Yeah, I think its kind of hilarious, because I'm currently learning about Cartels and how illegal they are in business studies and this seems to be the exact description.ghstman said:
Since When did this become ok?!!
- Thread starter Chesterfield Snapdragon McFisticuffs
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Ehhh...basing the price of games off of metacritics scores is a bit of a double-edged sword, however. You can have critical launch bugs patched within a few days that, in many cases, metacritics won't catch, since most review places don't re-review to see if critical errors or problems were or were not fixed.Void(null) said:
Likewise, if you go into the MMORPG realm, metacritics never accurately sticks up with how those games evolve, and usually stick to how the game was at launch.
In many cases, metacritics can work, but using it beyond a yardstick for how a game stacks up is taking the system far beyond what it should ever handle. Nevermind certain abstracts with how they convert grade scores into a percentage and the like relatively arbitrarily. It's not the best source, nor how it should be judged.
To that end, however, I still fundamentally agree with the fact that games should be more appropriately priced for their quality, but then one has to argue: what is a game worth? Is it a quality of experience, or quantity? Or both? Should it be zeroed out to a movie ticket price, or ~$10 for ~2 hours? Or should it be more subjective?
If anything: publishers should be held more accountable for angry customers who aren't getting their money's worth, but it's hard to really quantify how that can be accomplished without it being exploitable by either party involved, and the like. Usually, as with a car not having a set price, the price comes down to workmanship and materials, but it's much harder to judge workmanship in a game before it's released or bought, because individual people can't see what's under the hood, so to speak, nevermind be expected to understand remotely what's under the hood (IE view the source code).
Long story short: It's a can of worms.
Welcome to charging as much as possible for a product, championed by Ayn Rand. Works even better with food and health care...
It happens like that because people are greedy... I'm afraid if you buy three games now 'a' days you could have bought a Wii or cheap Xbox (okay, maybe it's not THAT bad) and frankly, it annoys everyone else - but they're the ones making money.
you havent watched ZP have you? no offence.
Anyway, thats the way of the world man, you got to buncker down and bear (And i mean bear) it.
Anyway, thats the way of the world man, you got to buncker down and bear (And i mean bear) it.
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.
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.
Veylon said:
Actually, one thing that gets me is that a "AAA" title is what they decide it is to begin with. Indeed if the industry had it's way they would bill every single game as a "AAA" title. Really you don't know what's really a "head and shoulders above the rest" until it's been out for a while. You can spend millions upon millions of dollars and years of dev time on a complete piece of horse dung.
Truthfully though, I'd be wondering if it's the game industry that is marking up the prices in these regions, or the retailers. I'd also look carefully at the laws in New Zealand and Australia to find out what the laws are on monopolies and cartel behavior. In the US at least it's SUPPOSED to be illegal for a gorup of businesses to get together, agree not to compete, and set prices for products, and coordinate price hikes and such. People tend to ignore it except when someone complains (which doesn't really happen with video games). Really we've only seen much action in my experience when it's come to Microsoft (over operating systems) or the price of gas rising at the pumps. Still, if the laws are similar perhaps a bunch of people down there might you know... call some attention to it. Get enough people and maybe something might be done.
That said, if it's the companies I'd also immediatly guess that it might not actually be all *THAT* unfair for packaged products due to the range of shipping. Packing stuff into boats and planes is not cheap. Of course this brings up my favorite criticism of digital downloads: basically that they were supposed to lower prices by removing shipping and packaging costs (in reality the companies just package the extra money). In general I have noticed that games availible for download tend to cost the same thing as retail... I would expect places like Australia and New Zealand to have benefitted the most.
It's the nature of the beast that's capitalism. While I am pro-capitalism, I hate companies that take advantage of their customers.
Unfortunately, if all the companies are doing it, you can't get them to lower their prices by only buying from companies that sell their games at much more reasonable prices.
Unfortunately, if all the companies are doing it, you can't get them to lower their prices by only buying from companies that sell their games at much more reasonable prices.
