GameStop Listing Hints at High Diablo III Price Tag

[Lord Krunk]

Yeah, high prices suck, but the sweet graphics make it worth it.

Honestly, graphics are one of the last considerations I have when buying games.

1 - Is it FUN
2 - Does it require that accursed Windows Vista or Windows 7?
3 - How many gameplay hours can I expect?
4 - Replayability?
5 - Can I buy it in store (box retail)?
6 - Does it require a subscription?
7 - Does it require external software or a launcher?
8 - DRM?
9 - Are there any known major bugs/problems?
10 - How much does it cost?
...
42 - What are the graphics like?

If it goes Yes, No, Hrs/Price>1, Yes, Yes, No, No, No, No, Price<$100 for the first ten, the answer to #42 doesn't matter at all.

That's actually a very good list. Swap 2 and 8 with Plot and Graphics respectively then you have my list for consoles.

#11 for me is Metascore.

 

[Lord Krunk]

That's actually a very good list. Swap 2 and 8 with Plot and Graphics respectively then you have my list for consoles.

#11 for me is Metascore.

Ah, but is plot truly important? I see it as more situational. Plants vs Zombies, nearly no plot, epic game. Command & Conquer 1, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, and Generals; all great games, horrible plot at best. The Battlefield series, what plot can be squeezed from a war that has gone on longer in game form, than in actual history? For all the rest, your Fable or GTA "story-driven" kinds of games, plot becomes important, but how are you going to know if it's a good plot until you buy the game?

That's why I put it after fun.

As for how I know, that is a good question.

 

[Tulisin]

If I did my math right, that's a flat out 20% increase in price, which is beyond an inflation adjustment as far as I can tell.

Only if for some reason you're not factoring in inflation over multiple years that games have been $50.

Lets say for argument's sake that games started being $50 in 2000.

Using the http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl calculator.

$50 spent on a game in 2000 = 62.71 in modern day money.

So, if you dropped $50 on a game in 2000, and $60 on a game in 2009, you paid less for the 2009 game (to the tune of $2.71 adjusted value).

Furthermore, if you want to reverse the equation, your modern-day $50 only goes as far as $39.87 did back in 2000, while gamer's expectations have generally *risen*. This means you expect more quality than ever before from games, in a more competitive market, while paying less. Yeah, at first that is only going to cut into profits, but eventually such a trend swallows them altogether, and finally makes game-making a simply un-viable business. If some of the people in this thread had their way, games would *still* be $50 in the year 2050, when that might not be enough to buy a dozen eggs.

In short, people need to look past the amount of dollars and trace how far the dollar is actually going. A currency alone is meaningless without a system and reference to give it value. In this case $50 (in 2000) to $60 (in 2010) is actually a discount.

 

[Byers]

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.

Perhaps, in your quest to tell me how wrong I am on the internet, you missed the part where I specifically stated that I'd accept paying a little more for games than I do for movies, as long as it's not 4 times the price of a movie.
Charging more may be necessary, but charging way more than the product itself is worth should not be an option, even if the market is smaller. There needs to be some correlation between worth and price. The solution to lackluster sales isn't to crank up the prices.

 

[AceDiamond]

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

Also I think if you were a fanboy you would've been like "yeah it was totally Activision, Blizzard can't possibly do anything questionable."

I still really have a hard time figuring out why people don't get that you can have a merger without sacrificing autonomy of the component companies. Add that to the fact that you can find about 20 press releases/news stories that point out Blizzard doesn't get told to do anything by Activision and one gets confused quickly.

 

[Carnagath]

Blizzard takes its time, and with good reason, but with absolutely nothing to base it on other than instinct I think we'll be lucky to see it by the end of 2010.

You're gonna see SC2 by the end of 2010. D3 will most likely be your grandchildren's favorite pastime.

 

[veryboringfact]

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

ahaha QFT

 

[Snotnarok]

Strange I thought I got Diablo 3 off steam...
Oh wait that's Torchlight, made by the original Diablo team, so Diablo 2.9 then?

In all seriousness, hope it comes out sometime soon unlike Starcraft Ghost

 

[theultimateend]

I only buy games so often, when all is said and done, a $10 price increase is chicken feed unless you're buying more then a game per month.
I'm happy to pay that bit extra for a game I know will be good.

To be more precise it is about 1.9 pounds of Chicken Feed.

But that aside in the Human world (Which for me is America at the moment) it is just under 10 1 dollar burgers (or 10 if you are lucky enough to live in Oregon).

Raising the price is ONLY acceptable if it is a good game. If (and I suspect it will) Diablo 3 gives me a 5 hour erection I'll be pleased. It isn't like this is just another run of the mill beautiful FPS set in a third world nation or something.

 

[Computer-Noob]

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

Doesnt seem like Blizzard is being "controlled" by anyone if they havent split the game into 3 different ones. Seems to me as if Blizzard told them to leave concepts to people with brains.

Blizzard isnt afraid to tell people that they/their ideas suck. Just look what happened to Uwe Boll.