Topic: Kaz Hirai Hints at PS3 games 59.99 +

[Spak-Spang]

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft becomes the medium between the two extremes earning a large marketshare from pooling from both markets of Nintendo and Sony.

[couchmonkey]

In spite of my last post, I do think game prices should come down, if anything.  I'm also very price-adverse.  I'm just saying I don't think this is the thing that's going to kill PS3.  I think hardware cost will be a bigger deal.

[JonLeung]

It's funny, because living in Canada, I grew up with the notion that $60 (Canadian) was the standard price for all console games.  This was back when I was dependent on parents to buy me new games.

From the N64 onwards I would be buying all my own games, but I still had this notion that $60 was the standard, despite that games seemed to be getting cheaper overall.  Every time I saw a $40 or $50 game, I'd be, like, "wow, what a deal!"  Yeah, I've said that to a lot of games lately (or rather, more than lately) which is what has killed that notion.  And now that the Canadian dollar is sitting much closer to the US dollar, I guess I should be outraged even if it's reverting to what I remember console games to be.

Except for the fact that I don't think I'd be buying any PS3 games.

So, rather, I would be outraged if I cared.

Man, Sony's just killing themselves here if they think the gaming audience will pay as much as they ask.

[Mikintosh]

Quote
Originally posted by: MaryJane
I'm not sure a high priced game will hurt a system if it is worth it.

If Nintendo were to make an MMORPG with all of their characters, I wouldn't hesistate to slap down $100 for the game and $15 a month to play. I might complain about it, but I'd still buy it.

If Sony can make games that people feel are worth paying $60 or $70 dollars for, and still release the "generic" ones for $50 or $55 they may not have a problem. I may or may not buy a ps3, but that's going to depend on how well the system does. The only reason I bought a ps2 was for the RPG's I couldn't get on GC. If ps3 gets all the RPG's again, I'm going to buy one, and pay $70 to play an RPG also. I think everyone has a genre of games they'd pay more for. Or perhaps even things within the game. There's a lot of talk about how HD isn't very popular yet, and all that, but you know what? HD graphics will sell to people. They'll think oh sweet high def graphics, it's better than everything else, and not realize that to their standard t.v HD graphics don't mean a thing. These people are the sheep, and as you can see from the ps2 sony has good prarie dogs. A lot of casual gamers only buy a game a month or less so spending an extra 10 or 20 dollars for them wouldn't matter much I think. The initial cost that's a much bigger issue i think. But from speaking to people who plan on buying one, they seem to think the price is justified with how powerful the system is.  A lot of money for a lot of power.  It's unfortunate but that's how people seem to be looking at it. Only for computers and cars I'd say that formula holds true for, and not even in all cases.

Yes, but no offense, just because you would slap down that much money doesn't mean a mass audience would. At all. I love Nintendo, but I'd never pay more than $60 for a game of theirs or anyone elses', even with hi-def graphics I can't take advantage of. I think only Final Fantasy XIII would be worth $70 to anybody, but even that's pushing it.

But anyway, just because people followed the PS2 doesn't mean anything for the PS3; if the PS3 cost $300 or less and the games were going to be $50 at most, we wouldn't be having this discussion. As people said, there will be some early adopters, but that doesn't mean 1st place for Sony this generation.  

[MaryJane]

You could very well be right...

Then again so could I.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but the reason I said what I did was because I did some "research" I was kind of recently at a party where everybody, and i mean EVERYBODY was playing ps2 taking turns obviously, even though we did have the four person connector, there were at least 25 people there. So then people started talking about the ps3, some had no idea about it, other were the online geeks who post in forums and watch anime...

So anyway, I just happened to sneak in two questions. 1. are you really willing to pay $600 for something just cuz it can play games in HD? and i got a simultaneous yes from all the geeks, with other saying things like, that's really expensive, but i'd still get it, cuz though graphics must be incredible. obviously some people said no, but that was like 5 people.
Then after much beratting and humiliating laughter and jokes, because my friend yells out, dont listen him he owns a gamecube, I said, o.k are you going to pay $70 for each game. The answer to that question was in my previous post, most people said they hardly ever buy 12 games a year, (obviously paraphrasing, this was the kind of party that I would intend) and that a $20 hike wouldn't mean too much to them, of course the geeks just gave their loud yes again. (damn forum based fanboys).

Anyway, all that was to say I didn't just pull my thoughts out of my a$$, there was a reason behind it, at the time I was just too lazy to give the full story, and in about 15 minutes I will be too lazy again

[Kairon]

Well, it may be a bit premature to parade around the $70+ price range.

PS3 games could simply be $59.99 at launch just like the XBox 360s were/are. That hasn't hurt the 360 too much, and heck, I'm sure the game prices would go down after awhile. The N64's did, after all.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[KDR_11k]

Must be some pretty severe fanboys, if I asked "What do you think about 70€ games?" around here the answer would be "What does a modchip cost?".

[slacker]

$60 games, in my opinion, isn't much, but he did say some games will possibly be more. That's a problem for the PS3. The bigger problem with the PS3 is the initial cost to play. $600 for the complete console version, plus you must have an HDTV set to take advantage of the higher quality graphics. That could set you back $1500+ easily before you even buy a game. If you already have an HDTV set, the entry fee is still $600 bucks.  I personally believe HDTV is the future, but the problem is that its taking a long time for it to get traction because of the lack of HD content on the air waves.  I don't believe HDTV sets will be main stream by 2010 at all. By then, the majority of sets in use will only be DTV or EDTV (which I believe is just a progressive scan tv set). Even when the analog signal goes dark in a few years, the tv, cable, and satellite programs have not yet offer anything in HD that is worthwhile on a constant basis for consumers to justify buying only HD sets.  Anyways, my point is that Sony is banking the success of the PS3 on sheer power and the massive adoption of HDTV sets by consumers, which I believe will cost them the video game market by the end of this coming generation. In the end, the PS3 is not virtual reality. Its still a game machine and it doesn't come with an HDTV set to play on. Mostly kids play video games and since parents are financially responsible for their kids, they are unlikely to put out a lot of cash on what is really just a high tech toy (unless the family is loaded).  

[Ceric]

Once SED Tv's start coming out then we'll see a little jump from the people who are like me.  I'm spoiled by growing up with a great CRT.  None of these new technologies hold a candle to CRT.  So I got a CRT HDTV when mine wen kaputt.  Obviously it's not big and it was a cheaper TV, but better picture then most, so it doesn't have all the new connections.  That was about 2 something years ago.  SED is pretty much a flatscreen large CRT.  There is a humongous quality difference between it and all the large screen TV Technology out there.  At that point I could find a way to justify the switch. But that won't be another 5 years maybe...

I really doubt the HD switch is really coming soon.  About a year or two back all the Commercials where in HD preparing.  Now there all back into SD because everyone realizes it ain't coming.  In the bigger TV's they stopped selling SDTV's but they haven't fully switched to every TV being sold beind HD yet.  Only then will we start the uphill climb to HD supremece.  Then it will still take like 20 years for market saturation.  This is all too incremental.  It's not like going from B&W to Color.  Everyone could tell the change on that one.  But time will tell.  There are clear Physical and quality  benefits of going from VHS to DVD still some people haven't switched.  That should tell you something.