First Party Xbox One Games Will Cost $60

[Ironside]

Its bad enough you have to pay £35 for that now, but an extra £20? Yeah, no way.

Its £40 for a console game is it not? It also used to be £30 for a PC game, but the developers/publishers seem to have thrown that out the window recently with more and more games costing £40-£45 on Steam these days and the CoD games costing even more. PC gaming has things that balance that out though such as competing companies trying to sell the game - for example ROme2 was originally up for £45 on Steam, but £30 on Amazon, but now Steam has dropped the price to £30 as I imagine not many people were taking them up on their £15 more expensive deal.

I agree that £55 is a ridiculous price as well (almost $90) and would hope that any company selling their games for that price will see a huge drop in sales.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I want you all to come to Australia and try buy a game. $60 is cheap!

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

"$60 to rent my game for as long as Microsoft decides? $60 to play when and where I can play?? $60 to not be able to resell my game if it turns out to be terrible??! SIGN ME UP!"

Sigh. There are far too many stupid people in the world, that this will undoubtedly be the case.

 

[The White Hunter]

This doesn't tell me prices of anywhere outside USA and those stay consistent anyway, its everywhere else that could be interesting.

All the placeholder prices for Xbone and PS4 games in the UK are holding at a steady £55 or... $86.7. Current generation new titles at launch are about £45/$70.67.

Gotta be loving that tax on not being american in gaming.

The xbox can do wehatever it wants, if it's region locked it can fuck off and die in a hole

 

[luvd1]

Seriously? People are complaint games are expensive now? Fek right off! You lot have no idea how cheap $60/£35 for a game really is. When street fighter II came out in 1992 it cost $74.99, in today's prices that would be $121.69/£77.66. Just for street fighter fekin 2!!!

 

[EternalFacepalm]

I pay about $60 including postage anyway for new imports from European countries, and consider it a bargain. How about universal pricing instead of fucking twice the amount in Australia? That'd get you some points Sony. Really. I would point at you every day for a week.

(No really, it'd be much appreciated.)

This isn't exclusive to Australia. I've seen plenty of games in retail stores in Norway that, converted to USD, cost about $104.

 

[Something Amyss]

Sounds to me like Sony were being cagey, waiting for Microsoft to say what they were going for.

I really hope that's the case. I know technically that games are cheaper now than they ever have been, but $60 is still a considerable amount to spend on a game when you're worrying about a mortgage and what-not at the same time. On that note, however, The Last of Us is totally worth $60.

It doesn't hurt that our actual buying power is down too, meaning that the technical decrease in game price due to inflation may be utterly meaningless even if you don't have a mortgage.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

It was said that PS4 games would cost between $0.99 and $60. I am comfortable paying another five dollars for a new game, but not much higher since I know I will be able to trade in games to help pay for the new one.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

"H-Hey guys, we may cost a hundred dollars more a-and require you to log on once every 24 hours via a broadband connection, but at least we only make you pay the same as you ever did always for games, r-right? It's over, Sony is finished!"

Seriously.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I like how no one has noticed the "FIRST PARTY GAMES" point in the post.


sure, games from microsoft will be $60, but how much is the next Call of Halo: Battlelines (Need for Gears) going to cost?

I was thinking about too when I read the title. Yay I guess? How many first party titles did Microsoft release last gen? 9 out of 10 games people buy (for non-Nintendo consoles anyway) are third party

 

[jim1398]

Seriously? People are complaint games are expensive now? Fek right off! You lot have no idea how cheap $60/£35 for a game really is. When street fighter II came out in 1992 it cost $74.99, in today's prices that would be $121.69/£77.66. Just for street fighter fekin 2!!!

Just because they are cheaper than they used to be does not mean they aren't still expensive.

 

[Absolutionis]

Bring back $49.99 for game pricing.

Pretty much only PC games go for that much nowadays, and that's great. Some scummy publishers like EA and Bethesda tend to charge +$10 because they can.

Console games tend to pay more because they have to go through validation. I have no idea why first-party games my MS charge extra for their in-house validation.

 

[Agayek]

This is old news. They have been advertised on amazon already for a week.....i even wrote a thread about it a few days ago. lol. £55 in the UK or $60 in America.

Granted the price could come down in time, i think PS3 or 360 games were really expensive to begin with. An thats why im not buying any new consoles. Imagine buy a game that lasts 8 hours for £55? Its bad enough you have to pay £35 for that now, but an extra £20? Yeah, no way. PS4, not so bad due to ease of second hand games and rentals, but Xbone? Yeah, game price is another negative. If they were gonna put all these anti consumer stuff on the console, then sell the games for £30.

Well, if you think about it, £55 for 8 hours of entertainment is not that bad. It's not great, but it's not bad. You're looking at ~£7 per hour of entertainment.

I don't know what the equivalent prices are in the UK, but in the US, a ticket to see a 2 hour movie costs about $12, and if you want any snacks, that brings it up to about $20. Which brings it out to $6-10/hour of entertainment.

A $60, 8 hour game is at ~$7.50/hour. So really, buying an 8 hour game is roughly equivalent to going to the cinema. And if you happen to put more than 8 hours into it, which, to be honest, happens far more often than most people on the internet would have you believe, it just becomes a better and better deal. Then you get the games like Skyrim or Fallout or Borderlands or whatever that people sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours into, and the game cost them pennies per hour of entertainment.

It's a significantly higher up-front investment, yes, but overall, games really aren't that expensive. Obviously, cheaper is better, and we'd all like that, but value-per-dollar wise, most games are not nearly as expensive as the internet would have you believe. It's well within the bounds of other forms of entertainment.

 

[Roxas1359]

This doesn't tell me prices of anywhere outside USA and those stay consistent anyway, its everywhere else that could be interesting.

All the placeholder prices for Xbone and PS4 games in the UK are holding at a steady £55 or... $86.7. Current generation new titles at launch are about £45/$70.67.

Gotta be loving that tax on not being american in gaming.

The xbox can do wehatever it wants, if it's region locked it can fuck off and die in a hole

It is region locked. Shall I get the shovel?

OT: Well not saying I'm surprised about this. Although a lot of games on the PS3 have been really cheap when bought new, but then again this is for first party titles. Still, I rarely buy new games when they first come out. Heck I rarely buy a new game that was released that year.

 

[Arawn]

Honestly I expect(ed) a price increase on games come this new generation. Less than a month ago I was browsing online at the games to be released on the new consoles. Some of these had a $99 price tag on them. But I wasn't shocked. As everyone has already noticed games have gone up, and it seems the increase does happen with the change of generation. It sucks that those outside the states had already been feeling sting of the changing prices. What surprises me is that these companies haven't developed a system for it. Save the gamers some money and they'll buy MORE games. Pretty simple concept. If figure X-1's prices might stay the same mainly due to it's unique set up. Trading or borrowing games is limited, guaranteeing sells since players will pay almost full price for access. Or if the game is acquired through their "Select Retailers" still funnels money to them. Money put into the X-1 stays within the X-1's influence. Almost a trap of sorts that prevents it from cycling out from MS.As for Sony to stick to it's non DRM path games are traded and sold by the purchaser. They might use the money to buy a WiiU game or perhaps pick up a new controller. So I expected a jump, maybe even a bump in price. Maybe $65-70 for the new gen.

But now that I think about it(writing this post), maybe we won't see a price increase. Haven't we all seen what it to come? Free to play brought video games a new tool for gaining money: micro transactions. Yes, the lovely paying of money to gain more in game you already paid for (if not paid anything for). I'll admit I've almost fallen prey to the temptation of buying in game items during my moments of frustration, but I realized that's the point. Make a wall and force you to climb with by your fingernails. You blame yourself for the inability to rise to the challenge rather than notice the odds are against you. Couple that with DLC(first day DLC no less), "Limited Editions", and Pre-orders on games [MANY]months away from release, they might not need to go up on anything. Keeping the price the same on games might work out just fine. Just pray we won't see on disk DLC again.

 

[The White Hunter]

This doesn't tell me prices of anywhere outside USA and those stay consistent anyway, its everywhere else that could be interesting.

All the placeholder prices for Xbone and PS4 games in the UK are holding at a steady £55 or... $86.7. Current generation new titles at launch are about £45/$70.67.

Gotta be loving that tax on not being american in gaming.

The xbox can do wehatever it wants, if it's region locked it can fuck off and die in a hole

It is region locked. Shall I get the shovel?

OT: Well not saying I'm surprised about this. Although a lot of games on the PS3 have been really cheap when bought new, but then again this is for first party titles. Still, I rarely buy new games when they first come out. Heck I rarely buy a new game that was released that year.

Get your gun. I hate region locking, I can barely tolerate it on my 3DS because it's mostly good for international releases actually happening. But region locking is usually very bad for a system in Europe as we can expect lengthy delays because "lol u guyz suck", or some other crap.

I do hope PS4 games don't break the £45 price point, thats really the upper limit of my wallet for games and even then it better be a steelbook. £35-£40 new for things I'm excited for, preferably a bit less.

 

[wulfy42]

$60 price tag for digital copies is crazy. It's the same as jacking up the price for physical copies by 20-25%. Why?

No production fees, no shipping, no paying distributors/stores etc. Each copy of a new game that say gamestop sells....they get a profit from (gamestop that is)...or they wouldn't sell it.

But if Xbone is selling digital copies only....then all that profit goes straight to them. Not to mention the no used sales etc (which is even more profit for them...and the game makers/producers).

So say they are currently spending $20 all together on all that. That includes making the disk, the manuals, the packaging, transportation of the game and the cut the resellers are taking.

They could...if they were smart....initially sell the digital games at $20 less....why? Because if they start that way and boost the prices later, it would help them sell way more xbones...at a very small cost over all initially. That would be the way to really make a come back at this point.

Even if they were not smart...they could have the difference....$10 more for them, $10 less base price for us. Selling new games at $50 instead of $60. That would be an advantage over Ps4 (even if the Ps4 keeps a $60 price).

As far as the Ps4 increasing the cost of games past $60, if I was sony I would NOT do that initially either (even if the price to make games has gone up. You again want to keep prices down initially (say the first year) to sell more consoles. It is a war often over which system a family/person will buy. I'm almost certainly only going to buy one console for this next gen, my PC and Ipad entertain me most of the time....I rarely use my consoles...and when I do, 95% of the time it's my PS3.

Right now the Ps4 seems to be dominating as far as public opinion. To capitalize on that, they need to keep a $60 price range. To many the disparity between getting a physical copy of something for the same price as a digital one....is going to be a huge factor.

On top of all that I think the cost of games should be dropping...not raising. The insane amount of money they are spending on games is silly...and not needed. The game market has continued to increase, so the money you spend on creating games can go up...but it should not SKYROCKET up past the amount you will make on average from selling the game. What is more, as the number of gamers world wide continue to increase...the over all cost per game should decrease (not drastically...but a few dollars here or there. Yes, if you have a special game that takes a ton more work to create etc...then you could charge more on a case by case basis, but the normal cost of new games that are produced in 2-4 years...should not be going up.

Digital copies should have ALWAYS been cheaper then physical. The possible reasoning for that not being the case is that distributors (stores like gamestop etc) would boycott or at least be very upset with a company that offered digital copies for less. The Xbone is already going to be offering digital copies, so that is certainly not an excuse anymore.

Charging the same for a digital copy (looking at you Blizzard) as you do for a physical copy is just a rip off. You make a larger profit, and the customer gets less for the same price.

 

[FalloutJack]

Really? Well, tell us about the used game fines again. I'm sure that's a reasonable price too, right? Hah.

 

[Terramax]

Is $60 for digital download too? Because, if so, that's shambolic.