How should games be priced?

[Madman123456]

There are some Games where we feel they practically stole my Money. "Kany&Lynch: Dog days" is an Example with a playtime of about four hours. And still, games which are rather short and offer little replay value have sometimes have the same pricetag as the really really long games.
It seems a bit unfair to shell out the same money for any FPS as i do for any adventure game. Even if its the best FPS on the Planet. Ok, i have to backpaddle a bit, my steam says that i played close to 700 hours of team fortress 2 while having "just" a bit over 100 in "Fallout: New Vegas".
I did get my Moneys worth out of both of them, still i feel People like Obsidian and Bethesda are getting the short end of the Stick when they sell their Games so "cheap".

"Oblivion" had me playing for Years. If i had known in advance how long i was going to play this, i would have paid more if Bethesda asked.

If someone told me that Bethesda would make a Game like Oblivion with all the Flaws ironed out, less bugs to the Point where you need to look really hard to find one and double the price, i would buy that game. Twice.
I have done that without Oblivion, bought the normal one and then later the collectors edition with the shiny septim coin

Would you buy that hypothetical game? Dont answer with "Skyrim", "Oblivion" or "Morrowind" in Mind. Or maybe, have Morrowind in mind because that game had a far more "finished" feeling to it then Oblivion did.
I'm talking about a counterpart to "New Vegas". One may argue about the bugs here and there, but let's talk about all the smaller things that, all togehter, will break your immersion.
Like when you can fill an "Empty soda bottle" but not the "Empty nuka cola bottle".
Little things like that make me think that the Developers where pressured by time constraints and simply didn't had the time to look after things like that.
"Oblivion" is guilty of the same thing, although i ran into them in "Fallout: New Vegas far more often, making the game feel more "rushed".
"Oblivion had this great lake around the imperial City, which can be seen in the intro. A Ship is seen there, and there are ships in the harbour.
The imperial City doesn't have any connection to the sea, because the city of Leyavin sits on top of the River that would connect the imperial city to the sea.

The Concept of the City of Leyavin couldn't be finished in time.

These are things like that, you notice something and you know this is there, or maybe not there because the developers ran out of time or money. This may be understandable in many cases, still it breaks immersion some times.

Now if someone made a game and promised to make it as big as oblivion and said that no one will ever be able to see such flaws, would you buy it if that game would cost double?

 

[ThorUK]

Bethesda make a killing in terms of profit/time spent off the DLCs. And companies who charge £30-40 for a half-arsed game pay in the long run when they go bust or their next title flops.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Costs + %10

Easy enough and when sales break even point lower the price or if the game isn't selling well then lower the price to bring in demand. It's simple pricing economics

Although I do think all linear games should have more content then they currently do, some campaigns are lasting less than 4 hours on one run through. That is a complete rip off

 

[Palademon]

I was once told that games used to p[riced based on how many hours there were in it without having to replay. But I'd still prefer a console game to cost more than a portbale game. Then again, I think I know more portable games that are really long than I know console games.

 

[Dexiro]

These are actually the rules I follow when buying games these days,
maximum I'll pay is:
- £30 for a new game that I MUST get
- £20 for new games
- £10-15 for older games and impulse buys

I actually don't have many complaints because I've gotten loads of decent games this way very recently. I just don't think any game should be priced above £30 because there's no way I'm paying above that for a game.

I think handheld games can follow similar rules too. I just think their prices should settle towards £15-20 sooner after release. Infact there's very rarely a handheld game that I'm hyped enough to spend £30 on, £25 might be a more sensible maximum price.

 

[thejboy88]

Good quality games should be cheap and bad games should be expensive. That should solve the problem of good games getting the shaft so often.

 

[icame]

Pricing is fine as it is now.

 

[Radeonx]

The should stay how they are, in my opinion.
Part of being a consumer is taking a risk on a product, and if you don't like that product, you should've chosen better based on your tastes. Sometimes, you get a fluke of a game that you'd think you would like but is terrible, but that's what happens.
Plus, games have been $60ish since they started. Changing it now would just make everything confusing.

 

[Physics Engine]

Games are cheaper these days, no proprietary system means the licensing fees are smaller than they were back in the SNES - N64 era.

I remember having to pay $180 (CAD) for Chrono Trigger and $110 for FFIII(VI).

N64 games were $90 and up.

It wasn't until the Playstation came along that games started costing less. It was the CDROM's doing that dropped the price of games as nobody had to license a proprietary cartridge to put the games on.

I can deal with $60-$70 games as they are. NES games were $50+ and they could be beaten in 45 mins to an hour (Dragon Warrior and FF excepted).

So, no. I don't think Bethesda or Valve or EA should sell their titles for more if they're more than 8 hours long. That's not how it works. If the devs want to make more money, they should think about the Rock Band method and simply add "legs" (DLC) to their product and charge a reasonable price for it. Consoles have hard drives now, your game doesn't have to all fit onto a DVD-9 anymore. Expand your engine to be future proof, have a solid physics engine and keep pumping out content for the whole console generation.

If anything publishers should stop pumping up hundred-million dollar projects and instead focus on streamlining the development process to be more efficient so their money goes farther. Less invested = less risk = higher ROI. But that's too simple a concept for billionaire CEOs to grasp it seems.

I don't care if the game is perfect and bug-free, more than $60 is too much. $100+ games? Been there, done that, not going back.