How Much SHOULD a Game Cost?

[Rack]

£30.

PC games over here are around that cost, console releases are £40 or in rare cases up to £50. Bugs me no end. I'm sure there's a reason that isn't 'We can exploit more people who play consoles', but I have no idea.

It's because MS and Sony sell consoles at a loss but charge a fee to publishers for selling a game on that platform to make it back. Nintendo sell consoles at a profit but they also like money so do the same thing.

 

[Samwise137]

I'm a PC gamer on a budget so I wait for everything to come within the range of 10-20$ but I understand them starting upwards of 40-50.

 

[BlackHazard]

I don't mind paying 60 dollars for a game that lasts 25-30 hours plus.
But 60 bucks for a game that lasts 6 hours like God of War is too much for my wallet.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I got no problem with what games cost, DLC on the other hand...different story

There's no question that dlc is overpriced (except maybe the dlc packs for Borderlands, they were a good value and the basic game had a hell of a lot of play in it) but I fear that the existence of dlc is making the games overpriced to begin with.
It's not just Capcom that withholds content to be sold at a later date.
R* is withholding side missions and the iconic collection activity from LA Noir so they could offer them as 'exclusive' pre-order dlc for Gamestop. I'm sure they'll be sold later at an absurd price and the collection activity is something you expect to be in a R* game to begin with.

It seems that in this generation of consoles (for most games) we're paying more money for less content.

And as gamers seem to keep shoveling out money (basically) whenever the publishers/retailers/console makers ask for it, it's probably just going to get worse.

 

[tommy15994]

I'm Kinda writing as i think this out so bare with me...

Should games be priced by the kind of entertainment it provides, for example, a game That is only multiplayer would be (purely example figures) ?40, A game that offers both a short singleplayer Campaign(6-8 hour bracket, and a top notch multiplayer would be 45-50. A game with a 30+ hour campaign would be ?50. etc.

Or how about a review based system? A game that gets 60-70 score on metacritic, has a 40 price tag, 70-80 45, 80-90 gets 50 and so on

I personally have no problem with the price of games, I feel i'm getting what i pay for.

 

[FamoFunk]

The £40-45 they're charging for PS3/Xbox I'm happy with.
I don't play PC but the £30 mark seems fair.
And I think DS/PSP should start around £20-25 not £30

Unles it's a game I want instantly like CoD or LBP I can happilt wait a few weeks for it to drop in price.

The regular price for CoD is £45, but since January I've seen it on sale at £25 - for weeks. If you're willing to wait for games you don't really have to get straight away then you can get then not long after release for a much cheaper price.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

Unless you have an intricate knowledge of the various costs associated with both a)Making the actual video game, and b)distributing/marketing the video game, I don't see how anybody here can actually claim that "THIS is how much a game should cost".

Obviously, the company is going to have to charge an appropriate amount so that, for one, the costs of actually making and marketing/distributing the thing are covered, AND enough of a profit is generated so that the company and its employees can stay afloat and live comfortably. I just think that there are a myriad of motivations behind charging people "X" amount of dollars for a certain game, and I think that very few people actually take that into consideration; instead, people do what people always do - complain about how expensive everything is.

your logic and well presented arguments are not wanted here!
seriously, though, this is exactly my opinion. and considering that the price of games haven't gone up in 10 years, i think people should stop complaining. bunch of entitled...*incoherent muttering*...

 

[Sabiancym]

People need to stop complaining about game prices. I get so ridiculously sick of people whining about this. Stop being cheap. Do you really think you should get games liked Mass Effect for the same price as Army Men on the PS2?

Game prices are going to go up, as they should. Inflation will play a part, but so will better and more expensive games.

If you want games to be great, you're going to have to pay for it. In good games, you get at least 30 hours of entertainment. That's a steal at $60. Going to see a 2 hour movie is at least $10 around here.


Stop Whining.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

$60 is generally too much for me. I can't say that the price should be lower, since I haven't done any real research on the economics on the other end.

DLC prices are ludicrous. DLC is barely advertised at all and charging someone a quarter of the cost of a game for four multiplayer maps is just ridiculous.

lets put it this way......its been $50 forever now...if its at 60 now (which it might be idk)...think about it..something went up 10 bucks over how many years.....where everything else went up how much over that same amount of time...everyone STFU and leave it alone before someone trys to charge us more

The problem with this is that the manufacturing costs went way down in the mid 90's, when companies switched from cartridges to discs, but the companies pocketed the difference, instead of passing on the savings like they promised. I'd imagine that $50 per game now would still net them more profit than it did in the cartridge days, even accounting for inflation. The only reason they charge $60 is because they can get away with it, and it makes the shareholders happy. It has nothing to do with rising costs.

http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html

Accounting for inflation price has gone down. Just fyi.

Point? Accounting for inflation, a AAA game in 1997 (FFVII is the one I tested with) would have had a respectable budget today, and you forget that the average wage has plummeted, accounting for inflation. $60 is still a ripoff, even accounting for inflation.

Capitalism doesn't work when there's no competition over prices, though. I don't know how it happened, but the industry just up and decided that $60 would be the price for games.

Remember when games used to be 50 bucks new? Namely every generation previous to this one. However with new graphics skyrocketing the development costs for the new generation, there was a need to increase prices to manage new costs.

TL;DR: When the only option a customer has to show that a product costs too much is not to buy it, rather than to buy it cheaper from a competitor, capitalism isn't really working.

If 60 dollars was too much for the consumers to bear, not many people would buy at that price point, meaning the producers would be forced to lower prices in order to sell an appreciable number of units to make up for costs. Since this is obviously not the case, 60 dollars is affordable enough to the consumer base, or at least enough for the companies to turn a profit at that price, meaning that they are likely to keep prices there until consumers make it clear games just aren't worth that much to them. But for now, they absolutely are.

Free market in action!

I wanna say this to you, screw the rest of the topic you win for that reference.

/bow

A pity not many people have commented on it, but I imagine some people have smirked.

It's too much for consumers who live and work in the real world. The only reason they don't care is they apparently make enough money for it to be profitable off of the well to do on what is, frankly, a low-class entertainment medium, that they don't have to worry about what profits they could make if they actually adjusted to the market. Monopolies in action.

 

[psivamp]

lets put it this way......its been $50 forever now...if its at 60 now (which it might be idk)...think about it..something went up 10 bucks over how many years.....where everything else went up how much over that same amount of time...everyone STFU and leave it alone before someone trys to charge us more

Not sure why you chose to quote me for this since I was not and am not advocating a systemic price change.

DLC pricing is always skewed in favor of the creator; it's generally not the same cost-content ratio the original game was priced at.
It has also stymied a great deal of modding. Why else do you think that companies don't want you modding your games? Because they want to sell you their mods instead!

Exactly what I mean on the DLC front. Although, I would generally add that publishers don't want you modding games, but -- given a choice -- developers seem more open to having a modding community. At least, I hope it's still like that...

 

[The SettingSun]

On release: Console game: £35-40
Handheld game: £30
PC game: £30-35

 

[Atmos Duality]

Exactly what I mean on the DLC front. Although, I would generally add that publishers don't want you modding games, but -- given a choice -- developers seem more open to having a modding community. At least, I hope it's still like that...

True, though the distinction is little more than trivia when you consider that we live in the era where the publisher dictates production.

 

[JoshGod]

It should depend on how much content is in it and the level of quality of said content.

 

[DarthFennec]

New console games and games on disk, I think around $40. Downloadable games should be more like $20 or $25, though. That's my opinion, anyway.

 

[ArchAngelKira]

I agree, nothing more nothing less I agree $40 games is a dream come true

 

[Siris]

I think we can't do it by content. I think it needs to be set in stone

 

[z3rostr1fe]

500 Pesos.... Wait, that's just around 10USD.... Oh well, I'm a cheapster...

But seriously, 30USD would be an ideal price of a game, not twice as that.

 

[Vicarious Vangaurd]

$50 (the price of PC games) for everyone.

Theres a reason for that you know

No I did not know that, please explain.

 

[Wolfram23]

Depends. CoD for just multiplayer - $15-20. Unfortunately they go and spend huge amounts on SP that few people bother to play. With that portion tho, I'd say $40. And considering they know pretty close how many they can sell, it's not a matter of cost+%profit/sales for them. It's FUCK YOU CONSUMER MAKE US BILLIONS!

Anyway, large epic SP games (let's say at least 30hrs gameplay) I don't mind paying $60. But for games with 7-10hrs of gameplay (not including "finding all the trinkets") they shouldn't be more than $30-40. And yeah MP games that aren't MMOs should be pretty cheap, especially when they're just rehashes of what they've already developed.

 

[MAUSZX]

The games cost 60 because everyone is ok paying that amount of money