Why are gamers so cheap? Should games cost more?

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It's nice to see that so many of you took the low road. Instead of having an actual rational discussion, you chose to call me spoiled and rich (I'm not) and jump to conclusions. Instead of seeing if and at what point an increase in game prices could effect the profits and possibly quality of games, you chose to flame me for calling for an increase on the current quality of games.

Almost no one posted any numbers. No economic info from game industry insiders. No unbiased looks into cost to gameplay ratios, absolutely nothing. Just a bunch of flames.



This is not about you. I don't care if you can or can't afford the games. I don't care if you'd get mad if game prices went up. I want to pay as little as possible for something as well, but personal economics is not what the thread was about.


If anyone wants to discuss the potential impact of a slight game price increase using actual data instead of "BUT I DON'T WANT TO PAY MORE MONEY!! YOU'RE JUST A STUPID RICH BOY!!" I'll be more than willing, but as of right now my inbox is full of quotes taking the low road.


Post facts, studies, industry quotes, etc. and leave name calling out of it. Not being able to only shows me that you're basing your conclusion on nothing but your personal feelings, which don't matter at all.

Dude, you said yourself you owned a business. That makes you rich compared to pretty much everyone else. What other conclusion should we draw from someone who owns a business telling us we pay too little for something that already represents half a utility bill for a lot of us?

Edit: My point is, you've demonstrated an excess of money and a lack of understanding of what a dollar is worth to people who have less of them than you do. What else should we call you but a spoiled rich kid?

 

[Snake Plissken]

I would be more than willing to pay $100 for a game

I'll tell you what:

We'll pool our money for 2 copies of a new game, one for each of us. You pay a hundred dollars, and I'll pay twenty. EVERYBODY WINS!

 

[MajorDolphin]

Console pricing has more to do with competition than how cheap gamers are. The console giants want to remain competitive with each other. With big money corporations behind the consoles they can justify the loss if gains are made up elsewhere. Look at Microsofts shady business practices in the past. They want to dominate the market and would be more than happy to lose a couple hundred dollars off the price of the console if it meant domination (if they did dominate the market you could expect to pay insanely high prices for consoles, beyond a reasonable profit margin). Luckily Sony is going to compete with them.

As for games, most games released are not even worth the 50-60 bucks charged for them. Again, the price of games is competitive. Why pay 100 dollars for MW3 when you can just get BF3 for 60? The publishers know that. Besides, casual gamers make up more of the big budget game sales than hardcore fans that play 80+ hours of the game. No casual gamer is going to 100 bucks to play occasionally.

 

[MetalDooley]

From what I remember of the PR campaign surrounding CD-ROMS, it really did. You've got to think, cartridges had what, at the time, were cutting edge circuit boards in them, and some of them even had EEPROMS for save files -- a very early form of flash memory. It would be like selling games on SD cards today -- even a small one of those could easily add $20 a pop to the cost, and they would need to be fairly large capacity cards to actually fit everything, which means it would be ridiculously expensive compared to disc based or internet based transmission. Granted, some of it was profit, but the margins were a lot lower before the CD-ROM than after.

Fair point but I doubt a cartridge added $20 to a games price.I recall reading somewhere before that the cost of manufacturing on cartridge was around $7-$8 a game(which admittedly is pretty high compared to manufacturing on other formats at the time).Add in dev costs,licensing fee and shipping and you're probably looking at around $20 a game so a £40 NES game(lets just assume £ and $ are equal)would still be making a substantial profit compared to a similar game on PC at the time

I agree that profit margins probably did increase substantially once CD's became the norm(although dev costs no doubt increased as well)but I still firmly believe that console games were massively overpriced in the 8-bit days

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I would be more than willing to pay $100 for a game if it led to a dramatic increase in gaming technology and depth. Considering an hour and thirty minute movie costs $8 around here, a 20+ hour game at $100 is a good deal. Especially when you add the hundreds of hours of online gameplay.


I'm sure I'm in the minority here, and will probably get some hate for this post.

Except the problem is, most modern games AREN'T that long, actually. And some of us don't give two shits about playing online. The thing about films is that you're paying for the experience of seeing it in a theater with a group of people on a big screen. To buy the actual DVD/Blu-Ray/digital copy, it's roughly $15-40 (depending on what you get, special edition, ect). Season boxes of tv shows, which actually ARE 20+ hours, are also a lot less than the current new game price, going between $20-40 generally. Going off of your own comparison, both of those are a LOT less than even the current $60 price tag of games. why they hell would we want to pay even MORE, when we're already paying a fairly high price?

If you feel the need to support your favorite game developers more, then fantastic, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Buy the special edition, all the DLC packs, ect. But not all of us are so keen on spending 100 bucks to play a 'single' game.

I love the season boxed set comparison. Any time someone starts using the hours to dollars argument, I point them in the direction of the Stargate SG-1 boxed sets. 22 hours of entertainment for $10, that's less than fifty cents an hour. The only way for a game to top that is to severely slash the price, even with a hundred hour monster.

 

[Estarc]

I would be more than willing to pay $100 for a game if it led to a dramatic increase in gaming technology and depth.

I live in Australia. We DO pay $100 for each game we buy brand new, frequently a little more. various digital distribution platforms like Steam allow PC gamers to get games a little cheaper, but console players have no such option.

 

[Altorin]

Again? Please, for the last time, try to get it into your head that the cost of games differ GREATLY, depending on where you are. Just the other day, I saw Mass Effect 2(Xbox360) for 50$, while Halo Wars was up for 75$. Try to tell me, what kind of earthly sense does that make?

I'm very happy there's money even under your skin, but for many others, paying even more is simply not a viable option. Games are severely overpriced in Hungary and this isn't South Africa, but East Europe we're talking about!

Sure, if I had lots of money and games were priced accordingly, I'd probably be inclined to spend more, but as of right now, this is simply not an option. You and a lot of others who think like you are stuck in the bubble of your own country and the chances you have there.

I cannot use Amazon and such, because shipping prices would equal me buying the overpriced here. We have NO used games service here. We have NO rental game service here. We've missed out on just about EVERYTHING pre-PSX, so that's another batch of tough luck if I ever want to try out something from N64 or (S)NES era legitimately..

I'm sorry, if I'm being aggressive on this, but it angers me endlessly when people assume that just because they have opportunities and the money for certain things, the rest of the world can either do the same, or be damned.

I have a habit of going into EB Games and valuating their games. What you see at some prices is insane, both ways. Brand new AAA games for 45 dollars, 4 year old shovelware for 60 bucks, sometimes it makes no sense.

 

[Kenami]

Sabiancym dude...people just don't like spending money. You say you don't care about "personal economics" but how else is a question like this to be answered?

I love gaming and love immersing myself into games but if I can rent a video game for $10 as opposed to buying one for $60 guess what I'm going to do? When you get older spending large sums of money becomes harder and harder. Especially with the accumulation of debts, bills, clothing, nutrition, and maintaining a home and that just the ones I can think of. What about the insurance for a car and the gas for car? and if you commute what about commuting fees? Theres a lot of other things people have to spend money on just to have a "typical" life.

You started this thread by comparing video games to other hobbies where others have to pay money. I am heavily into photography and despite my love for it I cannot spend that much money on gear. Does that mean I love it any less? no. Does it mean that I wish things were cheaper? Well I am a human so yeah. There is nothing wrong (in my opinion) to look at the price tag to something and wishing it was reduced. This has been around for centuries and I heavily doubt it will change. Simply put: If you think gamers are cheap than you seriously need to look at the rest of the human race as well.