Should you pay less for older games?

[Burnouts3s3]

Over the weekend, I bought the GTA collection from Humble, getting a couple of games for only 15 USD.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/grand-theft-auto-collection

Needless to say, I'm enjoying the games (especially San Andreas), when a thought occurred to me.

As technology advances, more modern games are getting more and more expensive. With games costing 60 USD as well as a number of microtransactions that have sadly become the norm in the industry, what was an initially 60 dollar investment can balloon to 100 dollars or more.

But with older games, they tend not to have things such as DLC or microtransactions and have a surprisingly large amount of content within them. However, as time progresses, the value of said game can depreciate in value. (Obviously, there are a number of exceptions that should be factored in when evaluating the price of a game such as the condition of the physical copy, the game's content, bugs, etc. At the same time, I know fans who are more than willing to pay more than the market value for items because they love the franchise).

Should that be the case? Should older games like GTA San Andreas or Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, games considered wildly influential to the medium and said to still hold up today cost less than the modern AAA title? Should games like Donkey Kong Country, a game many people like, be emulated since it amounts to little more than a ROM? Should a game that still uses bits and Polygons be valued less than games that use modern graphics engines?


With things like movies or books, things like a Star Wars DVD can cost about the same as a copy of the Avengers on DVD.

Are games different from other mediums that they can't be judged by the same standard?

 

[Burnouts3s3]

Over the weekend, I bought the GTA collection from Humble, getting a couple of games for only 15 USD.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/grand-theft-auto-collection

Needless to say, I'm enjoying the games (especially San Andreas), when a thought occurred to me.

As technology advances, more modern games are getting more and more expensive. With games costing 60 USD as well as a number of microtransactions that have sadly become the norm in the industry, what was an initially 60 dollar investment can balloon to 100 dollars or more.

But with older games, they tend not to have things such as DLC or microtransactions and have a surprisingly large amount of content within them. However, as time progresses, the value of said game can depreciate in value. (Obviously, there are a number of exceptions that should be factored in when evaluating the price of a game such as the condition of the physical copy, the game's content, bugs, etc. At the same time, I know fans who are more than willing to pay more than the market value for items because they love the franchise).

Should that be the case? Should older games like GTA San Andreas or Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, games considered wildly influential to the medium and said to still hold up today cost less than the modern AAA title? Should games like Donkey Kong Country, a game many people like, be emulated since it amounts to little more than a ROM? Should a game that still uses bits and Polygons be valued less than games that use modern graphics engines?


With things like movies or books, things like a Star Wars DVD can cost about the same as a copy of the Avengers on DVD.

Are games different from other mediums that they can't be judged by the same standard?

Scarcity and demand.

Yeah it boils down to what Zeke said, and just to clarify, classic 8-16 bit (and even some 32 bit) games used sprites for visual game assets. Modern engines still use polygons, albeit exponentially greater detailed ones.

 

[Mothro]

A games value should not be based on it's graphics, it's age or it's influence on the gaming world. It should be based on supply and demand. You have to decide if Ocarina of Time is worth $30 to you, for example.

https://www.gamestop.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time/122505

For me, anything that can be emulated well isn't worth much because I am not a collector, just a person who wants to play the games he buys/emulates. In this case Ocarina of Time can be played on the Virtual Console for the Wii and the Wii U as well as a remaster on the 3DS.

 

[Kerg3927]

Yeah, no offense, but the question in the OP makes no sense. Prices are determined by the economic forces of supply and demand. Period. There is no such thing as "should." No such thing as fairness or morality or whatever when it comes to pricing. It's not even a consideration. Sellers, unless they are bad at what they do, are always going to try to set the price at a level that maximizes profits. End of story.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Yeah, no offense, but the question in the OP makes no sense. Prices are determined by the economic forces of supply and demand. Period. There is no such thing as "should." No such thing as fairness or morality or whatever when it comes to pricing. It's not even a consideration. Sellers, unless they are bad at what they do, are always going to try to set the price at a level that maximizes profits. End of story.

I guess what he means to ask if its okay for like Nintendo to sell Super Mario 1 on the Switch for $60, claiming its a new release. Or any other company selling decades old games at what we now consider full price

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

It isn't about paying less, it's about charging less on the part of the merchant. The fact is that after a period of time, sales will go down. The bulk of a game's lifetime sales will happen in the first 3 months of its release. Now, digital distribution may alleviate this to a degree, since unlike a bricks and mortar store, they don't take up shelf space, it's accurate to say that anyone who wants the game at $60 will buy it at release. Lowering it to $40 will gain more sales and when all the people willing to pay $40 for it have done so, you can lower it to $30, then $20 and so on.

That is how it works with all entertainment media; music, movies, books, all eventually get discounted to clear out old stock, attract hesitant buyers, etc. It's free market economy; people will pay what they believe an item to be worth. Anyone not paying $60 for a game doesn't believe it's worth that much, or those that do will buy it. Not to mention that after some years, the game simply isn't fresh or original anymore. That's not always true, but consider the best of older games and how games emulated and evolved from them. System Shock 2 was amazing (still is), but it gave rise to the Deus Ex games, Bioshock games, Prey and other Shock-like titles, so System Shock 2 is no longer so unique (I'm not dissing it, it's an awesome title).

It's not even just entertainment media. Cars depreciate massively, clothes get discounted frequently, furniture is comically almost 24/7/365 on discount. Prices reflect supply, demand, competition, quality, rarity/uniqueness, and that's as it should be.

 

[Silvanus]

Sellers, unless they are bad at what they do, are always going to try to set the price at a level that maximizes profits. End of story.

Well, unless-- Bast forbid!-- profit is not their sole concern.

Heresy, I know, in a pure free market, but this is one reason why an unrelated, undiluted free market is horseshit for the consumer.

 

[gorfias]

I get irked when I see an old game still selling for top dollar. If they can get it, I have no right to complain. As others note, what the market will bare.

Personally, there are times I cannot resist and buy a game at full $60 price. MOST of the time, I can wait. Prices do tend to go down.

 

[stroopwafel]

The production costs of those old games are a fraction of the production costs of modern AAA games. It's actually a miracle that they are still able to maintain the 60 dollar price point but that is only b/c the audience for videogames have grown exponentially over the decades(meaning way more copies sold), though this in turn also drives up marketing costs to the 100+ million to reach those consumers.

These long and uncertain return on investments is the primary reason companies have either pulled out from AAA game development or try and exploit those games for shitty business practices. If you compare them directly than yeah, old games never had these ridiculous production costs which put them more on equal footing with modern indie games(which are also cheaper).

Ofcourse, there is also the reality that games are a product and all mass produced products lose their value over time. Unless like previous posters mentioned the value is driven up by scarcity.

 

[Worgen]

Well publishers would prefer games never went down in price, but how it used to work prevented that since physical stores would have to deal with unsold stock and to get them out of the door and make space for new games they would reduce the price. This lasted for a very long time but now that more and more games are just digital there is no need to reduce the price at all since they aren't taking up physical space anymore. Really the only reason to do it now is to attract consumers who have been dragging their feet or get people who might not know about the games attention with a good sale.

But yeah it annoys me too since I only rarely get a game at full price, like very rarely.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Should that be the case? Should older games like GTA San Andreas or Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, games considered wildly influential to the medium and said to still hold up today cost less than the modern AAA title?

Why should a digitally distributed game that has long since been dropped from support by it's developer/publisher cost anything at all? Besides the cost of bandwidth it is an unlimited and free commodity so charging more than a dollar or so could be taken as pointless.

In the case of San Andreas it's a particularly relevant question since the currently available release is missing content present in the original disc release thanks to various licenses expiring.

In the case of Ocarina of Time that entire game is 32MB, most people on this forum could download it in less than a second nowadays. In purely mechanical terms it's barely a trinket, you could fit the entire N64 library onto a $100 hard drive and have space left over, why should anyone continue to pay $60 for them when technology has marched so far forwards?

On a less extreme (trollish) note supply and demand dictate a falling price. Games are printed in the millions of discs, digital titles exist as long as the key algorithm keeps working (which in some cases isn't as long as you think, Hello Prey 2006), there will almost always be more copies of a game existing than people wanting to buy it, so price goes down to widen that net as much has possible.

 

[sXeth]

With things like movies or books, things like a Star Wars DVD can cost about the same as a copy of the Avengers on DVD.

Are games different from other mediums that they can't be judged by the same standard?

I haven't bought a DVD in a while, but last I recall, new releases were 16-20 dollars while other ones would be 6 dollars, 2 for 10, sometimes 3 for 10, some at dollar stores or liquidiation outlets for a flat buck.

There is a quality differential too. A game in 16 bit was made in 16 bit. A movie on VHS was filmed on much higher quality film and effectively diminished to put it on VHS. You are essentially buying a premium version (really, thats prettymuch what most video game remasters are getting to be, just adding the original uncompressed textures and such) compared to the older incarnations.

The obvious case of course is also, as mentioned above, supply/demand, and the used game market. Most of the people who are going to buy San Andreas outside of a few idly curious are those who are familiar with the title. They've probably seen, or are aware of it being in shops for 10-15 bucks, or at at thrift store or a garage sale. Thats not going to jive well with trying to sell it for 60 dollars.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Well publishers would prefer games never went down in cost...

Price, not cost.

Why should a digitally distributed game that has long since been dropped from support by it's developer/publisher cost anything at all? Besides the cost of bandwidth it is an unlimited and free commodity so charging more than a dollar or so could be taken as pointless.

It is not an unlimited and free commodity. It's still a commercial product, whether or not is is unsupported or even obsolete. Abandonware is totally a thing, existing in a grey area, but older games that are still getting sold...well that's up to the publisher. If it still sells in any numbers, that's good for them.

There is a quality differential too....
thats prettymuch what most video game remasters are getting to be, just adding the original uncompressed textures and such) compared to the older incarnations.

A remaster isn't that simple. Oftentimes textures aren't even touched. If they are upgraded that's actually above and beyond a standard "remaster". A remaster is usually the original game recompiled for a newer platform, with only necessary changes and fixes to make it work. The X360 -> XOne for example were wholly different platforms (PowerPC vs. X64) so 360 games couldn't natively run (an original XBox game technically could on the One however). So making them playable needs a recompile and some new coding for the new platform.

A good remaster may well up-res older textures, but remasters are not specifically that and are in fact a little different.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I sure wish I could.
But then in my little corner of the world a PS3 game from ten years ago is only marginally cheaper than the PS4 game releasing in a couple of weeks.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

You should play less for WORSE games, both new and old. Good old games are deserving of your money millions of times more than a brand new fifa or madden game released in the current year will be and that one will charge you full price.

 

[Pyrian]

It's not simple. Most publishers discount as sales wane, getting what they can when they can. Others (notably Nintendo) don't really do discounts. The thing is... Customers notice. A lot of people wait for the price to go down. But if you're thinking about buying a Nintendo game, well, what's the point? The price isn't going down. Might as well get it now. Markets are just people. It's not some magic invisible hand that sets ideal values of exchange. They are, in fact, quite easily manipulated, if you have the resources.

Cars, furniture, and other physical goods degrade, sometimes quite quickly. Digital goods don't inherently degrade, although some of their relative qualities (e.g. resolution of assets) can sharply decline through no fault of their own. It's not a one-to-one comparison. Many older games are more fun (and occasionally even better looking) than many much newer games. (Many others are very much not.)

 

[sXeth]

You should play less for WORSE games, both new and old. Good old games are deserving of your money millions of times more than a brand new fifa or madden game released in the current year will be and that one will charge you full price.

That's true in an ideal situation, but not the general norm.

If I go buy up another copy of Ultima at this point, I'm handing a batch of cash to EA. While EA isn't entirely unlikely to put out a new Ultima game (They've tried. Twice.). Its certainly not going to be anything related to the styles of old Ultimas I enjoyed. Most likely, it won't even give any sort of payoff to the people who made those games at all, at best some fraction of a cent. I would, ironically, just be throwing my money into the next Fifa or Madden in all likelihood (or into some EA executives or stockholders bonus payoff).

If I bought a copy of my other favorites series, Heroes of Might & Magic, its more or less the same deal, but with Ubisoft. Ubisoft has kept making Heroes of Might & Magic games, but even the semi-good one they initially churned out after getting the IP was flawed, and its only gotten worse from there.

 

[RobertEHouse]

'Value or price' of a product is determined by the market conditions at the time of its production and the products supply. Later on most media is based on the value people place on the product later on in its life span. (i.e. collectors market).
Games, Movies and other media by trend to tend to lose value because of the 'worth' or 'demand' from the consumer base as it falls off. So publisher sales happen to at least beat a little more cash out of it.

Also realize that not everyone will totally agree with you on exactly what is a influential game,movie,book or whatever is. Everything is up to debate and if anyone thinks that it impossible, spend time talking to a movie historian or a fan. In the end game prices fall because of what i stated before, Any exceptions usually fall down to people picking nostalgia over anything else. So no media should really every be except from normal market waves. As we are talking about products that have been so heavily mass produced that any value we hold to them is based on pure nostalgia.

 

[blue heartless]

I'm ok with games that need constant care and attention like server maintenance or semi-passive account protection changing prices based on the player population. Don't need a server that can host 10 million simultaneous 5v5 shooting matches if you only have only 9 concurrent users.

I'm not confident in my assessment of how game servers work so take this opinion with massive salt.