Games are too expensive

[Brandon237]

Never buy new. Simple, the only game I have that was made within the last year was crap and a waste of money. If you wait long enough, the prices fall off a cliff. I recently got bioshock for $10. Crysis warhead only cost me $20. I got dead space for $12 and just cause for $5. Why? Because I got them ages after they came out (I got all of them in the last 6 months).

 

[Sephychu]

Hence why I buy used games but OH NO I'M KILLING THE INDUSTRY.

Though it's better than not buying games at all, yes? I really can't justify spending $120 on a video game.

That does sound like one hell of a price.

 

[Flames66]

I won't spend more than £10 on a game. Don't like it games companies? Spend your money more carefully and price your games reasonably.

 

[Daipire]

$50 seems reasonable for a game. If you can't afford that then buy indie games or wait for it to go on sale.

or pirate it

I agree

 

[Kair]

Let's take a moment and think about what I just said. Oh wait, why not just ignore it and make assumptions instead?

People like you are the bane of social development.

Why not explain it and develop on your original point rather then just insult people and not address points brought up
A game is not a living necessity, it is a luxury right?
Therefore it should not be free, however even necessities are rarely free

Games also take money to make, from employing people, transportation costs, software & hardware costs, fixed costs (such as electricity and land to create and distribute the game on)
There is also a demand for these and enough to supply this demand, therefore the developers can put the game at a price that competes with other game prices

The only way a game could be free is if it cost nothing to make, made for charitable purposes where the developer made a loss or it receives money from a different manner (such as adverts)
Even the lowest method of distributing games (online downloads) still has to keep severs up and running

So how can you justify making information free when it costs to make and distribute games?

I was not the one who insulted.

 

[The Rockerfly]

I was not the one who insulted.

Okay well never mind the insults, why not address my points? I would at least like to understand your philosophy

 

[RobJameson]

Well, with the PC it's fine since it's rare for a great game to be more than £20-25. You always get the douches trying to charge us more and give us expensive dlc (£10 for 3 small maps, ROFL) but thankfully we can actually pirate the game and protest unlike consoles who are stuck paying the ridiculous prices they charge.

Hell the companies are raking it in, just look at IW/Activision or Bungie; these are the companies founded on the console who charge utterly criminal amounts for games that cost a pittance to make. The consoles haven't got any more powerful, the Xbox 360 was released in 2005 for crying out loud, if my PC was running tech from 2005 I'd kill myself. What it means is that the engines powering the games and coding in them doesn't really change, they don't have to make it compatible with the latest GPU or CPU architecture or the newest Direct X release/OS. They put very little effort into their games and charge a premium price for them due to the fact they have a captive audience (console gamers) who don't seem to have a tight knit community like the PC does.

Maybe the developers will pop back to PC but I doubt it, they get easy cash from the consoles and the worst part is the PC pays for it, all the gaming money is in the console market so we get crappy ports from the console and our games get held back since the technology doesn't advance because consoles are just horribly inflexible. They have on control system and their hardware is the same for years so the gaming tech doesn't move forward. I just hope that this changes in the next decade.

 

[LordZ]

They are expensive, but take a look at how much it costs to make each individual game. I'm not talking flash based indie games, I mean cutting edge Triple-A titles. Games aren't cheap because it's super expensive to make them. But even Braid, a much vaunted indie game was reported to cost the developer $170,000 to produce by himself. That's nothing to scoff at.

For reference: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 cost somewhere between $40 and $50 million. Gran Tourismo 5 has already spent over $60 million, and still hasn't been released yet. God of War 3 spent $44 million.

The average game has a budget between $18 million and $28 million. Why are games so expensive? They cost so much to develop.

EDIT: All budget data was accumulated from Kotaku.com

Going over budget or simply setting your budget too high is not our problem. If you can't run your business in a way that is profitable that is your fault.

Personally, I think most of the so-called AAA titles are trash. They have a lot of pretty graphics and not much else. Yeah, some are almost worth their price but those are few and far between. It doesn't change the fact that these companies need to learn to go with a budget and a price that is reasonable, if they want to survive.

 

[Burst6]

That's why i rent. $60? what am i? made of money.

I only buy games that i know i will play for a long time ( super street fighter 4, team fortress 2, etc). Everything else is from Gamefly.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

They average at about $130-140 in New Zealand.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

Modern Warfare 2: $70

70. Fucking. Dollars.
And for some reason the PC version was marked up to $80.

Good thing I didn't buy that blatant cash-in.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

They average at about $130-140 in New Zealand.

JESUS CHRIST that's like a new PSP or DSL here.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

They average at about $130-140 in New Zealand.

JESUS CHRIST that's like a new PSP or DSL here.

That's for a new release game, that's $30 more then my rent a week ^^; It's why I pre-order games I really want and pay em off around a month before they're out.

 

[vallorn]

yeah i saq a new copy of Nier for £24.99 yesterday. look like Activision didnt set a price trend with MW2 after all.

 

[Jesus Phish]

I remember when I was younger and the PS1 was in its glory days. I could go into the local HMV and pick up 3, sometimes 4 games for £20. And they were good games. Either from the platnium series or just older versions of a series.

I've only ever gotten two games (seperately) for under that price now for my 360. I love steam for it's sales, but I think 50-60e for a new xbox game, it's a bit much. Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 for my PC were a tenner cheaper, and ultimately have more resources (editors, mod communities).

 

[UberMore]

Well everyone knows games are really expensive but if you confront a dev or publisher about it they will more than likely throw the used games or piracy arguement in your face. You want to get the same game cheaper. Buy used games. Sure the devs may not make enough money and go belly up but that'll teach em to charge too much for a game.

On a serious side notethough the price of games is going down quite a bit here. The usual price for a game used to be 50-60 pounds but I saw the retail price for lost planet 2 was 30 pounds on day of release. Hopefully a step in the right direction.

Yeah, but the price for Red Dead Redemption new is about £55 at best, with Skate 3 coming close to those figures.
And Modern Warfare 2 is STILL being sold for about £45 in some places.

I think Lost Planet 2 is cheaper because a lot of people seem "on the fence" for the game, so a lower price will draw them in, whereas they know that people are willing to play nearly £60 for Red Dead and Skate.

 

[Hashime]

This is why I use steam for my games. I'll buy games when steam has a sale, saving 75% on average. I also love used games for saving money. I will however spend full price if the game is just that good- Like ME2

 

[Kair]

I was not the one who insulted.

Okay well never mind the insults, why not address my points? I would at least like to understand your philosophy

That is very respectable my friend.


My avatar. It displays a symbol of the unification of the peasant and the factory worker. This is again a symbol of the unification of all useful labour in an idealized economy.

Alone the useful labour classes could support each other. The bourgeoisie or capitalists are leeches upon this and disguise themselves as entities necessary for development, and they also fool themselves to think that. There are no need for these, but this is an entirely different debate.

These bourgeoisie are what drive the current video game economy. To them, a game is an investment and should be profited on later through sales.
In a logical, but still close to realistic today, way of developing games, developers are paid according to their efforts in the production and the final product.
The product is then free to be distributed among everyone.
Instead of having a resource that is to both benefit and cost of thousands, you have a product that for no cost benefits hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. The products popularity has also a say in the rating of the final product. The producers must be paid, or more correctly according to the ideology, supported, directly by the community. Do not think this is just another tax scheme, it works quite differently than the capitalist system of taxes. This is also to be enlightened another time.

For this to be possible, the complex, unwieldy and unnecessary free market economy we have today must go in favour of a direct approach economy.

Again, for this to happen, we need almost everyone to voluntarily be a part of this ideology. This is where it all goes wrong.
The only thing the idealists can do is try to promote it, and the very least thing those who have not accepted it yet is to not denounce without insight.

Thank you for reading it all.

 

[DividedUnity]

Well everyone knows games are really expensive but if you confront a dev or publisher about it they will more than likely throw the used games or piracy arguement in your face. You want to get the same game cheaper. Buy used games. Sure the devs may not make enough money and go belly up but that'll teach em to charge too much for a game.

On a serious side notethough the price of games is going down quite a bit here. The usual price for a game used to be 50-60 pounds but I saw the retail price for lost planet 2 was 30 pounds on day of release. Hopefully a step in the right direction.

Yeah, but the price for Red Dead Redemption new is about £55 at best, with Skate 3 coming close to those figures.
And Modern Warfare 2 is STILL being sold for about £45 in some places.

I think Lost Planet 2 is cheaper because a lot of people seem "on the fence" for the game, so a lower price will draw them in, whereas they know that people are willing to play nearly £60 for Red Dead and Skate.

If I wanted to play RDR id buy a preowned copy of GTA 4. Anyone who spends £60 on that game is very silly.
Yeah you may be right about the on the fence thing but thats not the point. if they can sell one game at this price all games should

 

[Amberella]

Games are definitely expensive. xD Even the 'used' ones are pricey anymore. Might as well pay 5 dollars more for a new, never played copy.