$70 American sounds like a huge discount compared to what we are used to paying in Australia

I bet your wages are a lot higher then the average American wage. Not only that our rent is high, gas is high, auto insurance, food is high, I can go on and on.

Greg

Don't forget health insurance, assuming one can even afford it and they don't kick you off it as soon as you need it. I'm much more concerned with those kinds of things becoming more affordable above worrying about new release games going up by $10.

...capitalism...such a love/hate relationship I have with it.

I'm not fussed, went to ASDA last night, not a single game was above ￡40, and I got Mass Effect 3 for ￡25. Not bad I thought, and that's without employer discount.

The sad part is even if you have health insurance, their is always a copay. I can go on and on why $70 games are bad for the majority of American consumers.

Greg

The cost of living is apparently very high in Australia. From a UK perspective, things like house prices, petrol and so on are generally very cheap in the US, and a typical income is broadly similar IIRC; and with games, electronics and so on, we often enjoy the "$1=￡1" mentality, or at least a very uncompetitive exchange rate.

I guess "who has it worse?" is missing the point, though: I don't think the time is right for a hike in games' RRP considering what else has been going on lately, such as shenanigans with DRM, DLC, trying to kill the second-hand market and minor things like a recession going on. Providing better value would be as likely to increase their turnover...

I highly agree with you here, the time is not right for a price hike. Its also not the time to kill the used game market it, many new game sales are made from people trading in old games. What developers need to do is produce a better product. For example look at Skyrim it was one of the better games to come out last year and they are on patch 1.526 on pc. Yet the game is still filled with bugs, they clearly could have used more developement time. But at least Bethesda is trying to make things right by making all these patches.

Greg

What I find appaling is that developers sell games that have maybe 15-20 hours playtime and still think $70 is a good price. If it has multi-player I can understand, that can provide numerous hours of entertainment. Same with games like Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur. Those I spend $60 on and don't care about because I know I'll get my $60 in entertainment. But a game like Duke Nukem costing $70 is pretty stupid.

Like the anti-used game rumors and all the other BS coming out about the new consoles I will remain optimistic. After all they are just rumors for now.

I'd get used to it.

Not saying it isn't true, but I didn't see any in that cost range (again though, very few developers release any of that data).


My point was that almost all of those fees and costs are being eliminated through the use of Digital Distribution and yet the price point remains at the same high level as when those fees and costs existed.


Video games are not "luxury" items. To be sure, they certainly are not necessities but their ownership rates have taken them deeply into the realm of common goods. In a free market, people pay what they think the game is worth. What publishers are trying to do is eliminate the second hand market (i.e. their competition) so that they can continue to engage in price-fixing. I can't pay what I think a game is worth if the only place I can buy the game is from the publisher who is greatly inflating the price point.


If you can get hundreds of hours then it was probably worth it to you, problem is they don't really make games like that anymore. It is far more profitable to make a game that has mass market appeal than it is to make a game that actually prevents people from buying other games due to the long enjoyment period (kind of like those Stride Gum commercials). The last game that I actually got my money's worth out of was Morrowind, and I have purchased that game twice now. Since then, I've only bought a handful of new games and they have all been unmitigated disappointments (especially Oblivion, which doesn't even get a place on my game shelf).

Every one here clamoring about getting their cheap steam games, I don’t see that helping game companies either.

Is the extra $10 even that much? I mean unless your buying a new game very week, its not all that much more.

I've been poor before (hell, I lived in a homeless shelter for a few years), but $10 doesn't seem to much of a difference.

Maybe the average person is greedier than me, its not my place to judge, though.

On consoles, most of the times people get cheap games they're second hand copies because it's harder to find new copies of older console games. Not all of them can be bought online. On Steam/GOG/wherever discounted games get bought quite a lot so that's much more beneficial to the game companies than the current situation on consoles.

If every pc user waited till a new release like Skyrim went 20 dollars cheaper or half price what do you think is going to happen to the game company. I realize a game like skyrim does have other sales outlets like consoles. It just struck me how there like two dozen posters in this thread braggin about getting their games cheap on steam, what if every one did that?

Thats still better than buying it used. At least some money is going into the developers pocket and not just the middleman.
Considering that the big majority of games are purchased on consoles nowadays, those PC users are much less of an impact than those people who wait a couple months and buy it used.

If a game costs over $100m just to make it to my console then clearly people are doing something wrong, especially when you look at some of the games' quality.

This is true, however a few high profile titles have been reported to have budgets in the range of $100 million.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1814884/business

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/09/grand-theft-auto-bang-bang-youre-dead?newsfeed=true

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/ea-spent-only-200m-to-make-star-wars-the-old-republic/

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Epic-Mickey-2-Production-Bigger-Than-Call-Duty-Resident-Evil-6-40564.html

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-27-pre-owned-increases-cost-of-games-cannibalizes-industry-says-dyack

http://kotaku.com/5893013/game-sales-are-dead-long-live-game-sales


In economics, "necessity goods" are essentials that consumers will continue to buy regardless of income, like food, water, electricity, etc. They have a low price elasticity of demand. "Luxury goods" are goods with a high PED, and in the case of videogames, the price elasticity seems to be http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http://www.netopia.se/2010/01/30/prissattningsparadoxen-natets-logik-bryter-alla-regler/

I'm not familiar with price discounts for older console games, but for PC games, within the first 18 months the digital download prices can drop down as low as $2.49 - $9.99 for many games that were once $50-$60. Perhaps you will start to see more of this type of pricing for digital downloads on the next console generation as well. (Or maybe more consumers will buy laptops and desktops instead of consoles. )

As for used games, it's exactly the same bits of data, how can any publisher compete with that? Of course they will seek to limit or restrict used game sales, as this cannibalizes sales of new games. Part of the reason why the indie DVD market collapsed a few years ago is because Blockbuster was turning around and re-selling all their new release revshare copies for a $4.99. On the PC side, we have already been accustomed to not being able to buy used software applications or games for several years.

Then they'd damned well better lower their prices, hadn't they? I'm buying games to play in my spare time, I'm not doing it to protect companies from the laws of supply and demand.

In any case, a sale on Steam is still a sale. If anything, that's helping game developers, because prices are lower, meaning more people can buy their games, and there's no physical distributor or print copies taking a cut of the profits.

I agree with this. Can anyone honestly believe that Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 required more than a few hundred thousand to develop? After all, it was essentially just a reskin of the last game with the leveling rearranged. Yet it made over $1 billion in its first 16 days on the market. For what it cost to make, they could have charged $20 a copy and still made massive profits. Tack in the fact that you are essentially required to buy the expansions in order to play online (you don't have to buy them, but if you don't you get to wait in 40 minute queues) and you have a pretty ludicrous example of why we should not be paying as much as they are asking.

If they honestly think that they are going to increase sales by blocking the used market they are delusional. Most people who buy used games do so because they either cannot afford new ones or are not willing to pay new game prices. Neither of those two groups will magically start paying full price.

I can't comment on MW3 as I haven't played the game, but the salary for development staff can range from $40k to well over $100k. Many of these large games have hundreds of employees, and sometimes hundreds of voice actors, tens of thousands of lines of dialogue, etc. This type of undertaking is comparable to producing a high profile effects-driven movie.

Perhaps they could have charged $20 for MW3 and ended up with a significant profit, but why on Earth would they? It's a business - Activision has a fiduciary obligation to its investors to maximize profits.

And? I don't know about you, but I don't buy games to help game companies- I buy games to get a product that I want and place some measure of value on. Paying a price I find reasonable is my only concern. Maximizing income from games is the concern of game companies. I expect both them and myself to look out for our own respective interests, and with any luck we'll be able to come to some sort of mutually agreeable deal that works for both of us.

Which could be argued as to why prices are going up at release to make up the difference, at least a contributing factor. Did any one on the pc get any price breaks for skyrim release on steam, no; it was the same as the box in the store with its disc & manual.

they may be helping their investors in the short run but they're going to hurt in the long run if all their customers feel they've been cheated in product quality

And this is why gaming is going to the dumps; no one gives fudge about anything but themselves.