Since When did this become ok?!!

[Arcticflame]

Why are AAA titles more expensive? Because they're triple-A titles! AAA means a game that is head-and-shoulders above the rest. It's more because people are willing to pay more for it.

Who says it's okay? You do! Every time you plop down $50+ for a disc you are making a statement that you consider the game worth at least that much. Why not take that cash and buy half a dozen titles from Good Old Games and make a statement of a different sort? I hear they've got the Might and Magic 6-pack for $10.

Here's the problem with what you've said. Steam is an internet content store, which means that basically these publishers are hiking up the prices in an attempt to force australian prices on games despite there not being a meaningful border to define it. So what do I do? I decide not to purchase the game. Publisher makes less money because less people buy the game. What does publisher do in response?

They stop releasing games for the PC, and go to the profitable consoles. Where the perception is a fanbase that has no choice, a much larger proportion of people purchasing with naivety and ignorance. (And before I get flamed, no I'm not saying PC's are for clever elite master gaming race and consoles aren't, all I'm saying is that people who do not know much about technology, and tend to go for hype titles buy consoles, a demographic that rarely visits this forum), and piracy is not much of an issue.

Basically sending messages to publishers through money doesn't work in the PC games market anymore anyway. They either blame poor sales on piracy, or call the PC a dying platform. Despite the fact that the good titles still get good sales.

 

[ethaninja]

It's called people being dicks. The world has always been this way.

Yes it has, for too long.

 

[Telperion]

At first I thought it was because they were big games (Modern Warfare 2, 89.99 USD) but then I realised that other were paying $59.99. Borderlands was originally $49.99 and got pulled, then re-released for $79.99. The price of Battlefield Bad Co. 2 has just leapt from $49.99 to $69.99.

Yeah, I have noticed the exact same thing here in North Europe. PC games used to be along the lines of 40 euros a pop, and XBox Games were 60 euros. Now, all of a sudden it's up to 50 ? for PC and 70 ? for XBox 360. That's getting just a little too expensive for my taste, so I'm looking into international vendors who - for some reason beyond my understanding - don't have to scam me quite so bad to turn a profit. Also, I'm starting to stray away from mainstream AAA titles, because those buggers cost the most, but usually don't even deliver significantly more content / gameplay than independent titles. Hey, it's a cold-hearted-capitalist world out there, and us consumers have to take care of ourselves.

 

[Veylon]

What I get a kick out of is everyone here complaining about a luxury good being expensive. "How dare they want too much money for something I don't need! The humanity!"

It's not even as though there is a shortage or anything. There's enough cheap games out there to last any of you a lifetime. Heck, there are enough free games to last you all forever.

It's as though there are rubies scattered over the floor, sapphires are available for pennies, and yet all anyone can talk about is how @$#@&% expensive diamonds are. I mean, why? Is it really that case that people can't bear to be without the latest title, that they are afflicted with some terrible geas that drives them, weeping bitter tears, to purchase it now? Somebody tell me!

 

[Captain Blackout]

Welcome to charging as much as possible for a product, championed by Ayn Rand. Works even better with food and health care...

sigh. I can't even be bothered explaining how wrong this is.

How wrong what is? Charging as much as possible, or my commentary?

 

[Chrissyluky]

When did it become okay to sell shitty games at full price?

Good qeustion. borderlands was a rent at best(so bland and 50% of it is running around). and battlefield stopped being good awhile ago =/. All of this would have to fit into the. we do it because we can thing. would have to say cod 4 probably kicked this off.(mw2 massively overpriced in britain)

 

[darthcendiarygrenade]

It might have something to do with New Zealand policy regarding international trade. ie keeping local prices competetive by upping the foreign price. ie a tariff.

 

[Low Key]

It's called supply and demand. Get more people to play games in your nation and watch prices drop. Europe is pretty close to America in terms of game sales, so they have better prices, but in terms of physical media, there are are other factors like tariffs, shipping, etc. that affect prices. I'm sure digital media is priced accordingly so people don't pick one over the other aside from their own personal preference in gaming machine.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I thought i was because of the money exchange rate
Also woohoo theres another NZ gamer on here!

 

[Telperion]

It's as though there are rubies scattered over the floor, sapphires are available for pennies, and yet all anyone can talk about is how @$#@&% expensive diamonds are. I mean, why? Is it really that case that people can't bear to be without the latest title, that they are afflicted with some terrible geas that drives them, weeping bitter tears, to purchase it now? Somebody tell me!

I for one didn't suggest that every possible AAA game is a must-buy, but rather that I have noticed a significant jump in prices. This begs the question: why? Nothing that I have noticed has changed in the last couple of months, except the prices jumped.

For the record: I bought Arkham Asylum as a used game, and I'm happy I did that. Once I'm through playing it Arkham Asylum goes back into Gamestop, because there's no way I'm going to bother playing through it again. ME 2 is also hanging around just long enough for a round of DLCs to come down from Bioware, and after that it's back to Gamestop for that game as well.

 

[Deleted]

They do it because they know people will buy it anyways.

 

[Rickyvantof]

I remember paying full price for Red Alert 3... what a waste of money. Ever since I've been pirating all the games that might be lame, usually buying them when they don't suck ass. Or I read reviews, which I should've done for RA3 D:

 

[Branbeggr]

I'm playing on a mere assumption here, but aren't most of the current game hardcopies in circulation produced in China and/or Japan?

If so, it severely undermines the whole "oooh, but Australia and NZ are on the other side of the planet and shipping's not free you know"-argument.

The Steam thing is pure capitalism. All hail the flesh.

 

[Veylon]

They stop releasing games for the PC, and go to the profitable consoles. Where the perception is a fanbase that has no choice, a much larger proportion of people purchasing with naivety and ignorance. (And before I get flamed, no I'm not saying PC's are for clever elite master gaming race and consoles aren't, all I'm saying is that people who do not know much about technology, and tend to go for hype titles buy consoles, a demographic that rarely visits this forum), and piracy is not much of an issue.

Who's "they"? Ubisoft? EA? Acitivision? Blizzard? Who cares! If a corporation abandons a market, it leaves a hole for another one to pop up and replace it. All these big studios are in serious trouble (hence the higher prices). Any and all publishers are replaceable, as far as the market's concerned.

Basically sending messages to publishers through money doesn't work in the PC games market anymore anyway. They either blame poor sales on piracy, or call the PC a dying platform. Despite the fact that the good titles still get good sales.

If they don't get the message, then they fail. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether they blame the market, the pirates or each other. If they can't see which way the wind is blowing, they'll end up on the rocks. So what? New, nimble companies appear all the time in every industry to exploit the cracks left by the old, doddering giants. Once upon a time, Nintendo cleaned up on Atari's mistakes, and then Sony cleaned up on Nintendo's, and now Nintendo's got that Wii moneymaker, and the world moves on.

I just think it's a mistake to get too focused on one subset of the gaming industry and assume that you can extrapolate from there. It's like thinking that the internet is in trouble because AOL's going down the tubes, or that the Big Three constitute the entirety of car manufacturing. There are a lot of young developers waiting in the wings to steal the show.

 

[Snotnarok]

I dunno when it became okay, honestly I live in the US so I don't see most of the shit game developers/publishers push. Me personally I'm pretty upset with paying $60 for every new game that comes out, there's no reason for it. Developers say the cost of games has risen, so has the customer base, more people play games now than ever.

Not only has the price of games gone up but you get less for your money as the rest gets released in DLC which we all know have to pay for. Anywhere from 10-20 bucks for a little bit more to a hour or so of game time, sometimes the content is even on the disc so what did you pay for?. It's madness.

Even controllers cost FAR more than before and that pisses me off to no extent.
PS2-25
GCN-25
xbox-35
PS3- 50
Wii 30remote +20nunchuck +20motion+
360- 40
Genesis- 15 (had to)

The worst, THE ABSOLUTE WORST of it all is this new age DRM/limited install bullshit. You pay 50+ bucks and get essentially 5 installs to combat pirates who remove the software anyway leaving it the customer who ultimately pays the price.

So basically you pay full price for a game that you have limited access to, there's no discount and BEST of all there's no warning that this sofware is in the game, you basically have to wait till amazon reviews come in with angry customers (though now they're coming out with info more thankfully) I want to smash the guys face in who made this idea happen because it's shady, it's buggy it's bullshit and a lot of other mean words. Don't try and tell me that it's okay because I got Farcry 2 with my video card and lost all my installs via trouble shooting some issues because the installs also mean hardware changes boys and girls.

To end this lengthy rant against developers/publishers/console makers. The video games industry has boomed into a huge market and that's great, but I think with all this we could do with less whining that they're losing sales when they're simply burying us with things to buy and tacking on bullshit DRM to rob us of money that most gamers I'd assume aren't exactly swimming in.

 

[seditary]

What I get a kick out of is everyone here complaining about a luxury good being expensive. "How dare they want too much money for something I don't need! The humanity!"

It's not even as though there is a shortage or anything. There's enough cheap games out there to last any of you a lifetime. Heck, there are enough free games to last you all forever.

It's as though there are rubies scattered over the floor, sapphires are available for pennies, and yet all anyone can talk about is how @$#@&% expensive diamonds are. I mean, why? Is it really that case that people can't bear to be without the latest title, that they are afflicted with some terrible geas that drives them, weeping bitter tears, to purchase it now? Somebody tell me!

That's completely missing the point.

Lemme explain somewhat: In the days before digital distribution (steam in this instance) games in America were roughly $50 per, and $80-100 in Australia, and the exchange rate was around 55-60 American cents per Australian dollar, so with exchange rates and shipping costs the amount worked out even.

Then the financial crisis happened and the American dollar went into the toilet, dropping to 90ish cents to the Aussie dollar. Australian steam users had a lovely period of buying games for $50 US which changed to 55-60 Australian instead of 100 for hard copies in stores.

A few publishers noticed they weren't getting as much money from the region now the American economy was in the shitter so they arbitarily raised the price on steam for some games to make them roughly analogous to the pre-crash era or store bought copies.

They're getting less total revenue from us, but they haven't realised that our money IS WORTH MORE NOW.

If the exchange rate now was what it was back then, MW2 for Australians would cost over $140. FFS I spent that much last week on a 1.5TB external HDD.

 

[Altorin]

Why are AAA titles more expensive? Because they're triple-A titles! AAA means a game that is head-and-shoulders above the rest. It's more because people are willing to pay more for it.

Triple-A is just industry slang. It doesn't hold any real meaning, and it's definitely not a mark of gameplay quality. It's mostly just "Big budget game from developer that you probably know!"

doesn't mean it will be good, or successful by any means.

 

[DarthNinja]

Wouldn't using this work?
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=us

Get steam games at USA prices because it thinks you're in the US?
Never tried it since I live in the US, just something I found a while ago on the steam forums.

 

[MySoxSmell]

well i am also from the land of the long white cloud, and yes i believe paying that much for games is bs, i buy most of my games off trade me (like ebay but nz only (for those who dont know) but yeah modern warfare at cheapist last time i looked is $125 (about $85 US) which is total crap. but yeah i dont think they can charge this much

GRRR KIWI RAGE

 

[Arcticflame]

Who's "they"? Ubisoft? EA? Acitivision? Blizzard? Who cares! If a corporation abandons a market, it leaves a hole for another one to pop up and replace it. All these big studios are in serious trouble (hence the higher prices). Any and all publishers are replaceable, as far as the market's concerned.

A generalised strawman I made up as an example, in this particular case it's 2K games and Electronic Arts. I don't care about whether a publisher fills the gap. Because if I want a particular game, I won't be able to get it from the publisher that goes to console. I don't care about the market, I care about getting the games I want.

If they don't get the message, then they fail. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether they blame the market, the pirates or each other. If they can't see which way the wind is blowing, they'll end up on the rocks. So what? New, nimble companies appear all the time in every industry to exploit the cracks left by the old, doddering giants. Once upon a time, Nintendo cleaned up on Atari's mistakes, and then Sony cleaned up on Nintendo's, and now Nintendo's got that Wii moneymaker, and the world moves on.

It matters because I would appreciate getting console games on the PC. Companies moving to console means I don't get the game.

I just think it's a mistake to get too focused on one subset of the gaming industry and assume that you can extrapolate from there. It's like thinking that the internet is in trouble because AOL's going down the tubes, or that the Big Three constitute the entirety of car manufacturing. There are a lot of young developers waiting in the wings to steal the show.

I think it's a mistake not to focus on one subset of the gaming industry, when the topic focused on that particular subset.
It's also a mistake to assume I particularly are enthused by the subject. My Favourite games companies are the ones that release PC games constantly for the same price as console, or in many cases PC game exclusives. My response was simply stating that it isn't fair for the developer or the consumer, and that the publisher is effectively shooting themselves in the foot and then not realising they have.