Poll: It is Time to Fix Game Prices

[CatmanStu]

I would say that the game industry is one of the few places capitalism works well. Publishers put prices on games that people are willing to pay and if those games are bad the consumer has a viable way of recouping some of the expenditure with the used game market which in turn effects future sales and leads to retailers reducing prices to ones more relevant to the games quality.

Now, take out the trade-in option then you have yet another market designed for exploiting customers.

Also, this is one of the industries that have a consumer base that, for the most part, do their homework before buying.

The thing I find interesting is that an industry where a lot of the consumers are complaining about prices being too high, is also one where consumers want digital distribution to take over. Sure prices will drop a little, but we will have no way to recoupe anything on a bad purchase as the trade-in market will have died.

Of course, as a primarily PC gamer, I have lived with the reality of this for a while now.

 

[Murmillos]

wall of text

I'm sorry your butt-hurt rant is over an opinion because you live in Australia. But hey, if US lower prices I'm sure the prices in Australia would also drop.

And if you feel so riled up over some opinion, I suggest you take a break from the internet; because apparently you can't handle it.

 

[Aurgelmir]

No game should cost over $40. Want to know why?

A movie blockbuster movie costs $100-200m to make. A AAA game currently costs ~30m. L.A. Noire was toted as a big freakin deal for costing 60m. GTA4 had a big hoopla made about how it cost 100m but most of it was for music contracts.
Movies on the other hand, charge $9 for a theatre ticket and $20 for the DvD. So for $30 bucks you can go to the theatre and see the movie and own it on DvD. This not only recoups the cost of the budget but most often, dips into profit.

This would effectively have more people buying games simply because they are affordable. As well, it would cut down the mark-up on used games the industry acts like they care so much about.

Well, games and movies aren't 100% comparable. Movies have more venues to sell on than games. A movie will fist be shown in the theater, where it makes a lot of money because a lot more people go to the movies than play video games. So by the time you get to the DVD and Blu Ray release you have earned most of your money back, and the sales will be more or less pure profit. Then the movie will be sold to TV stations etc.
Every time a new movie format comes out, all those movies will be resold in better quality.

A game is:
Released, sold for a few months and forgotten, until someone maybe does an HD remake or put it on GoG...

Not to mention a video game gives you at least 4 times the entertainment time...

 

[Murmillos]

Saying that Piracy is not worse then Used Games is factually incorrect,

And I never said it was factually correct, because I clearly stated that was my opinion of used game buyers.

The lot of you somehow equate stating a personal opinion as quoted fact. The hell man; an opinion is just that...

 

[Niccolo]

On topic now. I really wish we could see a change in the pricing, or at the very least a drop in the prices. As I stated above, it is $100 for a new game here in Australia, even though our dollar is now above parity with the USD, as the cost of living is higher. There are a huge number of gamers now, and I think a drop in the prices of games could lead to a massive increase in game purchases, which is profitable for the companies and cheaper for us. A simple rule of thumb with pricing is:
High Cost --> Low Sales
Low Cost --> High Sales

Good, a fellow Australian.

Hell, I'm lucky if a new (As in, the game was released less than TWO FUCKING YEARS ago) release for the 360 is less than $120. Even Steam occasionally fucks us Aussies over (Think you're hard done by having to pay $60 for Skyrim? Our "special" was $85)

So, Scarecrow, consider your point backed - vehemently - by me.

 

[Westaway]

Section 8 didn't retail for $60 anyway, did it?

As per the above poster, what is it with everyone being so cheap? Gaming is a luxury not a right, sometimes you can't have everything... this developing mindset is disturbing.

It did, but it's sequel sold for $15. I bought both, they're pretty awesome. And game pricing is fine.

 

[Something Amyss]

The pricing is fine. It's essentially what it's always been.

Yeah, I'm probably just imagining all those budget titles that were prevalent just a generation ago. The same sort of titles that are now 60 dollar titles this gen.

With inflation, increased budget, development, etc., video games should cost well over $100 american today, but they don't.

Of course, that would be completely disproportionate with other media, which haven't risen with inflation. So why it "should" be more expensive for them now is incredibly questionable.

Additionally, the fact is game companies are making a lot more with that same price point than they did even a few years ago, let alone 20 years ago.

 

[Treblaine]

One word: Steam

Retail model can bugger right off, you know to spite the $60 price point only about $18 goes to the actual game makers?

it's death by a thousands cuts;
-disc + packaging cost
-console licensing per-disc
-distributor mark up
-retailer mark up
-Software licensing

On Steam, valve only takes 25-30%, the publisher takes away around 75% so it is the OPPOSITE, they take away 3x as much per sale. Games could sell for $40 and they'd still make 2x as much per sale as compared to console-retail model and they don't have to worry about growing resale market.

I think around $40 is the right price with two caveats:
-70 to 75% of that money goes to the people who actually make the GAME!
-There is little to no resale possibility

I think the endemic resale of games is coming from how $60 is too high for a new game, people need to sell old games to buy the new and then prefer to buy older games when they can. On Steam where average game price is far lower it hasn't been a major problem with no ability to resale.

And then of course there are other models like free-to-play by micro-transactions or ads, paid beta (minecraft) or subscription models to diversify.

 

[WoahDan]

How did this discussion manage to become so complicated? at its heart its a pretty simple issue. Game prices should be cut; not because of 'entitlement' or because they've gotten more expensive (they haven't), or because they have low value (they are actually the best value medium around right now), or any other of the dozens of tangential reasons people have managed to come up with in this thread or outside it.

Game companies should cut prices because doing so will make game companies more money. I'm sorry but I don't care how much time it took to make or your production costs, $60 is more than I'm often willing to spend on a video game and I'm far from alone on that. Hell, not only is it often more than I'm willing to spend its often more than I CAN spend, $60 is a lot of money particularly for not-exactly-rich people like me (who still make up most of gamings target demographic) and them being so expensive means I cant afford as many games as I would otherwise have bought. When I was growing up i was forced to buy used pretty much exclusively, I couldn't (and my parents wouldn't) pay $60 for a game, and as a result until I turned about 14 I may as well have never existed as far as the developers were concerned. My entire early gaming life, eight years of gaming, and the people who made the games made scarcely a cent from it.

The current price is too damn high, it prices out some newcomers completely, and it stops the dedicated from buying as much they otherwise would have. Am i the only one seeing that Steam sales result in a spike in not only sales but profits as well? If the price of games were to drop to say $40 as an average price at launch, I guarantee the developers would see a spike in sales that would more than make up for the lower price point. People don't buy used because they want to f**k the developers over, they do it because its the price they are willing and able to pay, I'm getting sick of waiting for publishers to learn that pulling one over on their customers ultimately only hurts them in the long term.

 

[oktalist]

The way to get publishers to lower prices is for enough people to refuse to buy above a certain price point. /thread

 

[WoahDan]

@oktalist: That's already happening though (see: Steam ,used sales and piracy) and they refuse to change, ultimately hurting both them and the industry around them

 

[Treblaine]

With inflation, increased budget, development, etc., video games should cost well over $100 american today, but they don't.

Actually games have gone up in price FASTER than the rate of inflation

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

Games should be around $55 today, not $60 plus another $15-30 of launch-day DLC. So proportionately, for each person it is harder to pay. In fact with the amount of DLC the average game comes with many DO face a final price of around $100. Especially games with subscription.

Budgets may have gone up but also the market is larger, more people are playing games and more people are buying them. 24 Million copies of Modern Warfare 3 have been sold in only a few months. When you are selling a product with infinite reproducibility you don't increase the costs.

 

[hermes]

Game prices should be categorized in layers depending if they are AAA, AA or A games. I know many companies want to make a profit or every single game they release, but it is painfully obvious something like El Shaddai should not cost as much as Fallout 3.

I am not talking about the quality of the game, but the expectations of the company to sell them... Games like 3D Dot Game Hero were very good at 40 on release date, and they wouldn't have sold as many if they were more expensive.

Also, online retailers should do a better job at pricing their games. Steam has pretty good offers, but the prices on PSN and XBLA can be ridiculous at times.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Heh, the funny thing is: There are retailers refusing to carry games where you can get better deals in DD, thus the 60$ pricepoint of many triple-A titles on Steam. (This is just a thought I had while reading your post)

DD? Direct Download?

Well that can only last up to a point, sooner or later the publishers will realise they are better off going all in on Steam/DD at $50 than keeping retail-stores in the loop.

 

[Spitfire]

For me, I think it should be fixed and I think a game should not be priced how long it's been on shelves and whether or not it is on a shelf.

No price drops? Seriously? What does that accomplish, aside from never being able to buy a game that you couldn't afford on launch day?

 

[Farotsu]

Few guys did mention something about better pricing for games where the perhaps "sweet spot" would be and I have to agree with them. As it is right now I'm keeping myself very well entertained by any game that comes either free-to-play or pops out from Steam-sale and considering that a 60-50? prize-tag is just way too much which means that I will be passing on that game.

A lot of it is because of the risk-to-reward ratio. Especially lately I've found myself buying games that in fact don't meet my expectations even with any hype or recommendations concerning them and they stay unplayed in my library or on shelf so even a mainstream hit will most likely stay unbought. Now if Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur launched up with a 30? tag I'd probably pick them up, not to mention several others but as it is right now I don't really have the luxury to buy popular games just because they are popular when the game will end up unplayed and that 50? will be wasted.

So... Yes. I never bought Skyrim or so many other games. I only know stuff from Skyrim because of what I've read on the forums and what I tried to play on my brother's pc when I was passing by there. Yeah there probably were some games that I would've really enjoyed playing but I really don't wish to pay 50? a piece for 10 games to find one that I find entertaining.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

All depends on what time you take. NES times games costed around 60-80$ (again, Super Mario Bors. 3, released 1991 for 70$), today the pricepoint would be around 115$. On the other hand, if we take the last console gen then you are right.

Actually it's interesting to see how the pricepoint of games developed over the last ~20 years in correlation of increase of popularity and broader acceptance of games.

I'm comparing to 1996 price of CD based games as with the advance of storage technology it costs about as much to print a DVD/Blu-ray disc TODAY as it cost to print a CD in the mid 1990's i.e. less than 1 dollar per disc.

Too much has changed with the move from cartridge to optical-disc which is why I think it is not relevant to compare to price of SNES cartridges. ROM based storage is VERY expensive and made up a huge proportion of game price that completely disappears with the move to Optical Media which is very low manufacturing cost and lower cost with scale.

But going back to 1991, PC games (that were sold on CD or Floppy disc so cheap storage) only cost around $22. So by that standard PC games of today should only be around $40 and many of them ARE sold at that price.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/