Topic: The Return of the $60 Game?

[WindyMan]

Games might still be $50, but the costs to develop them aren't what they used to be.

Ever since the PlayStation came around, gamers have been used to paying $49.99 for a brand new videogame (save for us hardcore $59.99 N64 guys).  Publishers felt that this was the right price point to cover all the costs to develop a game, make some money off it, and still make the consumer happy.

That was then, and this is now.  Back in the 32/64-bit era, a game cost in the 1-2 millions of dollars range to develop.  That's not so true with the current breed of consoles, where most games cost five times as much to make or more, and while more people are playing videogames than ever, that still doesn't justify the cost of a game being the same price, $49.99.  At least, according to one analyst.  Here's a snip from the article, with comments from Shiny's Dave Perry:

Several things are driving development costs up:

First, compared to the last generation of consoles, the current 128-bit generation requires at least 40 times as many lines of code to fully exploit its capabilities. And that costs money.

Shiny president Dave Perry says that the more advanced the console, the larger the development team. He should know: Shiny’s “Enter the Matrix” cost more than $20 million to develop.

“To keep pushing the limits, that not only takes more people, but better people,” Perry said. “Great development staff are therefore becoming more and more valuable, and as our industry moves to Playstation 3, Xbox 2, etc., then they will be at a new premium,” he said.

Gamers concerned about a possible games price hike would do well to read the entire article over at MSNBC.  Be aware, though, that the entire article is speculative, and in no way indicative that publishers will increase game prices any time soon.  We hope.

[DRJ]

I don't mind paying for games, be it $20 or $60, but as the price goes up, I am going to expect more, and I am going to be more picky. Games like enter the matrix, which I have not / nor will probably never get cost like $20 million to make, and the game turns out to be sub par because most of that money went into licensing fees. I will certainly not pay more money for a less quality game. If the price were to go up I would still buy games like Zelda, Metroid, Mario (notice how these are all first party Nintendo games) Nintendo's quality is way above the average, so I wouldnt mind shelling out $60 for some of their games. If the prices do go up I would probably never buy another third party game, there are of course some exceptions, but most of the games will not be bought. If developers want to sell garbage then they need to price it accordingly, if they spend more money making a game really stand out, then the price is justified.

[HereticPB]

Well Me being a game player for a long time I don't remember games being anything higher than 55 dollars. Non of the N64 games I bought new were 60 dollars. And I bought them at launch. As for the price going up I think it is a very very big mistake. Stores like Gamestop will thrive cause of the used sales of games cause many people don't want to blow 60 bucks on a game. It is a lot of cash. And it has been proven that games at lower prices have sold better than many that are at a higher price. Also a lower price allows for more games to be bought.

[Fammy2000]

Next thing you know, Player's Choice will be $30. Oh wait!

There is a delicate balance in economics. Raise it too much, and you can lose money. Raise it a little, and you may make millions more. Stop buying licenses and making crap games is another solution. Why oh why didn't Superman N64 sell? It's Superman! He's invinvible.

[JoeSmashBro]

this is so stupid. we were just now getting games that were coming out for $30-$40, and they were entire, full games. Now they're gonna be $60?? I don't see it happening. As if the big companies suddenly looked around and realized, "Oh!! These games are costing more to make! I had no idea! Let's raise the price." You can count on me never buying a new game again if it's $60 freaking dollars. I have self-control, I can wait until the price goes down.

[Grey Ninja]

I live in Canada... games are regularly $60 here.  I would still pay the money if they went up to $80 though.  It's all good.

[Infernal Monkey]

So we get these statements from the big guns. Now I guess 3D0 and Midway will claim their 30 second works of interactive art *cough* also cost ba-jillions to make...

[Djunknown]

(off topic)
Those are some funny Comics Infernal Monkey. Can't wait to see more!

(on Topic)

It'll be interesting on how it pans out. I'm picky enough as is, I own only three 3rd party titles (NBA Street Capcom Vs SNK 2 and Baldur's gate Dark Alliance), the rest  I have are exclusives. And that's just because of personal preference, not price! Nintendo is stubborn as it is to lower prices compared to PS2 or Xbox.

There aren't going to be any Triple A, Top Tier, system Sellers like Metroid Prime or GTA: Vice City for the rest of 2003. There's gonna be good titles like Viewtiful Joe, Soul Calibur II, the Metal Gear remake, etc, but they aren't worth 60 dollars. To quote Kapp n', if 3rd parties are jacking up the price, I don't give a Squid because I won't buy them anyway!! As long as Sega, Capcom, Namco, Nintendo, SquareEnix, Konami stay level, its all good.

I personally thought competion between companies would be enough to keep prices steady. But I guess that's another realm altogether.

[Pod]

I'd be more than happy to pay $60 for new videogames. In Denmark we still pay $75 for most new console games, and that's not even considering the current low-as-ever dollar. New N64 games was $85 back in the day. PC-games, on the other hand, are released at about $50 here. I just don't get it, 'cause with prices like that, it's honestly no fun to be a console gamer, 'round these parts. :-/

~Pod

[KDR_11k]

I hope they don't increase the PAL prices, which are already above USD60. That increase would be completely unjustified!

[DRJ]

I dont think that Nintendo will raise their prices, and if a first party kick ass Nintendo game is $50 then no third party developer in their right mind would release theirs for more. Then again they might release their games for $60 and when they dont sell on the GCN use it as an excuse to stop supporting the platform.

[oohhboy]

If it goes to $60 dollars I will personally be the first one to say Duke>"See you in hell"</duke.

[Sabres Fan]

I'm used to paying $70-80 for new GC games in Canada, but new games (Sonic Adventure DX) are now down to $60 CDN due to the recent 10 cent increase in the Canadian dollar.If they do increase game prices all it will do is put it back to $70 for me, so I can't lose.

[Atma]

Quote
Originally posted by: Sabres Fan
I'm used to paying $70-80 for new GC games in Canada, but new games (Sonic Adventure DX) are now down to $60 CDN due to the recent 10 cent increase in the Canadian dollar.If they do increase game prices all it will do is put it back to $70 for me, so I can't lose.

That may be true (for you).  However, when the Australian dollar was worth 50 US cents, games cost $100.  Now that the AUD is up to 67 US cents, games are still $100.

The whole currency thing is kinda pointless imo.

[jasonditz]

This is a terrible idea for most companies. You could get away with this on Mario and Zelda games, but most of the others are going to just sit on the shelves until they get reduced. Come to think of it, that's what many of them do now.

The problem with raising the prices because your costs went up is that your marginal costs remain the same (trivial). What's the per unit cost for a GC game? I can't imagine it being more than a few dollars. 90% of the costs are in advance development costs... and once those are paid for, you make as much money as you can.

Since we have no real supply limitation once the game is already made (unless Sega Sports pulls it after the first day and it winds up $100 on eBay), what they face is a standard price/demand curve. A company will make as much (again, not counting the marginal costs) selling 100,000 copies at $25 as they will selling 50,000 at $50.

That's the problem with this article. Most of these companies are having a hard enough time stimulating demand at $50... it will only go down if they raise the price to $60. WWF Crush Hour is a perfect example. If they'd priced it at even $50, they would've been lucky to sell 10 copies. But down at $20, its worth the buy to a lot of people just to make fun of it.

Bringing the price of a good game up $60 might not be a big deal, but most of these game makers would see a lot more profit if they dropped it to $40.

[DRJ]

Quote
but most of these game makers would see a lot more profit if they dropped it to $40.

I definately agree. If you have a top notch game like zelda, metroid prime for $50 and some other games that just arnt as good, or just are not as well established, dont expect it to sell well. I go to best buy and still see people buying psone games for 10 bucks. psone games! they paid for themselves long ago and now the compaies are just making pure profit on each one.

I would really like to see some games start out in the 30-40 dollar range.