GameStop Listing Hints at High Diablo III Price Tag

[MrSnugglesworth]

Gonna buy it and love it anyway.



Good thing I have Torchlight to keep me company until then.


And MW2, Dante's Inferno, and Bioshock 2.

 

[Eric the Orange]

*OVERREACTION NERD RAGE*

seriously people, your getting up in arms about something that has no substantiated evidence.

Shame on you Tom for fanning the flames of the internet. What's next a thread where you talk about why religion is right/wrong.

 

[tehroc]

It sucks, but they can get away with it. Face it, we're all buying it.

Speak for yourself. Almost every Diablo clone I played was better. Blizzard are not the only devs that can steal another games ideas and dumb it down for the masses.

As expected the fanboys come out in droves to apologize for their beloved developer.

 

[Credge]

I Don't think that they will hike up the price. Warcraft 3 was in the works for a long time. You could watch the trailer when Diablo 2 was released so I can see them raising the price to catch up on expenses for it. So unless Diablo 3 is Delayed for another 2 years (I hope not) then they might do it.

D3 has been in development since the launch of D2.

 

[Rack]

It may suck, but at least it's honest. Dragon Age was normally priced, but then you had to pay an extra $7 to unlock core game features.

 

[Fenixius]

Meh, as long as Europe isn't affected by this I don't care.

Then you're missing the point entirely. It's not about practical side-effects. It's about principle, and ethics. What about if everyone was effected by this, except Europe? What if they did it one territory at a time, so noone really banded together to complain or dissent? It's not about whether or not you have to pay $10 more. It's about whether or not you'll have to pay $10 more per game, tomorrow.

I just don't undersand why exactly it costs so much for something that so quickly loses value. I can spend $100 on a PC game and then struggle to sell it for $10. It is not a good which retains value, and I have no method of trialling PC games.

That's another couple of issues entirely. Related, I'm certain, but not the same as the one raised in the article. That you can sell a PC game for $10 is pretty impressive - I can't do that here. Not with CD Keys and DRM locking it down. But I understand the point. I think you'll find a plethora of options exist for trialling the game, be they legal or not, and interactive or not. It's not like they're starving you for information.

Even Activision can't -really- be claimed to be doing that. Sure, they released bugger all about Modern Warfare 2 pre-release, but once it's out, people will review and record their games. People will share with their friends. The viral marketting will be huge. So I doubt you could claim you're being thrown in the deep-end; forced to wager your money on the quality of a game with nothing to support it.

Speak for yourself. Almost every Diablo clone I played was better. Blizzard are not the only devs that can steal another games ideas and dumb it down for the masses.

As expected the fanboys come out in droves to apologize for their beloved developer.

I respect your opinion that you dislike or do not expect the game to be good. However, I must vehemently disagree with your assertion that the people who disagree with the sentiment in this thread and your comment are "fanboys", devoted to their developers. Read closer. Some are, assuredly, but many people bring levelheaded ideas to the table. It's well worth your while to examine them, for this issue isn't -just- about Diablo, or Blizzard, or Activision.

Conspiracy to raise prices can and will affect us all, if left unchecked.

 

[Computer-Noob]

God damn it. It's like they want me to pirate it.

If $10 is seriously what drives you to pirate the game, I think you need to get out and find a job.

Fixed.

And expect Diablo 3 to release in 2011. How long has Blizzard been hyping SC2? Now they're moving more into their third franchise, which means they dont want to mess anything up.

 

[Fenixius]

God damn it. It's like they want me to pirate it.

If $10 is seriously what drives you to pirate the game, I think you need to get out and find a job.

Fixed.

Haha, yeah, that's about right, to be honest. The majority of the pirates I know would gladly spend their money on games... if they had any.

I know that's how I used to operate. I'd pirate because my money was -tight-. I'd buy in absolute necessary cases - to play online. Fortunately, I dropped that habit pretty quick, and now consider myself to pirate "ethically". That is to say: when a game is unavailable in my region, castrated by censorship, drastically overpriced in my region (and I cannot import for whatever reason), or no trial is available. Under no other circumstances would I pirate a videogame these days. Indeed, I make every attempt to be generous with my money towards the developers and industry I cherish.

 

[Slycne]

Eh, until Blizzard officially announces the price then I would take this with a grain of salt, especially considering the big pricing disclaimer GameStop themselves has on it. They probably figured it would be better to tell their pre-orders the game has gone down in price then up.

We used to manually enter SKUs all the time at the store and seeing as GameStop is slowly abandoning the PC format, I could also see their system defaulting to the $59.99 console price.

 

[John Funk]

We have yet to even see proper footage of Diablo III and you're aleady proclaiming the increase as justified?

Define please.

Sorry, I'm probably wrong here but they haven't released all of the concept details and the most I've seen is a teaser and a few screenies.

Uh, the game has been playable at both the last two BlizzCons, so I'm not sure where you're coming from here. (Plus, it's awesome.)

 

[Signa]

Sacred 2? A gem? That's hardly what I'd call it.

Fine, Best game ever. Whatever, jeeze.

And no, there aren't other options besides Diablo III. I've been hoping for this game for so long, I'll be damned if I let a measly extra $10 stand in my way.

A subscription fee is where I draw the line. I absolutely refuse to spend extra money every month for a game I've bought. That was the chief reason I quit WoW, and I won't be suckered into doing the same thing again, no matter what the title.

Joking about preferences over Diablo and Sacred aside, you seem to have missed my point. It is because of that mentality that they think that they can get away with it, and they will. That isn't right, because ultimately while the game will be good, it will be just another game. You can't give anyone in the business world justification to charge more for something just because they can, especially when it comes to PCs and data. There will be nothing more expensive about making this game to Blizzard compared to say Sacred 2 or GTA4, yet those games went for $50 when they were released. You might say differently for GTA4, but it was $60 on the consoles because of LICENSING FEES, not because the game cost more (I heard it was the most expensive game made at the time) or because they thought they could get away with it. Diablo isn't going to have any licensing fees to take from Blizzard's cut, nor do I find it likely that the game cost a lot of money of out Blizzard's pocket. Like I said in my last post, Blizzard has made so much money from WoW, that they could afford to give the game away for free, and it wouldn't hurt them. So why are you paying a $10 premium to buy their next game?

 

[uppitycracker]

A) Just because a game will sell millions doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense after the cost of development, especially with a game as huge as diablo. I'd hardly call it greed, and more along the lines of a company doing what's best for them, especially given the extremely high number of employees that Blizzard has

B) Gamestop always puts a placeholder price in the system so they can place pre-orders. It's happened many times where the cost listed does not reflect the actual cost of the game as it gets closer to the end of development.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

God damn it. It's like they want me to pirate it.

If $10 is seriously what drives you to pirate the game, I think you need to get out and find a better job.

It's the principle of the thing mate, whether or not you can afford it isn't the issue.

What you call principle, I call a convenient excuse to be cheap. Let's not get caught-up in semantics here.

Still, the thing I find amusing more than anything is that he's getting worked-up over speculation from a 3rd party. Gamestop has about as much of an inside source with Blizzard as I do with the Pentagon. Which is to say, none.

 

[Brotherofwill]

I am a huge Diablo fan but I won't pick this up if it continues that trend. I simply don't want computer games to get more expensive again, fuck you Activision.

It's that simple: If people don't stop buying the titles that have raised prices as a 'consumer test', there really isn't any reason why most publishers won't hop on the bandwagon and raise prices permanently. Swallow your pride and buy it second hand or when the price drops.

You young whippersnappers don't know what expensive is. My copy of Stonekeep was over eighty bucks, X-Com UFO Defense was sixty, as was Worms (the original). In the late DOS / early Win95 era, games used to generally run the sixty to eighty dollar range, with a hundred not unheard of. Games at fifty are cheap to me, but the quality of games (talking enjoyability, absence of bugs, and gameplay hours) has been way down, so they really aren't worth much more than that.

If Diablo 3 is the epicness that Diablo 1 and 2 was, and isn't a subscription-based game, then sixty bucks, big whoop. I'd probably pay double that. If it's a bucket of suck like Hellgate London was, or costs monthly to play, I won't touch it even if it were in the $1.99 bin.

Totally feel you. I remember I paid something like 100 bucks for my copy of Simon the Sorcerer 2. I avoid subscription based gaming like hepatitis B. If Diablo 3 shapes up to continue the awesome Diablo line I'm going to have to restrain myself not to buy it instantly though.

 

[CymTyr]

If D3 is indeed priced at 59.99 I am boycotting it till it's down to 30 bucks. When that might be, might take a few years who knows. But I refuse to be part of the price increase in gaming.

 

[Trivun]

The issue I have here is that a price hike on videogames that are going to sell millions strikes me as an incredible amount of greed. Do these companies really need to eke another $10 out of each loyal customer for titles that will continue to sell for potentially the next decade? As a videogame enthusiast myself, I want Blizzard to be financially stable until the end of time, and realistically $10 is not a whole lot for a game of superior quality. Still, when a game that will sell in the mega-millions is also given a higher price tag than normal, it does give me a slight feeling of being taken advantage of in a way.

Luckily, the new wave of cheaper, yet high quality digitally distributed games such as Torchlight [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/6697-Review-Torchlight] is only growing stronger and stronger. Plus, Diablo III's price tag is not yet set in stone, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

The thing is, we've also recently been seeing a high increase in the past couple of years of indie games that are being developed by extremely small companies or by some guys working together after their day jobs that are being released through things like Steam or through these people's websites, that are becoming massive hits. The most notable examples I can think of at the moment are Auditorium [http://www.playauditorium.com/] and World Of Goo [http://www.worldofgoo.com/]. Auditorium is retailing online for US$10.99 and World of Goo is only US$20.00. So it's fair to say that even if big companies are taking advantage, smaller companies are springin up that are still producing very good games at low cost and low prices. It's going to form a lot of competition for the larger firms if it goes on, and thatr could end up driving larger companies to again lower their prices or risk losing out on a lot of sales. There's a ceiling to how high prices can rise, as long as smaller companies and indie developers continue their present climb into the mainstream.

 

[Kajt]

Why go to Gamestop when you've got Webhallen?

 

[John Funk]

If D3 is indeed priced at 59.99 I am boycotting it till it's down to 30 bucks. When that might be, might take a few years who knows. But I refuse to be part of the price increase in gaming.

To play the role of devil's advocate here:

If costs of making a game have skyrocketed, why shouldn't the price go up? It costs much more to make a game these days than it did back when Diablo II came out, and teams are bigger than ever, so if a company hopes to actually make money in order to help its employees feed their families, then... what sense does it make to keep the price the same? They're not going to suddenly sell THAT many more units, you know.

I know it's tempting to just view the developers as big faceless corporations out to screw you out of every last dime, but they have bills to pay and need to put food on the table just the same.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

MW2 was developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision.

Diablo 3 is developed by Blizzard and published by ... Blizzard. They still self-publish all of their games.

even tho they might self publish, they are still controlled by the same people. as much as we'd like to think they're the company we all know and love, they aren't that anymore, they've changed man

wasn't it Activision who came up with splitting Starcraft 2, which is a Blizzard developed and published game, into 3 different games? this is just another example of that