Poll: What would be a reasonable price for games?

[Zaverexus]

Everyone has heard the argument that games are too expensive nowadays. Keeping in mind the product you are getting and that companies do need to make some money, what do you think would be a reasonable price for your average console game?

If we have anyone here working in the industry could we get some evaluation as well? Maybe an estimate of what games should cost? Thanks.

(I apologize to our overseas gamers for putting the poll in American Dollars, here's a site for conversions: http://www.xe.com/ucc/)

EDIT: Poll got eaten, sorry. Crossed my fingers as hard as I could and still no luck

 

[Lilani]

I'd say $40-$50, for a new game. Of course that depends on the length and quality (that's what she said, hurr hurr).

I've heard the argument that a movie may cost $20 and a game $60, but a movie gives you about 2 hours of entertainment (up to 6-10 with the extras), whereas a game can give you 20-80+ hours of entertainment (up to infinity with online games). I suppose that makes sense, but if you're going in blind $60 is a very steep initial investment. For some people that's their share of their apartment's utilities for a month. And a lot of times the games simply don't end up being worth it (see Duke Nukem Forever), so it's no wonder so many end up getting sold back to retailers within 24 hours.

Developers really need to decide what their games are truly worth. Yes it's a lot more content with a lot more people they're having to develop, but they can't inflate their games to the point where the bar of entry is too high for the average gamer. The prices can't keep going up ad infinitum, and their reasons for going so high even now are quite fishy ($120 for a game in Australia? The fuck is that nonsense?) No matter how cheap or expensive a movie was to make, the ticket and DVD/Blu Ray prices remain the same across the board. The only time you'll see a new movie cost more than $30 is if it's some special box set or collector's edition (which with games can top $150 and $200), If we're going to compare games to movies, is it so much to expect the same sort of reasonability and consistency?

 

[1-up]

$60 is a really, really hard pill to swallow for me. I've purchased a couple of games at that price point, but they're few and far between. Actually...New Vegas and Skyrim are the only two I purchased at that point, and New Vegas taught me a sharp lesson about when it was down to $20 in less than a year.

The vast majority of my game purchases are on STEAM during their sales. If you wait long enough, EVERY game goes to 75% off. From time to time they get as high as 90%, but that's pretty rare. I have no problem paying $10 for a game, and I'll happily risk a purchase on pretty much anything if it's under $5 and I'm looking for something to do.

If I have to buy a game on a disc, $30-$40 is what I'm comfortable with. Amazon does pretty good job of putting games on sale for that much, especially during the holidays.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I'm actually ok with the current prices. Gaming is not a necessity; it's a luxury. If I find the pricepoint to be too high to afford, I can simply go without. How much "should" games cost is relative; we'd all like to pay less, but the objective fact is that people have to be paid and a sizeable profit is what keeps companies around to make the same games we feel we pay too much for and ultimately "aren't worth full retail." Unless anyone knows of a high-quality dev team willing to work pro bono?

It seems a lot of people have this idea in their head that when the buy a game, the retailer or whomever has a little piggie bank with the developer's name on it and at the end of each day, they put the cash in an envelope and mail it off to the dev team as a job well done. No, that $60 (average) is the cost after the product has passed through several hands and encompasses everything from developement to packaging to marketing to paying the pizza-faced teenager who physically takes your cash and hands you the game. And all of those people involved pay taxes, have insurance, have bills to pay, families to feed, etc. The dissemination of your $60 ultimately amounts to pennies per transaction for every entity standing to earn anything from the sale. Imagine the effect of shaving a third the current price of the luxury that is gaming? If anything, expect to see prices go UP or an increased migration to digital media to cut costs.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'd say $45.

I mean, if I can get a brand new game as eagerly anticipated as Deus Ex Human Revolution on Steam for $45 on day one, then why the hell does it cost $60 for consoles? In fact, why the hell do console games cost $10 more than PC games at all?

 

[weker]

I think most games for my own personal minimum buying price, about a pound per hour. In the real world for everyone I feel all games should be priced at £30 and portable at £20, it just feels better and doesn't feel like your getting ripped off for a single player game only.

 

[krazykidd]

I'm actually ok with the current prices. Gaming is not a necessity; it's a luxury. If I find the pricepoint to be too high to afford, I can simply go without. How much "should" games cost is relative; we'd all like to pay less, but the objective fact is that people have to be paid and a sizeable profit is what keeps companies around to make the same games we feel we pay too much for and ultimately "aren't worth full retail." Unless anyone knows of a high-quality dev team willing to work pro bono?

It seems a lot of people have this idea in their head that when the buy a game, the retailer or whomever has a little piggie bank with the developer's name on it and at the end of each day, they put the cash in an envelope and mail it off to the dev team as a job well done. No, that $60 (average) is the cost after the product has passed through several hands and encompasses everything from developement to packaging to marketing to paying the pizza-faced teenager who physically takes your cash and hands you the game. And all of those people involved pay taxes, have insurance, have bills to pay, families to feed, etc. The dissemination of your $60 ultimately amounts to pennies per transaction for every entity standing to earn anything from the sale. Imagine the effect of shaving a third the current price of the luxury that is gaming? If anything, expect to see prices go UP or an increased migration to digital media to cut costs.

I agree with everythinf you say .

But when you think about it , almost everything we spend our well earned money on is for luxury . Cinema , music ,internet ,telephones , television , video games , hell even food and electricity ( these last two are debatable ) are all luxuries . A person can survive drinking only water and growing their own garden but we decide to buy food at stores and restoraunts. And so forth and so on . People always look for the best deals , and companies are still running , desprite the majority of people rarely paying full price for the things they have .i don't see why we should be expected to ALWAYS pay full price for games when we actively look for the best deals with EVERYTHING else .



Edit: oops forgot to answer the question . I say 40-50$ . As long as the game BELONGS to us and we aren't just renting the right to play them until the company decides otherwise .

 

[TheOneBearded]

It should depend on how much content it provides, but still keeping in the standard game value ($60). If it provides a large amount of content, it gets the full price (like Skyrim). If it doesn't provide much at all (like any modern Call of Duty game), it should be valued accordingly ($30-40). Little games that don't provide that much content shouldn't be as expensive as the games that do.

 

[Pegghead]

I dream of paying $60 for a brand new AAA title, you foreign devils are so lucky...

But yeah, compared to the price of other media over here (usually a few dollars short of 20 to see a new-release film) and the comparison of their enetertainment value with that of game I'd say 60 is fair.

But still, I think the best system would be one that prices a shooter with a six-hour campaign differently to an RPG with hundreds of hours of content.

 

[Hal10k]

The market price of a good lies at the intersection of its supply curve and its demand curve. There's no such thing as a "reasonable price", just what people are willing to pay. Right now, the demand for AAA games at a price of $60 is great enough that it typically meets the supply. The only things that could change the price of new AAA games (ceteris paribus) are A) some sort of aphrodisiac to ridiculously increase the supply of new games, as in "stores cannot physically contain this many games", B) a synthetic hipster plague that makes everybody stop buying new AAA games, or C) marketing executives learning the true meaning of Christmas.

 

[EGtodd09]

$60 would be a nice price for a new game like Arkham City or Modern Warfare 3, but for some reason, Steam is trying to charge $100 US dollars for these games in New Zealand (and probably Australia) where the exchange rate to NZ dollars pushes the price even higher (about NZ$130) and you don't even get a disc! It's pretty ridiculous, a lot of people are just buying cheap Russian CD-keys now.

 

[EGtodd09]

EDIT: Double up post. Escapist told me I had to enter a captcha and post again for some reason.

 

[dyre]

I'd be willing to pay $30 or $35 for a game that I think will be pretty enjoyable (say, Bioshock), and $60 for a game I think I'll love (say, Witcher 2).*

*your mileage may vary, of course

The market price of a good lies at the intersection of its supply curve and its demand curve. There's no such thing as a "reasonable price", just what people are willing to pay. Right now, the demand for AAA games at a price of $60 is great enough that it typically meets the supply. The only things that could change the price of new AAA games (ceteris paribus) are A) some sort of aphrodisiac to ridiculously increase the supply of new games, as in "stores cannot physically contain this many games", B) a synthetic hipster plague that makes everybody stop buying new AAA games, or C) marketing executives learning the true meaning of Christmas.

Eh, video games are absolutely not an example of perfect competition (all game products are not equal, and there is a highly limited number of sellers), so the supply and demand thing doesn't hold up. It's closer to an oligopoly, really.

 

[Hal10k]

I'd be willing to pay $30 or $35 for a game that I think will be pretty enjoyable (say, Bioshock), and $60 for a game I think I'll love (say, Witcher 2).*

*your mileage may vary, of course

The market price of a good lies at the intersection of its supply curve and its demand curve. There's no such thing as a "reasonable price", just what people are willing to pay. Right now, the demand for AAA games at a price of $60 is great enough that it typically meets the supply. The only things that could change the price of new AAA games (ceteris paribus) are A) some sort of aphrodisiac to ridiculously increase the supply of new games, as in "stores cannot physically contain this many games", B) a synthetic hipster plague that makes everybody stop buying new AAA games, or C) marketing executives learning the true meaning of Christmas.

Eh, video games are absolutely not an example of perfect competition (all game products are not equal, and there is a highly limited number of sellers), so the supply and demand thing doesn't hold up. It's closer to an oligopoly, really.

Yeah, I know. Like all economic evaluations, this is assuming we live in a hypothetical universe where all game stores are stocked exclusively with white boxes with the word "GAME" written on them in black lettering. Demand tends to fluctuate more wildly between different products of the same type. Still, my point stands: whatever people are willing to pay, that's the "reasonable price".

 

[hazabaza1]

I think £20, £25 probably? Seems like a good price to them.

 

[dyre]

I'd be willing to pay $30 or $35 for a game that I think will be pretty enjoyable (say, Bioshock), and $60 for a game I think I'll love (say, Witcher 2).*

*your mileage may vary, of course

The market price of a good lies at the intersection of its supply curve and its demand curve. There's no such thing as a "reasonable price", just what people are willing to pay. Right now, the demand for AAA games at a price of $60 is great enough that it typically meets the supply. The only things that could change the price of new AAA games (ceteris paribus) are A) some sort of aphrodisiac to ridiculously increase the supply of new games, as in "stores cannot physically contain this many games", B) a synthetic hipster plague that makes everybody stop buying new AAA games, or C) marketing executives learning the true meaning of Christmas.

Eh, video games are absolutely not an example of perfect competition (all game products are not equal, and there is a highly limited number of sellers), so the supply and demand thing doesn't hold up. It's closer to an oligopoly, really.

Yeah, I know. Like all economic evaluations, this is assuming we live in a hypothetical universe where all game stores are stocked exclusively with white boxes with the word "GAME" written on them in black lettering. Demand tends to fluctuate more wildly between different products of the same type. Still, my point stands: whatever people are willing to pay, that's the "reasonable price".

Well, some people are willing to be ripped off, while some people cannot afford to be. Consumer surplus and all that jazz. I'd say the social equilibrium is the reasonable price (where demand hits supply), but game companies (like most other companies) probably don't operate there, except in a perfect world where games are all sold in white boxes labeled "GAME"