Prices of Games

[Altorin]

my EB games has used Alpha Protocol for 65 dollars.

I cried a little inside.

 

[aaron552]

The amount of work needed to program a 2600 games probably goes into modelling a wheel or an NPC's eyebrow nowadays.

You've obviously never programmed for an Atari 2600. Those things only had a 1.19MHz processor and 128 bytes (yeah, bytes) of RAM. All sorts of hacks were needed to make anything even resembling a game. Cartridges started with a limit of 4k, but ways were found around that (bank switching).

Right now, sitting next to me on my desk is a HCS12C32 microcontroller kit, with 32k of flash ROM and 2K of RAM. Programming that to do anything useful is pretty hard with those limits (try fitting a TCP/IP stack in 2K of RAM).

Making games has become much easier, but not cheaper. But games ship an order of magnitude more copies now. The price of an individual unit is not a good measure of how how much work goes into a game; the studios set the price before they even start making the game.

At which point do you say it's too much? 60USD? 80USD? 100USD?

Over here in Australia, most games start at 99.95AUD, with PS3 titles at 109.95AUD. Many games are appearing for 119.95 now and that's just regular editions. Expect to pay at 30-50AUD on top of that for special editions.

the real question though, is if game dev/distribution costs were to go down significantly, how much of a drop in price can we really expect?

I'd say none or next to no decrease. The publishers already have really high margins, if costs decrease, that means more profit for them.

 

[Mandalore_15]

$60 USD. If you don't like the prices, don't buy the product. If you still want it, buy used or save your money like the cool people do.

There's no need to be a sanctimonious ****. People are perfectly entitled to complain about the price of games, and well, anything... I'm sure you've probably bitched about the cost of petrol, public transport, cinema admission, etc. etc. But hey, if you don't like the prices you just don't buy the product, right? Cut the guy a break.

 

[Betancore]

You should feel lucky you don't live in Australia. Brand new big games tend to go for $109.95-$119.95. And that's just the standard editions. Smaller games with be cheaper but usually only $20 at most. This is why I haven't been buying games lately, though my recent employment should see a rise in new games purchased.

Ugh, yes. I'm an unemployed, underage student, and I've just about given up buying new games, because I don't want to ask my parents for $100 AUD+ at a time just to buy a computer game. Even games that have been out for a while, like Call of Duty 5, go for around $60 - $80 depending on where you look. It makes me hurt inside when I see Metro 2033 for half price and it turns out it's $40 - not too bad, but that's half price. I'm just glad that games like Assassin's Creed and Deus Ex and Bully go for around $20, so at least I have something to play.

 

[Red Bomb]

All this make us in the UK look well cheap £40 for a new release and around £15-£20 for pre-owned.
However in the Caribbean where my parents live games are around $150bbs which is around $75US. Its painful buying games over there.

 

[danintexas]

Back in the day Atari 2600 carts cost $50 and the system cost $199

Stop complaining about the cost of games. Gamefly if its an issue

 

[hawkeye52]

i seem to remember that games used to be £30 on average but have been going up with the more popular developers pushing up their prices more and more knowing that people will still buy the game

 

[Ildecia]

i dont buy games much nowadays (huh) so i guess i really cant contribute here other than i think games are rather pricey (of more than one good one comes out at a time). The most recent game i've bought was Super Mario Galaxy 2, and since it was indeed a big seller, i pre-ordered it and got 5 bucks off. so eh..

sorry i couldnt contribute? 65 dollars with tax is still kinda dum to pay for a game.

 

[irequirefood]

Ugh, yes. I'm an unemployed, underage student, and I've just about given up buying new games, because I don't want to ask my parents for $100 AUD+ at a time just to buy a computer game. Even games that have been out for a while, like Call of Duty 5, go for around $60 - $80 depending on where you look. It makes me hurt inside when I see Metro 2033 for half price and it turns out it's $40 - not too bad, but that's half price. I'm just glad that games like Assassin's Creed and Deus Ex and Bully go for around $20, so at least I have something to play.

I know what you mean about the cheap games. I am getting desperate, so my friend and I are putting in $10 to buy the Sonic PC game pack or Sonic Heroes, Riders, Adventure DX and Mega Collection Plus. The sad thing is I used to have Riders and MC+, and he used to have DX and Heroes, but we sold them...

 

[PAGEToap44]

New games in the UK cost about £40-50 usually. £39.99 being the standard. For games I don't really want, I wait till they get cheaper and/or they are on sale. I don't like buying pre-owned games.

 

[Geekosaurus]

As soon as one company raises their prices, all the others realise that customers will pay the higher prices and follow suit.

 

[tlozoot]

I've been buying the odd anticipated release for £35-40 for as long as I can remember. I now rent or pay about £15 for them now, but if there's a game I really want then I'll pick it up at launch for full retail price. Games are getting more expensive to make after all.

 

[mrdude2010]

this generation of consoles has been out for 5 years. i understood why the prices were $60 back when the console first came out but now it really should go back down to $50, especially since cheap bastards force you to pay an extra $20 for DLC anyway

 

[DAOWAce]

Starcraft 2 was $60. (USD)

A PC game, standard edition, $60.

Do I even have to say it? That's just not right.

 

[squid5580]

I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?

Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.

Huh I am in a smaller town in Ontario and 69 is pretty much the norm.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

This is an eternal subject for threads, and yet, I'm sure when I was bought my Atari 2600 around the turn of the 80s, yes, the one with the wooden panelling on the front, I seem to remember the cartridges being around £40 each.

What were those cartridges, about 4K if full? Yet now we have full DVDs, 10 hour soundtracks of licensed music, 3-5 year development cycles with teams of hundreds working on a single title and still they're selling for £50 retail. I'd say a 20% raise in price over 30 years aint so bad. Considering we're not really comparing like with like.

Additionally, I just compared it to inflation in the US over the past ~25 years. $50 in 1985 money is just over $100 in 2010 money. It does still kind of bother me to see new game prices frequently being $60, but that's only a 50% increase from $40, not the 100% you'd expect based on the CPI (which is not entirely accurate, but for back-of-the-napkin math, it'll do).

Of course, they also have much larger economies of scale these days, selling hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of most major games, and that can cut costs dramatically, along with pressed DVDs (or even better, digital downloads with no boxes, manuals, shipping, warehouses, etc.) being a tiny fraction of the overall cost per unit compared to cartridges back in the day.

When it comes down to it, there are too many differences between then and now to really make any sort of simple comparison. If a game was worth to me the amount of money they were charging then, I was ok with paying that amount. The same thing is true now, even though the cost/value comparison continually changes.

 

[Sejvos]

I can not stand the price of new game's, It's just too much.

 

[Kagim]

I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?

Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.

Huh I am in a smaller town in Ontario and 69 is pretty much the norm.

Well a buddy of mine in Victoria has to pay 69.99 pretty often, yet in Vancouver its not hard to find a place that sells brand new games for 30 bucks. It could be all luck man.

 

[demoman_chaos]

$60 US new, but I almost always wait and buy used for $40 or less.