Should new video games cost $49.99?

[Anthony1]

I know that this topic has been pondered alot, but with the recent drop in music CD and DVD prices, I thought that maybe we could take another look at it.


Ok, music CD's are selling now in the $11.99 and $9.99 range, DVD movies are selling in the $17.99 and $14.99 range. Typically, of course. Sure there are lots of music CD's and DVD movies that sell for quite a bit more, but I'm talking about typical prices.


So with Music CD's and DVD movies selling for so cheap, why are brand new video games still going for $49.99?



My personal belief on this is that it is a combination of a number of factors. No.1, video game publishers feel that consumers think that $49.99 is a fair price, they think that is what they have to pay, and they continue paying it. No. 2, development costs have risen dramatically over the years. What used to take a team of 8 or 14 people to make, now takes 50 people or more to develop. No. 3, with so much fierce competition in the industry now, and so many companies fighting over the same market share, marketing becomes a huge factor and it's very expensive to market your product properly. I'm sure E.A. spends ridiculous amounts on marketing, but they also are always the sales leaders too.

But I honestly feel that new video games should cost in the neighborhood of $34.99, $29.99 and $24.99 brand new. I know if that was the case, I would buy triple the amount of games that I'm buying now. But obviously, the focus groups and think tanks in the industry disagree. They must feel that even if they lower the price, that consumers won't actually buy any more games. So they might as well keep prices high, if they aren't going to double sales.

[Evil E]

it's highway robbery!!

[Half Japanese]

I just have one thing that should be considered as far as DVDs go:

Most DVDs have already had a theatrical release that helps to offset the cost of production, and there is really no equal to this in game development/release.


There's a phrase that goes something like "what the market will bear" and the CD market has been pushing that for years, and the game market has likely been doing the same. However, you have to consider that as some games are getting more realistic and cinematic in their development costs rise. On one han you have voice actors to pay (big names tend to draw a little more attention to a game), as well as a slew of programmers and artists to make sure that everything is running as smooth as possible (much harder these days I imagine than it was even ten years ago). Personally, I have no problem with the current price. That's not to say I wouldn't crap my pants if all games dropped to $20 or less by tomorrow, but I feel that for all of the people involved who have families to feed and provide for, it's not really asking a dramatic amount of money. Then again, give us an experience worthy of our hard-earned $50! But then again, I'm one of the (apparently) few who still pays for music.....

[Delgrace]

I don't really mind the prices of videogames, because hey, you can just wait and anything will pretty much fall a couple of bucks. Still, $100 AUS is pretty hard to swallow sometimes, so I rarely buy ONE new game a year, let alone more.

What I do not agree with, though, are the prices of GBA carts. New releases are $70 AUS. That's insane! Why pay that when you could just go another $30 and get a new release on one of the home consoles?

[hydr0x]

OMG $50 only???? they are 60 EURO here in germany, thats about $65, so PLEASE shut the fuck up

[maxlords]

The cost of making a game is WAY higher than ever, and the company that made it only gets part of that money. We see three price hikes on the average game. Manufacturer's cost, then a hike for hte wholesaler, then ANOTHER hike for the retailer. So you're paying 2 middleman's fees on top of the cost of a game, and the cost of the game has to pay EvERY programmer's salary (unless they work for a big company like Capcom or Konami or Square). But figure that that money pays everyone that worked on the game for a whole year or more.

Personally, I think think that they should be around $40, not $50, and a lot of gamers are starting to go to the $40 mark, just because the sheer quantity of games out means that people can buy less at $50, and the DVD/CD media is MUCH cheaper than carts so they save money that way. It's about what we've always paid and I don't think it's too bad unless a game is complete shite.

[lendelin]

OMG $50 only???? they are 60 EURO here in germany, thats about $65, so PLEASE shut the fuck up

You poor Germans, I feel so sorry for you...and then all these games which come with a 5 month delay. On the other hand, you have better and much more soccer games. ...and...the PAL system which has a better resolution than NTSC. So, don't complain, German boy.

[Kid Ice]

I wouldn't go as far as to say I have a problem with the prices of the games, but I very rarely buy a game brand new. In fact, I've only purchased one game at full price in the last 2 years. I'm usually content to wait until the games drop in price. In a sense, something is wrong if they can't get a guy like me to buy their new games, and I would buy many more games if they came out at 30 bucks. However, someone must be buying them (and a lot of them) because they have been priced this way for years. I can remember about 10 years ago getting my girlfriend to buy me Zero Tolerance for Gensis; it was 69.99!

Another factor for me personally is ebay. Whenever I'm at the game store thinking about dropping a fifty on a brand new game, I have to consider how much that same 50 bucks would get me on ebay.

[Griking]

I think you left out a voting choice

X Because dumb people are willing to pay it.

[Zaxxon]

You're also forgetting that the game companies have to pay huge royalty fees from each game just to be able to make a game for a system. I had read on PSX games it was $12 and on GB games it was around there also. Think about that. Right off the bat $12 of profit is being eaten up by a royalty from every copy sold. They also have to pay big money for premium shelf space to stores like EB if they want their game displayed where people will see it.

What's driving up game prices the most IMO in this day and age of dirt cheap storage media like DVD's is that games are made waaaaaay too long and too complex. They feel they need to make every game take a month or more out of your life to complete to justify the high price tag. To make their game that long and complex they need to hire more programmers and artists which drives up development costs. They also feel they need to have one or several of those now boring CGI cinemas to intro every game and intro every level. These have got to be very expensive to produce. Who actually want to sit through those more than once? I can't stand those even the first time. They totally break the flow of the game and take you of the game world. Those are sooo unnecessary. It's now a vicous cycle they created.

They could sell games for $20 new if the cut out all the crap, made games a reasonable length and the royalty rates were reduced to sane levels.

[hezeuschrist]

I think the biggest factor now is the development costs. I remember reading an article that someone posted here about the potential cost of development for the next generation of system, and for the big games (GTA, Gran Tourismo, next Tekken/Soul Calibur, Halo, ect) it could cost upwards of 20 million dollars to produce the game.

That's a hell of a lot of money.

[bargora]

Yesterday on Gamefaqs.com the Poll Of The Day asked gamerz about how many used games they buy. At the time I voted, only 8% said that they buy more used games than new, and another 15% said that they even had a decent number of used games in their collection.

Now maybe gamefaqs is skewed toward the younger crowd that receives most games new as gifts (either for specific occasions or on whiny demand), rather than doling out their own scratch for teh gamez, but I am still astonished that only 8% buy used games more often than new. Unless the poll is somehow skewed by computer gamers, since there's really no B&M retail channel that I've seen for PC/Mac games.

They can charge whatever they want, but the only game I know of that I'm going to buy full price new in the next year is Steel Battalion: Line of Contact. And if I die before GTA: Criminal Bowel Movement drops to $20, then oh well.

[zmeston]

Here's an educational article about why the price of triple-A videogames may soon be rising to $60: http://www.msnbc.com/news/924871.asp?cp1=1

And my own observations:

* As mentioned earlier in this thread, toward the end of the cartridge era, a considerable number of games were retailing for more than $50: Phantasy Star IV, Zero Tolerance, etc.

* Sony's first-party titles usually cost $40 (SOCOM being a notable exception), since they don't have to pay the hardware royalty fee.

* Many more games are coming out at sub-$50 price points than just a few years ago. And not just the $10 budget titles and Greatest Hits re-releases, but brand-new and very decent games: Road Trip, Evil Dead: FoB, Big Mutha Truckers, Magic Pengel, Bombastic, etc.

* You can't compare CD and DVD prices to videogame prices. (Well, you can, but you'd be silly to do so.) There are wildly different factors involved in their production and pricing. Apples and oranges.

-- Z.

[Raedon]

Stay 1 year behind in games and save.. 1) a year of reviews will tell you a LOT. 2) You will find it for $10-20.

And yes, games were overpriced.. A SNES game costing $50? That was hard to swallow then, now at least you can tell there was a production team of more then 10 people.

From what I have seen in the last five years the trend has been for people to pirate games, PC especially.. The games that get the big sales are the ones that are online multiplayer and require a online serial code.

Lol, that reminds me of something I saw at Target about 6 months ago, I saw a kid open a UT2k3 and write down the Serial.. Didn't take anything out of the store but a piece of paper.

[ubersaurus]

It's waaay better then paying 80 bucks for a new SNES game back in the day ;p

Plus I buy so few games brand new, it doesn't bug me too much.

[kainemaxwell]

$40-$50's alot fairer then $50-$70 back during the Nintendo and Sega wars days.

[lendelin]

Here's an educational article about why the price of triple-A videogames may soon be rising to $60: http://www.msnbc.com/news/924871.asp?cp1=1

And my own observations:

* As mentioned earlier in this thread, toward the end of the cartridge era, a considerable number of games were retailing for more than $50: Phantasy Star IV, Zero Tolerance, etc.

* Sony's first-party titles usually cost $40 (SOCOM being a notable exception), since they don't have to pay the hardware royalty fee.

* Many more games are coming out at sub-$50 price points than just a few years ago. And not just the $10 budget titles and Greatest Hits re-releases, but brand-new and very decent games: Road Trip, Evil Dead: FoB, Big Mutha Truckers, Magic Pengel, Bombastic, etc.

* You can't compare CD and DVD prices to videogame prices. (Well, you can, but you'd be silly to do so.) There are wildly different factors involved in their production and pricing. Apples and oranges.

-- Z.

I think the quoted article simplifies a lot and is inconsistent. The highpoint: "Pachter, the Webush Morgan analyst, believes that publishers just don’t know any better.
“Game publishers don’t understand consumers, they understand video games,” he said. “Prices never go down. People don’t have a problem with prices going up, the publishers do.”

Holy cow! That's one of the dumbest things I ever heard. Neither Publishers nor consumers live in lala land. Almost evreyone has a limited budget, and not only we videogame nuts are price conscious, but also a family with three kids. If the avareage retail price for new releases goes up to $60, sales will go down for sure, and publishers know that better than Mr. Pachter.

The credo of this article is, development costs of games will rise, therefore prices will go up. Sounds like a justification of publishers to get the price up. Nope, won't happen.

- the competition prohibits such a uniform price increase. I don't think that Nintendo would follow suit a price increase by Sony and Microsoft. GC games which look suddenly more attractive for the consumer becasue of a lower price tag? I think they wouldn't have something against it, in particular when often the same game is realeased for two or three systems.
...and why did we see a constant price drop for the harware if not for the competition?

- the more games you sell, the lower the profit rate can be for an individual game. I can't see an increase in an expanding market where more and more games are sold.

- didn't Nintendo cut their losses for a lot of games for the N64 with a lower price tag because PS1 games were cheaper? Again, competition keeps the prices down.

- the article presents developers/publishers almost as victims. Here we are, the games cost more and more to develop, so...we just HAVE to increase the price for new releases. Poor guys. They have to come to grips with development costs and realistic expecatations for sales and calculate accordingly, and THEY DO!! If Shiny wouldn't have had expected sales figures for Enter the matrix which ends up with profits despite the millions for the Wachofski brothers, they wouldn't have spend money for the license and the money for the directors. If developers are forced to cut development costs due to market change, they sure can, and they KNOW HOW!!

Thank goodnes there is the last paragraph.

Ultimately, a price increase may rest with the customers. If one publisher sells a hot new title for 60 a pop and makes a killing, publishers with similar titles may follow. But if consumers determine that the gameplay can’t match the price hike. ... Well, hell hath no fury like a gamer spurned.

As long as game sales go up or even stagnate, we won't see a price increase due to competition...which means an increase of rational consumer behavior which chooses the cheapest item. We never saw so many very good games drop so fast to such low prices. Additionally, adjust the tables of the articles for inflation and purchasing power, and you'll see we get new released games nowadays around 40% cheaper than to the best SNES times. Current games were never so cheap, good for us players, and developers/publishers still make more profit than ever before, good for them.

[Sylentwulf]

Companies charge what people are willing to pay, plain and simple. If enough people thought $50 was too much, then noone would be buying them for $50, and they wouldn't be released at $50.

Personally, I DON'T pay $50. I have a nice setup going where I stay one year behind the videogame industry, even on sports games. I buy my games for either used/mint/complete, or new about a year after they come out for around $20 including shipping.

The only exceptions to this are:
Final Fantasy games (Up until now, FFX has ruined this for me, and I probably won't buy any more on release day)
EXCEPTIONAL games that WILL retain their value. Not many of these come around, and I usually wait a month or 2 to make SURE it won't lose value.

[zmeston]

Holy cow! That's one of the dumbest things I ever heard. Neither Publishers nor consumers live in lala land. Almost evreyone has a limited budget, and not only we videogame nuts are price conscious, but also a family with three kids. If the avareage retail price for new releases goes up to $60, sales will go down for sure, and publishers know that better than Mr. Pachter.

SOCOM, mentioned in the article by Pachter, has sold through more than a million units despite its $60 MSRP. Also, not all new releases would (will) move up to $60, just the triple-A stuff. Many publishers are already releasing games with modest production values at sub-$50 price points. Big Mutha Truckers would be a poor buy at $50; it's an excellent buy at $20, a price point totally in line with the amount of entertainment it provides.

Publishers who DON'T know how to properly price their games will suffer -- such as Eidos, which released Mister Mosquito and Mad Maestro! at $50, when they should've shipped at $30, tops.

...and why did we see a constant price drop for the harware if not for the competition?

Software and hardware are entirely different beasts; all the money is made by the former, which encourages console makers to market the latter as cheaply as possible.

-- Z.

[AB Positive]

Even working at Gamestop, I only bought two new games so far this year: Soul Calibur 2 and FF Tactics Advance. I don't have a problem with the $50 tag, but I need to make sure that I'm going to get that $50 of value.

The -systems- on the other hand, I won't ever buy new on release day again. Too much god damn money. And what if I don't like it's lineup after a year or so? *coughXBOXcough*.

Software, no problem. Hardware, I have issues but it can't be avoided as companies lose a lot on the hardware anyway.

-AG