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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.'"
$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.
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!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Visit the
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Irrelevant in the end, as there is no functional difference between someone who pirates a game and someone who refuses to buy it.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.