Prices of Games

Recommended Videos

Betancore

New member
Apr 23, 2010
1,855
0
0
irequirefood said:
You should feel lucky you don't live in Australia. Brand new big games tend to go for $109.95-$119.95. And that's just the standard editions. Smaller games with be cheaper but usually only $20 at most. This is why I haven't been buying games lately, though my recent employment should see a rise in new games purchased.
Ugh, yes. I'm an unemployed, underage student, and I've just about given up buying new games, because I don't want to ask my parents for $100 AUD+ at a time just to buy a computer game. Even games that have been out for a while, like Call of Duty 5, go for around $60 - $80 depending on where you look. It makes me hurt inside when I see Metro 2033 for half price and it turns out it's $40 - not too bad, but that's half price. I'm just glad that games like Assassin's Creed and Deus Ex and Bully go for around $20, so at least I have something to play.
 

Red Bomb

New member
Nov 25, 2009
403
0
0
All this make us in the UK look well cheap £40 for a new release and around £15-£20 for pre-owned.
However in the Caribbean where my parents live games are around $150bbs which is around $75US. Its painful buying games over there.
 

danintexas

New member
Jul 30, 2010
372
0
0
Back in the day Atari 2600 carts cost $50 and the system cost $199

Stop complaining about the cost of games. Gamefly if its an issue
 

hawkeye52

New member
Jul 17, 2009
759
0
0
i seem to remember that games used to be £30 on average but have been going up with the more popular developers pushing up their prices more and more knowing that people will still buy the game
 

Ildecia

New member
Nov 8, 2009
671
0
0
i dont buy games much nowadays (huh) so i guess i really cant contribute here other than i think games are rather pricey (of more than one good one comes out at a time). The most recent game i've bought was Super Mario Galaxy 2, and since it was indeed a big seller, i pre-ordered it and got 5 bucks off. so eh..

sorry i couldnt contribute? 65 dollars with tax is still kinda dum to pay for a game.
 

irequirefood

New member
May 26, 2010
558
0
0
Betancore said:
irequirefood said:
Ugh, yes. I'm an unemployed, underage student, and I've just about given up buying new games, because I don't want to ask my parents for $100 AUD+ at a time just to buy a computer game. Even games that have been out for a while, like Call of Duty 5, go for around $60 - $80 depending on where you look. It makes me hurt inside when I see Metro 2033 for half price and it turns out it's $40 - not too bad, but that's half price. I'm just glad that games like Assassin's Creed and Deus Ex and Bully go for around $20, so at least I have something to play.
I know what you mean about the cheap games. I am getting desperate, so my friend and I are putting in $10 to buy the Sonic PC game pack or Sonic Heroes, Riders, Adventure DX and Mega Collection Plus. The sad thing is I used to have Riders and MC+, and he used to have DX and Heroes, but we sold them...
 

PAGEToap44

New member
Jul 16, 2008
1,242
0
0
New games in the UK cost about £40-50 usually. £39.99 being the standard. For games I don't really want, I wait till they get cheaper and/or they are on sale. I don't like buying pre-owned games.
 

Geekosaurus

New member
Aug 14, 2010
2,104
0
0
As soon as one company raises their prices, all the others realise that customers will pay the higher prices and follow suit.
 

tlozoot

New member
Feb 8, 2010
998
0
0
I've been buying the odd anticipated release for £35-40 for as long as I can remember. I now rent or pay about £15 for them now, but if there's a game I really want then I'll pick it up at launch for full retail price. Games are getting more expensive to make after all.
 

mrdude2010

New member
Aug 6, 2009
1,315
0
0
this generation of consoles has been out for 5 years. i understood why the prices were $60 back when the console first came out but now it really should go back down to $50, especially since cheap bastards force you to pay an extra $20 for DLC anyway
 

DAOWAce

New member
Aug 7, 2007
23
0
0
Country
US
Starcraft 2 was $60. (USD)

A PC game, standard edition, $60.

Do I even have to say it? That's just not right.
 

squid5580

Elite Member
Feb 20, 2008
5,103
0
41
Kagim said:
Govant said:
I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?
Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.
Huh I am in a smaller town in Ontario and 69 is pretty much the norm.
 

Nalgas D. Lemur

New member
Nov 20, 2009
1,316
0
0
SenseOfTumour said:
This is an eternal subject for threads, and yet, I'm sure when I was bought my Atari 2600 around the turn of the 80s, yes, the one with the wooden panelling on the front, I seem to remember the cartridges being around £40 each.

What were those cartridges, about 4K if full? Yet now we have full DVDs, 10 hour soundtracks of licensed music, 3-5 year development cycles with teams of hundreds working on a single title and still they're selling for £50 retail. I'd say a 20% raise in price over 30 years aint so bad. Considering we're not really comparing like with like.
Additionally, I just compared it to inflation in the US over the past ~25 years. $50 in 1985 money is just over $100 in 2010 money. It does still kind of bother me to see new game prices frequently being $60, but that's only a 50% increase from $40, not the 100% you'd expect based on the CPI (which is not entirely accurate, but for back-of-the-napkin math, it'll do).

Of course, they also have much larger economies of scale these days, selling hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of most major games, and that can cut costs dramatically, along with pressed DVDs (or even better, digital downloads with no boxes, manuals, shipping, warehouses, etc.) being a tiny fraction of the overall cost per unit compared to cartridges back in the day.

When it comes down to it, there are too many differences between then and now to really make any sort of simple comparison. If a game was worth to me the amount of money they were charging then, I was ok with paying that amount. The same thing is true now, even though the cost/value comparison continually changes.
 

Kagim

New member
Aug 26, 2009
1,200
0
0
squid5580 said:
Kagim said:
Govant said:
I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?
Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.
Huh I am in a smaller town in Ontario and 69 is pretty much the norm.
Well a buddy of mine in Victoria has to pay 69.99 pretty often, yet in Vancouver its not hard to find a place that sells brand new games for 30 bucks. It could be all luck man.
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
4,951
0
0
They are getting pretty high. On one hand I understand... its called inflation, everything goes up in price every year, and the move from 50 to 60 was right about on schedule.

On the other hand were looking at situations with new games that increasingly more will have even more of a price tag attached in the form of DLC that will be out in some cases the day of release. Look at a game like dragon age. 60$ new, 35 for awakenings, 6 DLC packs ranging at an average of 10 per pop... meaning if you got everything day one, over 150$ in less than a years time, on one single game.

However on the development/distribution costs lowering so we can get a price drop.. I dont see it happening. First off, distribution costs, arguably the biggest price involved in distribution is the manufacture of the item itself. However consider recordable disk media has never been more inexpensive. If your buying bulk, blu/hddvd disc blanks cost around .16 cents a peice dependent on how much bulk. Packaging probably runs about 10$ between the box, manuals, inks for printing, plastic liner, shrink wrapping, magneton strip, ect. Shipping to distributors, prolly about 1$ per unit or less. and probably another 5 for production labor costs per unit. So a game typically just from its production runs about 15-20 per unit.

The real bulk of the expense of a game is development, simply for the sheer magnitude of man hours and people involved, unfortunately that amount is the biggest component of cost in production with gaming and if anything that will have to increase, not decrease as people demand more content, and better visuals.
 

koops

New member
Mar 17, 2009
141
0
0
Kagim said:
Govant said:
I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?
Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.
I live in Kamloops, the very definition of a medum sized town in BC and I saw the new Tiger Woods game for $74.99 at rogers last night. Games either seem to be 60$ or 70$ here with MW2 being only 60 and ODST 70. Reach Is retailing at $60 also. But the other day, I got ME2 for $25 new at Future shop. I guessing th was just a sale or something.
 

squid5580

Elite Member
Feb 20, 2008
5,103
0
41
Kagim said:
squid5580 said:
Kagim said:
Govant said:
I was looking at some prices of new games today, and I was surprised to see most of them up at CAD 69.99. Personally, I am ok with paying between 49.99 and 59.99 for new games, but 69.99 seems like way too much. I do understand people will buy them regardless, I am just curious when the price climb will stop. I also understand we are in the more advanced age of gaming and technology, so prices will be up a bit.

Just curious if any one else thinks this way, or if I am ranting all on my own haha.

What are the USD prices?
Where are you in Canada? And are you in a major city?

I live in a medium size town in BC and i rarely if ever see a game hit 69.99. Almost always 59.99 new and one of the four stores in my mall is usually selling it for five bucks cheaper.

As well overall i remember when i was a kid, I'm 21 now, most games were 49.99 new anyways. So over 14 years of buying games they only seem to have gone up in price about ten bucks.

Consoles are not that much cheaper either. While $200 for a nes or snes might not sound like much it definitely cost a lot back then.

Prices really haven't changed a whole lot. More so just rose as people in general started to make more money.
Huh I am in a smaller town in Ontario and 69 is pretty much the norm.
Well a buddy of mine in Victoria has to pay 69.99 pretty often, yet in Vancouver its not hard to find a place that sells brand new games for 30 bucks. It could be all luck man.
Well there you go. I have 4 stores to pick from for new games. EB,GS Walmart and Zellers. In Vancouver there is tons of competition.
 

Kagim

New member
Aug 26, 2009
1,200
0
0
koops said:
I live in Kamloops, the very definition of a medium sized town in BC and I saw the new Tiger Woods game for $74.99 at rogers last night. Games either seem to be 60$ or 70$ here with MW2 being only 60 and ODST 70. Reach Is retailing at $60 also. But the other day, I got ME2 for $25 new at Future shop. I guessing that was just a sale or something.
Well for the first place.. rogers video... Both rogers and Blockbuster in my town jacks up the price for anything new. They are not a good place to go to.

I find The sony store, or The source offer the lowest prices over all. HMV every so often undercuts Eb games by about five bucks, then in some cases charges 10 bucks more.

walmart is a massive curve ball. I have seen new games undercut by almost 20 bucks, but then again i have seen them sell PS2 games for 15 more then brand new PS3 games.



squid5580 said:
Well there you go. I have 4 stores to pick from for new games. EB,GS Walmart and Zellers. In Vancouver there is tons of competition.
My brother lived in Vancouver for awhile and if you know where to go and who to talk to you could get most electronics for dirt cheap. When the Ipod Touch first came out he actually haggled one store down to $100. Wild I know...