Poll: It is Time to Fix Game Prices

[Zack Alklazaris]

They already price games accordingly to whether they are big budget or indie video games.

As for the price, while I was way too young to remember I have been told video games have always cost 50-60 dollars. Inflation wise they have actually gotten cheaper. In the 80s original nintendo games cost 50-60 dollars a pop. The prices are fine, in fact I'm surprise they don't cost more.

 

[Baconator96]

If the rumors of the new xbox being designed to disallow the use of used games is true, then games as a whole need to take a drastic price reduction.

 

[Von Strimmer]

You think $59.99 is hard to pay for? I live in Australia, and do you really think I could afford to fork out $100 for EVERY new release that comes out?

You're just as capable of doing that as we are. Your minimum wage is double our minimum wage. I'm not sure about your actual cost of living, but a quick Google search showed there wasn't a lot of disparity between what I see here in the US. Also, that dude's post was rational and level-headed. There was no need to jump down his throat like that.

Fella above is right. Hell I'm full time retail (studying) and I get around 19 an hour :/ Which I am sure is more than what your Average American retail employee is on. As I tell everyone our shit is more expensive down under because we demand more pay. If we went on the US pay scale for jobs of course everything would drop in price, but no one wants to do that.

I think the prices are fine as they are. I just have to wait a bit longer for games or give some a miss, its hardly the end of the world.

(Awful lot of entitlement beliefs on this website)

 

[endtherapture]

Sometimes I think that games are too expensive, but then I realise that games 10 years ago still cost £30, so there isn't really an increase in inflation when you think about it.

I get most of my games cheap on Steam sales and stuff though, and PC gaming is cheaper anyway so I'm not bothered by the price.

 

[zefiris]

I never by used - because if you are buying used, you are basically saying I'm legally pirating the game.

That is complete and utter nonsense, and it is sad that some people actually believe such nonsense.

Your property, you can sell it. That is not "piracy".Deal with it.


In fact, what is piracy is technically companies saying that you cannot sell your games, in other words, them saying you cannot do what you want with the property you bought.

 

[DeltaEdge]

Prices are fine the way that they are. They haven't really gotten more expensive than they ever were because like many have already said, they used to be just as expensive on average, if not more expensive back in the days of old (NES Era). With the economy the way it is, I'm rather surprised that the industry is still doing as well as it is. (Some people are out on the streets homeless, and we are arguing about how these luxuries that we are apparently "entitled to" should be cheaper. I'm just sayin') A tier system would be horrible. For one, it's too subjective, and to elaborate on that, there are many differing opinions about games. The only way to create a solid tier system would be to create an official game review rating committee and base the prices off of their opinions, and I think we can all agree that leaving the price of a game up to how well it is reviewed by a single group of people would be stupid. Also, games are priced on how much they intend to make, not how much that we think it's worth. As U.S citizens, we live in a capitalist society, and trying to control the prices of games and put them where we see fit kind of defeats the purpose of a perfectly good (or maybe not, we aren't doing so hot at the moment)free enterprise system doesn't it? And like another poster mentioned, we have it easy compared to gamers in Australia who have to pay 100 for their games when their currency is worth more than ours. THAT kind of pricing is whats unacceptable. What we have is simply what the price has always been. Unless you want to give developers an excuse to make crappier games on the account of "you want lower priced games? Then here's your cheaper game. A really good game will be more expensive", you really shouldn't complain about the prices of new games. If people really can't afford them, no one will buy them, this will force the companies to accommodate for us by lowering the prices. The games no one likes will always go down in price, while the ones people like will maintain a higher price and drop slowly, and all of them will gradually drop slowly in price as time goes on. I don't really have any problem with that kind of system, and I don't understand why you feel entitled to cheaper prices for luxury goods which are already cheaper than they could be. I could easily see games as very expensive things that only rich people could afford, and I consider it rather fortunate that regular people can even afford to buy so many of them.

 

[00slash00]

i assume people who complain about prices are either young or dont have a very good memory. near the end of the lifespan of the snes, i can remember going into eb games and seeing new games selling for almost $80 and back then i dont think they even sold used games. even so, no one was complaining about the price. i dont know what happened to gamers over the years but i guess maybe used games just spoiled us. $60 is fine with me. sure, it means that i dont buy video games every month, but it also means the games i do buy, i buy because i really want them

 

[L-J-F]

You haven't felt ripped off until suddenly you realize you're paying an extra 80% because you're an Aussie, trust me.

 

[Drejer43]

that is such an awesome image, seriously that cracked me up. thanks.

 

[CatmanStu]

I would say that the game industry is one of the few places capitalism works well. Publishers put prices on games that people are willing to pay and if those games are bad the consumer has a viable way of recouping some of the expenditure with the used game market which in turn effects future sales and leads to retailers reducing prices to ones more relevant to the games quality.

Now, take out the trade-in option then you have yet another market designed for exploiting customers.

Also, this is one of the industries that have a consumer base that, for the most part, do their homework before buying.

The thing I find interesting is that an industry where a lot of the consumers are complaining about prices being too high, is also one where consumers want digital distribution to take over. Sure prices will drop a little, but we will have no way to recoupe anything on a bad purchase as the trade-in market will have died.

Of course, as a primarily PC gamer, I have lived with the reality of this for a while now.

 

[Murmillos]

wall of text

I'm sorry your butt-hurt rant is over an opinion because you live in Australia. But hey, if US lower prices I'm sure the prices in Australia would also drop.

And if you feel so riled up over some opinion, I suggest you take a break from the internet; because apparently you can't handle it.

 

[Aurgelmir]

No game should cost over $40. Want to know why?

A movie blockbuster movie costs $100-200m to make. A AAA game currently costs ~30m. L.A. Noire was toted as a big freakin deal for costing 60m. GTA4 had a big hoopla made about how it cost 100m but most of it was for music contracts.
Movies on the other hand, charge $9 for a theatre ticket and $20 for the DvD. So for $30 bucks you can go to the theatre and see the movie and own it on DvD. This not only recoups the cost of the budget but most often, dips into profit.

This would effectively have more people buying games simply because they are affordable. As well, it would cut down the mark-up on used games the industry acts like they care so much about.

Well, games and movies aren't 100% comparable. Movies have more venues to sell on than games. A movie will fist be shown in the theater, where it makes a lot of money because a lot more people go to the movies than play video games. So by the time you get to the DVD and Blu Ray release you have earned most of your money back, and the sales will be more or less pure profit. Then the movie will be sold to TV stations etc.
Every time a new movie format comes out, all those movies will be resold in better quality.

A game is:
Released, sold for a few months and forgotten, until someone maybe does an HD remake or put it on GoG...

Not to mention a video game gives you at least 4 times the entertainment time...

 

[Murmillos]

Saying that Piracy is not worse then Used Games is factually incorrect,

And I never said it was factually correct, because I clearly stated that was my opinion of used game buyers.

The lot of you somehow equate stating a personal opinion as quoted fact. The hell man; an opinion is just that...

 

[Niccolo]

On topic now. I really wish we could see a change in the pricing, or at the very least a drop in the prices. As I stated above, it is $100 for a new game here in Australia, even though our dollar is now above parity with the USD, as the cost of living is higher. There are a huge number of gamers now, and I think a drop in the prices of games could lead to a massive increase in game purchases, which is profitable for the companies and cheaper for us. A simple rule of thumb with pricing is:
High Cost --> Low Sales
Low Cost --> High Sales

Good, a fellow Australian.

Hell, I'm lucky if a new (As in, the game was released less than TWO FUCKING YEARS ago) release for the 360 is less than $120. Even Steam occasionally fucks us Aussies over (Think you're hard done by having to pay $60 for Skyrim? Our "special" was $85)

So, Scarecrow, consider your point backed - vehemently - by me.

 

[Westaway]

Section 8 didn't retail for $60 anyway, did it?

As per the above poster, what is it with everyone being so cheap? Gaming is a luxury not a right, sometimes you can't have everything... this developing mindset is disturbing.

It did, but it's sequel sold for $15. I bought both, they're pretty awesome. And game pricing is fine.

 

[Something Amyss]

The pricing is fine. It's essentially what it's always been.

Yeah, I'm probably just imagining all those budget titles that were prevalent just a generation ago. The same sort of titles that are now 60 dollar titles this gen.

With inflation, increased budget, development, etc., video games should cost well over $100 american today, but they don't.

Of course, that would be completely disproportionate with other media, which haven't risen with inflation. So why it "should" be more expensive for them now is incredibly questionable.

Additionally, the fact is game companies are making a lot more with that same price point than they did even a few years ago, let alone 20 years ago.

 

[Treblaine]

One word: Steam

Retail model can bugger right off, you know to spite the $60 price point only about $18 goes to the actual game makers?

it's death by a thousands cuts;
-disc + packaging cost
-console licensing per-disc
-distributor mark up
-retailer mark up
-Software licensing

On Steam, valve only takes 25-30%, the publisher takes away around 75% so it is the OPPOSITE, they take away 3x as much per sale. Games could sell for $40 and they'd still make 2x as much per sale as compared to console-retail model and they don't have to worry about growing resale market.

I think around $40 is the right price with two caveats:
-70 to 75% of that money goes to the people who actually make the GAME!
-There is little to no resale possibility

I think the endemic resale of games is coming from how $60 is too high for a new game, people need to sell old games to buy the new and then prefer to buy older games when they can. On Steam where average game price is far lower it hasn't been a major problem with no ability to resale.

And then of course there are other models like free-to-play by micro-transactions or ads, paid beta (minecraft) or subscription models to diversify.

 

[WoahDan]

How did this discussion manage to become so complicated? at its heart its a pretty simple issue. Game prices should be cut; not because of 'entitlement' or because they've gotten more expensive (they haven't), or because they have low value (they are actually the best value medium around right now), or any other of the dozens of tangential reasons people have managed to come up with in this thread or outside it.

Game companies should cut prices because doing so will make game companies more money. I'm sorry but I don't care how much time it took to make or your production costs, $60 is more than I'm often willing to spend on a video game and I'm far from alone on that. Hell, not only is it often more than I'm willing to spend its often more than I CAN spend, $60 is a lot of money particularly for not-exactly-rich people like me (who still make up most of gamings target demographic) and them being so expensive means I cant afford as many games as I would otherwise have bought. When I was growing up i was forced to buy used pretty much exclusively, I couldn't (and my parents wouldn't) pay $60 for a game, and as a result until I turned about 14 I may as well have never existed as far as the developers were concerned. My entire early gaming life, eight years of gaming, and the people who made the games made scarcely a cent from it.

The current price is too damn high, it prices out some newcomers completely, and it stops the dedicated from buying as much they otherwise would have. Am i the only one seeing that Steam sales result in a spike in not only sales but profits as well? If the price of games were to drop to say $40 as an average price at launch, I guarantee the developers would see a spike in sales that would more than make up for the lower price point. People don't buy used because they want to f**k the developers over, they do it because its the price they are willing and able to pay, I'm getting sick of waiting for publishers to learn that pulling one over on their customers ultimately only hurts them in the long term.

 

[oktalist]

The way to get publishers to lower prices is for enough people to refuse to buy above a certain price point. /thread

 

[WoahDan]

@oktalist: That's already happening though (see: Steam ,used sales and piracy) and they refuse to change, ultimately hurting both them and the industry around them