The Price of Games is TOO DAMN HIGH

[IamLEAM1983]

Actually, the prices decreased over time.

Back in the nineties, Diablo II cost me the hefty sum of eighty-five dollars, plus tax. Why? Because the PC was still a rather niche market. SNES games also cost eighty-plus bucks, because of the virtual absence of competition. In both cases, developing games was just starting to be a little less exotic, so the tools used weren't quite as readily available as they are now.

Today, getting an Unreal license is pretty easy. All you have to do is work with UnrealEd to design your environment and write your own code to implement new game features. The number of competing developers also exploded, with the former SNES/Genesis duet replaced with the little symphony made up of all the current consoles, all the handhelds, mobile gaming platforms and so on.

Game development is now comparatively easy. The only thing that still justifies the sixty-plus price point is the budget that spawns most triple-A releases. Consider that System Shock 2 was developed for just over one million bucks, when some projects today can cost five mil or more. Skyrim comes to mind, for instance, in the case of exorbitant game development costs. Seeing as gaming and developing isn't constrained to bedroom programmers anymore and as team sizes have dramatically swollen, it makes sense for the overall product to remain somewhat expensive.

On the other hand, what's nearly disappeared is everything that's peripheral to a game's release. When's the last time you saw a game with actually serious box art? Anyone remember the nineties and their fixation on huge boxes that held up about 90% empty space? As digital delivery grows, the whole idea of delivering an *object* is starting to fade away. The only indie dev I know of that actually bothers with mailing you a copy of your ordered game (if you choose to) is Introversion.

In short, the devs and publishers trimmed the fat, the increased population in the scene lowered some of the costs, tools became more readily available, but the individual budgets and the scale of projects kept increasing. Hence why sixty bucks plus tax for AAA games. Also hence why indie devs can afford to sell you the product of a small team at thirty bucks or less.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Computer parts are infamous for dropping drastically.
And, it's just something you have to put up with, or learn how to short sell video games--not sure how that'd work though.
I normally consider it a price for having the game as soon as it comes out.

On a side note, does anyone know why Assassins Creed Rev. and Batman Arkam City are still so high. Like demending on where you look it's still full or close to full price.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Computer parts are infamous for dropping drastically.
And, it's just something you have to put up with, or learn how to short sell video games--not sure how that'd work though.
I normally consider it a price for having the game as soon as it comes out.

On a side note, does anyone know why Assassins Creed Rev. and Batman Arkam City are still so high. Like demending on where you look it's still full or close to full price.

My guess is the publisher looked at recent sales figures and still saw some form of demand that was high enough to justify not dropping the cost.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Actually, the prices decreased over time.

Back in the nineties, Diablo II cost me the hefty sum of eighty-five dollars, plus tax. Why? Because the PC was still a rather niche market. SNES games also cost eighty-plus bucks, because of the virtual absence of competition. In both cases, developing games was just starting to be a little less exotic, so the tools used weren't quite as readily available as they are now.

Today, getting an Unreal license is pretty easy. All you have to do is work with UnrealEd to design your environment and write your own code to implement new game features. The number of competing developers also exploded, with the former SNES/Genesis duet replaced with the little symphony made up of all the current consoles, all the handhelds, mobile gaming platforms and so on.

Game development is now comparatively easy. The only thing that still justifies the sixty-plus price point is the budget that spawns most triple-A releases. Consider that System Shock 2 was developed for just over one million bucks, when some projects today can cost five mil or more. Skyrim comes to mind, for instance, in the case of exorbitant game development costs. Seeing as gaming and developing isn't constrained to bedroom programmers anymore and as team sizes have dramatically swollen, it makes sense for the overall product to remain somewhat expensive.

On the other hand, what's nearly disappeared is everything that's peripheral to a game's release. When's the last time you saw a game with actually serious box art? Anyone remember the nineties and their fixation on huge boxes that held up about 90% empty space? As digital delivery grows, the whole idea of delivering an *object* is starting to fade away. The only indie dev I know of that actually bothers with mailing you a copy of your ordered game (if you choose to) is Introversion.

In short, the devs and publishers trimmed the fat, the increased population in the scene lowered some of the costs, tools became more readily available, but the individual budgets and the scale of projects kept increasing. Hence why sixty bucks plus tax for AAA games. Also hence why indie devs can afford to sell you the product of a small team at thirty bucks or less.

Dude, even by late 90's standards, you got fleeced on that. I remember Best Buy and Walmart both carrying that specific game for about $40. Where on earth did you find somewhere that charged that much?

 

[Epona]

Actually, the prices decreased over time.

Back in the nineties, Diablo II cost me the hefty sum of eighty-five dollars, plus tax. Why? Because the PC was still a rather niche market. SNES games also cost eighty-plus bucks, because of the virtual absence of competition. In both cases, developing games was just starting to be a little less exotic, so the tools used weren't quite as readily available as they are now.

Today, getting an Unreal license is pretty easy. All you have to do is work with UnrealEd to design your environment and write your own code to implement new game features. The number of competing developers also exploded, with the former SNES/Genesis duet replaced with the little symphony made up of all the current consoles, all the handhelds, mobile gaming platforms and so on.

Game development is now comparatively easy. The only thing that still justifies the sixty-plus price point is the budget that spawns most triple-A releases. Consider that System Shock 2 was developed for just over one million bucks, when some projects today can cost five mil or more. Skyrim comes to mind, for instance, in the case of exorbitant game development costs. Seeing as gaming and developing isn't constrained to bedroom programmers anymore and as team sizes have dramatically swollen, it makes sense for the overall product to remain somewhat expensive.

On the other hand, what's nearly disappeared is everything that's peripheral to a game's release. When's the last time you saw a game with actually serious box art? Anyone remember the nineties and their fixation on huge boxes that held up about 90% empty space? As digital delivery grows, the whole idea of delivering an *object* is starting to fade away. The only indie dev I know of that actually bothers with mailing you a copy of your ordered game (if you choose to) is Introversion.

In short, the devs and publishers trimmed the fat, the increased population in the scene lowered some of the costs, tools became more readily available, but the individual budgets and the scale of projects kept increasing. Hence why sixty bucks plus tax for AAA games. Also hence why indie devs can afford to sell you the product of a small team at thirty bucks or less.

There was plenty of competition for SNES games, did you live in a town with only one store and it wasn't a franchise? Just because YOU paid $85 for SNES games doesn't mean that Nintendo was charging that. Shit, if that's what you believe...I have a copy of Skyward Sword in shrink wrap and I'll sell it to you for $100 even. Deal? I can replicate that amazing offer for any Wii game.

 

[zombieshark6666]

Lots of great games much cheaper than they used to be. I'm surprised they can charge this low considering the ridiculous budgets of games these days.

Even paying 5$ for Walking Dead feels like robbery.

 

[MercurySteam]

I have only one thing to say; come live in my country where new games go for $110 and then tell me that you couldn't possibly be worse off.

So games are too high in your country too. Why do people feel the need to belittle the price in one country because the price is even higher in their country. If I paid $20 for a hot dog and you paid $30, does that mean $20 isn't too much for a hot dog?

You're missing the point here. Compared to me, the cost of games in your country is hilariously cheaper. I would kill to only have to play $60 for games but sadly all electronics are more expensive in Oz and games seem to be up there with the most out of proportion of them.

What I'm getting at here is that in comparison to me, you have nothing to complain about.

 

[Epona]

I have only one thing to say; come live in my country where new games go for $110 and then tell me that you couldn't possibly be worse off.

So games are too high in your country too. Why do people feel the need to belittle the price in one country because the price is even higher in their country. If I paid $20 for a hot dog and you paid $30, does that mean $20 isn't too much for a hot dog?

You're missing the point here. Compared to me, the cost of games in your country is hilariously cheaper. I would kill to only have to play $60 for games but sadly all electronics are more expensive in Oz and games seem to be up there with the most out of proportion of them.

What I'm getting at here is that in comparison to me, you have nothing to complain about.

No, I get your point I just think it's fuckin stupid. See in "Oz" your min wage is higher so your prices are higher. Now if you can't see that fine but surely you can see that "too much" is more than just the highest value.

 

[MercurySteam]

No, I get your point I just think it's fuckin stupid. See in "Oz" your min wage is higher so your prices are higher. Now if you can't see that fine but surely you can see that "too much" is more than just the highest value.

And yet I can still buy region free games from overseas at $60USD. With the dollar being above parody it will cost me just under $60AUD, so yeah, when I buy games l look at the highest value and see where to go from there. Sue me.

 

[Epona]

No, I get your point I just think it's fuckin stupid. See in "Oz" your min wage is higher so your prices are higher. Now if you can't see that fine but surely you can see that "too much" is more than just the highest value.

And yet I can still buy region free games from overseas at $60USD. With the dollar being above parody it will cost me just under $60AUD, so yeah, when I buy games l look at the highest value and see where to go from there. Sue me.

Games can be expensive all over. $60 is expensive for us and $100 is expensive for you. Why can't both be right, does there have to be a competition?

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Snip!

Snippers!

Being from Quebec, I initially picked up the localized version of Diablo II. I don't know if the higher price covered the operational costs for localization, but it seems to me like that would be a safe explanation.

Not that it's going to shed some light for either of you, but I bought my first copy at an Archambault store (pretty much a music and books-centered franchise with the occasional shitty videogames aisle), which is a prominent franchise in Quebec.

My guess is their price point was set largely out of sheer ignorance of the market. I remember seeing them tag shitty stuff from Kalypso or Arkane dating to three or four years ago almost seventy bucks.

To counter my own argument, I later (about ten years later) re-purchased Diablo II as part of its Battle Chest set and got the core game and Lord of Destruction for thirty bucks - in their native version, without any kind of localization involved.

 

[MercurySteam]

Games can be expensive all over. $60 is expensive for us and $100 is expensive for you. Why can't both be right, does there have to be a competition?

Just saying that it seems silly when people are complaining that they have to pay almost half of what you pay for games when both respective dollars are approximately the same value.

 

[Savagezion]

I always find it funny that everyone that defends game prices always use games they love (highest common denominator) as the unit of measure. Pay $60 for a game you think sucks after playing it for 2 hours and tell me $30/hr on a game you didn't enjoy is a good deal. Am I supposed to play that shitty game I don't enjoy for 60+ hours to "get my money's worth"? That is like prolonged torture that costs money. I paid $40 for Oblivion and still feel I got ripped off. To make my point clear, I use that game as a poster child for what happens when game development goes sour. That game is a ball of broken features wrapped up in a terrible story with terrible dialogue. It is garbage on a disc. I painstakingly held in there for ~20 hours before I couldn't take it anymore and just figured the fanbase out there was just insane. I paid $2/hr for my experience with that game and I overpaid.
In the same breath, I spent over $200 on Civ 4 and expansions total and I love that game. It is under $.01/hour now, I guarantee it. That is the game I played from 2006-08 and have still continued to play since but with other titles mixed in. I have 2000+ hours in it easy. Easy. I am probably at around 5-7000 hours in on that game. I have personal mods, other people's mods. I still love that game. I have had a current Civilization game save since the series began in 1991-2. (Whenever Civilization came out on SNES) However, I don't hold EVERY game's worth to that of Civilization. I have roughly 150 hours in on the Uncharted Series and value it just as much as I do my Civ games.

$/hour is not how the value of games are assigned by most people. It's usually $/worth; or $/entertainment value. It's the same way with books, movies, and collectables. Games aren't worth anything. They are data on a disc that you can't even own. They have 0 worth to consumers, publishers are making damn sure of that. (That isn't to say they don't have value.) So now it comes to entertainment value. Does a good game have $60 value? Sure. But good is a subjective term and not every game is valued as worth $60 to every consumer. $60 is a huge gambit to check a game out. I can impulse buy games on PSN for $14.99 that I have no clue about. Why? Because you aren't asking me to risk more than a $20 bill. I have never impulsively bought a $60 game I knew nothing about. I have looked at them and always thought "Hmm, I'll have to check out more about this online" when I LIKE what I see being advertised. Even if the game sucks (which hasn't happened yet) The worst I am out is $15-$20; the price of a used game often.

Games are overpriced. I agree with the OP completely. The reason game prices drop off when they underperform is becuase they are then attempting to make up for it in volume and impulse buys. It is a last resort tactic that the sales world is all too familiar with. They didn't get their "full boat" so they are now "cutting prices like madmen". A common strategy in sales is "mark up to mark down" you mark up and some people shell it out and its gravy sales. Then when you get a "No" you "mark it down" (actually regular price with large returns) and consumer thinks he got a deal, and you actually just lost your gravy, not your profits. It amazes me how many people think marketing and sales teams are "honest people". The markup on games is huge. I am positive that reducing the price to $30-40 would actually increase sales figures by 100+%. You want people to take a gamble on your product in the store? Make it an affordable gamble. The problem is publishers want you to make a huge gamble at the store and not many are willing. However, people are willing to gamble on used games in the $20-30 range. So they must be the devil.

 

[xshadowscreamx]

Agreed. I rarely buy new games now because they cost way too much.

i come from the land of the highest taxes, (australia)...so $89 to $100 is the new release asking price here...$60 would be a dream....higher wages here though

 

[Sansha]

I don't understand the argument that prices are too high. As far as I can remember they've always been between $60 and $100, depending on title, franchise and developer.

Gaming is a luxury, a recreational hobby for some and a religion for others. Unnecessary things like that just happen to come with unnecessary prices. And the more you keep buying despite your disapproval, the more they're going to keep charging it.

 

[xshadowscreamx]

I always find it funny that everyone that defends game prices always use games they love (highest common denominator) as the unit of measure. Pay $60 for a game you think sucks after playing it for 2 hours and tell me $30/hr on a game you didn't enjoy is a good deal. Am I supposed to play that shitty game I don't enjoy for 60+ hours to "get my money's worth"? That is like prolonged torture that costs money. I paid $40 for Oblivion and still feel I got ripped off. To make my point clear, I use that game as a poster child for what happens when game development goes sour. That game is a ball of broken features wrapped up in a terrible story with terrible dialogue. It is garbage on a disc. I painstakingly held in there for ~20 hours before I couldn't take it anymore and just figured the fanbase out there was just insane. I paid $2/hr for my experience with that game and I overpaid.
In the same breath, I spent over $200 on Civ 4 and expansions total and I love that game. It is under $.01/hour now, I guarantee it. That is the game I played from 2006-08 and have still continued to play since but with other titles mixed in. I have 2000+ hours in it easy. Easy. I am probably at around 5-7000 hours in on that game. I have personal mods, other people's mods. I still love that game. I have had a current Civilization game save since the series began in 1991-2. (Whenever Civilization came out on SNES) However, I don't hold EVERY game's worth to that of Civilization. I have roughly 150 hours in on the Uncharted Series and value it just as much as I do my Civ games.

$/hour is not how the value of games are assigned by most people. It's usually $/worth; or $/entertainment value. It's the same way with books, movies, and collectables. Games aren't worth anything. They are data on a disc that you can't even own. They have 0 worth to consumers, publishers are making damn sure of that. (That isn't to say they don't have value.) So now it comes to entertainment value. Does a good game have $60 value? Sure. But good is a subjective term and not every game is valued as worth $60 to every consumer. $60 is a huge gambit to check a game out. I can impulse buy games on PSN for $14.99 that I have no clue about. Why? Because you aren't asking me to risk more than a $20 bill. I have never impulsively bought a $60 game I knew nothing about. I have looked at them and always thought "Hmm, I'll have to check out more about this online" when I LIKE what I see being advertised. Even if the game sucks (which hasn't happened yet) The worst I am out is $15-$20; the price of a used game often.

Games are overpriced. I agree with the OP completely. The reason game prices drop off when they underperform is becuase they are then attempting to make up for it in volume and impulse buys. It is a last resort tactic that the sales world is all too familiar with. They didn't get their "full boat" so they are now "cutting prices like madmen". A common strategy in sales is "mark up to mark down" you mark up and some people shell it out and its gravy sales. Then when you get a "No" you "mark it down" (actually regular price with large returns) and consumer thinks he got a deal, and you actually just lost your gravy, not your profits. It amazes me how many people think marketing and sales teams are "honest people". The markup on games is huge. I am positive that reducing the price to $30-40 would actually increase sales figures by 100+%. You want people to take a gamble on your product in the store? Make it an affordable gamble. The problem is publishers want you to make a huge gamble at the store and not many are willing. However, people are willing to gamble on used games in the $20-30 range. So they must be the devil.

how long did it take you to type that?

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

Computer parts are infamous for dropping drastically.

The difference, though, is that you only need one video card, say. Any video card that is newer will replace your old one, making it obsolete (though still quite funtional within a reasonable time frame.)

Games, on the other hand, are more like food... new games aren't better than old games, nor do they replace one another. A game is good for wasting your time until you finish it, at which point it may have some lesser degree of replayability at some point afterwards. It's equally good at serving it's function if it came out last week or three years ago, but one of those games costs $60 while the other costs $15.

Of course, from a production standpoint there's a similarity. Both games and parts take a lot of effort to research/develop and significantly less to mass produce, meaning that you have this huge initial cost to pay off that's largely unrelated to how many units you sell. As you pay down that investment, the price you need to charge for each unit decreases dramatically... but again, there's a difference. Games don't need to worry about being eclipsed by the next one before they make their money back... at least, they shouldn't, as graphical improvements and the like aren't THAT important. The hype dies away, I suppose, but I've bought plenty of older games in order to be caught up with their newer installments.

Game companies could probably afford to cut their initial prices to something a bit closer to where they're ending up on Steam, since their product has a pretty long shelf life. They have precious little reason to do so, though, and as long as the game isn't a padded, 4-hour experience that costs me more than $10 per hour of enjoyment I can live with that.

 

[xshadowscreamx]

Games can be expensive all over. $60 is expensive for us and $100 is expensive for you. Why can't both be right, does there have to be a competition?

Just saying that it seems silly when people are complaining that they have to pay almost half of what you pay for games when both respective dollars are approximately the same value.

it is known that we australian should not have to pay thAT MUCH FOR GAME..but no one with power is complaining..and we are too soft riot these days