games really are not that expensive...

[Soopy]

You're right though, games really aren't that expensive, UNLESS YOU LIVE HERE!

*insert obligatory Australian bitching about games being over $100 here*

Get this, I can buy parts for my car from America, and pay less than an American would to buy the same thing.

Yet I pay twice as much for a game developed in America, produced in a chinese sweat shop and shipped in bulk to Australia.

How the fuck, does that make sense?

 

[HarryScull]

fall of the samurai (amazon sale)

Fall of the samurai for less than 5 bucks? Sorry but i don't buy that.
The rest, ok, makes sense, even shogun 2, but Fall of the Samurai isn't that cheap yet.

currently on Amazon its only £10 and I got it in a sale

 

[HarryScull]

TLDR: games are very cheap, pirate's are wrong

So the whole thing was to disprove some imaginary pirates you were arguing with in your mind? Cool, I hope you won. That wouldn't work against real pirates but keep going, you might have a decent argument one day. And some time later you might even be ready to argue with pirates. I'll even give you a tip - get a lobotomy to be able to understand the justifications they give you.

no it was to show that although games are expensive if you buy on launch day, if you wait for sales and price drops games are really cheap, and that a lot of people I know pirate because "games are to expensive and I wasn't going to buy it for £40 anyway" which is a retarded argument

 

[HarryScull]

snip

Suggest you change the title to "PC GAMES really are not that expensive"

I have been waiting for almost a year for Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 to sell at a reasonable price, but both are hovering around £30 for a NEW copy, and pre-owned copies you lose the online pass.

I love PC gaming and my PS3 has been neglected more and more as I simply cannot justify the cost of the few games I could get for it.

I used to play xbox and games are a lot more expensive for console, even when I bought used games and waited for sales I was still paying £20 a game, and with used games being destroyed with the nest console generation, one of the main reasons I got a PC was because it should save me money in the long run on games

 

[HarryScull]

Okay, how about the games that actually get pirated now? Console games are expensive and all those you listed are were part of sales. You didn't list a single game I have played for more then a few hours.
I think you mean 'Some games, if they are on pc, on sale and not that expensive to make, aren't really expensive'

um no, I mean that if you insist on buying brand new games on launch day then games are expensive and you are letting game company's screw you over but if you are happy to wait for price drops and sales you can buy some really great games for very cheap

my statement stands, gaming really ins't that expensive

 

[Amaror]

fall of the samurai (amazon sale)

Fall of the samurai for less than 5 bucks? Sorry but i don't buy that.
The rest, ok, makes sense, even shogun 2, but Fall of the Samurai isn't that cheap yet.

currently on Amazon its only £10 and I got it in a sale

Damn uk^^.
But's still more than 5 bucks.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

Am I the only one that doesn't find RRP for new games too pricy?
I mean, by no stretch is my family rolling in money, but it costs about 1/2 or more of £40 to just go out for a night, eat out somewhere or to buy almost anything else that could be considered a 'luxury hobby item'.

£40 for what could last me months and rack me up 100+ hours of game time is a good deal, and it's often worth buying multiplayer games early because you get to play when everybody else is playing and get a feel for it sooner. If you think £40 is too expensive for something that lasts you so many hours, how can you ever justify buying alcohol for the price its at, buying a ticket to a movie or buying an expensive phone every year?

 

[II Scarecrow II]

I recently watched a lot of video's arguing over the games being expensive, most of them are jimquisition style rants about how games are "ridiculously expensive" and it getting more and more expensive, I disagree and to prove my point to buy games decided to see how much fun I could have gaming at a cost of <5£ a game, and how long I could go without spending over 5£ on a game

the results
shogun 2 total war (amazon sale)
fall of the samurai (amazon sale)
rome total war gold edition (steam sale)
amnesia (humble bundle)
limbo (humble bundle)
phyconoughts (humble bundle)
bastion (humble bundle)
super brothers sword and sorcery (humble bundle)
old version of minecraft (minecraft.com)
team fortress 2 (steam)
and a huge amount of flash games, many of which were ore fun than the full blown retail games, such as portal, pandemic 2, bloons, box head, and around 20+ more

I have lost count of how long its been going but it's been afew months and will probably go on for many more, to put it in perspective I have probably clocked over 250 hours in rome total war gold edition and haven't even played shogun 2 or fall of the samurai yet (they came Friday in the mail and I haven't got round to installing them yet) I'm pretty sure I could keep this up indefinitely if wanted to but some games are a better deal that are more expensive than £5, such as portal 2 or minecraft 1.3

this is a huge amount of games some of which I have put 100+ hours in already and some I haven't even had chance to install/download yet and this makes video gaming by far the cheapest form of entertainment I have, to put in perspective I pay around 5£ for 1 hour of kickboxing lessons..or rome total war gold edition which I have an embarrassing amount of time on

in the interest of fairness I am accessing these from a very expensive computer, that cost over £1000 (which I use for allot of things besides gaming), that money was going to be spent on my first car but as UK insurance companys rip new car driver of big time I decided to get a boss like PC instead (best decision of my life)

also I need to upgrade my hardrive to a 500gb caviar blue (44£) so I have enough memory to keep my plethora of games on.

for discussion value are games really expensive and is costly a valid excuse for pirating?

in my opinion games are an incredibly cheap source of entertainment, and pirating is just inexcusably wrong, you can access these games and pay for them and playing them without paying for them is ridiculous, you know what I cant afford? to rent as house in york but that doesn't give me permission to move into a house anyway and then complain to the tenant that they are in the wrong and act like I'm a victim




TLDR: games are very cheap, pirate's are wrong

Hmm, you're purchasing last gen games over the internet that are on sale, so of course they're cheap. No-body is arguing that OLD games are cheap, the problem is with the NEW ones, or the big Triple-A titles. For example, Modern Warfare 2, or even WaW still retails in EB Games for $60, and that's a used copy in Australia. Brand new games usually average between $90-$110, depending on how much you shop around, and this can last for months depending on the title. BF3, which has been out for almost 8 months STILL retails at the full $90 price tag that I payed for it new.

Yes, I'm sure people could find it cheaper if they shopped around, purchased things online or via Ebay, but that is not the problem. The problem is that retail stores, and to some extent digital distribution platforms like Origin, are priced ridiculously high. Can someone explain to me why a hard copy of Mass Effect 3 costs the EXACT SAME price as a digital version that has no printing or shipping costs associated with it?

Sure, the price for many games invariably drops, faster if it's quite shit/unpopular, and I am not arguing that you can get the game cheaper at a later date, nor am I arguing that piracy is the way. I just think it's a little bit unfair for you to say that 10 year old games are cheap, therefor all games are cheap. As with anything else, the price will depreciate over time in accordance with demand, and that is fine. The real problem is the ridiculously high starting price.

Someone used a car analogy, where they said an '05 car is cheaper than a '12 luxury car, which is of course true, but it is an unfair comparision. Sticking with this analogy, the older model might not have all the little extras, or support for your problems might have been cancelled for some reason, or maybe it simply runs on a type of fuel that isn't produced any more and this is why people want to buy a new one, provided they could afford it.

But let's say cars were all priced the same for their category, regardless of their actual value. All new small cars were priced at $20 000, 4 wheel drives at $60 000 and then luxury cars like BMW's at $100 000. This is the problem with gaming. All games are arbitrarily released at the same price, and the rate at which they depreciate is dependent on their quality/popularity and the problem is, there is no way for the buyer to get a better deal, because there is simply no competitiveness in the industry. If people want to get a game new, then that is the price they must pay, no if's, but's or maybe's and in any other industry that would be considered uncompetitive and economically wrong. This either forces people to wait until a game MAY come down in price to an acceptable level, or just fork over their money for the game they want.

Again, I'm not arguing that people should or shouldn't wait for the price to drop, as that is their own perogative, but the real problem with the industry is the lack of competitve pricing. And THAT is why games are too expensive.

 

[Treblaine]

And how do you determine the proper prices for these games? Apparently not supply and demand since presumably people are still willing to pay that much for those games...

That exists on PC where it is much more open to competition and with less expensive stipulations of set-price licence fees and retail-store mark-up like you find in console gaming.

The problem with consoles is there are just too many factors pushing the price towards $60 (and higher) and no one is really allowed to go any lower. And people are NOT accepting these prices, the majority of shelf space in stores is dedicated to used-games that means a huge proportion of the market are compelled to sell their old games and buy used rather than new.

Sony, Microsoft, etc will orchestrate circumstances to keep game prices high, that makes it easy for them to have a $15 licence-fee per game.

ON PC you can have such dynamic pricing from how many middle men are cut out of the loop. There is REAL competition from how with PC you aren't forced to use Steam for EVERY game, but if you boguth a PS3 you MUST use PSN. If You bought a 360, you have no choice but Xbox Live.

That isn't true competition. That's like buying a Ford Automobile but you can only buy fuel that Ford sells in their special gas stations where they can charge whatever they like.

Capitalism is BROKEN on consoles. It is broken by how pricing is not truly independent and there are effective monopolies on a per-customer basis.

 

[Iwata]

Gaming IS expensive if you want to keep up to date with brand new releases all the time.

I started saving a lot of money once I stopped buying games on release and just waited for their price to drop after a couple of months, as well as started buying more pre-owned games.

At this stage, I'd say gaming is as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be.

 

[Scars Unseen]

As far as entertainment goes, games are bargain. Hookers are much more expensive for the time you get out of them, plus they can leave you with much bigger problems than poor vision and RSIs.

 

[spekkio9]

OP, you are missing the point of most of the articles which say video games are too expensive. Many video game publishers view selling and purchasing pre-owned games as piracy. They think you are breaking the law no differently than someone who downloads the game off the internet for free, because they only see the money from the original purchase. They go on to site this practice as one of a myriad of reasons why video games cost $60 new and creativity is stifled. The counter argument to the publishers is that [new] games are too expensive for 10-20 hours of play time (on average), so people resort to purchasing pre-owned games, selling used games back, or waiting for the game to get old enough to buy it new on sale. Additionally, the target audience for most games are teenagers and college students, both of whom have a high percentage of disposal income (assuming they work), but not a high absolute dollar amount.

So yes, I think we can all agree that games are affordable as long as you purchase them in every way that publishers view as illegal and which they make no money. If they had their way, you would only be able to purchase the new game for full price.

 

[Fidelias]

I don't think you can count Humble Bundle, steam sales, last gen games, or free to play games and then say that games aren't that expensive.

Yeah, games aren't that expensive when you wait 10 years to buy them (Rome total war), nor are they that expensive when out of the goodness of their heart a bunch of developers allow you to name your price for a game FOR CHARITY.

None of this counts.

I have to agree. I mean, you can say that a car isn't expensive if you count waiting ten years and buying it for a couple hundred bucks. But that ten-year-old car isn't going to last nearly as long as a brand new one, or even slightly used one.

But the thing is, you can't wait too long for the price to drop if you're thinking about playing multiplayer. You wait too long, and there won't be anyone to play with. And I don't want to wait a year or two to get a half-decent deal on a story-based game, because no matter how much you try to avoid it, someone is going spoil the awesome plot-twist for you.

Now, I usually don't spend more than 20 or 30 bucks on games myself, either because of promotions or using gift cards I've saved throughout the years. But that doesn't change the fact that a brand new game costs more than 1/4th of my weekly paycheck, and that's kind of ridiculous. Also remember that a lot of games are forcing you to buy extra content, like multiplayer passes, if you buy used. So you're not always getting games at 20 or 30 dollars, but 25 or 35 dollars.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Suggest you change the title to "PC GAMES really are not that expensive"

I have been waiting for almost a year for Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 to sell at a reasonable price, but both are hovering around £30 for a NEW copy, and pre-owned copies you lose the online pass.

I love PC gaming and my PS3 has been neglected more and more as I simply cannot justify the cost of the few games I could get for it.

I used to play xbox and games are a lot more expensive for console, even when I bought used games and waited for sales I was still paying £20 a game, and with used games being destroyed with the next console generation, one of the main reasons I got a PC was because it should save me money in the long run on games

Another thing with PC gaming is you pay for as much graphical quality as you want. You either get a super graphics card for the top range, or a budget card, or anything in between. And if later you want more power you don't need a whole new machine but just upgrade one major component.

Consoles had an edge over PC at the beginning of this generation but they have pushed things too far. They killed their golden goose by being too greedy.

I think if there is EVER going to be a new console generation a lot of people are going to seriously question if it is worth it, and if they are going to move to a whole new system might a decent PC not just be a better choice.

 

[Woodsey]

I don't think you can count Humble Bundle, steam sales, last gen games, or free to play games and then say that games aren't that expensive.

Yeah, games aren't that expensive when you wait 10 years to buy them (Rome total war), nor are they that expensive when out of the goodness of their heart a bunch of developers allow you to name your price for a game FOR CHARITY.

None of this counts.

And uuhh... why don't Steam sales count?

OT: Yeah, between Steam sales and Amazon.com digital download sales I've been saving a shit-load.

Nabbed The Darkness 2 for a tenner about 3 weeks after release from Amazon's download store.

PC games are a lot easier to get a hold of cheaper though, I'll grant people that.

I always use http://savygamer.co.uk/ nowadays.

 

[PureChaos]

well yeah, if you buy old games you can get them cheaply but it's new games that are the problem. Having said that, though games are expensive, in terms of cost per hour of use, they are the second most cost effective items. A new DVD would cost, say, £12, it's 2 hours and you watch it 3 times, that's 6 hours meaning the film cost £2 per hour of use. A new game is, say, £40. Say each run takes 30 hours and you play it 3 times. That's around 44p per hour. If it's a HUGE game and you could get more hours per run which would make the hourly cost even less. And that's a new, expensive game. I got Pokemon LeafGreen for £5 and have cracked up probably 100+ hours in all the runs i've done.

The only think that has a better hourly cost are books.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

How do video games compare cost wise to other mediums like Movies?

I know some movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars yet retail for about $25AUD.
How is the price so different?

Are you responding to me, because I really don't understand your point.

No, I'd have quoted you if I was.

I'm just genuinely interested as to why video games sell for $100AUD but movies about 1/4 of that. Yet movies cost at least as much to produce as a video game.

I can't speak for Oz's inflated prices, but Games are more expensive then Movies because:

A: They do not have anything equivalent to Cinema releases. Films can completely equalise their costs on the Theatrical release alone. DvDs are usually just icing on the cake (or a life line)... a film has already succeeded (or bombed) before the DvD release.

B: Films have a FAR larger demographic. People still forget that for every 100 gamers (casual or hardcore) there are Thouasands of Movie goers and film watchers and that isn't including those gamers who may also watch films.

C: Most games need a long term aftersales support, like patches, community management, Server maintenance etc. Films don't... pay for a ticket, watch the film... pay for a DVD watch the DVD.

Of course, this still doesn't excuse the prices. The games industry, particularly the AAA industry, have some pretty bad business practices. The price is only so high because they want to keep expanding, rather then hitting a plateau and maintaining it.

But don't worry, the industry is hitting a few snags now, and are blatantly getting desperate (look at the controversy of 2nd hand sales). They will have to level out soon, or face fatal losses.

 

[Lilani]

But don't worry, the industry is hitting a few snags now, and are blatantly getting desperate (look at the controversy of 2nd hand sales). They will have to level out soon, or face fatal losses.

Or, even though gamers ***** and moan on forums about wanting lower prices, they still flock by the millions to pay whatever price the publisher offers on release day. Meaning the statistics they have in their meetings all point to most gamers not giving a fuck about what prices they pay.

 

[Starke]

in my opinion games are an incredibly cheap source of entertainment, and pirating is just inexcusably wrong, you can access these games and pay for them and playing them without paying for them is ridiculous, you know what I cant afford? to rent as house in york but that doesn't give me permission to move into a house anyway and then complain to the tenant that they are in the wrong and act like I'm a victim

Yeah, not on the piracy front, but I think you managed to demonstrate that the MSRP doesn't reflect the actual market value of video games these days. That the price tends to sharply drop in the weeks after release is certainly additional evidence of that, and the sales figures for some games, like Torchlight, that eschew the main industry price points is another bit of evidence there.

 

[ElPatron]

Gaming is not too expensive. IF it's too expensive for YOU, just wait for a sale.

Which is an extremely good idea in an industry that is used to make it's biggest profits on the first week after release.

Result? The publishers would play victim and punish the consumer.

EDIT: not everyone has the right to enjoy price drops. In many countries a lot of games retain their release price for months.

No wonder people complain games are expensive if they don't know how to shop. If you buy the shiniest newest thing of course it's going to cost a lot. A luxury 2012 car is more expensive than an economical 2005 car. Just because you're looking at the expensive cars doesn't mean they all are.

I don't think you can compare the two industries.

A 2012 "economical" car will be cheaper than a 2012 "luxury" car. No need to throw 2005 into the mix because you're just adding time as a factor for convenience.

The fact is that 60?-70? (around $95-$105) for a game is too expensive. We shouldn't have to pay more than 45? for new releases because that's only slightly higher than what Americans pay.

The prices are fixed for gaming. At release you're paying 60 bucks and it doesn't matter if it's a Ferrari or a Fiat. You can't compare it with the automobile industry.