How Much SHOULD a Game Cost?

[PayneTrayne]

Charge based on effort and originality? No way it'll ever work, but it'd be cool.

 

[Dimbo_Sama]

They should stay $60.
Because they've been $50-60 since they started coming out, and changing it just because the part of the fanbase that doesn't recognize this complains is stupid.

yeah, that frame of mind is stupid in and of itself.
When video games came onto the market in America, they HAD to be that price to earn a profit for all involved, because it was a huge risk to bring it into a market where the entertainment industry (shops and all) were giving up on video games altogether. Hell, the reason the NES was the Nintendo Entertainment System, was because they were trying to sell it as something other than a video games console to the stockists, hence why the cartridges were so large for such a small ROM.

Meanwhile in the UK, video games and the industry had no problems, so when Nintendo brought in their new console, with games at £50, Sega were selling Master System games for 20 quid and Spectrum games were going for 2 or 3 pounds, which is why (among other things) Nintendo didn't get a market until the SNES.

The fact of the matter is that video games are a huge industry today, and almost every household has a console of some sort. a DVD comes out and it's between 12-20 quid, and it sells a ton, it sells a ton when it's a tenner, and it still earns them a fuck-ton of profit. The reason places like GameStop have a dominance on the market is because they sell the pre-owned games for such a noticeable mark down. No matter what game it is, leave it a couple of months, it'll be cheap as hell second hand, where as it might not of gone down in price at all, brand new.

Lower prices means more people are going to decide they can spend that on a game, which means more sales, which makes up the difference in the price drop.

 

[suitepee7]

£35 for console, £30 for PC and £20 for handhelds. bear in mind, this is brand new releases, after a while expect £5 off each.

 

[Arehexes]

Whatever price the market will bear.

Capitalism, HO!

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

 

[norwegian-guy]

In Norway we pay in NK what would be around 100 US dollars per new game. Everyone who complains about 60 dollars should think about that.

 

[MercurySteam]

It should definitely be less than $100 AUD... It'd ridiculously expensive down here, I can only afford 2-3 games a year if I'm lucky.

I know how you feel, mate. Go to your local EB Games (we all have one) and try to price match to JB HiFi, Big W or even KMart. If you have a Gametraders handy then you should be okay.

a game should cost between 10 - 20 dollars.
no game should come in a box.
why? because digital distribution should be to gaming what e-mail was to the mailindustry.

Yes, and we'll have great fun when developers have to run on fumes, publishers will have to jack-up already ridiculous prices just to survive and piracy goes up 1000% in the first few years until the entire industry collapses.

I seriously hope you are joking.

 

[MisterShine]

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.

 

[Zeema]

$50 AUS

Im sick of paying $120 for a new release game in AUS

 

[IronicBeet]

Hell, I'm happy paying the $70 it costs in Canada to play most of the games I have. If it's a good game, the devs deserve money for it. As long as it's affordable I'm happy.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

The prices you yanks put on games... You would cringe at the price of some releases over here when the pound was strong!

 

[joshthor]

i think 50 dollars is a perfect amount for a new, AAA title. however, i think lower budget games, or cash in games should be 30 - 40 dollars. i hate how so many crappy games get sold at ridiculous prices because of the simple fact everyone else does it.

 

[iLikeHippos]

From a gamers perspective, it should cost less as I want to buy at least more than 1 game without spending my entire birthday income in total.

But, on a producers perspective, I think they should cost A LOT MORE! Games aren't made with a fuckin' snap! You're forced to sell millions of copies if you are ever to see a slight chance of profit, and only 1/4 of the game publishers actually succeed to gain some bit of revenue.

So, to please both parts, let's to what has ALWAYS been done; Keep it in between.
That way, you please no one! Hii hiii... hi....

This system sucks.

 

[Wintermoot]

big title 50~60 US$
small or old title 20~10 US$
re-calculate it too any currency too get the right price
30~40 US$ for a big title handheld game
10~5 US$ for a HH small title/old game
60 US$ for a CE HH game
maximum of 200$ for a CE PC/Console game (depending on the added stuff)

 

[vxicepickxv]

So, how about 43 dollars new(360/PS3) or 21 dollars new(Wii)? Oh wait, that's based on averages, and profit margins. They don't always play the same.

This is a bit of info you might want to look at before making judgement.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/episode-111-pach-attack/64278

 

[SonicKoala]

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.

the problem is that not very game is of equal quality or cost, so obviously it would make sense for a high budget game to have a higher price, but EVERY game is $60, no matter how good, bad, cheap, or expensive it is.

also, game companies did fine with $50 games and they've had 6 years to get used to the current generations. they have no excuse for charging $60 anymore

Well, to be fair, quality of a game is an objective characteristic - furthermore, if a game really is crappy, the price tends to go down almost immediately after it comes out; I've seen quite a few games at my local EB go from the usual 69.99 release price (I live in Canada) to under 50 dollars within a couple of months.

As for the shift from the usual $50 to $60, wouldn't that just be a result of the increased costs that come along with making games for the more advanced gaming systems we have today? Sure, gaming companies are used to the current generations now, but how would that reduce the cost of production? Perhaps it's just my lack of knowledge regarding technology, but I don't really see how a gaming company could cut production costs to the point where they could justify charging a full $10 dollars less for each game, thereby losing somewhere in the range of $5 million dollars in revenue, provided the game sells half a million copies - that's a lot of money, yo.

 

[Biosophilogical]

If they were cheaper I would buy more.

So what we need is a graphical representation of the relation between sales and price, and find the optimum price, then bump it down a couple bucks (For the Horde! Consumers!)

 

[Illyasviel]

I think current prices are fine ( USD60 ). Digital distribution users shouldn't be given a significant edge over those who prefer hard copies.

The thing is, if you're patient, or just savvy, you can get most everything on discount. I regularly pick up games for USD15 - 25 and I often even manage new releases for USD40. Collector's editions? Well, in the last six months, I've picked up Gran Turismo 5 CE for USD70, BioShock 2 CE for USD30 and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for USD55.

Not including tax of course ( 10% ).

That said, I think portable games should go down a bit and DLC should stop pricing everything as a multiple of 5. USD10? Go screw yourself. USD7? Now we're talking.

 

[albear]

I liked the idea of the humble indie bundle as in, pay what you want

yes i know alot of people will pay very little compared to what they are paying now, but think about it, alot of people out there just download games for free anyway, and what would be the point in getting it for free when they would only have to pay a minumum fee of say a pound (just for arguments sake)

also, games will be getting rated for what they are worth aswell, i.e the good games people will be willing to thank the developers for will get more revenue than those that you would pay £40 for and yet just fail at being a good game

this will also prod companies to actually develope better and more inovative games as obviously good games will bring the most revenue rather than just copy n pasting the previous game and giving it a new skin.

again i see the obviousness for this system to be taken advantage of, but its good to dream

 

[JochemDude]

40 on release, but after a few weeks 30 would be nice

 

[vadagar1]

when I become filthy rich I shall spend a billion dollars to make a great game

and the the rest to make a working star ship, honestly people with money spend it on crap if you ask me, rich people are stupid.
people who become rich are a different matter however.