Games are too expensive

[Johnnyallstar]

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.

Agreed, and understood. The problem is, most people want the best, and most companies want to be the best. Wanting to be the best means that you have to pay the best developers, have the best equipment, etc. Why do people upgrade consoles, or upgrade their PCs? So they can play the best of what's out there. There's money in being the best, and the businesses need the money.

Most of those Trip-A titles didn't go over budget, and look how they've done in terms of bringing money in. They charge $60 so it would take less total sales to recoup the costs of creating. And then they keep the price the same so it's fair to the initial consumers, and the more money they rake in, the more they are able to take the hit of a poor selling game, and the more games they're able to fund.

 

[LordZ]

Agreed, and understood. The problem is, most people want the best, and most companies want to be the best. Wanting to be the best means that you have to pay the best developers, have the best equipment, etc. Why do people upgrade consoles, or upgrade their PCs? So they can play the best of what's out there. There's money in being the best, and the businesses need the money.

Most of those Trip-A titles didn't go over budget, and look how they've done in terms of bringing money in. They charge $60 so it would take less total sales to recoup the costs of creating. And then they keep the price the same so it's fair to the initial consumers, and the more money they rake in, the more they are able to take the hit of a poor selling game, and the more games they're able to fund.

I just wanted to ask if you had heard of Torchlight. It's proof positive that you don't need to have the most pixels and dump the most money into development to have a hit game. Torchlight was priced low and sold like hot cakes because of it. It reached a level of success some games with much larger budgets never even touch.

If companies focused more on making a game fun than on making it pretty, you'd be able to sell it for less to more people over a much longer period of time. Games that are fun tend to have real selling power beyond what any glitzed up trailer can pull off.

 

[ENKC]

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

Are you buying those games that come with crazy add-ons like the $300 Steel Battalion with the insane looking controller.
Or you are buying only the special edition to which I say don't since they only come with gadgets.

I'm not buying anything of the sort. That's the price of a new-release game in EB Games Australia.

And once again, people in America and elsewhere get horribly confused when we try to explain that however much they're bitching about prices, we pay TWICE what they do. TWICE.

Yes, $100-$120 is standard for new release games here. $50 would be considered a budget title. So games are too expensive in Australia compared to the developed world generally.

Overall though, they're not too expensive. Ultimately, they are a privilege and not a right, a luxury and not an essential. I'm not swimming in money but I've accumulated hundreds of game, because it is a priority to me and I because I buy them when and where they are affordable.

 

[geldonyetich]

Don't want to pay a lot for videos games?

No, don't pirate, but do what I do:

Wait a few months until they're old and marked down.

If it's not on the PC, rent [https://www.gamefly.com/].

 

[Kaymish]

well i did some shopping around today because my usual gaming store managers had a brain fart and only got in 6 copies of red dead redemption so i had to go else where and found that the price for that particular game vary from $79.98 - $129.99which is a huge difference for the exact same product lucky for me the normal price for my usual store was only $1.00 more than the lowest price i could find which was an online only store with free shipping which i tend to avoid like the plauge

 

[Uber Waddles]

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

Those games you have mentioned all sold, or will sell, 1 Million copies in their first week. Now, assuming were running off of dollars, cause go 'Merica, thats $60 Million, right off the bat. Now, I know some goes to the retailer, blah blah blah. They make their money back though, in the first day, for major titles. MIND YOU, this is JUST the first day, they make ALL (or most) of their money back. From their on, its profit.

Companies arent broke; they make their money. They just know gamers WILL dish out, so they know their limits. Games could afford to drop $20 and still still turn a profit at $40. But who cares, more money!

Not to mention DLC; which most will dish out for $10 to $15. Used games also give some money back to the companies, and allow for extra profit on something they already SOLD.

Companies are Greedy. Games are expensive, but they will stay that way. People will buy games, they will save up for their long awaited games. Sucks, right?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

When I first started working, I made mimum wage producing truly terrible tacos. That's right, I was a line monkey at Taco Bell, and back in 2000 that netted a high school student a whopping 5.15 USD per hour. New big names games at the time cost 49.99, equating to just shy of 10 (9.7) hours of work. By contrast, a newly employed line monkey at Taco Bell these days gets paid 7.25 USD per hour and games cost 59.99 on average, equating to about 8.3 hours. By the standard of absolute minimum wage, the relative price has actually decreased.

 

[The Rockerfly]

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.

Thanks, I am a big believe in Voltaire and freedom of speech is the key to enlightenment plus it's interesting

I see where you are coming from actually, however I do not agree. I don't agree because this just doesn't work in a free market, even you yourself agree that the developers have to be paid because they have worth to the business.
For a game to be free the worker would have to work for nothing as they have no value because they are not making the business any money, this is why workers get paid and not because of their efforts. An example of this is the Call of Duty series where very little was changed from Modern Warfare to Modern Warfare 2 however due to the massive amount of sales Modern Warfare 2 had, the workers got paid more because they gave the business a profit an the business underestimated their value to them

I also do not agree because developing games does cost a hell of a lot to make, not just from the workers costs either. To make a game free you would have to ignore the land the business has to make game on, the software & hardware to be able to create the game, the electricity in which to power these computers, other equipment such as chairs and desks this is even before the actual workers. If every single video game developer discussed it all together and made games free, they would have to get companies supplying all these for free which I can't see the government doing or all these businesses being that charitable

This is actually a problem I have with capitalism, supply and demand is something I'm surprised you didn't address. In a free capitalist market, if I want to buy something or sell something, I have to trade something of equal value to buy a product or to sell it. This means that in theory I should not make a profit because I am trading something of equal value. So I will relate it back to the video game industry, if I want to buy a game then I have to trade something of exact value for that game. This is the ideology behind a free capitalist market, so why is it that video game industries make so much in profit? Why should I be forced to support a game company for a game I might take back next week or even because I just don't want to

 

[direkiller]

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.

that has more to do with them competing with used game outlets
Walmart over here in the US is doing that under the slogan "Why buy used when you can buy new" and there selling the new game at the same price as used games
my guess is the store you go to is following the same policy

 

[Daedalus1942]

Even given to accounting for inflation, I believe that the reason the games industry isn't making more money is not only the recession, but the very fact that games are just too damn expensive.

Don't believe me? Linkage [http://www.mcvuk.com/news/39087/Comte-Games-pricing-must-change]

In the US, we have a little more disposable income compared to other parts of the world. What I would love to see is how you can effectively drive prices down on commercial games when there are plenty of alternatives.

Yeah, I recently discovered I was being ripped off by buying retail.
eBay and online bidding is just so much frigging cheaper!

 

[Daedalus1942]

in my country games range from $300-$600 believe it

With all due respect.. that's like what, maybe $40 or $60 where I live, yeah?

 

[Kair]

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.

Thanks, I am a big believe in Voltaire and freedom of speech is the key to enlightenment plus it's interesting

I see where you are coming from actually, however I do not agree. I don't agree because this just doesn't work in a free market, even you yourself agree that the developers have to be paid because they have worth to the business.
For a game to be free the worker would have to work for nothing as they have no value because they are not making the business any money, this is why workers get paid and not because of their efforts. An example of this is the Call of Duty series where very little was changed from Modern Warfare to Modern Warfare 2 however due to the massive amount of sales Modern Warfare 2 had, the workers got paid more because they gave the business a profit an the business underestimated their value to them

I also do not agree because developing games does cost a hell of a lot to make, not just from the workers costs either. To make a game free you would have to ignore the land the business has to make game on, the software & hardware to be able to create the game, the electricity in which to power these computers, other equipment such as chairs and desks this is even before the actual workers. If every single video game developer discussed it all together and made games free, they would have to get companies supplying all these for free which I can't see the government doing or all these businesses being that charitable

This is actually a problem I have with capitalism, supply and demand is something I'm surprised you didn't address. In a free capitalist market, if I want to buy something or sell something, I have to trade something of equal value to buy a product or to sell it. This means that in theory I should not make a profit because I am trading something of equal value. So I will relate it back to the video game industry, if I want to buy a game then I have to trade something of exact value for that game. This is the ideology behind a free capitalist market, so why is it that video game industries make so much in profit? Why should I be forced to support a game company for a game I might take back next week or even because I just don't want to

Ah, but the main point of my post was that the free market must be removed in favour of a direct approach economy. Sorry if I did not make that clear enough.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Ah, but the main point of my post was that the free market must be removed in favour of a direct approach economy. Sorry if I did not make that clear enough.

Okay then that makes a bit more sense, free markets can be a ***** sometimes

 

[Kair]

Ah, but the main point of my post was that the free market must be removed in favour of a direct approach economy. Sorry if I did not make that clear enough.

Okay then that makes a bit more sense, free markets can be a ***** sometimes

Well put.

 

[hongimaster]

I live in Australia, and yes games do hit the $120, leave your legs at the door, price mark. However I have recently started purchasing my games off of Ebay, and to give you a recent example:

Red Dead Redemption (360 version for all those interested)

Ebay: $70 inc Postage
EB Games: $108 (at time of writing)
GAME AU: $109.95 (and their "special" web-only price was $89)
Dick Smith AU: $89 (the cheapest store price I could find)
JB HiFi: $99

Anyway, you get the point. I even walked into a store the other day, and saw the Pre-owned Games marked at the same price as their "New-but-on-sale" brethren. That is absolutely ridiculous.

Ironically I purchased the Limited Collectors Edition of Red Dead Redemption off of Ebay for $90 inc Postage, which works out cheaper than store-buying the normal edition. The only downside to Ebay is you have to wait for the postage time (as the games are usually sent from Hong Kong, UK etc). However I would rather wait 8 days and save those sorts of dollars. I find it amusing that I can purchase a game from the UK, pay postage on top of that, and still get it cheaper than I can in any retail store. At one point, I bought two new release titles for $60 each, then laughed when I looked at the $120 price tag of one of those games in-store. It is almost criminal.

For the record, all of the New release Ebay games I have bought have been sent in a sealed, unplayed condition and have worked great on my 360. I may or may not have acquired the UK version of Left 4 Dead 2 when it came out and thus payed less for a more complete version of the game.

Oh well, all we can do is facepalm. It is hard for me to state an ideal price without actually being shown the cost of producing and the in-store markup. However, if games were cheaper, I am almost certain there would be *less* (notice I didn't say "no") piracy and more people would be willing to purchase multiple games.

I see a lot of people are using the "Games provide more entertainment than Movies" based on a dollars per hours entertainment argument. I find this suffers from apples and oranges syndrome, because I pay $8 to go to the local cinema, $5 to rent a DVD and $15-20 to buy one. Now fine, if a game is Good, it will provide HOURS of entertainment spread over days/weeks of play. But if a game is Bad, generally it will provide less hours of entertainment and more hours of dull, spiteful gameplay (usually you are just trying to finish it). I bought Mirrors Edge for $60 and finished it in less than 6 hours (and of that, 2-3 hours might have been enjoyable). At $10/hr, the value then seems to fall on its arse. Also, if a movie is shit, then I have wasted an $8 ticket and 2 hours of my life. If a game is shit, you waste a lot more in both time and money.

Ideally, there would be an international panel of gamers who would play the game from front to back, rate it out of 10, and then the price of the game would be decided from that rating. This would encourage developers not to push through mediocre games (conveniently saturating the market) and would inform gamers as to what to buy.

This would never happen because games developers like pushing out turds and polishing them up with pre-renders and fake hype. Anyway, that is my rant.

 

[Gindil]

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

Those games you have mentioned all sold, or will sell, 1 Million copies in their first week. Now, assuming were running off of dollars, cause go 'Merica, thats $60 Million, right off the bat. Now, I know some goes to the retailer, blah blah blah. They make their money back though, in the first day, for major titles. MIND YOU, this is JUST the first day, they make ALL (or most) of their money back. From their on, its profit.

Companies arent broke; they make their money. They just know gamers WILL dish out, so they know their limits. Games could afford to drop $20 and still still turn a profit at $40. But who cares, more money!

Not to mention DLC; which most will dish out for $10 to $15. Used games also give some money back to the companies, and allow for extra profit on something they already SOLD.

Companies are Greedy. Games are expensive, but they will stay that way. People will buy games, they will save up for their long awaited games. Sucks, right?

This horribly skews the company's perspective. If most companies put the price down by just $10 dollars, it's harder to recoup their money. So long as they make the money back on a larger titled game, a publisher will be happy whether they made one dollar over expected results or 1000000. And no, not every new title makes the big cash flow like they should. Let's remember that Lara Croft 4 & 5 flopped. The original makers of the game were taken off their creation and the franchise was given to a new developer. They may have recouped the losses on the game, but they didn't turn a profit until the PS3 era.

Granted, some developers have made good decisions and willingly dropped the price. It happened with Capcom and their decision to drop Super SFIV to $40 dollars when it is a similar game with newer characters and details. New, SFIV cost ~$50-$60.

DLC is really BS. If you ever have to pay for a patch or something new that they forgot to put in, then there's something wrong. If it's optional such as Dragon Age's, that makes you keep the game, more power to you. So long as it is fun and keeps the game fresh and new without having to be episodic, then keep doing it.

 

[Thoric485]

I'd be happier with the price if they atleast came with more than a shitty plastic box and a b/w manual.It's just MMOs that have more luxurious packaging and loftier manuals filled with art. Probably to create an illusion of buying a game and not a triple priced 30-day gamecard.

"But wait, they're just doing it for the enviroment [http://kotaku.com/5520261/ubisoft-does-away-with-tree+killing-instruction-manuals]! What matters is the video game - it's what you really pay for!" Well - now we have DLCs.

 

[Varun Garuda Maharaj]

On a 6 to 1 basis yes