Bye-Bye $60 games?

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

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Could The $60 Standard Be Reversed By The Recession?
By Michael McWhertor, 3:40 PM on Mon Dec 29 2008, 0 views

Not sure if you've noticed, but the economy's in the toilet. Even the supposed "recession-proof" video game industry is feeling the pinch, with publishers slashing prices even on best-selling titles. Could last-gen pricing return?

Forbes points to cuts on titles like Activision's Call of Duty: World at War — currently Amazon.com's deal of the day — and Guitar Hero World Tour as indicators that sales may be slowing on top tier titles. Analysts, such as Lazard Capital Markets Colin Sebastian, say that the reduction on the latest Call of Duty, a best seller in November, "highlights the risk of lower software pricing moving into the new year."

Activision's not the only one cutting prices. Pre-holiday releases like Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy's EndWar and Far Cry 2 saw significant cuts.

Forbes theorizes that if publishers keep releasing new games at the new standard of $59.99 USD, "the inability to keep them at that level for a significant period could have some serious implications on revenues." Especially if wiser buyers anticipate that big-budget releases will be inevitably slashed and decide to wait, we'd think.
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Source

I was having this very talk with a friend yesterday. He said it's not fair when you pay $60 for a game like Grand Theft Auto IV or MGS 4, then go pay $60 for A game like GoW or Dead Space that's 10 hours long. Plus you keep in mind other games that are even shorter. Developers use the "It has online-capability" line, to claim the game has value. What about gamers who don't like playing online? Anyways, online is just a side effect of the main game. If you design it with multi-player in mind from the begining, your not putting in 'extra work' for the multi-player that in anyway makes up for the work GTA or MG or FF developers put in. So why the same price?

You can't tell me <insert random 10 hour game here> took as much to develop as Grand Theft Auto IV, so why does it cost the same? If the company says they can't afford it, to bad, then they don't have the right to charge $60 like those who do spend the money.
 
bigdogchris said:
If the company says they can't afford it, to bad, then they don't have the right to charge $60 like those who do spend the money.
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They have a right to charge whatever the hell they want for it, you have the choice not to buy it... I hate when ignorant people use the word 'right' without knowing wtf they are talking about.

And I'm sorry, your reasoning is poor. Length != Quality.

I'll take a shorter game that's jam packed with action that's short rather than a drawn out POS grinding game or games that just copy and paste level design to make it longer.

By your reasoning, how do you price puzzle games? How do you price games like TF2 or CS with only an online mode which has the potential to last you years.

That article was about the prices of games dropping because of the economy, not game length anyway...
 
This is why I almost never buy games on launch day. I wait till they drop to 29 or 19$. Much better value.
 
Vengance_01 said:
This is why I almost never buy games on launch day. I wait till they drop to 29 or 19$. Much better value.
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yup. Games tend to drop 10-20 bucks within a month or two really quick these days, especially if they're not sales demons. Prince of persia dropped 20 bucks in three weeks.
 
I don't buy them for full price anymore, I wait till they drop.
 
Paying $60 for a game has always put a knot in my stomach. Thats a good chunk of the cost of the console, I'd feel much better paying $30 or so. But.. there is always waiting, as some have said, and thats what I'll usually do.
 
I am willing to pay between $30 and $40 for a video game.
IMO, games are the gas of PC. The most remarkable difference is that gas cannot be sold back after use...
 
IMO the "sweet" spot for games is 35-40 bucks.

If games were released at this price I would buy a LOT more of them brand new.

With the recent sales I bought both Fifa 09 and NHL 09 for 37 bucks.

I was about to buy call of duty:waw but the price was hiked back to 58 bucks so no buy now.

Instead I'll just go back to my usual means of purchasing most games, ebay/forums and buy them from the second hand market.
 
The first time I ever paid $50 for a game, was way back in the day when I bought Super Mario Bros for the original NES. I actually had the first release system that came with Gyromite and Duck Hunt and not SMB. Still have Rob the robot too.

Anyway, I remember back then thinking how ridiculous it was for me to have saved my allowance as long as I had for that game. Even though to this day, I still enjoy it (Nesticle FTW) but $50 back then was even more than $60 is now. I am all for giving developers their profits they've rightfully earned, but count me in that group who waits a few months for price drops. The only 360 game I paid full price for was Halo 3. The rest have either been bargain bin specials, or the result of good sales which fortunately have been plentiful. Just picked up Fallout 3 yesterday from BB (Target pricematch) btw.

IMO, sports games are the worst culprit of price gouging (if you want to call it that). There are those out there who will pay $60 every freaking year for a roster update and to me, that is just asinine. Especially considering that last year's game is now only $10 at most places. I'll just always be a year behind but I really don't care. What's even more funny is that in some instances, the current year's game is worse than the previous year's due to new features which gimp the gameplay.

In any event, it will be interesting if we start to see a few price drops and more pricing based on gameplay length rather than just arbitrarily being price at $60.
 
Stiler said:
IMO the "sweet" spot for games is 35-40 bucks.

If games were released at this price I would buy a LOT more of them brand new.

With the recent sales I bought both Fifa 09 and NHL 09 for 37 bucks.

I was about to buy call of duty:waw but the price was hiked back to 58 bucks so no buy now.

Instead I'll just go back to my usual means of purchasing most games, ebay/forums and buy them from the second hand market.
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Agreed. BTW, check Target for COD:WaW. It's on sale for $39 this week. Or, go for a BB price match if they are out OOS.
 
derek533 said:
The first time I ever paid $50 for a game, was way back in the day when I bought Super Mario Bros for the original NES. I actually had the first release system that came with Gyromite and Duck Hunt and not SMB. Still have Rob the robot too.

Anyway, I remember back then thinking how ridiculous it was for me to have saved my allowance as long as I had for that game. Even though to this day, I still enjoy it (Nesticle FTW) but $50 back then was even more than $60 is now. I am all for giving developers their profits they've rightfully earned, but count me in that group who waits a few months for price drops. The only 360 game I paid full price for was Halo 3. The rest have either been bargain bin specials, or the result of good sales which fortunately have been plentiful. Just picked up Fallout 3 yesterday from BB (Target pricematch) btw.

IMO, sports games are the worst culprit of price gouging (if you want to call it that). There are those out there who will pay $60 every freaking year for a roster update and to me, that is just asinine. Especially considering that last year's game is now only $10 at most places. I'll just always be a year behind but I really don't care. What's even more funny is that in some instances, the current year's game is worse than the previous year's due to new features which gimp the gameplay.

In any event, it will be interesting if we start to see a few price drops and more pricing based on gameplay length rather than just arbitrarily being price at $60.
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I think the first one I bought was legend of zelda for the NES. Gold cartridge, AND it can save your games? OMG so worth it!! :)
 
Not surprising after a lot of hyped up games didnt even come close to performing like they normally would have. Im not sure how many $60 games they expect people to be able to afford in the period of 2 months.

At least they arent as expensive as N64 games. I still remember the first time I saw Wave Race for $84 at Best Buy. Wtf.
 
Are you sure about that? I bought that game too pretty soon after it was released and don't remember paying that much for it.
 
Yes, I remember showing it to friends and joking about it each time we went to Best Buy (actually I think it was Media Play). Prices for 64 games varied wildy because Nintendo stuck to cartridges one generation too many, they ranged from $40 to $80 with no real bearing on if the game was any good or not.
 
Any game with endless play. (basically any game with mulitplayer.) is worth 50$

Single Player only games should be 30$ at most.
 
Dion said:
Single Player only games should be 30$ at most.
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My 120hr Final Fantasy 12 save would disagree with you. I think that was the last game I bought on release day, and it was WELL worth the money.

Generally though, the FF titles (if I own the corresponding console) are the only ones I'm willing to buy on day zero.
 
Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES) was $72 at Wal Mart when it came out.
Was worth every penny too. 32meg cart, I think...
 
I usually wait for price drops, unless it's a Valve game or an EA NHL game.

edit: I remember paying about $100 for WWF No Mercy on the N64. That was absolutely ridiculous, but the game had almost infinite replay value! I'd play it right now if I could find my darn controllers :mad:
 
You can't tell me <insert random 10 hour game here> took as much to develop as Grand Theft Auto IV, so why does it cost the same?
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Lemme take a wild guess... they expect to sell less copies because they don't have some giant franchise backing them up?
 
the way I see it.. the economy, and the world in general, is changing. These companies will either adapt, or be left behind.

As the owner of a small web design business myself, I'd MUCH rather produce 5 websites for $5000 a piece rather than a single one for $15000 because for every satisfied customer, they will tell 5 more people which might develop into 5 more customers... etc... the point is, these companies are realizing the business models of before simply don't work. The money simply isn't there. Perhaps lower prices might drum up even more business than keeping things expensive and exclusive, it's certainly happened before (and likewise, the opposite has proven true as well, the Wii has for some reason continued to sell like hotcakes with a high price due to it's exclusivity. So I could be wrong...)
 
The "business knowledge" in this thread is laughable.

Here's the reason you start off your games at $60: people will buy them at that price, even if it's just a few people. As you exhaust the $60 portion of the market, you move down to $50. Repeat until you hit $20 or so. Starting low just means you give up profit at the higher end of the market. This is a simple supply-demand curve optimization, folks. There _is_ something to be said for having a mix of price points for your games, but that can be accomplished just as easily and with less profit loss by using the falling prices strategy I've just outlined.

However, I would agree with the statement that games will drop in price more quickly in a bad market.
 
I was surprised to encounter several brand new games like Left 4 Dead and Motorstorm 2 discounted over the holiday. Some were $10 off, some were dropping as low as $39...and these weren't dud games or even poor sellers either.
Either way, I spent money in a Gamestop for the first time in quite a while after seeing all of the deals they had prior to Christmas. Target jumped on the bandwagon on the 26th and 27th.
 
Dion said:
Any game with endless play. (basically any game with mulitplayer.) is worth 50$

Single Player only games should be 30$ at most.
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Any CD with a full band should be $10. Soloists may only charge $5.
 
Lumping games into a price range be genre is crazy. There's 10x more content in Fallout or Oblivion than most multiplayer games. Just because you can shoot your buddies over and over again and play online doesn't mean that replayability is any better than a single player game. That applies to anything. I've put in hundreds of hours into Street Fighter and Tekken online, but they can't even come close to touching something like Fallout or the fairly short God of War games.
Games should be priced according to the quality of the content.
 
I always pay the $60 for NHL and Madden. Everything else i try and wait for, but then some of them just never drop. I was late to the 360, and I'm pretty sure i still paid the full $60 for GoW even like a year after it was released. Worth it though.
 
Isn't the price of games based on the fact that consoles are sold at a loss and games are used to recoop the lost money? I thought that's why bioshock and the orange box were $10 more for the console version over the pc.

You really end up paying more than sticker for games anyway. New content usually comes with a price if you choose to download it.

Kudos to everyone who waits and buys games after their initial release. I do the same. My only gripe is that the console community is very fickle with online play, and sequels come faster than they sometimes should. I'm still shocked, and happy, that halo 3 and cod4 have had such strong staying power.
 
Frankly, as long as the price doesn't stay at $60 then I don't see what the problem is.

In economists terms it's called "price searching" and is a way of maximizing your revenue for a given product.

For example:
You sell 25 copies at $60 = $1500
You drop the price to $45 and sell 40 more = $1800
Finally your game goes "greatest hits" and you sell 50 at $20 = $1000

From that example you would make $4300. However, if you had charged an incredibly reasonable price of $40 per copy and held it static at that amount - not only would you potentially never see the 50 sales at the $20 price mark, but you would LOSE the $500 you could have made by charging those 25 people who were willing to buy at $60. You would potentially only see around $2500 to $3000 in sales.

Certain customers are willing to pay certain prices. Why shouldn't they try to get people to buy their games at $60 bucks? Once they see movement dropping off, they adjust the price to match. It's free market capitalism, don't like it? Don't buy it.
 
It's pretty amusing to see people attempting to correlate gameplay length to retail pricing, as if it that's some sort of sole determinator of a game's "value" or "worth" and that a game's initial MSRP is set by a game's potential value to consumers. Such concepts are only pertinent to consumers -- the end users. For publishers, pricing is determined by other factors, central to those being development and marketing costs. If gameplay length were the primary consideration for establishing retail pricing, Morrowind: Game of the Year might be priced more appropriately at $349.99 rather than $19.99.

For the most part, publishers seem to want to adhere to established pricing trends: if a given number of AAA titles are selling for the $59.95 MSRP, most other AAA titles will launch at the same MSRP. If the market is willing to bear these prices -- and I think it's pretty well established that the market can -- then AAA titles will continue to sell at the same price points they always have regardless of trivial factors like gameplay length. On the flip side of the coin, the same pricing trends that keep MSRPs "high" also keep prices on individual games from becoming "too high".

 
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I wish there was more variety in new game retail pricing, there is no way a "B" title should cost as much as MGS4 or GTA4, but $60 in today's money is really not that much if it's a good game.

i remember paying more than $60 for many cartridge games, and that was 15-20 years ago, with inflation that's close to $100. Before the crash, most big Atari titles were $30+.

Historically $60 is not that bad IMO.
 
ScreamingBroccoli said:
They have a right to charge whatever the hell they want for it, you have the choice not to buy it... I hate when ignorant people use the word 'right' without knowing wtf they are talking about.

And I'm sorry, your reasoning is poor. Length != Quality.

I'll take a shorter game that's jam packed with action that's short rather than a drawn out POS grinding game or games that just copy and paste level design to make it longer.

By your reasoning, how do you price puzzle games? How do you price games like TF2 or CS with only an online mode which has the potential to last you years.

That article was about the prices of games dropping because of the economy, not game length anyway...
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I agree to a point. I refuse to pay 60 for a video game. 30 to 49 dollars is my sweet spot and I expect quality regardless of length.

The sole reason I do not game on consoles now is because of the $60 price tag on todays games. I can't justify paying that kind of money for software that will be used maybe for two weeks or a month if i'm busy.
 
fdiaz78 said:
I agree to a point. I refuse to pay 60 for a video game. 30 to 49 dollars is my sweet spot and I expect quality regardless of length.

The sole reason I do not game on consoles now is because of the $60 price tag on todays games. I can't justify paying that kind of money for software that will be used maybe for two weeks or a month if i'm busy.
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There is never a reason to pay MSRP on any electronic media including PC/Console games or CDs. They day they are released they are usually on sale for $5-10 off MSRP or come with some kind of bonus that makes it worth it. Just wait one month and then they are usually on sale for even cheaper. Usually the only day I pay MSRP for a console is the console's actual launch day (I paid full price for Zelda on Wii, but had a coupon for $5 off monkey ball)
 
IdiotCow said:
Frankly, as long as the price doesn't stay at $60 then I don't see what the problem is.

In economists terms it's called "price searching" and is a way of maximizing your revenue for a given product.

For example:
You sell 25 copies at $60 = $1500
You drop the price to $45 and sell 40 more = $1800
Finally your game goes "greatest hits" and you sell 50 at $20 = $1000

<<snipped>>
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I don't think anyone would claim that the system can't be made to work. However, you're ignoring factors that are real but can be hard to measure.

For example, since games for my console tend to be released at the $60 mark and I'm extremely reluctant to pay that price, the publisher is already in the hole with me - I'm likely never going to buy a game on day 1, nor am I likely to preorder a game for purchase.

Now, once the game is released I'm going to see how the buzz is from the professional reviewers and the gamers who did buy the game on release. Since the game has to be very good for me to buy at $60, the publisher has now handed control of my potential full-price sale to people outside their influence.

During this time period people are trading the game back to used game retailers, and since I'm not obsessed with getting that "new game smell," even if I decide I'm willing to buy the game early I'm probably going to end up buying it used and spending that $5 savings on a Double Quarter Pounder (with cheese, natch). The same continues to be true even if the publisher reduces the price over the next year.

In other words, while I'm sure the publishers get some deferred sales by reducing price over time, at a minimum they're losing more and more sales as time passes because people know that they can get the same disc, case and manual for less than whatever price is being charged for the game in shrink-wrapped new condition.

Some publishers are trying to push schemes that will limit the playability of used games, but they risk running afoul of both the law (used videogames are, and should be, just as legal as any other used products) and of disgruntled consumers. If, on the other hand, I could get 2 brand-new games for less than $100 I might become more willing to speculate on release-day gaming. As it is now, though, they're losing my sales almost completely to used game retailers.
 
I wouldn't mind paying $60 for a game if all the bonus content was included in the price. This is the way PC gaming has been for years. I doesn't make sense to me why I would have to pay for extra content that they release to either appeal to new fans or keep the current ones. This micro transaction crap is silly. I understand you can vote with your wallet, my point is you shouldn't have to.

If you based all of the games on a rating system wouldn't every developer consider their game a AAA title. Not many people would say hey we are shooting for a C-grade game and we are going to charge X-amount of money.

Make an enjoyable game, appeal to your demographic, release new content to keep it relevant. IMHO
 
Babbster said:
Now, once the game is released I'm going to see how the buzz is from the professional reviewers and the gamers who did buy the game on release. Since the game has to be very good for me to buy at $60, the publisher has now handed control of my potential full-price sale to people outside their influence.
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Publishers push advertising money on several review sites that influence reviews for their games. Remember the Kane and Lynch fiasco? They can't do much for word of mouth, but by the time word of mouth plays into sales the game is either recognized as a hit or a bomb anyway and the price is relative.

I'm not so angry at the price of games now as I am the price to rent games. I remember renting nintendo games as a kid for $2 for 2 nights. Now its what - $15 for 6 days at blockbuster? Four rentals would be a new game for me. I can't justify that. I'll just download a demo to see if I like it first.
 
NeoTek said:
I wouldn't mind paying $60 for a game if all the bonus content was included in the price. This is the way PC gaming has been for years. I doesn't make sense to me why I would have to pay for extra content that they release to either appeal to new fans or keep the current ones. This micro transaction crap is silly. I understand you can vote with your wallet, my point is you shouldn't have to.
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It is silly, but it makes sense. Gamers are fickle. So many console games to keep you busy you have to find ways to keep people coming back to your games and ways for those games to continue to make money. Its even happened in PC gaming recently. It was rumored that blizzard actually pushed up the release of WoTLK to compete with Warhammer online's release.
 
NeoTek said:
I wouldn't mind paying $60 for a game if all the bonus content was included in the price. This is the way PC gaming has been for years. I doesn't make sense to me why I would have to pay for extra content that they release to either appeal to new fans or keep the current ones. This micro transaction crap is silly. I understand you can vote with your wallet, my point is you shouldn't have to.
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Have to agree with you there. Then again, since I buy almost exclusively used, even paying for online content ends up costing me less than a launch-day game. And, I get to provide some money to the publisher/developer, which I'd like to do regularly but won't at the $60 price point.
aggr1103 said:
Publishers push advertising money on several review sites that influence reviews for their games. Remember the Kane and Lynch fiasco? They can't do much for word of mouth, but by the time word of mouth plays into sales the game is either recognized as a hit or a bomb anyway and the price is relative.
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There are definitely bad eggs out there, but since I'm waiting a month or more to buy games they just don't affect me.
I'm not so angry at the price of games now as I am the price to rent games. I remember renting nintendo games as a kid for $2 for 2 nights. Now its what - $15 for 6 days at blockbuster? Four rentals would be a new game for me. I can't justify that. I'll just download a demo to see if I like it first.
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Gamefly is the only way for me. $15/month and if a game's a clunker I can send it right back and get another one fairly quickly. I know it seems like a lot to some, but even if I only played one rental all the way through per month I'm still saving money over buying.
 
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