirate those games easily, because valve offers me games that are cheap, easy as "push button to get game" and convenient with autopatching and matchmaking, and now when i get done playing a Steam game they get to pop up a little window telling me what's on sale and you know what? they've made a shitload of sales to me that way. its called being SMART and knowing you'll make a hell of a lot more on 10 million customers than on half a million when the costs per unit is so incredibly cheap. DVDs are what? less than a dollar including packaging? And of course digital deliver is a pittance, so its really only stupid shortsighted greed that is keeping these companies from making a shitload more money. In a way it reminds me of the MPAA who screamed that VCRs would be the "Boston Strangler" of the movie industry...right up until their first check from videotape sales came in.

When you charge assraping prices you are simply leaving tons of money on the table, both from those that will pirate as well as from those that will simply walk away. its business 101 folks and charging the absolute limit the market will bear is almost never the way to maximize profits.

Re:HotS

[Bensam123]

...except that almost all companies charge $60 regardless of what PoS they dish out.

Re:HotS

[icebraining]

Actually, it's the other way around. Buyers, not pirates, are keeping the prices high.

Companies don't set prices by theur "feelings", that's ridiculous. They set prices based on what people are willing to pay. Therefore, it's the buyers fault, by being willing to pay $60/game, that prices are this high.

Re:HotS

[artor3]

The fact that the industry is screwing themselves over by overcharging and using onerous DRM does NOT entitle you to take a copy of their work for free.

You've spilled a lot of proverbial ink about all the things industry does wrong, but none of those things make it okay for you to just take whatever you want for free. It's a complete non-sequitur, and I see it all the time. The argument seems to boil down to, "I want it, so I should be able to have it at whatever price I'm willing to pay. If they won't give it to me at that price, that's their problem, not mine." That's not a sustainable attitude. It ends with people deciding that they really shouldn't have to pay at all (look around Slashdot, the attitude's already common here), at which point the top quality, expensive-to-produce content just ...stops.

If you don't think a particular good is worth the price, then don't buy it. But don't try to rationalize pirating it.

Re:HotS

[Dr Herbert West]

mod parent +insightful, please. Articulate and succinct.

Re:HotS

[Alamais]

The same tired arguments, still incomprehensible to me.

The Wings of Liberty campaign was easily as long as the original SC campaign, with massively improved storytelling and gameplay. I'm sure Heart of the Swarm and the Protoss campaign will be just as long, and probably even better.

Halo 2 was easily 50% longer than Halo CE. Halo 3 was perhaps a tad short, but was gorgeous and epic and had a great ending.

All of the above came with complete, entertaining multiplayer (blah blah sc2 lan whatever) too, if you're into that.

In no way did I end up feeling overcharged for these games. Reach I felt robbed by, but that's another argument entirely...

Re:HotS

[Uberbah]

The fact that the industry is screwing themselves over by overcharging and using onerous DRM does NOT entitle you to take a copy of their work for free.

Irrelevant in the end, as there is no functional difference between someone who pirates a game and someone who refuses to buy it.

Re:HotS

[realityimpaired]

Yeah, but you can pick up Crazy Machines or any of its standalone xpacs on Steam for $10, and easily get 10-20 hours of gameplay, not to mention fan-created puzzles. Isn't that better economy than paying $60 for a 40 hour game?

Don't get me wrong, for nostalgia alone I'll probably pick up D3, but the only $60 titles I've bought in years have been sequels to games I played a long time ago. I just don't see the point when most AAA games coming out are 10-20 hours, tops, and then expect you to spend *more* money on DLC so that you get the same length/quality of game that you would have gotten 10 years ago. And if it really is one of those "you just have to play it" titles, I'll wait until it goes on sale. Within a few months of original sale, most AAA games drop in price by at least $20.

Re:HotS

[TheRaven64]

Rational decisions include no longer selling anything/quitting the industry, lowering prices, ignoring the issue, or offering a cut down product for free (or a lower price)

Actually, ignoring the problem is exactly the right thing to do because piracy is not the problem. Piracy is an emotional issue, not a business issue. If you search for the title of any of my books on Google, I think the top hit is an illegal PDF download. Yes, it sucks. Move on. Back in the world of business, there are three categories of people:

• People who are your customers.
• People who might become your customers.
• People who will never be your customers.

None of these categories is pirates. Pirates are spread all over them and they are irrelevant. Your job as a business is to make sure that people in the first category stay in it, and people from the second category move into the first.

The anti-piracy measures by a number of companies have moved me out of their first category. Companies I used to buy from, I no longer do because my time is too valuable to waste on a product that may or may not work due to some DRM crap. I buy entertainment to be entertained, not to be frustrated (well, except adventure games, then it's a mixture of both). Meanwhile, pirates just get the version with the DRM stripped off and don't care.

I spent more money on GOG.com in the first six months than I had spent on games for the preceding five years. I'm pretty sure that they don't sell anything that isn't available on your favourite file sharing network, but I still prefer to buy than to pirate. Actually, that's probably true of the company I rent DVDs from too - they lock down their streaming service with so much DRM that I can't actually use it on the machine connected to my projector nor on my tablet (you know, the two places where I might actually want to watch films...) and yet somewhere like ThePirateBay has a much wider selection of films. I'm personally not going to pirate, but they've managed to make the illegal version far more attractive than the legal one, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people did.

Re:HotS

[hairyfeet]

Preaching changes NOTHING friend, you might as well be pissing in the wind. i will happily explain why your argument is worthless, ready? PPT math. You see it frankly doesn't matter whether you pirate it or not, as regardless of what you do the companies are gonna bring a PPT into congress and say "If you'll look at slide 4 you'll see we made X on this game with the consoles and since there are Y numbers of gamers we should have had X+Y in profits but we didn't get it so it must be teh ebil pirates argh! Give us more laws and extended copyrights" and you know what? they'll get it.

You see we are talking about capitalism and the market and whether that person takes the game or simply walks away doesn't matter in that sense because the end results are the same, money left on the table. I know many pirates that were converted into paying customers simply by Valve offering cheap games with easy ordering yet you still have companies like Ubisoft that do everything but shit on the game boxes before handing them to the customers, why? Can they not see all the money they are leaving on the table? Can they not see how many won't buy their products because frankly the pirated version is the better product thanks to its lack of DRM?

Its simple really, you give the people what they want or they go elsewhere, your morality means nothing to the market. If you magically destroyed piracy tomorrow i bet my last buck the sales wouldn't go up even 5%, because they simply would walk away, the end results would be no different than they are now. These assclown MBA, master of bullshitting assholes, simply have no ability to think beyond the quarter. Why should they? they'll have moved on long before any damage they do can be blamed on them anyway so why care? In the end when you try to introduce artificial scarcity with a product with infinite supply at little to no cost and then try to assrape the customers on top of that the market WILL route around the stupidity, be it with knockoff DVDs in China or Internet piracy. thinking that somehow THIS time, with THIS DRM you might get all those millions to actually pay you a bazillion dollars a product is just delusional. Either you take the amount they are willing to pay or watch as they walk away, your choice.

Re:HotS

[MattSausage]

God help me for not going AC with this reply, but here goes: Piracy is a direct result of the cost of digital goods.

If game companies want people to stop pirating their games, lower the price. That is the silver bullet. In general people don't pirate games because they are too lazy to go to the store (or even better, the website) and buy it. The VAST majority of piracy is due to people not seeing the cost/value ratio of that entertainment within acceptable parameters.

Obviously people don't necessary consciously think those things. But if you look at Louis C.K.'s latest gamble with his DVD. Charging a fair (or beyond fair) price makes piracy almost completely disappear. Louis made money hand over fist, and piracy was almost non-existent.

$60 dollar games cause piracy. It is that simple.

Re:HotS

[Canazza]

Lower the price AND make distribution easier.

One of the things I currently hate about the games industry is the difference between release dates across the world. Okay, it's about 5 days between US and UK, but it can be months until somewhere like Australia can get it. and it even happens on STEAM and other Digital Distributers, which is frankly *insane*.

I don't pirate, (not for about 6 years), and I buy very few AAA titles (most don't interest me) and cheap Indie games or F2P games are much more fun imo. Something like Tribes Ascend, or Minecraft have given me alot more enjoyment, and alot more TIME put into it, than something like Call of Duty or Halo could ever give.

I bought Deus Ex:Human Revolution and enjoyed that alot, but I didn't buy the DLC until it was in the 66% off sale on Steam. I'm not upset that I didn't get the main game for that, since I'm more than happy to pay a bit extra for Day-1 play.

Re:HotS

[wild_quinine]

The fact that the industry is screwing themselves over by overcharging and using onerous DRM does NOT entitle you to take a copy of their work for free...If you don't think a particular good is worth the price, then don't buy it. But don't try to rationalize pirating it.

You're missing the point completely. Piracy *happens*, and the argument put forwards is that there's a price threshold below which piracy dramatically reduces, and profits may well also increase. This is a good argument and likely to be true.

It doesn't MATTER that piracy is wrong. Did the OP say that he was a pirate? He talked simply about the fact that at high prices, piracy is more prevalent than at low prices.

That, my friend, is called a fact. If you want to continue selling at those high prices because piracy is wrong , even if it bankrupts your company then that's your prerogative. You're an idealist, but you're not a businessman.

No good businessman ever looked at the facts of the market and said 'Well sir, I don't care much for the way the world actually is, I think I'll base my pricing strategy on a number that I personally like.'

Re:HotS

[Bomazi]

Movies have a much larger audience than games. They sell at a lower price, but they sell more. You have to look at total revenues, not per unit price.

Re:HotS

[AJH16]

I would hazard that as long as you either a) stop playing it after deciding not to purchase or b) buy the game after deciding to purchase, then the above poster likely would have no issue with your justification. I think it is more just a rant against the prevalence of individuals who take a "holier than thou" attitude to piracy for piracy's sake to "stick it to the man" without actually abstaining from the content (which would be the truly praise worthy behavior). For people like me, who do at least occasionally actually refrain from buying content because of the company that makes it or because we feel the price is unreasonable, it is very frustrating to see someone be the jackass that is used to keep the companies in denial and harm the very cause they claim to support.

It's easy for a company to not change their behavior when they see people are still consuming their product and simply not paying for it. Clearly this shows people want what they are making, but they are simply taking it because they can. The (apparent) solution to this is to simply make it more difficult to do so, which hurts everyone. When nobody consumes it at all, it shows that something is wrong with the model all together and demonstrates that something needs to fundamentally change for the company to be successful. The problem is, my choice to suffer through not consuming something is rendered useless by some selfish, deluded individual who lacks the self control to not consume and the default assumption becomes that all "lost sales" are a result of piracy, not an active purchasing decision.

Re:HotS

[Bert64]

Indeed, reviews these days are bought and paid for by the games companies so you simply cannot trust them... Publications that review games rely on the goodwill of publishers to provide prerelease copies of games for them to review, but publishers will simply refuse to do this if the publication has published bad reviews, forcing them to purchase the games on the open market after they've been released, by which time all their competitors have already published their reviews months ago.

And game demos, if they are made available at all, tend to showcase the best aspects of the game. I played a game demo of a platform game years ago which was just the first level and it was great, bought the full game and found that:
Subsequent levels were nowhere near as good as the first one...
There was no way to save, so if you died you went back to the start.
Although the first level was good, playing it over and over again soon got boring... Playing the second level over and over in order to get to the third really bored me to death and i never got any further than that.

Other things to consider...

The cost of producing a game is a one off, the actual per copy cost is trivial (and has actually gone down, you no longer get big boxes, multiple floppies, printed manuals etc and some are distributed online now so not even media costs)... If the games were priced more cheaply, then they would sell more copies and still make the same or more profit... Most people who buy games would simply buy more if the prices were cheaper, and some of those who pirate would switch to buying instead.

Many games are simple remakes of older games, i doubt they cost all that much to make, and yet they are still sold at the same prices as original games... A lot of sports games come out every year, and the only change is an updated list of players and teams - hardly a huge budget activity... Charging full price for such games makes people feel even more ripped off.

Some are just one or more games from an older platform, bundled with an emulator... No original content at all really, and yet still full price.

DRM schemes do nothing to stop serious pirates, who will soon have a crack available... It is paying customers who have to suffer with the various hassles caused by the scheme.

The only other impact is "casual piracy", that is where someone makes a copy for their friends... We used to do this a lot in school, since being schoolkids we simply couldnt afford to purchase all the games, so everyone bought a handful of games and we traded copies among ourselves.
Those games which we couldn't copy due to copy protection schemes, we went and bought copyable pirate copies from someone...
Had we not been able to copy the games, or acquire pirate copies, we would just have played less games and found other things to do... We simply couldn't afford to buy more games than we did. If the games had been cheaper, we would have bought more for the same money.

Re:HotS

[CastrTroy]

This is my biggest problem with video games right now. Everyone is charging the same price for every game regardless of how good the game actually is, or how much time and money went into making the game. I don't mind spending $60 on games. But I don't get more than 2 games a year at that price. And those 2 games last me about the entire year. Because, if I'm going to spend $60, I'm going to make sure that I don't end up spending $60 for a game I'm only going to play for 2 hours.

Re:HotS

[ArhcAngel]

Agreed, I bought and played both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on Steam as well as all the DLC. I have never had an issue with Steam's DRM and switching to a new PC was almost a painless process (Still had to DL all the games over). When I heard EA was forcing the use of it's Origin PoS I was incensed! Origin has been in Beta longer than most Google properties and doesn't add anything other than letting EA spy on my PC. I did purchase the DVD copy of Mass Effect 3 over the weekend but it still installs Origin. Now I have to watch what I say because if EA can tie your Origin account to any negative comments about them they will ban you and you can't play any of the games you "own".

Re:HotS

[hairyfeet]

Thanks for pointing out that I didn't say "just go pirate it" but pointed out what shouldn't even NEED to be pointed out, that when the price rises to above a certain threshold piracy (or a black market with physical goods) flourishes and when it drops below a certain threshold where the needs of the majority are met trivially then those markets dry up. You would think this would be the most obvious and common sense thing said here but i guess i'll need to give another example.

Now with new games I simply refuse to pay more than $20, if you don't offer it to me at that price or below (my personal sweet spot is $10 or less) then i simply walk away and that is money you have left on the table which when you are talking a price per unit of literally pennies then that is just stupid to leave that money on the table and as L4D showed when you hit the sweet spot the sales become truly astronomical. hell I would argue there are even times that giving away something valuable for nothing can pay off long term, as it was the Portal I giveaway that got me on steam where they have gotten easily more than $200 off of me in the past 6 months.

Now have I pirated games in the past? yes I have. is that because I felt entitled? no it is because the companies refused to service my needs and the pirates did.; i have been on 64bit operating systems since 2005 and many of the games before the release of Win 7 were tied to 32bit DRM that at best simply would give you nothing but the finger in return for your money but i quickly found that was NOT the norm, the norm was to try to jam 32bit code into a 64bit kernel using hooks which took a giant shit on the entire system and threw stability right out the window. so in my case the pirates actually offered me a better value not so much on price but by offering a product I could actually run without fear that it would trash my system. I'm not the only one who has been bitten by DRM, watch this video (warning language NSFW) and look at how many PC games the guy owns and gets nothing for his money. He would have been better off pirating. If you don't serve the market the market will route around the damage, be it with black markets or knockoffs or piracy. that's just how it works folks.

Re:HotS

[Kelbear]

1) For reviews that are not paid for, see www.giantbomb.com. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for refusing to bow to pressure to raise his review score on a game which was paying Gamespot for advertising. 3 others eventually followed him to Giantbomb. They've given bad reviews even games from their friends on several occassions. The one time where they felt they could not stay objective they abstained from reviewing the game (Bastion).

2) Giantbomb doesn't care what publishers think about them. Giantbomb doesn't choose to review every game in existence, just the ones they feel matter enough for them to play. If the publishers don't want to send a review copy, GB just buys one after release and puts out a review later. If a gamer can't wait until after release to find out whether a game is good or not, then a bad game is just part of the risk for jumping in early.

3) They have 30-60min "quicklooks" to demonstrate games. They either go in cold, or have saves prepared to show off parts of the game they feel you should see. Either way, it's unedited gameplay with ad-libbed commentary, you can just watch these and judge for yourself.

Re:HotS

[AJH16]

Maybe in part, though I think that is more because of the SAAS direction of the tech industry as a whole. The notion of purchasing copies of software is becoming unpopular with software vendors who would rather have a subscription service that gives continuous income. This is a very scary trend as it threatens to make computing a controlled and limited experience. I'm not saying SAAS is bad, however having it replace software as a tangible product seems dangerous at best to the freedom that technology has brought us. I also agree that rampant piracy contributes (though is not the only factor) to this trend.

$60 games? Luxury!

[JackCorbae]

$60 Games? I'd LOVE to see the price drop to $60 games. Most new PC Titles in Australia debut at between $89 and $99. The collectors edition of .. .Dragon Age I think it was, was $109. $60 games ... luxury.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the AU$ is worth more than a US$ at the current exchange rate.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Anonymous Coward]

And console games are regularly $120. Ten years ago, when the exchange rate was at $US0.50 - $US0.60, it made sense. it was the US price + a little overhead for the distance + exchange rate. now we're at $US1.05ish and have been for a long time without sign of dropping there's no excuse for $120. If it's $60 in the USA, it should be $60 in Australia, or maybe $65 to account for extra logistical costs.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Anonymous Coward]

Opportunistic profiteering. It used to be exchange rate, but the Australian dollar has doubled in value since the $100 price was set, but the price of games has never come down in response.

Either the distributor or the publisher is pocketing the windfall, I guarantee neither the developer nor the retailer is getting any of it. If the retailer was, then competition would have brought the price down.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Dyinobal]

Huh you'd think they'd get hit with price fixing or something. Then again I'm in no way qualified to speculate on anything legal or economic in nature.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[fiziko]

The same thing happened in Canada. Why don't they lower the prices? Because we're used to paying them, so they don't have to. If we stop paying artificially inflated prices for all of our media, it'll change. NOTE: I'm not advocating piracy. That won't change their minds; they'll just say we are ripping them off for the heck of it. I'm advocating that individuals do not spend money on media with prices that seem artificially inflated, and that those doing so tell the media providers that this is happening and why.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[fiziko]

That works in the extreme southern trim only. The U.S. border is an 8 hour drive from here, IF I'm speeding, and it's two tanks of gas, each at the cost of a game. Vancouver, Toronto, etc. can do that. Much of the country can't.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely profiteering. I was a game dev until the high dollar ripped the arse out of the local industry, and I also had contacts with an Australian distributor from a previous job, who let me buy games at wholesale prices as an employee perk. We were paid the same to develop the game, no matter how much it made. At wholesale price, I was paying around AUD65-80 for new games, which if you factor in all the costs of running a shopfront isn't giving the retailer an excessive profit at AUD90-100 per game. With the exchange rate change, the wholesale cost should have dropped to around AUD30-40, but it didn't. Now whether it's the publisher or the distributors overseas head office getting the money, I don't know, I only know that none of that fat profit is staying in Australia.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[sortius_nod]

Which is what drives us Aussies nuts! We know that the games are not worth what we pay, there's no justification to pay almost double US prices in some cases (some PS3 games release at $120... that's 1/3 the cost of a console). I refuse to pay full price for games here. It's either hit up a torrent site or wait until they drop to a reasonable price on Steam.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Z34107]

The extra $60 is for translation. And discs that spin the opposite direction.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Nursie]

Direct Import. Gerry Harvey is right, it is killing local stores, but that's because they either can't or won't compete.

10% GST is irrelevant when games often cost 100% more here.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[mjwx]

Why is that? Taxes? or what?

Media is only subject to the Australian Goods and Services Tax (GST) of 10%. So that's A$72 per game Ex GST (no tax). All prices in Australia are Inc GST unless explicitly stated otherwise.

The problem is local publishers having a stranglehold on the market. They set the price at an artificially high price point based on an exchange rate that hasn't been seen for a decade (not even the GFC got that low and we're pretty much consistently above US$0.70 since 2004).

A while back the Australian government made it legal to parallel import many products including games, movies, digital media, clothing and electronics from overseas. Shipments of A$1000 or less are GST exempt (but other duties like alcohol tax still apply). So I just import from the UK or Hong Kong for half the price of buying it locally, the OP pointed out Mass Effect which is A$88 for the PC, I can order it from Zavvi.co.uk for GBP 28 which is around A$45.

This year alone I've bought a laptop and 2 SSD's from the US saving nearly A$1000 in the process (Asus U46SV in Oz A$1400, in the US US$850, tax is still only 10% but seeing as it was under A$1000, I didn't have to pay it).

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Sabriel]

Okay, blowing moderation for this one. The *average* salary is not the *median* salary. Just because some folk are being paid silly amounts by the mining sector (or for that matter whichever sector is paying you "well over double" the average!), thus distorting the economy, doesn't mean the rest of us are remotely near easy street.

TLDR: $100 is not significant to YOU.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[sourcerror]

The translation bit was lame,

Maybe you forgot that Mad Max was redubbed for US release.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[tlhIngan]

The same thing happened in Canada. Why don't they lower the prices? Because we're used to paying them, so they don't have to. If we stop paying artificially inflated prices for all of our media, it'll change.

Actually, what happened is consumers revolted, and the government started asking questions. They started demanding answers to why, when the loonie was at par, why they were still paying anywhere from 1.2-1.5x as much.

The first retailers to do so were Best Buy/Future Shop who basically started matching US pricing, realizing that big ticket items would make it more affordable to go the US to buy. The prices started dropping and it's no longer worth going to the US to pick it up - it can even cost more after shipping and customs and duties and other fees. The only reason to shop in the US the expanded selection. After this, most other retailers started doing the same thing.

The industries which are still failing this are the books and toys, where the Canadian price still has a premium. Amazon.ca, while not as good as Amazon.com fixes the first issue, and Wal-mart fixes the second )when you get them on sale).

Australians - do what Canada did - revolt and start demanding answers.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Ihmhi]

Edmonton

No, he said "habitable".

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Ihmhi]

Solution:

1) Find more fellow pissed off video game employees.
2) Form your own company.
3) Make and sell games domestically at a lower rate.
4) Sell games to Americans for $60 (when they're $30 in Australia).
5) Profit!

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[crossmr]

Canadians have dealt with it for years. It's much more obvious to us since we get american channels and ads and everything else.
Back when the Canadian dollar stopped being garbage it took a long time for book sellers to reset their prices. When the dollar sucked and waslike 63 cents us, we were paying 6.99USD/10.99CAD for books.
Then finally the dollar shot up and was work 1.02 USD. But the book companies didn't adjust their prices. This went on for a month or two and people started getting really ticked off.
They could buy it in the US and ship it cheaper.
I think their solution was to raise the US price.

Re:$60 games? Luxury!

[Alamais]

The international shippers charge extra to murder their way through the horde of sharks, giant spiders, and dingoes to get the games to your stores.

No, the new system is the salami swindle

[Opportunist]

Here's your game, for just 10 bucks. Plus 5 bucks for the equipment that you need in level 2. Plus 7.99 for the multiplayer addon (i.e. what you actually bought the game for). For just 3 bucks a pop you get new maps. Not happy with our controller layout? For just 5 bucks you can now create your own AND store it online on our server for just 3 bucks a month. Oh, talking about it, to play online of course you have to pay 10 bucks a month to play on our secure and dedicated servers... for as long as we run them only, of course. Which will be about a year, when the 2013 edition comes out. But hey, it's only going to cost 10 bucks!

john c dvorak had an article in the early 90s

[decora]

predicting the end of the $40 computer game.

people say we are logical, and we have science, and we no longer rely on witch doctors and shamanism and we dont believe in magic.

but pundits are our shamans, and we throw bones trying to predict these things that are not only unpredictable, but dont really matter that much, but we love to do it.

something about the mysticism is there in all of us , and which part of it is good, and which is bad?

the really interesting moments when you realize you were wrong, and you were wrong for wrong reasons.

Re:john c dvorak had an article in the early 90s

[BitZtream]

Well, it kind of makes you look silly if you ever took anyone predicts the end of any of these major companies happening over night. Everyone knows its just grandstanding and the more incorrect statement you can make up and the backup with 'facts' the more attention you get.

Nothing has changed that would make the price of games go down, the author just discovered a new type of game that was already there.

Tetris came before Angry Birds and in another 20 years, they'll be some other tiny, cheap game that will be a fad for a year or two, nothing changes, you're just becoming more aware of the way the world around you works. Dvorak will then be predicting the end of the $240 game and I'll still be having conversations with my wife about how that $240 game is actually cost effective if you consider that I'll literally end up paying less than $1 an hour of play that I'll get out of the game.

Mass Effect 3 for instance is $60 now. Thats 7 or 8 times the cost of a movie ticket on average. To make things easy, lets say that movies cost $4/hour. My latest Mass Effect 2 play through has roughly 60 hours on it of me screwing around. This is at least my 3rd time I've completed it, first on easy, then a couple play throughs on hard.

Thats roughly $0.33 cents an hour.

In 1970, 33 cents an hour for entertainment would have been GOOD. The price won't drop when there is that much value in the content compared to other forms of entertainment. Cheap fads come and go in every industry/sport/entertainment option and theres always someone shouting about the demise of something else, even though pretty much the same thing has happened before.

Mass Effect 3 is $80

[rsilvergun]

Yeah, you can buy it for $60, but there's a chunk of pretty critical zero day DLC. Heck, Super Street Fighter II was $70 in 1995, and Phantasy Star was $80 in '84. But then again those were both commercial failures in the States...

Re:Mass Effect 3 is $80

[jaymz666]

or you can wait 6-18 months and get the game for $10-$20 on sale on origin or steam if they let them sell it and the DLC is still $10.

don't forget the bandwith fees

[Joe_Dragon]

from as high as $2.50 a gig to lowes of $10 for 50 gigs

Free to play will have to show balance to thrive.

[PrimalChrome]

I expect the market to correct the model of $5 DLC for one hour of play to occur before $60 for 40 hours of play. DLC, hats, and paid content with regards to Free-To-Play will do well in the market....but there is a lot to be said for a level playing field and flat initial cost for people that play in even casual/competitive games. Knowing another player can drop $20 and get a BFG-2000 that insta-nukes his opponents may encourage griefing kiddies to play...but eventually drives away the core market.

That being said, it Riot Games has done an excellent job with balancing Free-To-Play competitive gaming with League of Legends.

Biased Parties

[rsmith-mac]

This just in: Free 2 Play Publisher Says $60 Games Doomed.

Meanwhile In other news this evening, RJ Reynolds has a new study out proving that smoking is good for you and makes you look cooler.

Death of $60 games is greatly exaggerated

[flagg9483]

Are you kidding? There are men out there who will pay $200 if a woman will just get naked and call him daddy for an hour. Anyone who thinks gamers won't pay $1.50/hour for a game is crazy. Hell, I pumped more than 6 quarters an hour into arcade games once a week when I was a kid, and that's back when you'd actually pick up a quarter in the street if you found one.

Inflation

[Gideon Wells]

Games having been keeping up with inflation if you assume the same time goes into producing a game, but just using better technologies. Good games can be worth 60. The only thing I see ending is bad games being able to charge as much as they used to now that there is more competition thanks to Steam, X-Box Live Arcade and the like.

But then look at TF2. Valve has admitted that game hit a ceiling in profitability, and making it F2P has turned it into a real money maker. So that might be the future. Cheap game, sell hats for profit.

Meanwhile in Aus ...

[Evil Pete]

... games are typically $100 or even $110. I see ME3 for PC is going for just $88 ... a bargain :-/ What's that in US currency .... $93. Yeah.

What about 20 years ago

[Osgeld]

when 4 hour games cost 50 bucks?

Zero Day DLC

[OutLawSuit]

I have no problem with $60 games or even DLC. The problem I have is $60 games with zero day DLC (like Mass Effect 3). It's obvious that many developers are starting to use it to discreetly jack up the price of the core game. Then to add insult to injury, they claim it was never intended to be part of the core game despite the files already being physically on the disk.

If developers were just honest, I wouldn't have much of a problem with the practice. Instead, they're trying to play us for idiots.

For those with long memories

[AdamHaun]

Don't forget inflation when complaining about game prices.

$60 in 2010 adjusted using the unskilled wage as an index via MeasuringWorth.com:

2005: $55.30
2000: $48.60
1995: $41.00
1990: $35.30
1985: $30.40

The CPI-based results are within $1-2 of this, if you're curious. I tried to dig up some old game prices for comparison, but this information seems hard to find. Anyone know a good source?

Re:For those with long memories

[blahplusplus]

"Don't forget inflation when complaining about game prices."

Let's not forget wage stagnation. Everyone forgets about the most important thing - stagnation of wages. What matters is purchasing power and that is more complicated to calculate.

Re:For those with long memories

[NIN1385]

I feel I need to also point out that these games sold back then were also a physical good that once you purchased you owned everything necessary to play that game all the way to the end and you could even re-sell said game when you got tired of it for a price that wasn't terrible.

Inflation does come into play big time, but the way games are delivered to the customer is really pissing a lot of people off, me being one of them. Today when you buy a game you're actually just purchasing the product key for that game. I have not went through it myself as of yet, but I can only imagine the nightmare scenario where I have to explain my hard drive (in my PC or PS3) has had a hardware failure and trying to talk to a company that is no longer supporting a particular game into helping me get my game back. Not even sure I would want to subject myself to that kind of torture.

I guess what I am trying to say is that times have changed drastically and this whole idea of the cloud kind of worries me, I want to purchase something I can hold in my hands. If I can't hold it in my hands, I want to at least know that I can use that same code to reinstall the game that I purchased on my computer or the computer I later own after I upgrade. Is that being unreasonable? Am I asking too much as a customer? Discuss...

The problem is the length of the games

[msobkow]

When I stopped buying video games, the average game took me about 60-80 hours to finish.

My friends now regularly finish games in as little 12-15 hours.

So where I paid $40 for my games, about $0.50/hour play time at best, my friends are now paying about $2-4/hour, and that's not even ten years later.

What's unsustainable is the presumption that gamers have infinitely deep pockets, or that people don't give damn about the value for their dollar if the game is "good enough." Sooner or later, things are going to crash. And the popularity of used and "old" games in the $20 bins is starting to prove that point, as are the number of $10-20 internet games.

Remember, the industry is now competing with "App" games that sell for $1-5 each. Sure "Angry Birds" doesn't have the visceral glory of the console games, but it's fun to the people who play it and it's not costing them an arm and a leg. Expect more of the same, or a major crash in the whole gaming industry.

Re:The problem is the length of the games

[firefrei]

When I stopped buying video games, the average game took me about 60-80 hours to finish.

My friends now regularly finish games in as little 12-15 hours.

So where I paid $40 for my games, about $0.50/hour play time at best, my friends are now paying about $2-4/hour, and that's not even ten years later.

Three things:

(1) Good games are generally replayable. I don't like buying games that I play only once and then shit on the shelf. A good game for me is one that has enough depth and variety that I can replay it in a number of different ways and get different outcomes. For recent titles, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one that comes to mind. I can play stealth only, or entirely non-lethal, rambo style, undetected by anyone, and so on. Or I can just take more time at exploring the world and finding hidden entrances/praxis kits. Whatever works, so long as I can keep playing the same game until I'm bored. It certainly saves me money and extends the time I can enjoy the one game.

(2) I generally don't want to take 60-80 hours to finish one game. Make a game too long and you run the risk of the player becoming a bit bored and wanting to move onto something different. This is where (1) comes in handy - a shorter game with greater replayability means you won't have to wait too long for the game to reach its conclusion, then you can replay with different tactics/a new character build. If the game was crazy long, you might end up restarting with a new build before it even ends (or worse, abandon it for something fresh).

(3) $2-4/hour, not taking into account (1) and (2) is still a lot better value than most hobbies.

Re:Free to play will have to show balance to thriv

[viperidaenz]

Wasn't it the BFG-9000? a BFG-2000 sounds whimpy in comparison.

wrong question

[PopeRatzo]

I think the question ought to be, "Should $60 games survive?"

Is $60 really that ridiculous?

[MindPhlux]

I'm sort of surprised by the comments on here. I'm approaching 30, so I grew up buying games in the 'good old days' when they were ~$20-35. But if you account for inflation, is $60 really that unreasonable? I mean, I'm not mindblowingly rich, and I am pretty stingy with my money as far as just going out and dropping a 50 bill on something - but $60 for a really good game seems pretty ok. Most of the time, the $59.95 titles will have preorder sales or whatever for $45-50, and if you can wait a couple months, you can usually score top tier games for $39.95.

I'm pretty OK with paying that amount of money for good games - they usually last more than 4-6 movies lengths of entertainment, so that seems par for course as far as entertainment goes. Of course, I never spend my money on bad games - I usually find a way to errr, preview them before committing - so maybe my game buying experience is different than that of the average consumer.

Nexon's customer service is HORRIBLE

[NoSleepDemon]

Nexon's games might be "free", but they're also trash. Case in point: Dungeon Fighter Online suffers frequent hacks and break ins, and players complain on the message boards about SIX MONTH WAITING TIMES for tickets involving account hacks and the items stolen are items that were paid for by real money. I'll take my $60 game thank you very much, because that's the only money i'll have to spend on it to enjoy it, and no one's going to break into my account and nick all my stuff. An example of the kind of crap Nexon customer support makes its players deal with:

Greetings,

****Please note that this is an auto-generated message from Nexon Support based on your support ticket. If you are reading this message in your email, please understand that any replies to this email will not be seen by the Nexon Support Staff. If you would like to provide additional information please add a comment to your ticket.****

Unfortunately, we are continuing to experience a high ticket volume at this time. We have not forgotten you and we apologize that a GM has not yet been able to assist you.

Please note our Nexon Support business hours. We answer tickets Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm Pacific time.

We will do our best to assist you as soon as possible.

Thank you for your continued patience,

Nexon Support Team

Ticket Information:

Ticket #: 19000-1054887

Date Created: 1/18/2012 05:55 PM PDT

Ticket created in January, nothing but weeks of automated emails. A little ironic that a person whose company is this epicly awful at serving their customers is trying to tell others how to operate their business.