GameStop Listing Hints at High Diablo III Price Tag

[John Funk]

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

No, it was not Activision's idea. I get why people think that, and it's easy to point fingers and create conspiracy theories, but speaking with Blizz guys on the RTS team and seeing their enthusiasm for the product, it's hard to imagine the order coming down from above (or rather, technically to the side and maybe a little bit above). Game developers aren't traditionally the best liars out there.

With SC2, they knew there was a ton of stuff they wanted to do with the game. They had a few options here:

A.) Cut out all the cool stuff they wanted to do in the campaign to get it out sooner.
B.) Put all the cool stuff back in, but with the consequence that the game would take significantly more time to develop - we're talking 2012, 2013 here.
C.) Split the content up with two expansion packs instead of just one.

Neither A nor B are really ideal situations here. With C, it's just like what we got with StarCraft 1 + Brood War, only with an extra expansion. The fact that they're calling them expansions now indicates to me that they probably WON'T be full price (though I don't know if calling them expansions means that you'll need to get all of them for the multiplayer instead of the currently-announced model where all you need is one of the games to get the full multiplayer).

Blizzard isn't owned by Activision. Blizzard's boss is still Vivendi, whose game department merged with Activision. And Vivendi has had the sense to leave well enough alone so far with their golden calf.

 

[Artemis923]

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?

I get your point, and it's a good point.

But I've been waiting almost 10 years for this game now. If I have to pay another $10 to have it, then I will.

 

[TheKaiserEcho]

I'd pay $60, but with how much Blizz is making off of WoW they could probably give it away, but as long as it's good and they use the money to make more good games, then I'll gladly hand it over!

 

[Byers]

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.

It costs way more to make Hollywood movies and you can buy a DVD for 15 bucks.

 

[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.

It costs way more to make Hollywood movies and you can buy a DVD for 15 bucks.

Way more? Avatar is one of the most expensive movies ever made, and it's $250m, whereas the biggest blockbuster games are over $100m. Hell, a year and a half of WoW cost $200m in *operating expenses alone,* IIRC. Plus, you're forgetting that movies also get the benefits of ticket sales before the DVD hits shelves, and there's a much larger market for DVDs than games.

 

[Byers]

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.

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

No, it was not Activision's idea. I get why people think that, and it's easy to point fingers and create conspiracy theories, but speaking with Blizz guys on the RTS team and seeing their enthusiasm for the product, it's hard to imagine the order coming down from above (or rather, technically to the side and maybe a little bit above). Game developers aren't traditionally the best liars out there.

With SC2, they knew there was a ton of stuff they wanted to do with the game. They had a few options here:

A.) Cut out all the cool stuff they wanted to do in the campaign to get it out sooner.
B.) Put all the cool stuff back in, but with the consequence that the game would take significantly more time to develop - we're talking 2012, 2013 here.
C.) Split the content up with two expansion packs instead of just one.

Neither A nor B are really ideal situations here. With C, it's just like what we got with StarCraft 1 + Brood War, only with an extra expansion. The fact that they're calling them expansions now indicates to me that they probably WON'T be full price (though I don't know if calling them expansions means that you'll need to get all of them for the multiplayer instead of the currently-announced model where all you need is one of the games to get the full multiplayer).

Blizzard isn't owned by Activision. Blizzard's boss is still Vivendi, whose game department merged with Activision. And Vivendi has had the sense to leave well enough alone so far with their golden calf.

Not sure if it's just me, but at this point, every single thing you say just sounds like "choo choo, MASSIVE Blizzard fanboy coming through, choo choo!".

 

[John Funk]

Not sure if it's just me, but at this point, every single thing you say just sounds like "choo choo, MASSIVE Blizzard fanboy coming through, choo choo!".

Well, to be fair I do think I have a bit more of a perspective than others, actually getting to, y'know, speak to the people who make the games and hear their own reasons for what they do. Misinformation bugs me, and I think that gamers have a tendency to overreact and hyperbole gets out of control. So, I like to play "developer's advocate" every now and then, because as much as gamers like to hate EA and Activision and Ubisoft, there are real people who work there who like games just as much as you do, but they have families to feed.

I think it's part of my job as a news writer to try and correct misunderstandings, even misunderstandings that are, well, perfectly understandable because people don't have first-hand experience with certain things.

But Blizzard IS probably the single developer I respect most in the industry, yes. I'm not going to deny that

 

[ItsAPaul]

Why do you guys care what Gamestop says? You could pre-order Baldurs Gate 3 a few years back and can probably still pre-order Starcraft: Ghost. They literally open those the moment a game is hinted at, so to me it just looks like they're assuming a price. They also have a release date on Starcraft 2 that's fiction fyi.

 

[Byers]

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.

It costs way more to make Hollywood movies and you can buy a DVD for 15 bucks.

Way more? Avatar is one of the most expensive movies ever made, and it's $250m, whereas the biggest blockbuster games are over $100m. Hell, a year and a half of WoW cost $200m in *operating expenses alone,* IIRC. Plus, you're forgetting that movies also get the benefits of ticket sales before the DVD hits shelves, and there's a much larger market for DVDs than games.

I'm pretty sure the majority of games gets made for less than a hundred mill. And any the justification for WoW's costs are the recurring subscription fees that make such spending possible.
And even if the average cost of a computer game was directly comparative to blockbuster movies, it wouldn't justify a 4 times higher price.

I'm willing to bet the larger chunk of the movie audience do not both see a movie in the theater and in addition buy the DVD (at least not until it drops to the low budget bin). I know none of my friends do, unless the movie is earth shattering.

And I somehow doubt the audience seeing Transformers 2 are that much larger than the player base for mainsteam titles like World at War 2, considering the title spans multiple platforms.
And even if it is, that's not really the consumer's problem. We still don't deserve to have to pay 4 times the price for something of comparable production cost.

 

[John Funk]

I'm pretty sure the majority of games gets made for less than a hundred mill. And any the justification for WoW's costs are the recurring subscription fees that make such spending possible.
And even if the average cost of a computer game was directly comparative to blockbuster movies, it wouldn't justify a 4 times higher price.

I'm willing to bet the larger chunk of the movie audience do not both see a movie in the theater and in addition buy the DVD (at least not until it drops to the low budget bin). I know none of my friends do, unless the movie is earth shattering.

And I somehow doubt the audience seeing Transformers 2 are that much larger than the player base for mainsteam titles like World at War 2, considering the title spans multiple platforms.
And even if it is, that's not really the consumer's problem. We still don't deserve to have to pay 4 times the price for something of comparable production cost.

The majority of games? Maybe. But the price of making a game HAS escalated hugely. FF7 was one of the most expensive games made at $30 million dollars back in 1997. GTAIV had a budget of more than $100 million, ten years later. So if the relative price has tripled, why aren't we paying three times as much for our games? While you're right that the cost of MOST games is well below that, we're comparing blockbuster film to blockbuster game, and most movies have a budget well below that of Avatar.

(By the way, just looking it up. Transformers 2 grossed $100 million worldwide in one day of sales. Averaging out ticket sales to $10 - which is certainly not the case in poorer parts of the world - that comes out to 10 million people who went to see it in one day. That's triple the current record holder for games, Halo 3. Add in the fact that movies traditionally have a much longer "tail" than games, get a second wave of money when they're released on DVD, and I think you'll find that movies do have a much bigger audience than games, hence the lower cost of DVD)

At TGC earlier this year, Atomic boss Peter Tamte said that most games have to sell a million copies just to break even and recoup development costs, even at $60. How many games actually sell a million? Only a handful per year. So even at $60, a lot of games simply fail to turn a profit.

 

[Byers]

I'm pretty sure the majority of games gets made for less than a hundred mill. And any the justification for WoW's costs are the recurring subscription fees that make such spending possible.
And even if the average cost of a computer game was directly comparative to blockbuster movies, it wouldn't justify a 4 times higher price.

I'm willing to bet the larger chunk of the movie audience do not both see a movie in the theater and in addition buy the DVD (at least not until it drops to the low budget bin). I know none of my friends do, unless the movie is earth shattering.

And I somehow doubt the audience seeing Transformers 2 are that much larger than the player base for mainsteam titles like World at War 2, considering the title spans multiple platforms.
And even if it is, that's not really the consumer's problem. We still don't deserve to have to pay 4 times the price for something of comparable production cost.

The majority of games? Maybe. But the price of making a game HAS escalated hugely. FF7 was one of the most expensive games made at $30 million dollars back in 1997. GTAIV had a budget of more than $100 million, ten years later. So if the relative price has tripled, why aren't we paying three times as much for our games? While you're right that the cost of MOST games is well below that, we're comparing blockbuster film to blockbuster game, and most movies have a budget well below that of Avatar.

(By the way, just looking it up. Transformers 2 grossed $100 million worldwide in one day of sales. Averaging out ticket sales to $10 - which is certainly not the case in poorer parts of the world - that comes out to 10 million people who went to see it in one day. That's triple the current record holder for games, Halo 3. Add in the fact that movies traditionally have a much longer "tail" than games, get a second wave of money when they're released on DVD, and I think you'll find that movies do have a much bigger audience than games, hence the lower cost of DVD)

At TGC earlier this year, Atomic boss Peter Tamte said that most games have to sell a million copies just to break even and recoup development costs, even at $60. How many games actually sell a million? Only a handful per year. So even at $60, a lot of games simply fail to turn a profit.

Maybe if the price was lower, more people would buy them. Like with DVDs.

Besides, the budget and special effect standard in movies has escalated at a similar pace to that of games, considering video games has only been around for a few decades. Yet the cost of buying movies has actually dropped, at least where I live, from the glory days of VHS. Even accounting for inflation.

Now, I'm not saying it's easy for developers to break through and become successful, but asking the consumers to pay increasingly ridiculous prices to make up for the comparatively smaller market than that of other industries does not sit right with me. Paying more than $15 will be necessary - paying more than $40 shouldn't be.

And we both know that what's going on with Blizzard is not an up and coming developer struggling to make ends meet. They could release an empty box containing Chris Metzen's shopping list, with a doodle of an orc at the bottom of it, and it would sell to triple platinum.
No, this is clearly a matter of "hey, I bet if we priced this thing 10 bucks higher, it would still sell like gangbusters for extra profit!".

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Goddamn, suck it up Americans! Most other countries in the world usually have to pay double what you are.

 

[L33tsauce_Marty]

I probably will be DLing it from the interwebz anyway, because I fucking hate gamestop.

 

[Tom Goldman]

I could be looking too much into it, but you never know.

 

[Tom Goldman]

Warcraft III was priced at $59.99 when it was released in 2002, almost unheard of at the time.

Really? That sounds... implausible. I guess I didn't buy it right when it came out, so I don't remember directly, but weren't most PC games still going for $30 in those days? Or they'd just started bumping up towards $50, thanks to the Xbox/GameCube/PS2 era?

Hmmm, too bad I can't think of an easy source for this sort of data at the moment...

Sorry for the double post, but here's an article I found that shows the $60 price:

http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

 

[Vim-Hogar]

Warcraft III was priced at $59.99 when it was released in 2002, almost unheard of at the time.

Really? That sounds... implausible. I guess I didn't buy it right when it came out, so I don't remember directly, but weren't most PC games still going for $30 in those days? Or they'd just started bumping up towards $50, thanks to the Xbox/GameCube/PS2 era?

Hmmm, too bad I can't think of an easy source for this sort of data at the moment...

Sorry for the double post, but here's an article I found that shows the $60 price:

http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

Thanks! That's really interesting. I think in this case, the price went down pretty quickly, because I believe I bought WarCraft 3 a year later for $30 with StarCraft thrown in for free or like $5 more. Then again, I think I've already demonstrated that my memory on this point is a little fuzzy.

And I somehow doubt the audience seeing Transformers 2 are that much larger than the player base for mainsteam titles like World at War 2, considering the title spans multiple platforms.
And even if it is, that's not really the consumer's problem. We still don't deserve to have to pay 4 times the price for something of comparable production cost.

Now, I'm not saying it's easy for developers to break through and become successful, but asking the consumers to pay increasingly ridiculous prices to make up for the comparatively smaller market than that of other industries does not sit right with me. Paying more than $15 will be necessary - paying more than $40 shouldn't be.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if the expenses are the same for making a movie and making a game, but the audience for the game is smaller, that this is no excuse for charging more for games than for movies? If so, I wonder if you think they shouldn't bother making the game in this scenario unless it can sell as many copies as the movie, or if you somehow missed the part where a smaller audience means you have to charge more to meet the same expenses. I'm guessing it's the former (and I'm asking because I might have missed your point entirely), not that it really matters in the end; it's a pretty unrealistic view of economics either way.