£50 seems to be becoming the average price for new games

[Raymond Lin]

I’m old school so always prefer physical copies, only get digital if it’s free PSN or massive sales or Indy digital only like that.

I go as far as buying much less games these days and when I do, I even get the collectors one if it’s interesting. Otherwise wait until it’s £20 6 months later and get it physically.

 

[Kreeeee]

I know but I'm talking about at face value to the average joe. Ignore all the fluff about inflation etc, the same argument was used about the Nintendo Switch RRP and how people complained how expensive it was then all reports about inflation and "if it was released in the 90's it would actually cost £200 more, blah, blah, blah" But really we don't care because ever since the credit crunch people pay more attention to price increases and games is one of them.

Good thing about now compared to the early days many games drop in price fast.

Well it's about time people wake up and start paying attention to how the economy works then, because inflation will be getting much worse with Brexit. Yearly price increases are becoming the norm so people should educate themselves about why it's happening.

 

[Flubble]

if the price is above £29.99 then i'm not interested, wages aren't going up

and games are getting shorter, 4-8 hour single player game is ridiculous, multi-player is boring

 

[silvagti]

Good thing about now compared to the early days many games drop in price fast.

That's true but I suspect a lot of that is down to second hand sales of physical copies on console. Once we go digital only I have a feeling game prices will stay high much longer.

That's part of the reason I like buying physical copies as you actually own something tangible which can be resold. Whereas when you 'buy' a digital copy you're basically just renting it and can have it removed from you at any point if a server is turned off or a service goes out of business. That why I've never bought any movies/music off thing like itunes.

To be fair I think in the long run gaming will likely all move to a spotify/Netflix style subscription service and the idea of "buying/owning" a game will be seen as archaic!

 

[HRL]

Haven't bought a physical game in quite some time. Having just spent £50 on Spider Man perhaps I should have gone for the physical disc rather than digital, but the convenience of digital with my kids and the fact I'll never have to find where they've left the disc outweighs the cons to me.

 

[Jase]

I think the prices of games are reasonable for the amount of entertainment they provide. I pay £25 for a 4K bluray that provides a couple of hours entertainment.

I used to buy mainly imported games on the original Playstation/N64 etc and that cost much more than £50 all those years ago.

 

[old gamer]

Can't help feeling downloads should be cheaper, no disc, no box, no transportation, no middle man ie shops, no resale value.
Most of the time downloads cost more than a disc, maybe it's me and I'm missing something but I just don't get it

 

[malachi]

Can't help feeling downloads should be cheaper, no disc, no box, no transportation, no middle man ie shops, no resale value.
Most of the time downloads cost more than a disc, maybe it's me and I'm missing something but I just don't get it

You pay the premium for the convenience of having it there and then.

I was listening to a gaming podcast last year (Giant Bomb I think) It only seems to in be certain countries like here in the UK. In the US retail disc is the same or cost more than the digital download.

 

[nicktay2605]

I don't think the price of games is too bad. Most games I buy I'll normally complete over the course of a month or two and then sell on, and second-hand prices on recent games are pretty decent so I end up getting a good chunk of the money back. If I decide to keep a game it will be because it has some continued entertainment value, either in the form of replayability or more often in the form of multiplayer.

 

[jimferno]

It's odd that God of War could be made as a complete game for £50 with no planned DLC. According to most of you they must have lost a lot of money because games should cost £100+ now, you'd be happy for them to cost that, and DLC/micros are needed to keep them afloat.

Question, If the prices were raised to £100 per game would they stop with special editions, microtransactions and DLC?

 

[Xclockerx]

Yeah it is expensive to be fair

 

[TheVoice]

Can't help feeling downloads should be cheaper, no disc, no box, no transportation, no middle man ie shops, no resale value.
Most of the time downloads cost more than a disc, maybe it's me and I'm missing something but I just don't get it

Retailers can negotiate pricing for physical copies, work with publishers/platforms to promote titles, give them prominence on websites/instore, and as time goes on the unsold stock needs to continue to be shifted so the price tends to naturally fall. A retailer doesn't want stock sitting losing value and a publisher/distributor probably doesn't want that stock back, so it gets sold cheap.

A download has no value until it's sold, so they set the price at whatever they want knowing people will either pay it on the basis of "convenience", or they'll just buy a disc. They get a sale either way.

 

[silvagti]

Question, If the prices were raised to £100 per game would they stop with special editions, microtransactions and DLC?

It's odd actually as taking inflation into about there are plenty of times I've paid over £100 in today's money for games in the 90s. It's weird but somehow back in the 90's paying £50 for the likes of Mario64, Streetfighter 2, Starfox ,etc felt like a better value proposition at the time vs paying that for a game now in terms of the technology they offered at the time!

Whereas you look at something like spiderman4 or godofwar and to me they don't feel like £50 games? I think half the problem is they're at heart just sequels which don't really look like they'll bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay or technology.

Most of the stuff I've bought this year has been for VR and that's mainly because it's the first time I've found a technology new and exciting for over a decade since the PS3/360 came out.

 

[Rusko187]

I remember paying £50 for a mega drive game.

I’m sure people remember paying £65 for a N64 game.

£50 after 30 years on with inflation is cheap to be fair....

This... N64 games cost more or less the same as this gen of games, think of the content that goes into them now! When you think of it this way you can totally understand why they go for paid content and DLC. The current model is unsustainable, you can't go making multi million ££ games and still only charge £35.. development costs are at their highest and the gamer has never really felt the effects of that.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Games like Destiny though cost you like £50+ per year to play. They also have micro-transactions.

FIFA is £40 for the game then pay to win. Where on average people will spend anywhere between £50+ at the start to £50+ per week to play. There is a few guys on here that have spent house deposits on FIFA. Remember everything they buy is wiped and they start from scratch the following year. It's madness.

 

[montymint]

. There is a few guys on here that have spent house deposits on FIFA. Remember everything they buy is wiped and they start from scratch the following year. It's madness.

Madness in my eyes. But then again how much do "social" drinkers spend on booze each year? With nothing to show except headaches and instagram photos

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Madness in my eyes. But then again how much do "social" drinkers spend on booze each year? With nothing to show except headaches and instagram photos

Difference being if you actually drink socially you have all those life experiences with friends. If you drink alone in house then yeah - bad.

 

[Scort]

I remember paying £60 odd quid for the Alien vs Predator on the Jaguar from Electronics Boutique - similar prices when I picked up Goldeneye and a bunch of other games, when the N64 came out - heck, even all the Dreamcast games I brought were certainly near enough £50 each!

As others have likely said, £50 these days isn't that bad for a day one release - granted, I'd personally rather pay £35, but I can wait for prices to tumble or offers to come up.

Edit: in retrospect, and after reading a few more posts - people are correct, that £50 these days is like an entry fee to a partial game. Whereas, back in the day, the prices I mention above were for a complete game (Perfect dark needing an expansion pack being the odd one out )

 

[bakes0310]

Rare to pay £50 all my games are £40 or under as I wait for all the dlcs to come out and the goty editions. Don't mind waiting as I always have something to play.

 

[shorttricky]

in retrospect, and after reading a few more posts - people are correct, that £50 these days is like an entry fee to a partial game. Whereas, back in the day, the prices I mention above were for a complete game (Perfect dark needing an expansion pack being the odd one out )

I'd love to know what people think all these "partial" games are? In the last couple of years I've played games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, Far Cry 5, Assassins Creed Syndicate/Odyssey, The Division and Fallout 4 - they've all had DLC or season passes, but they've all still been 30+ hour games without it, and have all had a complete story. Seems like there's a touch of entitlement in expecting more game than that for no money.

It's also worth mentioning that back in the day, it was entirely possible to pay £50 for a game that turned out to be hideously buggy, or worse, so broken it couldn't be finished. And don't forget the joys of copy protection like coded manuals, or bizarre code wheels - don't lose those, or your game is only good for fixing a wonky table leg . Hell, I had Elite on the Spectrum which was completely unplayable, thanks to the delights of the single worst copy protection I've ever seen (lenslock, I think?) - I was literally never able to play it.