Poll: What would be a reasonable price for games?

[Elvis Starburst]

$35 or so for a console/PC game, and maybe $30 for a handheld game. $40 for console/PC at most

Edit: I also agree on the quality and length of game-play ideas. I spent $30 on Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and it took me 645 (19 days) total to even beat every quest, including item gathering, monster grinding, failures, etc. I'd say that's BEYOND worth it

 

[Don Reba]

$60-$100 for AAA titles would be fine, but try-before-you-buy via torrents should be legal and unobstructed.

 

[Jimmybobjr]

Prices are slowly dropping in OZ. Personaly, i think that about $70 for a brand new game is really good. Certainly better than $120 that the games were getting onto a while back.

 

[loudestmute]

Mostly it depends on how long the game takes me to complete. I judge the value (in dollars) of a game based on how long it keeps me entertained. And quality does play a role in this, because I would be willing to give a good game a second and possibly third playthrough, thus extending the amount of time I have been entertained by it.

A single playthrough of Mass Effect 2 took me 30 hours. I would be perfectly fine paying $60 American for that, especially considering I plan to play it again. Call of Duty 12 (or whatever they are now on) would take me about 5 hours to complete, and I do not fancy the multiplayer much. I would not pay much for that game, maybe $10-15 American.

Considering all games are different, though, it's kinda hard to set a universal price for them.

To answer the question, I guess $40-45 American would be a fair price for a game I have never played.

For some reason, I'm reminded that EA has been trying out a new pricing model for Fight Night Champion, at least in its downloadable form. $30 for the full game, $5 for just the single-player story mode. Grab only the parts of the game you're willing to pay for, and get charged a somehwat reasonable price rather than the typical publisher response of "$60. Take it or leave it."

And in doing research on this, I saw the LA. Noire Complete Collection going up for $40, when anyone who bought the game new (re: suckers like me) had to rely on preorder bonuses to get free DLC. So here's my next point for developers to ignore. Rather than an "online pass" requiring users to cough up $10/long code entry to get the game online, give instead a "season pass" with new purchases. New box sales get all future DLC packs for free, used sales have to shell out the $10-$40 in extra content. More importantly, DLC is not and has never been required to enjoy a game. Used sales still get to enjoy the experience, though they might not experience as much content as someone who paid retail price. When used games decide to download the content packs, developers get their money.

If anyone loses in this system, please let me know. Because I'm failing to see any downsides at the moment.