Because software companies control the supply they also control the price and they have no incentive to lower prices for a popular product. Why in the world should they do that?
I am not saying that Quake 3 should be priced lower, that is for ID Software to decide how they price their products. Hell, I even bought it when it came out, played it a lot, and felt that I got my money's worth.
I am just saying that increased sales of software won't make the prices go down. On the contrary, high sales of a game would imply to the company that the price of the product was actually right since it sold a lot. And thus, it would be an incentive to price coming products at the same level (or maybe even higher?).
You say I am babbling away but it seems to me that this is an easy way for you to not answer the important question: Will bigger sales of computer games lower prices? What do you think?
Ever since growing up in the 1980s I have heard the game producers (then for the Amiga) claim that with less piracy they would sell more games and thus be able to sell them at a lower price.
For me this has always been a flawed argument. It is economical theory: If somebody sells more of a product they will just reap the profits, not lower the prices to fix their profits at a certain (low) point. It is not like a company will go: "Damm, we are really selling a lot, lets lower to price so we don't earn too much money".
If more people bought original games it would only mean that game companies would earn more money, not that the prices on games would change. It would probably have the side effect, though, of more games being produced as more companies would be willing to enter an industry where there is profit to be gained.
As a real-world example we can just look at some of the PC top-sellers, like for example Quake 3. This game was relatively cheap to develop and everybody knew that it was gonna sell a shitload of copies. Does that mean it was sold at a lower price? Of course not, it just means that ID Software would earn more money.
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That is exactly my point.
Because software companies control the supply they also control the price and they have no incentive to lower prices for a popular product. Why in the world should they do that?
I am not saying that Quake 3 should be priced lower, that is for ID Software to decide how they price their products. Hell, I even bought it when it came out, played it a lot, and felt that I got my money's worth.
I am just saying that increased sales of software won't make the prices go down. On the contrary, high sales of a game would imply to the company that the price of the product was actually right since it sold a lot. And thus, it would be an incentive to price coming products at the same level (or maybe even higher?).
You say I am babbling away but it seems to me that this is an easy way for you to not answer the important question: Will bigger sales of computer games lower prices? What do you think?
Ever since growing up in the 1980s I have heard the game producers (then for the Amiga) claim that with less piracy they would sell more games and thus be able to sell them at a lower price.
For me this has always been a flawed argument. It is economical theory: If somebody sells more of a product they will just reap the profits, not lower the prices to fix their profits at a certain (low) point. It is not like a company will go: "Damm, we are really selling a lot, lets lower to price so we don't earn too much money".
If more people bought original games it would only mean that game companies would earn more money, not that the prices on games would change. It would probably have the side effect, though, of more games being produced as more companies would be willing to enter an industry where there is profit to be gained.
As a real-world example we can just look at some of the PC top-sellers, like for example Quake 3. This game was relatively cheap to develop and everybody knew that it was gonna sell a shitload of copies. Does that mean it was sold at a lower price? Of course not, it just means that ID Software would earn more money.